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May 16, 2004 The Onslaught of the Sudanese Summer Springtime
was short but sweet. The
trees and shrubs bloomed with an abundance of vividly coloured flowers
enhancing the otherwise pastel surroundings and filling the air with a
delicious scent. And
then came the onslaught of the summer.
The petals faded and the mercury flirted with temperatures in the
50's. I
found myself in an involuntary state of perpetual perspiring, sweating like I’ve never sweat before, in places I
didn’t know I could sweat. I was dripping like a hairy man in a sauna wearing a PVC cat-suit and a raccoon hat doing star jumps.
I
was at my wettest on public transport amongst the hordes of other sopping
passengers. Once the buses
are en route, everything is fabulous, 'coolish' dusty air flowing through
the open windows and exotic tunes playing aloud, but when the buses are
stationary, it's a different story.
In Sudan, most buses don’t begin their journey until they’re full,
so its not unusual to wait 5-minutes in an idle bus as it populates.
With not a breath of air flowing through the stuffy cabin, one
bakes like hardening clay in a pottery kiln.
The
sweat dries and the big dirty patches wash clean, but the relentless heat
does have its genuine annoyances. Constant
power cuts and water outages are a fact of life as the heat increases the
demand for both. Even more of
a nuisance is the damaging effect the high temperatures have on floppy
disks, videotapes or cassette tapes in the daylight hours, as the
scorching weather will undoubtedly destroy the contents of the magnetic
storage device. Even
the locals sweat and complain, but it all helps to keep life interesting
and different to what I am used to in this land of hotness. Between
the smelly sweat fests, teaching, juggling and singing with students and
tales of magic Nigerian penile pinchers, I have been
working on securing permits for our imminent Nile adventure through Sudan.
In my most respectable uniform of white shirt, slightly grubby
beige pants and snakeskin briefcase, I have been zigzagging across Khartoum
estate visiting important people in Ministerial Offices and drinking
copious amounts of tea in aid of sourcing official letters with rubber
stamps. May
12, 2004 was a monumental day for me as I finally received my first
Ministerial letter of support from the kind folk at the Ministry of
Tourism and National Heritage. It
was an educational experience to say the least. On
one occasion, I was waiting for one of the many letters I needed to
acquire the
Ministry letter, when Mooz Mahir, a real-life crocodile hunter without the
Hollywood, gave me a helpful lesson on how to deal with our reptile
friends of the river. The session incorporated everything from how best to fend off the scaly monsters to opening their ‘locked-jaws’ by tickling the edge of their mouth if something is stuck inside (like a hand). Following the extensive tutorial, Mooz left the room and returned with a cardboard box strapped together with thin yellow twine. Just as I was wondering what could possibly be in the box of any relevance to our lesson, he pulled out a live baby crocodile for some practical experience. So after playing with the croc infant I am slightly more confident there’ll be no hands to wrestle from hungry crocodiles' holds. In saying that, our baby was only about 40cm long, whereas adult Nile crocodiles grow up to 6-metres, and probably aren’t as well fed... |
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Before
the weather got too hot, Katrina, Max and myself managed to squeeze in a
short excursion to Gedaref to sample the kind hospitality of the country
folk and to visit Angus and Dave, two hawajas teaching English at
the university there. It was
a nice change from the hustle of dusty Khartoum and refreshing to see that
plastic bags have been banned in the city so litter seemed much less
prevalent. Gedaref
is a dear city of around 100,000, close to the Ethiopian border.
It is famous for sesame seeds that grow there a plenty.
One of the nicest features of the city are the conical straw huts
that provide shelter instead of the mud-brick homes that make up most
cities in Sudan. One
of the nights we stayed in the picturesque village of Dalisa, just outside
of Gedaref, with Weleed, a friend of Angus’s.
The village was dotted with an ad hoc collection of straw huts and
dotted with small hills. It
was a fascinating place as life there was so different to Khartoum.
Wells provided the water for the villagers, but not first without
the arduous task of hauling the water up by long ropes, usually performed
by the well-toned ladies of the village.
Waleed took us to a well that his family had been digging for two
years using just a shovel in the remarkably hard land. The well was still unfinished. Possibly the most outlandish thing I have seen in Sudan was the sesame seed oil manufacturing process we bared witness to the following morning. In a small straw hut, a camel was blindfolded and tied to a bizarre contraction made from clumps of wood that was used to grind the central barrel of sesame seeds into oil. Pulling the grinder, the camel walked around and around and around in the hut, as it did everyday, as camels had since this process was first devised hundreds of years ago.
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Another
jaunt away from Khartoum saw me visiting the village of Abu Seir, a short,
but twisted, lorry journey from Hasaheisa with a student Eman.
It was a peaceful adobe village in which all of its residents
seemed to be related to Eman, which meant visiting many homes and
receiving ludicrous quantities of Pepsi cola and sugar-ridden tea.
It was a nice day as the families were genuinely warm and
hospitable, with many of the youngsters having never seen a white man
before. To top things off,
Eman’s family slaughtered a sheep for me, both a great honour and a good
feed. After some lessons on how piddle correctly in Sudan I journeyed back to Hasaheisa through the canal-framed fields of harvested cotton. In Hasaheisa I stayed with Christen, a hawaja teaching at the university there. We had a fantastic day chilling out, strolling along the Blue Nile’s banks, scoffing some heavenly benoffy pie, topped off by the contents of a sheep’s head, cooked on the spot in a wok. |
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