goodwoodenship

For a capital Khartoum is relatively lacking in opera houses, libraries, cafes, theatres, cinemas, and the usual alcohol fuelled areas that pass for packaged entertainment in other more western cities. Entertainment is of your own making, ideas tend to get a little addled under the influence of heat stroke. Hence after spotting an ice block district in the large markets in Omdurman where huge metre long slabs of ice are sold and carted off on donkey pulled vehicles, a couple of friends agreed that it would be a good idea to try and create an indoor curling rink in Khartoum out of seven or eight of those blocks. This idea is still under implementation but we’re optimistic. An equally ridiculous idea was attempting to herd together and discipline enough ex-pat brits and Commonwealthers to film a decent game of cricket to submit to the BBC world cricket world cup coverage. They’re apparently doing short skits of the more outlandish places that people are playing cricket.

Rob, an aspiring county cricketer who moonlights as a lawyer when not otherwise occupied, persuaded a bunch of us to dress up in whites, complete with county cricket hats, to do a desert cricket match. Unfortunately for him most of us didn’t know what we were doing and the atmosphere was one of kids let out for half an hour before bedtime. The first bit of footage he got started with me going in to bat. Last time I was let near cricket stumps was when I was twelve and my brother needed someone to practice with. I was fairly confident I would excel. Two minutes in I rendered the film unusable by shouting an invective string of inventive swear words at the bowler, myself and my bat as I swung and missed three times successively. Shortly afterwards Ingrid an amazonian Australian who has a reputation for being a tough negotiator in high level meetings, took the wicket, professionally tapping the ground with her bat, the Irish wicketkeeper said something derogatory about her stance, barely hesitating she swung round and gave him the finger, two seconds after that the country director of a smaller ngo who was fielding in the slips wandered into the camera shot his shorts deliberately pulled down so that he was half-mooning the camera.

The last over, the only salvageable footage, was about the time I came back in to bat. My partner was at the stumps and had just hit the ball an impressive distance. We ran, my hat fell off, I stopped to pick it up, changed my mind, ran for the stumps, suddenly thought I might trip over it on the journey back, stopped again hesitated turned back for it, bent over, realized my partner was on his second run, and got up and sprinted for the line just as the fielder threw the ball an impressive distance back towards the stumps. The ball was flying in at a slightly faster speed than my uncoordinated run, instead of hitting the stumps it made a perfect trajectory to my head, bounced nicely off and was caught neatly by the bowler. “Howzat!” he cried.

Much as I tried I was unable to persuade Rob to delete the footage.

My only consolation is that Rob wasn’t there with his camera a couple of hours later when Olivier, a friend of mine, was giving me a lift back home. His car has a default setting whereby even if your foot is not on the gas it still rolls at a steady pace regardless of slope angle or terrain. The pace is slightly faster than a walking pace, we calculated a very well trained power walker could keep up with us nicely. We pulled out of his driveway at this speed and continued without engine through the back alleys towards my house. This wasn’t a problem. The problem started when we hit the main road and on a mutual silent consensus decided to see what would happen with the already chaotic traffic if we inserted ourselves in it at a snails pace. At first it meant that the usual three cars to one lane increased to three cars plus the optimistic fourth trying to overtake us. It’s a strange experience being in a car watching traffic flow around you, having enough time to check out what is happening at a stall at the side of the road, to wave to them and exchange pleasantries before you move on. It says a lot for the chaos of Khartoum traffic that to some degree our eccentric behaviour was just incorporated into the usual traffic flows.

The hairiest moment was when we turned off the main road, there was no break in the traffic. Olivier’s way of dealing with this was to turn anyway, regally waving and smiling out his window at the oncoming traffic. Miraculously, even though it took us a terrifying age to cross and the oncoming cars didn’t stop, we weren’t hit. This brought on a vague air of insane hilarity whereas before the predominant feeling had been of laid back laziness and curiosity. As we approached my house, passing my neighbours listening to their radio in their garden, the decision not to stop the car to let me out was taken and I consequently strapped my shoulder bag over my neck and arm and held it tight to me so that it was secure (yet looked ridiculous), opened the car door and after steeling myself up to it for a couple of minutes, leapt from the car running at right angles. This proved to be slightly stupid, which admittedly I should have already clocked, I stumbled a little, nearly ran into the wall that we were driving by, recovered and mentally patted myself on the back as I turned to wave goodbye to Olivier. At which point I realized I’d left the door open, I started sprinting after the car to slam the door shut, assuming that the rules of the game still held. Unfortunately just as I caught up, Olivier, assuming the game was over, hit the brakes, I was in the middle of crying "Olivier the door’s still op…" when I ran face front into the car door still clutching my bag tightly to me.

Like I said, you have to make your own entertainment in this city and sometimes if they’re lucky, you make it for others.

