A journey to Darfur's highest peak

In the winter of 2019, I was a guest of the small but
committed active couchsurfing community of Kassala on the Eritrean border in
Sudan. One day my host excused himself for an unexpected countryside trip, but
he offered to introduce me to his friend. Iman, a 25-year-old smiling Sudanese
girl welcomed me into her office. As she saw my eyes wandering around the
suspiciously nicely furnished room, she answered my first question before I
even raised it: her company runs hunting trips. My second question probably
surprised her more: I immediately asked whether she could take me and some
other people to the Deriba Caldera and the Marrah Mountains in South Darfur.
After some phone calls Iman said yes the next day.

The Deriba caldera volcano in the Marrah Mountains last
erupted about 3,500 years ago. When it collapsed, a sharp crater rim and two
lakes had been formed inside. A point on the remaining rim is currently the highest
peak of Sudan's at 3042 meters. The climbing itself doesn’t require special
technical skills beyond good physical condition, the difficulty lies in the
access itself. Good physical condition needed to climb but it has no technical
difficulty but the approach is challenging.

By then I had been traveling in Sudan for more than a month.
Last year's demonstrations and regime change did not eliminate economic
problems and neither did it stop the inflation, but the public opinion was
quite optimistic compared to my previous experience. The country was ruled by
Omar al-Bashir but in December 2018 rallies began to rise due to rising prices.
Bashir was deposed by the Sudanese army, while he was also indicted by the
International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Following the coup d’état, the country is currently led by the Military
Transitional Council, until the elections planned for 2022. I talked to
students and taxi drivers from Darfur and South Kordofan province and everyone
agreed that the situation is improving and it’s more and more safe to travel.

Throughout my life, I have worked with people with weird
hobbies and life has recently brought me two committed Hungarians, Tibor and
Zoltán, whose is to climb the highest peaks of every country. Since Denmark and
the Vatican also count in this game, it’s easy to complete a nice list of
countries as an avid amateur. But when Europe, the American continent, and much
of Asia are already done, the little-known African mountains become a pretty
nice trophy. So supply and demand finally met, and a few days later we made the
decision to head to South Darfur.

Sudan has long been suffering from the divide between its
Arab and African population, and the conflict is toppled by the independence
endeavors of Darfur. One of the independence movements is the Sudanese
Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) which was our partner in the adventure, and
the other is the Justice and Equality Movement. Both have been fighting a
brutal war with the Arab-dominated Sudanese regime since 2003. As a result,
hundreds of thousands fled to neighboring Chad, the rest of the population and
the residents of the Chad refugee camps were also terrorized by armed groups
funded by the Government of Sudan. With the independence of South Sudan in
2011, Sudan lost most of its oil reserves and a quarter of the country's
territory, mostly inhabited by Christians. Needless to say, Darfur’s
independence has very few supporters outside the Darfurians themselves.

Three days after landing in Khartoum in early February, my
haunting nightmare came true when dreadlocked teenagers in sunglasses  and  long trench coats approached us, one waving a machete
while the others surrounded the car with AKs in their hands. ‘It didn't last long’
the thought slipped into my mind.

The previous day we met Sheikh Ali, a former commander of SLA/M,
often called a rebel, in the capital of South Darfur, Nyala. He had been
released by the authorities after he negotiated his private agreement with the
government. This prestigious old man listened to us, then outlined a scenario
that was totally incompatible with our original plans as the only way to get up
the mountain.

At dawn the next day, six of us squeezed into a Land
Cruiser. Iman, our guide and tour leader from Kassala, and two local dudes who
joined the expedition. One of them, Mohammed worked in Darfur and Chad for
decades and has known everyone. The other one, Rabia managed humanitarian
projects in the villages where we were heading to. We were questioned by the
police, the Sudanese army; we got permission from the ministries, so the tour
started disturbingly legally.

The child soldiers came when we reached the ridge after the
last checkpoint of the Sudanese army. Our constantly joking Sudanese has
stopped laughing, and we fell silent too. ‘There is no adult with them’ he
replied when I asked the reason. We had to wait for someone who is past puberty
and have some authority among these youngsters. As we didn't show any
resistance, the ice slowly broke and we were invited to lunch. The menu, like
every day, was beans with canned tuna, eaten by hand from a huge dish.
Eventually an older man came and we were allowed to drive further, finally into
the rebel-controlled area.

After half an hour of jolting, we stopped. There was a
Liberation Army camp on the mountain, and as if we were watching a film by Béla
Tarr, a tiny point started descending, slowly approaching towards us. After ten
minutes the point took the shape of a human. He was the commander who could
give permission to continue our journey. After a short talk, he walked back
over the mountain, and half an hour later the previous scene played again, but
now he handed over  the paper we needed.

The paved road ended in a village called Feina, the only way
to continue from there is either on donkey or on foot. It was time to scratch
the surface and see where we really are.

Prior to the turn of the millennium, tribes in the Marrah
Mountains lived in relative peace with each other and with the Sudanese regime.
Even though tourists were not very familiar with this region, some aid
organizations were present in the area, mostly building schools and running
agricultural projects.. The fact that this road is the only way to cross the
Marrah Mountains, combined with the presence of the rebel groups was enough to
draw increased attention from the government.

Negotiations started with all the about eighty tribes living
in the area with varying success, so the situation escalated into a civil war
in 2003. By 2010, the Sudanese regime got weary of the stalemate, bombed the
villages and invaded the region. This was the year when masses fled even
further into the mountains, while the situation of international organizations
became untenable, forcing them to withdraw. This year marks the time when the
last outsider set foot here: not only foreigners, but barely any Sudanese
passed by Feina other than the locals – except, of course, the army.  The removal of President Bashir and the somewhat
cooperative attitude of the military and civilian government has made reopened
the chance for peace. Or at least the need arose.

