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The weekend here is Friday and Saturday. ‘Yes’, you say, ‘I know, because I am bright like that and know these things about muslim countries. When my boss talks about working on a Sunday I don’t feel like he’s stolen a precious day of rest from me’, you say, ‘no I know full well that I will be sleeping in on the Friday and Saturday, happy and safe under my blissful relief bringing ceiling fan’. At which point I’d interrupt you with a "ha!" and a "no!" and "You’d think that wouldn’t you, if you were a sane and logical person, yes you’d think that" and another bitter "ha" before I’d lapse into a moody silence and dig into the complimentary lemon sorbet from the hotel, all the time pointedly chewing (even though it’s sorbet) in time to "Here comes the Hotstepper" playing in the background.
‘So what’ you finally say after an awkward silence ‘is the problem?’
And then I’d tell you.
Sod’s law and years of merciless mocking of friends who had to work weekends in DC has finally blossomed together in a job that had me at work at 8am on the day I arrived on a 4am flight and where I have worked late every day and haven’t had a full day off since. Which actually is the only thing I have to complain about and I’m only mentioning it because that, combined with a slightly dysfunctional camping trip yesterday, has left me feeling a little disorientated, wild eyed and wired today.
Tues, Weds and Thurs have all been learning exercises in the layout of two rooms. My hotel room and my office in the world bank building in Khartoum II (there are regions in Khartoum, they are many. And I, with my idiot less of the savant grasp of directions and names can name but one and a half correctly). The one day I had decided enough was enough and that I would see more of Khartoum and had planned to go walking after work to find a coffee house and challenge the first willing person to backgammon I passed out on my bed whilst trying to work out where I’d packed my socks.
All wasn’t lost though. I’d been invited to a Friday camping trip by a friend of a friend in DC. Hopes of seeing the outside world, so briefly soaring, were temporarily dashed by my boss asking me to come in and work instead. Luckily at 8.30 am when I got to the office, it turned out he wasn’t there and hadn’t really needed me after all.
The journey to the camping site took, I think, about 2 to 3 hours. I’m not sure, time became a miasma left behind in the wake of buses precariously overtaking us at 140 miles an hour on the endless tarmac through the desert. Sometimes in the face of oncoming traffic, and, on one delightful occasion, in the face of another bus doing the same thing, (traffic here seems to be mostly one big game of chicken, bizarrely pedestrians seem to be pretty good at it)
There were twenty of us in 8 off-road vehicles, we drove like a presidential convoy in perfect harmony, distracted only by the occasional breakdown, toilet break and insult throwing match between the last two cars — me and three others versus three ex military types who had already started drinking and who, shortly after one particularly lively exchange through rolled down windows, ran over a small tree.
They didn’t notice.
(So in a way very much like a certain sort of presidential convey)
About an hour and a half in, after passing endless stalls of watermelons, distant minarets, swathes of plastic bags running free in their natural habitat and the occasional group of goats, we swung off the road into proper desert and starting driving like maniacs through the sand dunes (hence the tree incident). It seems incumbent on me now to point out for those of you looking for some sort of higher analysis in this mental drivel I am spilling out, that the desert isn’t what I’d imagined it to be.
One I wasn’t riding a camel, sword drawn, about to engage in battle. Two there were no mirages and endless vast plains of shimmering golden sand. It’s full of stuff: thorn trees; mules (that appear leisurely sitting in your path through the temporary gap in the sand thrown up by the vehicle in front); dogs; rocks; goats; goats that look like rocks; people; an oil refinery; the ocassional ruin or building; again, plastic bags; and even, in the mornings, a group of six kids who tell you they’ve come from the village on the other side of the hill you camped next to in full belief that you were in the middle of nowhere and truly getting drunk with nature, sorry, one with nature.
Anyway to the point, we built a fire, set up camp, which consisted of a number of cots provided by others, firewood brought all the way from Khartoum (by others), food for twenty people, chairs, a grill, electric lamps, music, drinks and ice buckets (all brought by others), and (my contribution) a backgammon board and a game of scrabble.
At about 2am we started falling asleep, (not before a bizarre incident where one of the insult throwing opponents, in a quiet moment, threw my hat in the fire - I watched it burn, thought "that was odd", and then went star gazing), at this point the desert was very much what I thought it would be. One it was very very cold, mostly because of a persistent dry wind that finds all chinks in your sleeping bag armour. I was fully dressed with a coat and a sleeping bag and still it was cold enough to trigger people to start wondering who they could become friendly with to get warm. Two it was insanely beautiful. It’s a cliche but currently it’s my cliche and I’m going to tell it, I saw the most stars I’ve ever seen out there, the sky is completely crowded with them. It’s breathtaking and peaceful.
‘So’, you ask, (a little impatiently I might add), ‘What was dysfunctional about that? Apart from the hat it sounds lovely.’
"Well", I say, after leaning forward with a dramatic flourish of my sorbet spoon, "at that point it was, apart from the hat as you say, lovely"… I fell asleep to the sound of nothing but the wind and the vision of nothing but the stars falling endlessly backwards towards me. Bliss. About ten minutes after that the sound of nothing but the desert wind turned began to be punctuated by a series of irregular, heartfelt, and slightly disconcerting groans. I can’t do them justice but they went something like this: "aaaaah" (pause) "ah ah arrrrr, oh god" (longer pause) "aaaaaaAAAh" (pause again - at which point you’d think they had stopped) "aaar" and then "Oh god…. arrrrrrggh". After about thirty minutes I finally cracked and said "does anyone else hear that?", "it’s probably one of the guys" came the sleepy reply "being sick". I can’t imagine what that person had eaten or how painfully it was coming up but those groans could have been used as sound effects for Dante.
About an hour later I adapted and fell asleep again. Ten minutes after this I was woken again by someone using my wrist and the friction a small section of my flesh provided as it pinched against the metal frame of the cot, as a prop as they pulled themselves up from under it. (A place from which they had passed out earlier). "Ow" I murmured, to no reply, and turned over. Two seconds later a rhythmic rustling started coming from the edge of my cot, fearing something truly dodgy I rolled over to see someone rocking back and forth, both hands clutching their head, obviously still asleep, on their knees. Every rock back brought them against the edge of my cot.
I’ve been told, and I wasn’t about to test this, that it can be dodgy to wake someone up when they’re sleepwalking. So after contemplating the rocking figure for a few disturbed breath-holding minutes, I pulled myself together, turned my back and lay there, listening to the rhythmic rustle of the guy rocking against me, a lullaby interrupted only by the occasional wistful "argh" echoing out from behind the bushes.
Like I said, slightly dysfunctional, but beautiful all the same.
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