Sudan Is Speaking. Will the World Listen? Janet McElligott

Content warning. This episode includes discussion of sensitive topics.

Listener discretion is advised.

The Sudanese people have called you the voice of the voiceless.

So here you are stepping up being the voice for people who don't necessarily get

their voice out there. So how did that happen?

It wasn't intentional.

It's not as if the Sudanese weren't speaking and asking for help.

It's that people weren't listening.

I want you to feel. I want you to feel

something crazy, crazy, amazing.

Hey, beautiful people. Welcome to the Crazy Amazing Humans Podcast,

where we share the stories of people who remind us that courage, compassion,

and determined action can change lives and sometimes even history.

I'm Katrina Carlson.

And I'm Jefferson Denim.

Today's guest has spent more than four decades working in international

politics, security, and advocacy, often behind the scenes.

But her work in Sudan has brought her very much into public view.

That's right, Jefferson,

because Janet actually was the first woman in history to serve as political

advisor to a head of state in the Arab world.

And that head of state being President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.

The Sudanese people have called Janet McElligott the voice of the voiceless.

She has carried stories of war, displacement, hunger,

and sexual violence from survivors to social media, news programs,

the halls of Congress, and international forums.

Janet describes herself as a warrior who wears pearls into war zones,

silk and brocade into military camps, and walks with purpose.

That word walks, by the way, has profound meaning in her own life.

At 13, she was told she might never walk normally again.

She refused to accept that verdict.

Amazing. So Janet, welcome to the Crazy Amazing Humans podcast. Thanks.

We are so happy to have you here today. You bet.

Well, I'm really pleased to be here. Thanks for coming.

I appreciate the opportunity.

Of course. I love it. So Janet, as you probably know,

our very first episode featured Dr. Tom Catena from the documentary film,

The Heart of Nuba, directed by my awesome hubby, Ken Carlson,

who was also featured on that first episode. So Ken,

can I pull you out from behind the camera and will you come sit with us and say

hi to Janet, please? Ken Carlson, everyone. Ken Carlson, everyone.

Hugs happening right now. Thank you, Ken,

because I was thinking it would be a great jumping off point to get to know who

Janet is to have you help tell the story about how and why Janet was able to

help broker a ceasefire with President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan

alongside you, Ken, utilizing the film, The Heart of Nuba.

So can you tell us what happened and what impact exposing the atrocities in the

Nuba mountains had at a time when journalists were not even allowed to be in

that area?

We finished The Heart of Nuba and we are very proud of the film,

but we needed to get it out there. I mean, a film is great.

And if you play it, people respond,

"That's great." But how do you get it out into the world so it's effective?

How do you distribute it so a lot of people can see it, especially key people?

And I happened to get a phone call from our dear neighbor, Don Burris,

who said, "Ken, I am eating at a restaurant right now,

and I'm sitting across from this lovely lady that says she can get the heart of

Nuba into the hands of Omar Hassan al-Bashir." And I went,

"Huh?".

Now for our audience, who is that?

It's the former president of Sudan. And so I took a flyer.

I love Don and he has never led me astray.

So I decided to go down to Blue Plate Oysterette and sit down, and I met Janet.

And I told her about the film. I told her why I made it,

and I told her how I wanted it to impact the world. And she said,

"I can help you with that." I'm like, "Okay, well, I need to..." She goes,

"I can help you get the film to the president of Sudan Bashir." I'm

like, "You can?" She goes, "Yes. Trust me." And.

He did.

Trust me. And so at that point, everybody's tells you that, "Trust me,

I got this covered. It's a home run.

It's a grand slam and it's a sure thing." And I decided

to listen. What did I have to lose? I mean, just some time and effort.

So I listened to her and she said, "I can have Mahdi Ibrahim

visit soon within two weeks.".

Yeah, he was coming for the inauguration, the first inauguration.

Who is he?

Mahdi Ibrahim Mohamed was the Sudanese ambassador in Geneva at the UN,

and then he became the ambassador in DC. And at the time,

he was the minister of political affairs at the presidential palace.

In Sudan.

In the Sudan.

Yeah. So she said,

"Is there any chance that we could screen the film for him and get his

approval and have him be our courier and take it back to Bashir because he's so

well respected." So I said, "Absolutely.

I'm in." And we had a quick screening here at our home

in a screening room that we have.

And Janet and Mahdi and I watched the film,

and she can tell you what happened after that. I mean,

I didn't know what to expect.

I didn't know if my life would continue after this meeting.

I was literally pacing the floors. I'm like, wait,

why did we invite this guy into our home? He knows where we live now.

And if they don't like this film,

which is exposing things and Ken was in a war zone that was forbidden for the

press, my spidey senses were tingling.

