On the Verge of Death
On the Verge of Death Hibattalla Morgan | Al Jazeera Correspondent – Sudan
Al Jazeera has been my family for more than five years, since I started freelancing for them in South Sudan in 2015, covering the then-ongoing civil war before becoming staff, based in Sudan. My journey with the network has involved covering heartbreaking stories of the victims of the conflict, but also heartwarming stories reflecting the resilience of the survivors. Many stories we’ve covered play on my mind long after they’ve been aired. In late 2016, I was with an Al Jazeera crew covering the aftermath of violence in South Sudan’s western region of Western Bahr El Ghazal. When we arrived, we called the military commander of the state to let him know that we were going to come to his office in the morning to film with him as well as get permits to access parts of the state. When we spoke over the phone and asked the commander for his location, he said ‘Grinti’, which is the military headquarters. What I heard, however, was ‘Bringi’. We asked the driver how far Bringi was and he said it was an hour away. The next morning, the team and I decided to start early. On the drive to Bringi we passed a small army station just on the outskirts of the capital city of Wau. A few minutes after that, the phone networks went off.
Further on, we reached a checkpoint, where our driver explained that we were an Al Jazeera crew and had an appointment with the commander. From there we were led to an old school where hundreds of people were huddled. By then, we understood that we had just entered opposition territory and that the people around us had been displaced by the conflict two weeks earlier. It was raining lightly, but many had no shelter. Some of the rooms had been turned into clinics to help those who had been injured as they fled as well as those suffering from infections from sleeping in the cold. Many of those people had not eaten for days. These were the people whose stories we had travelled from the capital to tell. A solider had gone to call the commander of the opposition and we waited for a while before he came. He was a short man, dressed in military fatigues and with an air of excitement about him. It was the first time a news crew had made it to the opposition-held territory. Having interviewed him, he briefly explained what was going on in the state from his - and the opposition’s - perspective. An hour later, we decided that it would be best for the crew’s safety to leave, so we wrapped up filming. We got back in our car to return the same way we had come. But that journey did not go so
smoothly. The soldiers at the station just outside Wau stopped our car as it approached. The phone networks were back, so I called the government commander to explain that our delay was due to me mishearing him. Then I told him where we were and he asked us to have one of the soldiers there direct us.
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