Far From the Madding Crowd

Driving out through the desert from Karima, the road passes by the pyramids that I had seen the day before, then crossing over the Nile to Merowe. Here, a bokasi (a pick-up truck) is the public transport that ferries people out to the villages, into the back of which I cram to drive out to the village of Nuri.

The pyramids at Nuri lie far from anything significant, bordered only by the small adobe houses of the neighbouring village. They sit, weathered, amongst the desert dunes, their small rounded bricks eroded by the millennia that have passed since their construction.

The scant information I had regarding this site mentioned that “tickets” to visit this site should be bought back in Karima, although there is rarely anyone to collect them. Standing in a never-ending expanse of sand, it’s hard to imagine anything as organised as ticket-sales for such a location. But as I walk back to the village, a man arrives on a motorcycle, asking in Arabic for my ticket, which—of course—I did not possess. As I claim ignorance, he kindly proposes to accompany me to the local police station to rectify the situation. Having heard stories of Sudanese police, and being not yet in possession of the photography permit that should accompany the camera stowed in my bag, I am keen to decline his kind offer. I thus try my luck with baksheesh (“bribe” or “tip”, in Arabic, depending on the situation), offering him half of the declared price of a ticket.

This baksheesh turns out to be quite the investment. He accepts it, and as we strike up a bit of a rapport in my broken Arabic, he invites me back to his place for lunch and to meet his family. I climb on the back of his motorcycle, we unsteadily traverse the desert sand and are soon speeding down a dirt-track to a collection of rustic houses.

He is in the final stages of the construction of another room for their house, and so I sit with his brother and a paint-covered friend as we eat a platter of local dishes. The water comes from a clay pot, which he describes as river water. Having exhausted my supply of water in the desert heat, I gladly accept, hoping that my stomach has obtained enough resistance with local water to not cause any problems.

Following lunch his brother—Rashid—insists that I visit his nursery, a project that he has been cultivating for the past three years. Rashid has constructed this haven from the arid environment that is filled with a variety of plants, as well as hosting some more “exhibition” pieces. A box contains a history of Sudanese money, birds are sculpted out of rocks, and he is building an enclosure for some animals. Signs are posted in Arabic & English amongst long grasses, and a seating area is shaded from the scorching sun by a parasol made from an old satellite dish covered by woven grass. I am astonished at what he has done to create this sanctuary, but at the same time question the purpose it will serve. Nuri is a small village, hardly known, far from anywhere, and I can’t imagine that this place, once opened (in one year, insha’Allah), will receive many visitors. It is, however, a great testament to both his imagination and dedication, and I wish Rashid & the Nuri Modern Nursery the best of luck.

For me that day, a little bit of baksheesh went a long way.

Life Blood

Leaving the coffee houses of Cairo, I postponed the trip south to Sudan by a brief séjour north to the fish of Alexandria. I wanted to make the most of one last opportunity for fresh sea-food on the Mediterranean before heading into the arid heart of Sudan, and then east to Ethiopia. I presumed that good fish would be off the menu until (or if) I reached the Kenyan coastline.

How naïve I was. The Nile is a huge source of fish, and the Sudanese know how to serve it.

“England. Fish & chips?” other travellers would often say to me when talking about British cuisine. In spite of my societal roots, I shy away from the floppy, fried offerings that many a street corner proposes, hunting out the fresher, grilled fare with a dash of spice & plenty of freshly squeezed lime.

The river is being tamed, though. Oil revenues mean investment in infrastructure is booming, with new roads, bridges and dams being built. The bridge that now links Karima & Merowe, the town on the opposing bank of the Nile, has rendered the ferries obsolete. They now stand aground, rusting amongst the verdure of the river’s banks and the fishermen repairing their nets.

Climb Any Mountain

Standing atop Jebel Barkal looking east, lush green palm groves line the banks of the banks of the Nile as they cut a sweeping curve through the desert plains of Sudan’s Northern State. Looking west, these arid, dusty, rocky plains stretch to the horizon. I had heard talk of Jebel Barkal before getting to Karima, and with my basic grasp of Arabic, thought this might be a nice little opportunity for a bit of a ramble. Jebel in Arabic more or less translates as “mountain”.