And rightfully so.

It's a tough film to watch.

You see a hospital being bombed.

You see children who are terrified of a noise

in case it is a plane coming to drop bombs on them.

And so during the screening,

you were in charge of your youngest daughter and putting her to bed.

And you thought. I could see it on your face like, oh,

they'll be gone by the time I get back.

I always think of any excuse to get the hell out of there.

He was very emotional though. He was. Remember? I mean, here he was.

And he told me after that screening that he didn't know that this was taking

place. He didn't know that the extent of - The.

Extent.

Yes.

He knew about the bombing of the Nuba Mountains.

He was understanding that the bombing was in military

areas.

So ultimately, I did trust Janet.

I'm very grateful that we did because she was able to get the film through Mahdi

into the hands of Bashir and tell - And parliament. And the Parliament.

That's a whole nother story. Tell them the end result then.

Ken came to the Sudan to interview the president.

That's not a little thing.

Ken to get an interview. Am.

I right? Everybody wanted to interview this guy or get to him and talk to him.

Nicholas Kristof, a dear friend,

was there three times and spent over a week each time.

And then they denied him the interview.

So I was kind of of that mindset that it could - And.

Just so everyone knows,

Nick Kristof is the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist.

But he didn't talk to Janet. Yeah.

That's a problem. So Janet, you got Ken there to speak with President Bashir.

Yes.

And she kept me safe, which was a big deal.

I think it was actually more dangerous. To be there.

I was more exposed there than I was when I was in the Nuba Mountains.

And did they make you apologize for being in the war zone?

Yes. In order to get in,

I had to sign a letter saying that I did in fact smuggle myself into a

war zone in their country that was illegal and that I had to apologize for

it, but I had to essentially admit it. Admit it. And so going into that,

knowing full well that they were aware of the fact that I did something illegal,

then they had the documentation that could of course prolong my stay.

As the kids like to say, they had the receipts.

Yeah. However, I've been able to negotiate the release of, I don't know,

seven or 800 hostages. So if he was going to get into jail - You were.

Going to get them out.

Yeah. It's not that big a deal. I mean, when -.

Not that big of a deal for you to say. Ultimately,

there was a statement made by Bashir that said the primary reason

for the ceasefire was the film, The Heart of Nuba.

It was the reason. He didn't say primary. He said it is the reason.

Because when you see instead of just read on a piece of paper,

there's a very different reaction. It's.

Visceral.

It is visceral. And to hear and to see kids shaking a rosary,

please Jesus, help me.

The Muslims have respect for three religions,

but sometimes it has to be right in your face to go,

"These are a people of the book too.".

You know what we love Kat?

Kat and I are big fans of art because art moves things, gets inside you.

And one of the things I think our audience probably,

if you haven't seen it in a while or if you've never seen it, watch this movie.

It is profound. It's wonderful storytelling. I'm biased, but what can I say?

And you will come away changed.

And.

It's.

Horrible. Yeah, no, it's hard to watch,

but it's actually - But there's redemption.

In.

It too. There is. It is. There is hope and redemption in that.

Film. And there's a great protagonist, Dr. Tom Catena.

I've been so blessed to have my path cross with his and have a

lifelong friend like him. He's truly a saint.

But I wanted to say one other thing that then the film,

it was able to achieve a lot of other things. We raised quite a bit of money,

millions of dollars for the hospital.

So it kind of has an annuity now that it can survive on its own.

We still need funds,

but it's really comforting to know that it's not going to shutter tomorrow.

Also, this is the power of the medium.

This is the power of filmmaking. As you mentioned,

art has a profound effect on us,

but also the need to believe in others and trust others. And.

To be inspired.

And be inspired by. So I trusted Janet with this,

and it had a huge effect on that part of the world and many other parts of the

world.

And my niece, who is my second eldest sister's daughter,

saw the film.

She went into Fordham and got her degree in global health.

And she now is with Catholic Missionary Boards and they raise money for this

hospital. Oh.

That's so cool. That's a full circle. Isn't that wild? I love that.

So there it is.

It's beautiful. You know what, Ken? This is great. Don't get back to work.

We need you behind the camera, Ken. Hey, beautiful people.

This is the part of our episode where we quickly remind you,

if you're enjoying our podcast on YouTube,

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be crazy amazing and write us a review. Very much appreciated.

Now back to our conversation.

All right, Janet. So you grew up on a cattle ranch in Oregon.

You had a total of 11 people in your high school graduating class with

three of the graduates being Miguelgates.

Absolutely.

Okay. With that as your upbringing,

how in the world did you develop the passion you have for the plight of those in

other parts of the world?

When you grew up in a small town and your family kind of

dominates things, my uncle was the judge.

