Home » United Arab Emirates » Atlantic Express, Port Sudan, 07/09 – 08/09

At long last, after four days of drifting in front of Port Sudan, we are given authorisation to enter the port and start discharging our cargo. We enter the port at night. The city on either side seems extraordinarily quiet: no lights, no cars in the street, the only visible building is the Hilton Hotel near the harbour. I am later told by the agent that it is the only 5 star hotel in the country. It looks quite unremarkable from here.<br/><br/>

Atlantic Express, Port Sudan, 07/09 – 08/09

Degrubenc
2005-12-09 16:42:15

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honesty and precious help but decline the suggestion to bribe all the officials to visit the deserted city.

I go to bed locking my doors and chaining all my possessions. Pepe is a formidable guard dog and scares off the Sudanese who try to come on board.

The discharging starts. We unload about 1,900 tonnes of cargo, most of it equipment for a dam project on the Blue Nile. The cargo needs to be loaded straight on the waiting trucks, as there is no space to store it anywhere on the harbour. This is a great cause of the congestion of the harbour. It is filled to the brim with cargo. The reason for it is simple: the people who own the cargo have not enough money to pay both for the merchandise and the bribes needed to get it out of the harbour. The longer it remains in storage, the higher the bribes or semi-official fines imposed on it. After 6 months, the cargo is auctioned off and the vicious circle starts again. The buyer has to pay on the spot for the merchandise but then the bribe to take it out is always higher than expected, often about 50% of the value of the cargo. After 6 months, it is auctioned again and then again. There are thousands of trucks, agricultural machines, cars, tonnes of steel and copper, equipment of all sorts littering the harbour and hindering port operations, but that is hardly important when one considers how much money the Port Authorities are making out of bribes and auctions.

Sudan is the 7th largest country in the world yet it is one of the poorest African countries. The land contains huge resources and untold potential, most of it wasted by the successive corrupt governments. The only valuable export they have is the recently found petrol. They produce 500,000 barrels a day, soon to be increased to a million barrels a day. They hope to become a country similar to the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. I struggle mentally to see this dream come true: ...