What I didn’t factor into these plans were the fact that in Sudan, jebel equates more to what I would consider a hill, and that the mercury in the thermometer is rather averse to dipping below 40°. I had spent a hot, sweaty day traveling & running around Karima sorting out the bureaucracy that is innate to arriving in a new town in Sudan, but was still keen to see the gueule of this lump of rock. As the sun dropped to the horizon, hoping the temperatures would follow suit, I walked out of town towards the jebel, expecting to find solace in solitude.

All around is flat, slight undulations in the sand form rolling waves of sand, and then just before the desert reaches the green fortress protecting the Nile, a rock rises up as a watch-tower. At the base of this rock stand several pyramids, remnants of the 18th dynasty Pharaohs who held this ground as sacred, gate-keepers to the jebel.

Seclusion was not to be found. Atop a sandy hillock stood a rickshaw seemingly out of place, and at the base of Barkal several Sudanese families were picnicking. Sunset was rapidly approaching so I raced to the top of the rock, my lungs burning after months of shisha evenings & a growing unfamiliarity with physical exertion. The guys dressed in djellaba sliding down the sandy banks seemed slightly perplexed at this khawaaja striding up; they don’t get a lot of foreigners here.

From the plateaued peak the pyramids below were dwarfed, sticking out of the sand like blunt needles, separated from the setting sun by the desert plains.

As the last people left, I had the place to myself as darkness rapidly drew in. Getting closer to the equator, sunsets are periods to be snatched, not savoured.

Karima

I squeeze myself into the back of a small bus in Dongola, my backpack strapped to the roof, and put my life in the hands of the bus driver as he cuts across the vast desert of northern Sudan. As with most towns in Northern State, Karima & Dongola both sit on the banks of the Nile, but the road that joins them cuts through vast swathes of nothing but desert as the river performs a big U-bend to the south. The only things breaking the monotony of sand & black rocks are the occasional, confidence-inspiring, shells of buses or blown-out tyres…

Karima itself is a small little town, with a lively souk at the heart of it. The town houses a railway station, but the tracks no longer support the rumbling wheels of locomotives; the influx of oil-revenue & subsequent investment in road building have replaced the trains by competing bus companies.

Arriving in the peak of the afternoon heat, as the sun reached its zenith, I once again had to endure the ordeal of locating the police registration office before I could dump my bag and nab a bed for the night. Despite Karima’s small size, they managed to hide it well; as I walked through an unmarked entrance into what seemed like a family’s garden, it was only the framed picture of President Omar al-Bashir hanging in a room that gave the game away. The local tea-ladies (who are prevalent throughout Sudan) kick me back into life with a spicy coffee, prepared on the side of the dusty street before I take a rickety bed in a dilapidated lokanda.

In town, I meet Mahmoud who, over the course of the following couple of days, in between contradictory talk of the corruption of the ruling NCP party & the benefits of incumbent president Bashir, would try to enamour me the ways of Islam. He runs a couple of mobile phone shops in town, having moved north from Khartoum, and is trying to save enough money to “escape” Sudan, pinning his hopes the (illegal) people trafficking routes of Ethiopia to Turkey, and then into Europe.

At night, sat outside his shop with a computer, he seems to hold the monopoly on the local music business. People arrive at his shop, hand him the SD card from their mobile phones to have it charged with a new selection of Arabic & western MP3s. Part of my reason for leaving Europe had been to evade the mindless consumerism that prevails on the high street; but here in a dusty African village, as people with little “spare cash” to spend hand over 5 SDG for a change of music to play through the tinny speakers, it seems it is perhaps innate to human nature. Mahmoud wants to go the other way. He can’t wait to “leave this goddamn country” and “get the fuck out”; each download of an MP3 takes him a step further to reaching his goal, although I question how many of his dreams will be realised as an illegal worker in a Greek restaurant… But in the mean-time, as a Muslim, he will accept his fate & destiny — it is “God’s will” — and he would pray that I would find enlightenment in Islam.