My dad was the school board chairman.

My other uncle had gotten a national award for soil conservation.

You're used to being a leader.

And it doesn't matter if you're a leader in a small town versus a big town.

That's what you're used to doing.

Wow. I never.

Thought of it that way. Yeah. So cool. We took turns being the president,

the secretary, treasurer, and the vice president of the classes.

And we were in the honor society.

The starting five on the girls' basketball team was Michelle McElligott,

Carol McElligott, Martha McElligott, Grace McElligott, and Janet McElligott.

That saves a lot of money in producing t-shirts in Jersey.

The name is already there. Yeah, go ahead.

So that was who I always have been. That's amazing.

And it was our responsibility.

Nobody stepped forward because you wanted that. It was like it was your turn.

Yeah.

Yeah. This was your elevation.

And that's the difference.

Yeah. Otherwise nothing would happen. That's really cool.

That's a plus for a small town.

It is a plus for a small town.

I like that. So the Sudanese people have called you the voice of the voiceless.

So here you are stepping up,

being the voice for people who don't necessarily get their voice out there.

So how did that happen?

It wasn't intentional.

It's not as if the Sudanese weren't speaking and asking for help.

It's that people weren't listening. There were a lot of voices,

but none of it was cutting through.

I got so upset one night because

I have all these friends in Sudan having worked there for about 30 years doing

peace talks, the bin Laden stuff.

I was liaison between the National Islamic Front and the Catholic Church for a

good 20 years. And these rebels,

which are funded by the United Arab Emirates,

went into the displaced camps and

murdered the doctors,

murdered and displaced 600,000 people.

And in a space of three days, killed in El Fasher,

180,000 people.

There was so much blood you could see it from space and it didn't make the news.

And I was furious. It was probably 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock at night. I though,

well,

I'm going to figure this out and I'm going to make people listen. So I went on

Facebook and hit that live. And I'd never done a Facebook live.

I'd used Facebook as a way to keep track of all my family.

I propped my phone up on, I don't know, some books, I think.

And I said,

I was furious and I was crying and I didn't have makeup. I looked awful.

It was like the worst, stupidest decision.

And it hit six million or seven million views in a matter of two or three days.

Wow. Okay.

And I didn't even know if. I mean, I know that sounded like a lot of people.

But the.

World's a big place. How many million people are in.

The world? Who knows? Yeah.

And what I didn't know is that put me on everybody's radar.

And then people who were displaced began to send me

messages. I'm looking for my daughter.

My child's lost.

Because Facebook was the way that they were communicating.

The troops on the front line send me messages.

I even got a message coming here today that said 700 of the UAE's

militia.

And I think it was 153 Colombian mercenaries that were hired out of Abu Dhabi

were killed by the Sudanese armed forces today because they're on the road back

to El Fasher almost four years after the coup happened in

cartoon.

Wow. As I'm processing all this, I just have to think,

first of all,

it must have been a shock that you were able to reach so many people.

Obviously you were frustrated and you just wanted to put the word out there.

Yeah, that's all.

But now that people are responding, I mean,

do you feel like you're drowning in this information?

Is it just overwhelming to you?

No. When you come from a big family,

you're used to a lot of people throwing stuff at you.

And so it's not like I'm drowning at all.

The funny thing was I went on to renew my

own website, which is this McElligott International the next day.

And it was on godaddy.com. And I thought, I wonder who's doing war crime stuff.

So I just put in the GoDaddy Think Sudan war crimes. And then it pops up.

U-R-L available. And it was 99 cents. So I bought it. And then I went,

the dot-com's available. I wonder if the dot org is. So I bouht it and I though,

oh, I'll give it to somebody in the government later.

The next day I got an offer to sell for either 26 or

$2,700.

Wow. And so why would someone offer you that?

Because they didn't want the website created.

Wow.

They didn't want anyone to document war crimes.

That's incredible. For someone listening who knows almost nothing about Sudan,

and that would be me,

can you explain in plain language who is fighting?

How did this war begin? And who is paying the greatest price?

I'll start with who pays the greatest price. It's civilians.

The reason the war started was because there was complete disarray in the

Capitol. After 38 years of being in power,

Bashir was ousted. And he was ousted.

It was kind of the remnants of the Arab Spring. Everything came to Sudan.

What year was.

That-ish?

This was 2023 that this happened,

this latest fighting. But he was ousted, I think, in 2019.

And there wasn't a great deal of leadership going on. So the people of Sudan

were a bit frustrated, and that's how Bashir was ousted.

And the military took over.

So there wasn't a lot of leadership at the time.

And the former vice president, a guy named Hemedti, which means Little Muhammad,

his name is Muhammad Dagalo, decided I can take this whole thing.

