I seem to
have done a pretty quick transit of Sudan. I find myself up here at the far
Northern border with Egypt and Ive only been in the country about a week… But I
was never intending to be here long really. There isn’t that much for the
tourist to do. There are maybe four or five sites with ancient ruins though on
a much smaller scale than in neighbouring Egypt, there are the quite modern
cities of Khartoum and Port Sudan, and that’s really about it (and of course
the southern and Western regions of the country are pretty much off-limits to
tourists because of violence/political unrest)… of course there are lots of
cultural and social aspects to any country but I cant really get too involved
in or gain too much understanding of them since I cant speak or read any
Arabic… So it’s a bit limited.
But while
I was here I did find that the Sudanese are very friendly people and they are
very polite and always invite you to eat or have a coffee or tea with them etc…
Truly very nice. For the tourist though, there are quite a few “hoops to jump
through”… First in order to get a visa to come here you need a letter of
invitation from someone in Sudan (I got a hotel to supply me this in return for
staying at the hotel for a couple of nights). Then, once you arrive in the country
you need to promptly go and “register” as an alien with the tourism department.
And then if you want to go and travel pretty much anywhere you need to get a
travel permit (from a completely different government department) and of course
permission to use a camera (which is the same department as the travel permit).
And then if you want to stay in many of the hotels in small towns you need to
get signed permission from the local “security office” as well, and lastly
(well as far as I know anyway), there are dozens of road blocks along all the
main roads and at all the significant towns where you are required to stop and
show your passport and travel permission paper and leave multiple photocopies
for …well for whatever it is they do with such things???
So, it
seems a little “schizoid”… The government is clearly worried about insurgency
and disruptive elements (and they have some good reason for that with the South
Sudan rebels and Darfur, and Eretria etc) while the population in general are
extremely friendly and welcoming.
Other
things Ive noticed here are that all the little tooktooks are two-strokes while
everywhere else Ive been has had the more modern four-stroke version… It serves
as a very clear reminder to me of why I hate two-stroke engines… noisy and
smelly and polluting… just horrid little things!
And “Fat
is Back” which is to say that I got quite used to seeing very few over-weight
people in most of the other countries Ive been in and particularly in Ethiopia.
But here in Sudan there is a definite tendency for people to get fat… Id guess
that 75% of the older men that I see are over-weight and 90% of the older women…
Not sure why its so, Just saying it as I see it J
Sudan
also seems to have a very strong “water culture”… Everywhere you go there are
little shaded stalls under which are mounted up off the ground, groups of large
earthen “flasks”. And the flasks are full of water which is available for
anyone to drink at any time… It makes sense for a country with such serious
levels of sunshine J The nice thing about the earthen
flasks is that they are slightly porous and so the water slowly oozes through
their walls and evaporates from the outside which has the effect of cooling the
rest of the water (The flasks are mounted up in the air to facilitate the
airflow for the cooling)…I think it’s a really nice aspect of the social
culture and ione that the people here should be proud of…I wonder if its just
here in Sudan or in other countries up here in the Sahara as well?
And they
certainly do have lots of sun here… Magnificently excessive and blinding
burning beating sun! The South of the country had quite a bit of cropping and
its toward the end of rainy season at the moment so everything down there was
green. But once you get north of Khartoum you enter the real desert. The
Southern edge of the great continent spanning Sahara… And by the time you are
in the Northern areas there isn’t even any grazing going on… Its just a
sun-blasted rock-scape. Even the mighty Nile river which was raging through the
North of Uganda and Ethiopia seems to be subdued by the intensity of the sun
here. It’s a good sized river but it seems to “skulk” and huddle down as it
makes its way as quickly and unobtrusively North through the Sudan desert… Its
heavily laden with brown silt at the moment which seems to act as “camouflage”
as the river makes its “run for the border”. Rather than taking the big highway
direct from Khartoum to the main crossing point with Egypt, I detoured over to
the West and followed a smaller highway along the side of the river… But it’s
the desert that dominates here, not the river! The river water seems only able
to have any effect for about 50m from the river bank where there are lots and
lots of date palms all along the banks. Then there is a band of human
habitation for another 50m or so with all the adobe box houses with their mud
brick walled compounds, and then it’s the starkest and harshest of desert for
as far as the eye can see in every direction. Oh and there is the wind… A
searing hot (40degC plus) wind that blows most of the time at just under gale force…
It seemed to be in a different direction every day while I rode and I think it
was a bit cooler when it came from the South (off the Ethiopian highlands) but
when it came from the North or West it was scorchingly hot and dry! That’s why
all the buildings have yards with high mud brick walls; its to provide
protection from the winds! But back to the sun, as my thoughts are constantly
drawn, away from whatever mundane task Im doing … like driving, or walking, or
breathing… ever back to that ball of fire hanging in the sky!) You know, the
sun is so hot here that it has pretty much broken every single chair in the
country!... Im not kidding either; since I arrived I don’t think Ive had a
fully functional chair to sit in at all. They all have broken strapping or
cracked plastic or bent legs and torn fabric… Its like they have been singled
out for special abuse here (with beds ads a close second). The sun hasn’t done
the damage directly of course, but the sun is the cause of it never the less.
The heat is so pervasive that people seem to spend inordinately large amounts
of time sitting (no doubt this goes a long way to explaining the resurgent
obesity I see), and so chairs are heavily used. And when people sit down here
it is often heavily and suddenly and that takes its toll on the chairs too.