Electoral Hopes in Dongola

Having hitched a ride south from Wadi Halfa, my new-found roadtrip friends dropped me in the Nile-side town of Dongola, capital of Sudan’s Northern state. They are headed straight for Khartoum before carrying on to Ethiopia the following day: they would be crossing the whole of north-east Sudan in two days.

Two asphalt roads run through the centre of town, criss-crossed by dirt streets where shops and market stalls offer shade to the people out in the afternoon sun. My first task would be to trek across these dirt-streets under this burning sun, laden with my backpack, in search of the police station.

Having first gone to a small lokanda (basic, Sudanese “hotels” offering a bed in a courtyard), I was informed that as a khawaaja I couldn’t snatch a bed until I had a letter of authorisation from the police. I was pointed in the general direction of the police office, the other side of town, and told that no, I couldn’t leave my bag here. Laden with more than twenty kilos, dehydrated and sweating profusely, I stumbled through the maze of dirt streets, lined by short, squat houses in search of something official.

The police station was a rather nondescript building as far away from the centre of town as possible. I was seated—nearly passing out—in a dusty office, a fan blowing warm air over the lethargic men sitting around, semi-paralysed by the heat. Details of my passport were copied into a ledger and I was handed a letter authorising me to stay in town. Utterly pointless, but at least there was no baksheesh involved.

Staggering back to the centre, I held my resolve to not give-in to the temptation of one of the many rickshaws that buzzed past. I found a more welcoming lokanda, unfettered my load, and went in search of nourishment and rehydration. A bowl of fuul and several gallons of orange juice later, I was appreciating the laid-back vibe of this town. Bustling, by Sudanese standards, but rather more relaxed than the Middle East.

My health has taken a bit of a battering since arriving in Sudan, my stomach adjusting to the food, water & heat with rather violent results. As I squat over the hole in the floor, discharging a rather obnoxious yellow goo, cockroaches scuttle across the walls. This is not a place of luxury. Add to that the mind-altering anti-malarial—Larium—that is due today, and exploring a new town becomes quite a task.

I appear to be the only Westerner in town. Walking through the streets, heads turn, and the familiar Arabic phrase Ahlan wa sahlan forms a vocal Mexican wave as I walk past shop-fronts. Against my better judgement, I make frequent stops to drink from the many clay pots of water that line the streets. “It’s character building for my immune system”, I tell myself; chances are, this is drawn directly from the Nile, but seeing the way in which refuse is disposed of in these countries, I am not keen to contribute to the pollution by imbibing from plastic bottles all day long…

Come nightfall, life picks up a little, pausing only with the muezzin call for the Maghrib prayer. As “Allah akhbar” echos through the dusty air, life stops and my two new Sudanese friends excuse themselves to join the large groups of people collecting outside mosques, praying en-masse on street corners. For ten minutes, there are no people, no cars, no rickshaws, only prayer. Islam is big.

Mohammed is a university teacher of English literature but is currently working as an official UN translator for a team of election observers. Conversation thus turns to the elections, and they are keen to know more about elections in Europe, and whether there is the same level of campaign posters being pasted in such highly-visible public places. Here in Sudan, they seem to cover every available wall; the green tree of the NCP is ubiquitous throughout Dongola.

Whilst al-Bashir does have a strong base of support in Northern Sudan, Amin talks of his hope for a different government to change the system in the country, but he doesn’t seem confident that these elections, the first multi-party vote in Sudan since 1986, will bring in another party. Nor that if they did, the level of corruption and mismanagement would improve. They explain that government-employed workers here receive a monthly salary of only 150 USD, barely enough to live on. I find life here in Sudan surprisingly expensive - things here seem to cost around twice as much as in Egypt. Many of the rickshaw drivers are university graduates.

» More photos from Dongola.