And they brought in the Wagner group from Russia.

The Wagner group are the militia or the mercenaries that are

Putin's mercenaries.

And they also brought in military advisors from the United Arab Emirates who

believed that they could have this coup happen overnight.

Because like I said, things were not very strong at the time.

The Wagner group took control of the airport.

They took control of the presidential palace and they thought that was the end

of it.

But the military in Sudan has been the one institution that the

people have always relied on. And it woke them up. Now,

they were still in disarray. Things looked terrible,

but they began to organize as the voice of the people. And

the capitol was held and destroyed by the militia.

And it was -.

By the Wagner Group?

By the Wagner Group and what's called the Rapid Support Forces.

And the Rapid Support Forces is just a nicer name for the Janjaweed.

The John Jawid was something that Bashir brought in to control Darfur and to

fight against the South during the Civil War. And Janjaweed,

when you translate it from Arabic, it means devil's on horseback.

And they are those people. The head of the Janjaweed,

which now is called the rapid support forces, is a guy named Hemedti,

Little Muhammad. And he never went beyond third grade.

He was a camel trader, but he is a brilliant strategist.

I mean, make no mistake. He's a brilliant strategist.

And he had the might and the money of the UAE behind him. Now,

why would the UAE want to get involved in this?

Let's look at the Arabian Peninsula.

In 25 years, the UAE,

which is a very small country on the opposite shore of Saudi Arabia,

and it's right where the Strait of Hormuz is right now. They will have no water

and they will have no food. Sudan,

north and south together is the same size as the United States East of the

Mississippi River.

Wow.

Okay. And Darfur,

that one state of Darfur is the same size as France.

We're talking enormous land,

70% of which has water and can produce food.

So if you're looking at

controlling things in the 21st and 22nd century,

it's food. You can't drink oil.

Or eat money.

Or eat money.

And Abu Dhabi is the governmental head

of the seven Emirates. Whereas Dubai is sort of,

or I should say was because this has really destroyed them.

They have been the shopping mecca. They have been where all the gold goes,

but they don't have one gold mine in the Emirates, not one.

And what's happened is they've actually replaced Cyprus

as the biggest money launderers in the world.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Oh yeah. Because you can just - So who's.

Replaced Cyprus? Dubai?

Dubai.

Okay.

Yeah.

Huge money launderers. And the Iran war

has kind of broken that wide open.

This was an unexpected result of the

Americans and Israel attacking Iran,

was Iran hitting the neighbors.

All of the neighbors that had bases.

So the Emirates were looking to control the agriculture,

the gold, and the oil, but not just that.

In oil and in a land that's as vast as Sudan,

you have a tremendous amount of rare earth minerals because don't forget,

one of your neighbors is the Congo.

So as we look into the 21st and 22nd century,

Africa is where people are looking for resources.

That's why they're.

There. That is why they're there.

Yep.

Okay.

So this past New Year's Eve where you spent that New Year's Eve with

survivors from El Fasher,

without sharing anything that could put someone at risk or anything else,

can you bring us into that room and tell us what happened there?

So I'm a part of something called the Center for

Political Affairs for Sudan.

It's run by a gentleman named Abdul Aziz Osher.

And he asked me to be on their board because I have a very large

following now on Facebook. I do little updates, no more than five minutes.

And not every day, it's just when I have news. So I said, "I'll do it,

but I want to meet the survivors of El Fasher because

they have suffered so much." And they're in a camp called Daba Naira.

And it is 700 miles that these people walked to

get to freedom, to get away from the militia and to feel safe. So.

They walked from El Fasher to Daba Naira.

And this El Fasher, that attack with all these people who survived,

that was one of the first attacks in the war? Or where was that in.

This? That was the most brutal attack.

Okay.

Where 180,000 people were murdered in a span of three

days.

Could you say that number for me one more time?

There were 180,000 civilians murdered in a span of

three days. Three days. Executed in the streets.

You could see the blood from space.

How do you know that?

There's a group at Yale called the Yale Humanitarian

Assessment, I think is the rest of it.

They had accurately predicted this genocide. They had

spoken to Congress six times.

They had briefed the United Nations that this was coming.

They could see the armaments coming from the UAE.

They had the manifests of the planes. They knew.

They knew that these Colombian mercenaries,

that the military from the UAE had brought in troops

from Chad, Libya, Mali,

and across from West Africa to take Darfur.

And the key point that they needed to take first was El Fasher.

And they needed to create something that was so brutal,

people would leave on their own from other places.

Okay. Why were they wanting to take Darfur? And Darfur,

you're talking about the state of Darfur?

Correct.

Okay.

Because Darfur has a mountain called

Jebel Marra, and it is literally a mountain of gold.

