At 7:34 I do my radio check. I walked into the radio room and said 5 by 5 and walked out. Once outside the compound I run into Osman, a driver, we get into a conversation. It is after 7:30 pm and I want a ride. No cars are available and I have to check with Gerry if i want a ride.
Gerry is a dick so I say forget it. As I am walking towards the house, i notice a toyota pick up doing rounds with people. Not unusual to have armed men in the area. Anyway I am turning the corner near the mosque when I realise I forgot my phone in the office. I debate for a second whether I should go back for it. Deciding to do so because I need to call my boss and inform him that once again another location has recieved more staff while we haev only 4 people and all the other locations have a minimum of 10 each.
I get my phone grab an empty bag which I will use as my run bag I head back out. I run into my room-mate outside who say a friend of our will be joining us so let wait for her. A few seconds later she shows up at UNHQ in El Geneina. We chit chat, start heading to our place.
We are walking around and I and my room-mate notice the pick up do a U turn as it sees us walking round - 3 foriegners with bags. We head past the second block and get close to the UN guest house. We take a left and move infront of the MSF Guest house.
At this point 2 men come up to us and indicate us to stop. Confused, we thought they wanted to talk, myself and my room-mate start off in our weak arabic. That is when the AK-47s come out.
One is pointed directly in face. The other infront of my room-mate. We are no idiots. I raise my hands and hand over my bag to the armed men. They were of arab descent and not of the area. They start going through our pockets.
One takes me the other my room-mate. The girl is left alone, just her bag is taken. They go through my pockets - none of us resist. They take my keys, which they don’t like so they dump it on the ground. Then they go for my right pocket which has my cell phone. They take that as well. Thn they go for my back pocket which has my passports. US Pakistani and UN. They take my wallet as well. Luckily no money in it. But the passports are more valuable
They take them. They leave us. None of us moves for a moment. When we hear no bullets, we start walking fast. We head straight to the house of one Pakistan female. She is a doll. Me and my room-mate are both pakistanis.
She calls Her team leader and they call security. We spend 20 minutes there, call for a car and head over to our home. Have dinner and discuss the issue.
If people feel this is not relevant, so be it. It can be deleted. I am required by SOP for such situations to internalize the issue and discuss it as much as possible to avoid post traumatic stress and that jazz. I have been informed by a few people I am taking this way to calmly thus the need to post this and retype it each time to different people or different locations.
Why did I have my passports on me? We are required to make copies of our passports before we leave. Thus all the documents on me.
As an update from last night: I got back my keys, my pakistani passport and my UN passport. Still no US passport.
My unit and the sudanese staff has been brilliant. Once they realised they were arabs who robbed us, they have set out and called their friends and gone around looking for my stuff. That is how i got my passports and keys back. I don’t care who has them. That they are back. We got a small office, its good to see people look after you after such an issue.