Four days later...
Five of us stumble through the streets of Kosti in the middle of the night, trying to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and the thugs who are chasing us. We are literally running for our lives.
I have just done something amazingly brilliant or incredibly stupid. I have told the scar- 55 faced sergeant of the platoon protecting a train that’s just brought us halfway across Sudan that under no circumstances are we going to pay the bribes that just about everyone else on the
train has been shelling out over the past four days. Not only that, but we have confronted him openly in front of the locals – people who normally don’t see anyone challenge his venomous authority – causing a loss of face that no doubt outweighs the value of the cash he was trying to 60 scam from us.
And once that die was cast, the only thing to do was run as fast as we could, find a place to hide until first light, and hope that Scarface and his men would tire of the chase, crawl back onto the train and chug away. Because the alternative – getting caught – was unthinkable. We’d seen how Scarface and his men had dealt with Sudanese passengers who didn’t comply – beating them with leather strips and rifle butts, tossing them off the train in the middle of nowhere. And we had no illusions that they would deal any less harshly with us, five young foreigners travelling across their country.
Question 4
Explain why the writer is trying to find a place to hide.