Okay.

And at the beginning of the war,

they had been smuggling out gold.

They smuggled out 25 metric tons that I know of

through Libya into a port city called

Misrata. And Misrata,

when the president of Libya found out about it, he said,

"That gold belongs to the Central Bank of Libya,

but it was in General Haftar's area. So we know it wasn't the Central Bank.

And there's not a gold mine in General Haftar's area.

This came from Jebel Marrara.".

Wow.

Thank you for that.

So you promised the men and women who had experienced sexual violence

that they were not alone.

What exactly did you promise the survivors of El Fasher?

And how are you trying to keep that promise now?

Remember I told you for 99 cents I bought a website.

I met a woman in the camp that night.

Her daughter wasn't able to see me because her daughter had been killed.

She had been seven months pregnant and one of the militia took a machete and

cut her open and took the baby out and murdered the baby in front of her.

And many of the people, and when I say people,

the UAE's militia, the RSF,

would put bags over the head of these people and

babies as young as a year.

And they were castrating the men because they wanted to

repopulate with the militia from Mali and Chad and

Libya. And I said to them,

"I will speak until the world listens.".

The voice of the voiceless.

And when you see this,

you know that

they have to have their stories told.

So you're basically telling us about all these war crimes.

You got this website.

Explain to us that clearly in the past there have been war crimes.

Currently there are war crimes. There will be more in the future.

Will you tell us what you're doing about that?

So I bought the URL. I didn't know how to do a website.

So I just put on Facebook, "Hey, does anyone know how to do a website?

And does anyone want to help?" And Anne Maraya

goes, "I'm in." I goes, "I'm a website developer." I said, "Okay, here.

I'll just pay for all of this stuff." So I've been supporting

his household and brought him back to Sudan. He was in exile. He was a teacher.

Did you know.

Him when he reached out to you or was he just a stranger who reached.

Out? Total stranger.

Okay.

Okay.

He was a teacher from El Fasher who had barely escaped the genocide with his

wife. They looked out one day,

like two days before the genocide happened,

and their next door neighbor who lived across the street had all of these

military cars. And they said something bad is going to happen.

And they had survived the 2003 genocide in El Fasher. And they said,

"We're getting out of here." And they left their house.

They just closed it up and left and went to Saudi Arabia. And

he'd been wanting to come home. And he goes, "I'll do the website." I said,

"Do you know how to do them?" He goes, "Yeah. Yeah." So sudanwarcrimes.com,

he created everything.

And we're in the midst now of also creating something called Sudan Wiki.

And that is. The great thing about Anwar,

he's a smart cookie because I don't know how to do any of this stuff.

He had been collecting five terabytes of information.

And for the last 15 years,

he had created kind of an encyclopedia of all the goods,

agricultural things, all the birds, the wildlife that Sudan has,

but he didn't have a home for it.

Ah, so this is going to be a lot of information on Sudan.

When you look at

When you look at bringing home the 14 million people that have been displaced

and their homes burn and their city is destroyed,

they don't want to hand out. They want to hand up. They want their dignity,

even if they don't have any place to go just yet.

And so if we can find the manufacturers who

want the cotton, who want the sesame, who want these things,

then we can marry those.

And that's what the Sudan Wiki Project will be about for bringing the world back

in and rebuilding one of the largest countries in Africa.

Wow. Maybe you've already answered this,

so I just maybe reiterate it.

When did Sudan stop being an international issue you worked on and became

something deeply personal for you?

I think I was always deeply personal. My first trip into Sudan,

I never wanted to go to Africa. I was a China expert. I'd lived in China twice.

I was at the Chinese embassy and met Mahdi Ibrahim Mohamed,

the Sudanese ambassador to the US.

And I ended up becoming a liaison between the National Islamic Front,

the Red Cross and the Sudanese government to free eight Red Cross hostages.

And I said, "Okay, I'll pass messages,

but I'm not going to Africa." And of course,

the minute I said that 38 days later, I was in Africa. There you are.

But at the time you've been working. Yeah, because you speak Chinese.

How many languages do you speak?

I can get by in about seven or eight.

That's incredible. Okay. So what do you love about Sudan and its people?

Something that maybe the headlines don't show us.

The Sudanese are known to be the

kindest, most generous people on the face of the planet.

In Darfur,

women have to walk four to six hours a day to get water.

And yet outside of every gate and every home in Darfur,

there is a large cauldron of water for strangers.

Wow.

Wow, that's a metaphor for a lot of things.

That really is incredible. And if someone is hungry in any place in the Sudan,

every home has a room

to feed a passerby.

I love that. That's incredible.

So you obviously have witnessed these acts of kindness,

of compassion and bravery, and they can really break your heart,

but you also have hope at the same time.

