Tim Sanborn had a different take as he awoke to the smoke in the air around Cochrane on Tuesday.
It smelled “like home” and was much better than the smell of the smoke wafting through the air from burning vehicles, buildings, and who-knows-what, where he was a few weeks ago – in the war-torn city of Khartoum in Sudan.
“Trust me, it smells a whole lot different than a burning airplane,” he said. “Every day at home has been almost perfect.”
The Cochrane resident’s life has simplified – and gotten much safer – since he was ushered out of the Sudanese city when fighting broke out between rival military factions in April.
His harrowing tale began in Khartoum, where he was setting out to return to Cochrane on April 17, after completing work-related duties in a town about 550 kilometres (km) to the north.
That was before unfortunate circumstances took over his life.
The fighting in Sudan that has made international news broke out two days before he was scheduled to fly back to Canada. He waited 10 days in Khartoum, not knowing what was coming next.
The insurance company for the Cochrane agricultural equipment supplier that Sanborn works for arranged for the evacuation. The plan would entail a bus ride to the Port of Sudan, where a ferry was waiting.
In Sanborn’s memory, the most vivid part of the bus ride was leaving Khartoum, passing destroyed homes, abandoned vehicles, and other evidence of recent fighting.
“Obviously people (were) wounded and killed, so getting out of that was pretty tense, but then it just got pretty desolate,” he said.
The situation was still tense at military checkpoints along the 840-km ride to the port city, where it was nearly impossible to tell which of the warring factions were about to board the bus, since their uniforms, by Canadian standards, looked similar.
Sanborn said at one stop, a gun-toting soldier got on, sporting an outfit combining the uniforms of the two warring factions.
“At another stop, a guy came on with jeans and a leather coat, with a machine gun – so I don’t know what side he’s on,” he recalled.
The 15-hour ride ended at Port Sudan, where he was brought to an outdoor holding.
That was followed by a 13-hour overnight wait before he found out what was next.
“We didn’t know what we were really waiting for, that’s why it was so stressful,” he said.
At the holding area (resembling what westerners would perceive as a refugee camp) a representative of Sanborn’s insurance company asked people in the same situation as Sanborn to hand over their passports, which he turned over to the Saudi officials. Then he left.
There were thousands of people in the port area looking to escape the war.
“I was terrified,” Sanborn said. “There were piles of passports – shopping bags full of them – and they were announcing countries that were selected to go on the ship.”
Being without a passport in a situation like that was “very uncomfortable,” he said.
In the hours that followed, Saudi officials announced Canada a number of times but his name wasn’t called. He was left to wonder what was going on, standing overnight until he finally heard his name at 7 am.
They all were led to believe they were going to be on the ferry to Jeddah (a Saudi port city on the Red Sea) that had left an hour earlier.
His uncertainty was finally relieved when the waiting group learned they were to board a tugboat which eventually delivered them to a Saudi warship in the harbour. Once there, the group of 55 people from a variety of countries were treated very well, according to Sanborn.
He had never seen a warship of any kind, and was relieved there was a warship – of any kind. Once on board, he said he felt relaxed for the first time during his ordeal.
“There was no question on my mind that I was safe,” he said. “It was a Corvette, about 100 metres long, it was pretty cool – I hadn’t been on a military ship of any description before, so it was interesting.”
Peace of mind and a place to lay his head soon followed, before a 20-hour boat ride to Jeddah. There, the rescued passengers were surprised to see film crews waiting, along with a Saudi general ready to make a speech, as they were thrust into an elaborate media event.
Escaping a geopolitical war zone with the help of a country that doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation in terms of human rights was perhaps a bit ironic.
But Sanborn said there was not a political thought in his head as a Saudi flag was presented to him.
“I was more than happy to wave my flag – they got me out of there,” he said. “Not Canada, not the U,K, not the U.S., it was the Saudis.
“I have some opinions on the Saudis, but when the chips were down, they helped me. Their human rights record is pretty poor at best, but they were there. That’s the lasting memory.”
Canada, Sanborn pointed out, was not.
“They had opportunities to prove they were a responsible, capable government and they were really invisible,” he said.
A single email (in an area with very poor cell service) from Canadian government officials describing airlifts available from northern Khartoum wasn’t received until it was too late, Sanborn said.
“It would’ve been impossible for me to traverse the whole city of Khartoum at that point anyway,” he said.
“It was about 30 km out to the airbase where they were doing airlifts, right through the most dangerous part of the whole country, so it wasn’t really an option for me – I couldn’t find anyone who would ever consider driving me there.”
Safely ensconced in his Cochrane home with wife Nycole, daughters Jillian and Jess, and dog Ollie,
Sanborn is restoring an old pick-up truck, catching up on yard work, and doing some golfing. He called it “catching up and recalibrating a little bit” after the tense and lengthy ordeal.
Going back to Sudan isn’t anywhere on his near horizon, but Sanborn said he wouldn’t mind some kind of return, even if it’s not work-related, to see how the country he came to admire has hopefully recovered from the senseless loss of life in recent weeks.
Tragically, he predicts thousands of innocent people will be killed by the time the war concludes.
“I was beginning to like it there,” he said. “I’d like to go back to the country I remember as opposed to the one I left.”
