“What I saw on the road is indescribable. I wake up in my sleep sweating. Dogs eating corpses, there was no one to cover them”. With this disarming description, Greek-born obstetrician-gynecologist Makis Ouanis gave the picture of the cruel war raging in Sudan.

Speaking on the First Program 91.6 and 105.8, Mr. Ouanis, a Christian himself, explained that he was in Sudan to celebrate Easter in his hometown with his mother and siblings.

Finding her M. Paraskevi in the town of Wad Madani, 2 hours away from Khartoum, he went to the Epitaph service and the next day the war started, which he learned from the news on TV.

As he mentioned, he had planned surgeries in those days in the area and saw the hostilities continue and the water and electricity supply to the Khartoumrunning out of food and basic necessities and also gas stations going out of business due to the interruption of the electricity supply, with the result that finally the “absolute chaos”.

“The first thing the rebels did was to destroy the airport, there is no control tower, no runway, so that no help can come from outside for the government. I had a communication and I want to publicly thank him, the Secretary of the Greek Embassy in Egypt, George Oikonomou, got in touch with us, 150 Greeks we were in Khartoum, but he can’t do anything. We were scatteredhe couldn’t collect us, because the rebels are on the road and anyone who goes out was finished.

On the road you see decomposed corpses. The tanks, the cars are burnt by the bullets and the rebels also enter the houses. They intend to steal money, cars, crosses, watches” Mr. Ouanis described.

How did he manage to get back to Greece alive?

“I learned that I could drive to the border with her Egypt, it is a very dangerous and long way, but I had no other way. I started negotiating with 40 other people to rent a bus that covers this distance.

The road is very bad, you can’t go with more than 40, there is a risk of meeting rebels on the road, but it’s easier to go by bus than by car. Because they can stop you, take your money, the car and leave you there.

We rented it. We learned that these buses started at 200 Sudanese pounds and this morning we learned that it had reached 7000 pounds per person, which is equivalent to a year’s wages. They don’t take you if you take a suitcase with you, at most a small rucksack with 2-3 shirts and a bag with water and sandwiches, because you won’t find anything on the road, it’s the Sahara and the temperature is 45 degrees. From Khartoum to the border of Sudan is 15 hours200 km. From the border of Sudan to Egypt is another 17 hours.

We got there and stayed a whole day for the passport control, because we arrived together around 20 buses. We were only stopped once on the way. We are lucky because we started at night. They saw that there were women and small children on the bus and they didn’t do anything, but he caught us shaking with our guns on our backs.”

The bus passengers, along with Mr. Ouanis, managed to reach Aswan, Egypt where things were now easier, as there are buses, trains and planes as options to get to Cairo. From there, Mr. Ouanis finally returned to Athens. “If you told me to do this route again, I wouldn’t do it” he said concluding.