And so can you share a moment that stayed with you of hope that you saw there?

Absolutely.

There's a gentleman,

he decided to use his Facebook page to raise money

to feed these displaced people.

And he created feeding centers all over,

everything funded through Facebook donations.

He has fed millions of people.

When we cut off USAID,

25 million people in Sudan were at the verge of starvation.

And this individual stepped up and said, "You know what?

I know how to cook.

I know that we can do this." And he recruited volunteers and

said, "This is what God expects of us.".

This is like the World Central Kitchen.

For - Yes, very much so.

For Sudan and World Central Kitchen wouldn't send anyone there.

It's way too dangerous, right?

Correct.

Correct. So he became the Jose Andres of Sudan.

I'm thrilled that people are showing up like this,

but it doesn't excuse cutting USAID. It just doesn't.

I agree.

And so I'm happy people see a gap and they want to do something about it.

But I think it's criminal that we justify cutting aid to the.

It's so shortsighted and it just makes me angry.

I'm curious to know what your response would be to that.

Let's go back to how the Sudanese are.

They aren't looking for a handout.

They're proud that there's a Sudanese that stood up and

said, "I see a deficit. Let's work together."

And if we cut USAID, which we have,

not every country's going to respond that way.

And if we call ourselves a Judeo-Christian culture,

this is shameful because we're only acting as if

how much money can we make with the next Bitcoin?

And I don't think that's very Christian-like.

I don't think that's very Muslim-like. I don't think it's very Buddhist,

Jewish, any of these religions.

It's.

True.

It really is against all that, in my humble opinion as well.

And you mentioned earlier too, Kat, remember when Janet,

you mentioned that even though folks are starving and going through such

hardship, they're generous.

Oh, it's amazing. There's.

Compassion at the level of poverty that sometimes if you have

too much, you don't know what that's about. You don't know how to share.

That's why I.

Asked, was this gentleman wealthy? Because I assume the answer is not really.

Yeah, not really. No, not wealthy.

And I just think it's a witness for people to see that, yeah,

anyone can step up and help,

just like you have stepped up and helped be a voice for the voiceless.

One more thing I got to say, like you were saying, folks want a hand up,

not a handout, which explains the skirt you're wearing.

Yeah. This is actually a pair of pants. I'll show you what the color looks like.

Well.

Let me get my glasses on. It looks like a skirt from here. But anyway, so yeah,

the awesome colors. Yeah. So go ahead.

We all have choices how we want to spend our money.

And unless you are a nudist,

you're going to buy clothes.

Okay. Why'd you look at me when you said.

That? Oh, it was just wishful thinking.

I.

Like.

This.

Case. So I have a friend named Dr. Patricia Bailey,

and she is a missionary and she works in about

160 countries. And so one of the places that she

concentrates on is Africa.

And they help unwed mothers in Soweto create

fabrics and to put them to work.

So I buy a lot of my clothes from her knowing that this goes

to help a kid go to kindergarten,

that this helps a teenage mom feel dignity

instead of a charity case. Absolutely.

It's loud and proud.

Yeah. Okay. So you may have touched on this. Okay. We know,

Katrina and Ken, me, our audience knows that you take stories entrusted to you.

And then you take it to newsrooms, Congress, the United Nations,

the BBC. You said that you get interviewed by them quite a bit.

Yeah. Two days ago. Two.

Days ago. Certainly on social media. So can you give us,

if you can narrow it down to one,

can you give us your most impactful or favorite example of how you've done that

in one of these areas? I.

Think that people, Americans especially,

are generous souls, are compassionate people.

And when you're talking about a war in a distant country,

they think it's overwhelming and they don't know what to do.

But when you give someone an opportunity, they go, "Oh,

I can do that." So for instance,

I was asked to be a part of this thing. I got this email saying,

"Do you want to be the next runway star?" I'm like,

"What is this?" And it started by a woman named Amanda,

Amanda Nguyen. She's a Vietnamese American.

She was raped in her sophomore year at Harvard.

So she realized that her rape kit was thrown away after six months.

And she worked to get the laws changed and started an organization called

Arise. And maybe I came up to her because of this work.

A lot of people have seen it.

And so I applied to be a part of this. That contest is going on right now.

And in my group, I'm at number one. The prize for this is $20,000. And

I'll take that and we'll create a bigger platform with

Sudan war crimes.

And the first thing we'll have to buy is actually a solar generator.

They cost probably like, I don't know,

1,500 or $2,000 because there's no electricity.

All of the electrical lines were burned.

The copper was stripped out of houses by the RSF and

they melted it down to sell it.

So the entire country will be rebuilt.

