Salaheldin Omer

The enthusiasm for the German national football team has led Salaheldin Omer from Sudan to Germany. Like many boys around the world, he was interested in the international football leagues, and his heroes were the German footballers around Lothar Matthäus. With his friends, he played with self-stuffed balls at the White Nile, not far from the house.

He was born in 1974 in the capital Khartoum between the two arms of the Nile. He grew up with nine siblings, the son of an engineer. During high school he attended German courses at the nearby Goethe Institute. In addition to the language training, he received information about the way of life in the country and saw pictures of landscapes and places that fascinated him. He didn't know forests and mountains from Sudan.

In 1996 he decided to study medicine in Germany, with a scholarship helping to finance the project. Stations included Frankfurt/Main and Greifswald. He now works as a heart surgeon at the Falkenstein Clinic in Bad Schandau.

Here he particularly appreciates the peace and quiet and the landscape. He likes to be on banks of the Elbe. He used to be able to see the Nile from his house. „My homeland is Sudan, the whole country. I was born and raised there,“ he says. „Frankfurt is a second homeland to me. I also always go back and visit friends or places. […] You can have multiple homelands. Here in Saxon Switzerland, I now have a bit of a homeland.“

Fighting in Sudan

After Omar Al-Bashir, supported by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, seized power in a coup d'état in 1989 and established an Islamist system, there were months of Protests from the population in 2019. The long-time dictator was overthrown and a transitional government was established. The strengthened military refused to cede power to a civilian government and staged a coup in 2021.

The conflict escalated in mid-April 2023. In Africa's third-largest country by area with about 47 million inhabitants, millions of people are at risk of poverty due to ongoing fighting, even though Sudan is rich in raw materials such as oil and gold.