I notice this general feeling of discomfort amongst my colleagues and friends. Situation in Sudan is not the best, and the grass is always greener on the other side. There are extremely good reasons for that, this is not what this post is trying to address. I don’t think life is meant to be comfortable, nor easy. But we can have fun and work our asses while we are at it.
In my first lecture of the third college, the head of our department (Surveying, now geomatics engineering), gave us the most pep talk ever.
This is your third year, you can no longer switch to any other department. Accept that and live with it.
It was harsh, but very true. Pretty much everyone from my batch wanted to switch to another department, whether civil, mechanics, or god forbid chemical engineering. This also applies very much to the case now: everyone wants to leave Sudan.
Not only do you pay the cost of the decisions you make, but also the ones you didn’t. People often refer to this as “Opportunity cost” [1], you can google about it. Staying in Sudan is not inherently a bad decision. Staying in Sudan with a bad attitude is a terrible decision. The country is so fucked up already you need to double your effort to make any success, half-assed efforts are your clear path into failure.
A lot has left this country already, from my batch we are 4 or 3 left in Sudan. Tech field is suffering a lot from that, every engineer with >2 years or even less of experience either left already or planning to.
That aside, there are others who are still there. Half-assed efforts will not take you anywhere. You are not sacrificing anything, please don’t use that card. Give it all your best, sincerely. Things will probably not work out, but at least it won’t because you didn’t put up enough effort. Don’t think of any excuses, just keep working hard.