And I'm telling you that this is one of the great opportunities for all of

us. You can donate to Sudan war crimes.

We're registered in Sudan. I'll take some of that money because I'll win.

Yes, you will.

Yeah.

She's just making it.

Happen. What's your quote about the world is good to you? What is that?

Oh, I know that the world wants to be good to me, so I let it.

Yeah. I like that.

What has your advocacy accomplished in concrete terms and where have the

powerful institutions still failed the people of Sudan?

Well, interestingly enough,

there are banks that are reaching out now because they

see the opportunity for making money. And that's perfectly fine.

You can make money anywhere. When you have high risk,

you also have high returns and high reward. And so

I know that the advocacy, it's very clear.

I don't get paid for this.

I think I might have made like $89 on Facebook.

They don't really pay very much. And my videos reach into the millions,

but it's not the demographics Facebook is looking for.

And I'm not selling face cream or.

That's how you make money on Facebook or TikTok is you're selling a product.

And I'm like, I don't know how to do that and I don't even care. So

it really is people go, well, what's motivating that person?

Why is she doing this? And I'm doing it because I can.

And people are paying attention. We had, and Ken mentioned this,

I think you mentioned it too, Ken. We've had Nicholas Kristof on the podcast.

He's a Crazy Amazing Human. New York Times awesome writer, journalist.

And he said when he was with us that sometimes he had a hard time getting folks

to care about big things happening internationally,

especially with people dealing with so many things in their daily lives,

as you mentioned. So I'm going to ask it this way as a provocative way,

but why should we care about what's happening elsewhere in the world?

The reason why people should and do care is because

they realize at the end of the day, there's an impact. It may seem far away,

but let's go to nine eleven. That came right up to our doorstep.

Let's look at where these data centers are going in terms of energy.

Where do we get our oil? The whole war on Iran has impacted us.

Our gas prices have gone way up.

The Sudan is at the mouth of the Suez Canal.

If the Suez Canal stops, what happens?

Do you remember during COVID when a ship went sideways and all of our products

all of a sudden came to a big old halt? Yeah.

So when people understand that the world

is interconnected, then people go, "Oh, okay.

I do care,

but I didn't know why until my normal life was interrupted."

So we have the opportunity as well to look at

things in a very different way because communication has allowed the flattening

of the world. We can Google,

we can go on Facebook, we can go on TikTok and Insta,

and we can see dancers from Uganda who then were with

Shakira at the World Cup. And they were amazing.

But would we have seen them without TikTok?

Would we have known that they were in a village and they'd propped their phone

up?

And would we have seen that this is our next generation of

entertainers?

So that certainly helped us care about, meet people from other.

Countries. Absolutely.

And it's made us even more interconnected.

Absolutely. And

we don't have to take a month on a ship to go to China.

We just get on a plane and we're there that same day. In fact, we gain a day.

It's like we haven't gone anywhere. That's amazing. Yeah. I love.

That.

If you keep going that direction, you get younger, I heard.

I wish.

Okay. So going back to you there in Africa,

I can't get this image out of my mind about you wearing pearls into a war

zone and silks and brocades and military camps.

And so where did that practice begin?

And what are you declaring when you enter those spaces dressed beautifully?

Well, it kind of began accidentally.

I was going on a hostage rescue and I'd never been to Africa.

And the ambassador at that time, Madibrahim, said to me,

"Do you know how to dress in my country?" I said, "Up to here,

down to here and down to here." And he goes, "Precisely." Well,

the only outfits I had was a green silk Mandarin collar

outfit. And I put it on with tennis shoes thinking, okay,

I can go to the bush in this. And it didn't look good.

So I put on these gold lame flats and I though I can run fast if things get bad.

And I had a silk scarf and pearls. And I mean,

that was the way I dressed. So I didn't think anything of it.

And when we landed in the bush,

everything just kind of parted. And these guys looked at me like,

"What the blazes is coming off of this plane

in a green silk outfit with pearls and an Hermes scarf and gold

shoes." But it was practical. It kept the mosquitoes off.

I could run. And if I needed to pay off someone,

they would take pearls in exchange for my life.

Oh.

That's.

Fantastic. Okay.

So I always went in with at least $15,000 worth of jewelry in

case I needed to buy my freedom.

Oh my goodness.

That's smart. I want to go back a little bit to the war. Where is it now?

And what do you wish that people knew about it

to help make change there?

Right now, the Sudanese Armed Forces is,

and I'll just quote this, ridding the country of vermin.

These are militia that are funded by the United Arab Emirates. Today,

I got notification from the frontline and I can't remember the exact number,

but it's 700 militia were killed today.

And at least 150 of them or 153 of them turned out to be

Colombian mercenaries paid by the United Arab Emirates.