Since there has been no tourism-motivated foreigner in this
place for 10 years, and not much before either, there was no protocol for what
a rebel organization should do with us. With no weapon and no money, with no
commission or intent, not as an aid organization or as a journalist, logic got
mate: who are we? We didn't ask questions, we didn't take photos; we talked
about moving forward and what we needed to do. We showed the peak photo of our
climb in Iraq last year, where the same three people smile at the camera under
a Kurdish and a Hungarian flag. Ultimately, that was the point that convinced
them.

With this episode it has also become apparent that in the
absence of the above-mentioned protocol, every decision-making situation will
be preceded by endless negotiations, wasting our precious time. Until the last
day, half of our day was spent negotiating and waiting for permits. But let's
get back to the first one.

We stopped the car next to one of Feina's demolished houses,
and we set up the tent between the bare walls. Dozens of locals gathered,trying
to express their expectations, which resulted in quite a surreal conversation
at a certain point.

‘Leave the car here. And you have to pay $250 for security.’

‘Do not worry; it’s safe because our driver will stay here.’

‘It's not so safe. It's not safe for him. It can be
anything.’

‘Okay, then we'll send him back to the army-controlled area
and then come back in a few days and pick us up.’

‘You can't leave. You have to pay $250.’

‘I'll give you 25. 250 is out of question. “

‘You definitely pay.’

‘If I understand the situation, you have just kidnapped us.’

When I pronounced the word ‘kidnapped’, the locals froze
because this spoken word is quite strong. They started protesting, and I
repeated it a few more times because if we can't go anywhere and have to pay, it’s
quite clear indeed. A robust old man suddenly appeared on scene and disbanded
the meeting with three sentences and turned to us. ‘Don't worry about these.
I'm the teacher here, you're going to sleep in the school, and the car can stay
there.’

We spent most of the following day to negotiate for donkeys.
Dozens of people were deliberating, then one came over and told us what they
thought. I declined and explained why we cannot accept their good deal. He
returned in another half hour with another offer, and so on. When the village
understood our intention, everyone wanted to join us. Finally, in the
afternoon, we continued our trip with six donkeys and one guide, wasting the
whole day. We even spent part of the night on the donkeys, because we couldn't
find accommodation. Maybe just because we were looking for a school.

In the morning we arrived at a larger settlement that
everyone referred to as Toronto. Actually the name is Torongtonga but couldn’t
hear much of a difference. News had travelled faster than we did. A team of
teenagers greeted us, later the Sheikh, the SLA /M humanitarian commissary, the
military commander as well as the teachers joined the company. A bunch of kids also
showed up with huge guns and a mortar just to remind us where we are. We had breakfast
at the market: dried cricket and excellent grated liver, while our hosts apologized
for not having real meat. We performed our litany again: we are Hungarians, we
go to the mountains, we do not take photos, we do not write anything, there are
pictures of our climbing in Iraq, we do not want anything but climb up to the
summit of Marrah and see the two lakes of the Deriba caldera. From here, a larger
team led us further towards the caldera.

As our rebels had no idea about us, sometimes we also
struggled to figure out why things were happening around us. From the caldera we could already see the summit, so we
planned to go out there in the evening, sleep on the shore of one of the lakes,
and go up the mountain early in the morning. Our companions have no blanket, no
sleeping bag, no food and no water. Finally, standing next to the inner pond of
the caldera, one of them points to the highest peak of the inner rim: ‘You can
climb now and we wait here.’ ‘But that’s not what we came for! The one behind
it, you see?’ ‘You can't get up there from here.’ We had to return to the last
village, another two hours on donkey, at night.

Kosonga hides in the bottom of a valley next to an orange
orchard. Idyllic little village, we wrap ourselves in front of one of the tukuls.
The door is open, a small child clears a guns inside, the others smoke huge joint
before heading out into the night. In the room on the bed I have a knife next
to my head, an AK-47 on the other side, the magazine with bullets at my feet –
along with a small plastic box, containing a toothbrush.

We are ready to leave at seven in the morning. At eight, the
first couple of people show up, then the commander. His people will be hungry
on such a long journey, he says, so they won't leave without breakfast. After
the cook quickly shredded a goat, the commander declared themselves ready for
the hike, so we could finally leave. We walked on the edge of the crater; our
locals were extremely fast, casually stopping, talking, smoking, while wearing
rubber-soled Chinese shoes. I used to say this is also a profession, if you
live in the mountains for a decade or two and can only ride donkeys or go on
foot, you cannot compete with these guys.

They patiently waited for us at the highest point of Jebel
Marrah (in Arabic Jebel means mountain), taking the summit photos, showing us
around then starting to descend. They also got their first climb, obviously
they hadn't thought of coming up all the way here just to look down.

On the way back we figured out that this must have been the
first documented climb of Sudan's highest point, and as such has extra value. Some
tourists may have come here before 2010, but the highest peak of Sudan at that
time was Mt. Kinyeti, which belongs to South Sudan since 2011. According to the
locals, Jebel Marrah has not been visited by strangers since 2010, so we can
assume we were the lucky ones to first reach this summit in the ‘new’ Sudan.

On the way back we were asked to look at schools everywhere,
listened to the problems, and locals asked us to talk about them at home. At
the end, the military commander pulled me aside and emphasized that their
soldiers cannot be featured in social media, but villages and landscapes are of
course free to show. On the last day we spent six hours on donkey without
stopping for a single minute. The only thing that keeps us alive is the promise
of a shower and a bottle of Cameroonian whiskey smuggled from Chad (the latter
arrived, as well as the next one a day later).

At the child soldier checkpoint we just get off, everyone
smiled and shook hands and we are on our way back to Sudan within a minute.