They have the identification cards.

I'm sure I'll be getting more detailed information.

Okay. I'm sorry. I keep getting.

The RAF is different than the Sudan armed forces.

Correct. The SAF Sudanese Armed Forces,

RSF rapid support forces.

Are they on the same side or different sides?

They're the opposite sides.

Okay.

The RSF are the murderers.

The.

Mercenaries.

Too.

The mercenaries. They are paid by the United Arab Emirates.

So when you're saying that Sudan armed forces are, who's riding the vermins?

Which side?

The armed forces. Think about it as the US military.

It's the Sudanese military. It's the people.

And what's really interesting is, do you remember I told you it was in disarray

when the Wagner group overthrew things? There were,

I think, maybe 600,000 in the entire country in the armed services.

People came out in droves.

There might be as many as two million Sudanese who joined the military.

Okay. And they're defending their country.

Defend their.

Country. And are they on the up right now? Oh yeah. So you're.

Saying they.

Killed a bunch of people who.

Were - They took out many of the people who raped and murdered

civilians today. And they are taking back the country. Okay.

So the people believe in the military.

They're actually the good guys and they're happy that they're around and doing

what they do.

Armed forces. Okay, great.

What do you want the world to know then about this or how people can help them?

Because who is supporting the Sudanese armed forces?

Right now, Saudi Arabia is behind the armed forces and so is Egypt.

Because they realize if they allowed this to

continue, those people will come for them next.

And so the region is now

stepping back and going, okay,

this isn't as clear as we thought.

And the RSF is much more evil.

And they are literally the definition of terrorists.

And they have created multiple genocides, not just El Fasher.

They did it in a place called Kordofan.

They went into the Nuba Mountains and started murdering people because the idea

was let's get rid of the population that's there,

replace them with people from Chad and Libya and Mali.

And then we as the UAE control the gold.

We control the agriculture.

Okay. We're going to shift a little bit.

If the people you met on New Year's Eve are listening,

what do you want to say directly to them today?

You can stand behind me and I will tell the stories you don't

have the heart to do.

Powerful. Voice to the voiceless, once again.

That's a very apt moniker. All right. So Janet,

at Crazy Amazing Humans,

we love to give our audience suggestions, marching orders, whatever.

We love to say, what's one small thing we can do? Because we can't all be you.

You're doing amazing work internationally, but we can do something.

So what would you recommend or suggest?

Or what framework can we put our minds to do

one good thing where we live in the communities we live in?

Well, for instance,

I'll give you a couple things you could do that are pretty simple. One,

go onto Facebook. You can follow me and share these stories that touch you.

You can find something in your neighborhood that touches

you. It doesn't have to be the Sudan.

I want you to look up from your phones occasionally.

I want you to see the world. I would take.

A hammer to the phones. No, I'm kidding.

You.

Want people to see the world.

I want people to see the world, even if that world is your neighborhood.

Because you don't have to choose the Sudan. You don't have to choose Iran.

You don't have to choose Gaza. You can choose Santa Monica.

You can choose downtown LA and the homeless.

You can choose Dayton, Ohio. You can choose Detroit.

Choose what touches your heart and say,

"I'm going to do one thing and make it 1% better at the end of the week."

You don't have to make the difference. Make a difference.

Wow, that's fantastic. That's.

Fantastic. I love that. You don't have.

To make the difference. You just make a difference. That's.

Beautiful.

All right. So you mentioned a little bit, just in one fell swoop,

how can our audience all follow you, see what you're up to, support you,

what links and so forth? How do we do that?

So find me on Facebook. That's the easiest.

Help me by a free vote.

And you better spell your name. If we're going to find you on Facebook.

Yes. Go ahead. Actually, if you go onto Google and you type in Janet,

M-C-E-L, my name will pop right up.

You're the only one in that category.

That's Janet.

I guess.

Okay. It.

Sounds like Mc Elligott. It does. I mean,

that's what phonetically it sounds like. Mc Elligott.

And if this podcast comes out and I'm still in the running for next

network star, find it. And it's a free vote.

If you donate money and buy votes,

it goes to help victims of sexual violence.

And it makes it easier for me to win.

I've always felt that if you want to do good in the world,

step forward instead of stepping aside.

I love it.

Wow, that's great.

Janet McElligott, thank you for trusting us with your stories,

with what you're doing,

for helping the world see humanity and beauty that war can never erase, right?

War cannot erase that.

So thank you for reminding us also what a relentless spirit can

accomplish. Janet McElligott, you are.

Crazy amazing!

Thank you.

I want you to feel. I want you to feel

something crazy, crazy, amazing.

If you have any questions or comments about today's episode,

please make sure to write us at crazyamazinghumans@gmail.com.