This morning, as usual, I opened my eyes around the time I should be getting up, closed them again and reasoned five minutes more wouldn’t hurt. Curling around my pillows and slothfully wrapping my sheets around me I fell asleep again. Half asleep and happy, I rolled over to my left side to make my back more comfortable. Due to some sort of deficiency from dehydration the usual brain functions that gauge where you are while you sleep didn’t work, as I rolled the bed wasn’t there all of a sudden and I rolled onto nothing, I paused mid-air for a minute to make a “oh shit” face to the camera, then hit the floor still clutching my pillow.

It’s been a good metaphor for work today.

The temperature in Khartoum peaked at 49°C this weekend, today in comparison it’s only a mild 43°. The heat is deceptive in that it’s dry and so hot that you don’t sweat so much as slowly desiccate. Hence the usual warning signs that you are being fried alive no longer manifest themselves. On the first day of this heat I happily thought I was dealing quite well with it since the only physical signs I noticed was the fact that my ears felt like someone was blowtorching them (in retrospect that seems like a fairly valid reason to worry).

That same day I went to join the usual suspects at the Khartoum race track to play mixed touch rugby (we usually play one field over from the Sudanese Polo team which presents a particularly surreal montage against the backdrop of the local mosque). The race track is around five or six km from Khartoum airport which is positioned in the dead centre of the city and means that most daily functions (including our game) are performed to the tune of the incoming and outgoing Sudan airways flights.

Ten minutes into the game I was bent double clutching my knees as if somehow I could rehydrate from my own sweat by osmosis through my palms. Twenty minutes in and I was unable to stand without spinning; the world was considerately staying still but inside my neurons were rearranging themselves in a giant game of musical chairs. If I concentrated mid hoarse breath I could hear them conga lining to “feeling hot hot hot”. The only thing that kept me going was sheer competitiveness, it was a tight game and we were losing by just one try.

Just as I was about to suggest a week’s hammock break before the next try, the munitions dump next to the airport exploded. It was quite impressive, deep booms punctuated by higher staccato bangs, going on continuously without pause. I’ve never been in a war zone but if I ever end up in one I will make sure to remark “this reminds me of the time I was playing rugby in Khartoum, terribly funny story you know…” Within a couple of minutes all the players had their security radios out, the contrast in agencies was marked, the UN in detail restricted staff movements to a two metre radius of their toilet bowls with orders to report any unexploded ordinances and to tie blankets over their heads and count to ten whereas the EC was punctuated by the lone voice of a woman saying “what is the situation? Over. Can anyone give me an update? Over”.

I in turn texted my work security officer but only received a text from a friend in Cape Town in reply, “the weather here is lovely” he said. I took it as a good sign. From the various radio traffic it turned out that rather than some sort of civil conflict (which was what was on everyone’s minds, there being a lot of SPLM militia in the city at the moment) that the munitions dump, placed near to the airport, had also been placed in close vicinity to a truck that was in the sort of state that led it to spontaneously combust. All of us were gathered round one UN radio holding the rugby balls and gulping down water as quickly as gravity allowed to hear this update. After careful consideration of the situation (explosions still ongoing in the background) we did the only logical responsible thing - we agreed to play to best of three.

I just got back from Kenya last night, smuggling through customs into khartoum illicit alcohol and porcine products, flashing my UNLP and make believing that two passports make my life glamorous and full of glitter.

Being in Nairobi was a welcome break, on arrival I was picked up at the airport by Gerald, a taxi driver who knows Nairobi back to left to up to right to front. In his car, on the radio, a programme discussed sex and the correct way to tell if your lover was cheating on you and what to do about it. The minute I heard this and realised that in this country it didn’t matter if I had had sex before marriage and that my flesh was showing around my midriff (hussy) a weight seemed to lift from my shoulders. This was at least a week in which I didn’t have to conduct myself according to other’s standards.

It seems though that the trade off between nairobi and khartoum (an over-simplification obviously) is that in khartoum ideologically you may not be free to express yourself but social structure wise it’s miles ahead of nairobi. I can walk down the street in khartoum with a bag full of cash at night and not worry about what’s about to happen to me but in nairobi, wear an semi-expensive watch in your car and you’re shafted. (Usually with some sort of firearm.)

I was there visiting an old friend from university, my first ever flatmate in fact. He’s now married and running a carpentry shop in Nairobi, we swopped stories and hit each other on the back enthusiastically in the way you do when you’re so glad to see someone physical abuse seems necessary.

On the weekend I decided to indulge myself and admit I was nothing more than a bog standard tourist and go on a safari. I booked a plane to the masai mara park (the biggest game park in kenya) and settled down with the guide book to properly memorise the facial features of the big five. No point meeting them if you can’t properly introduce yourself.

The flight there was in a piddly little plane where the wings are superglued to the top of the plane, you can see the light through the joints and where the slightest turbulence brings an endless list of things you haven’t yet managed to do crowding panic-stricken into your consciousness. "Me!" they cry, "you haven’t managed to do me yet, you’ve got oh probably 0.5 minutes of life left to try and cross me off the list"

Fortunately I am fairly stoic and after a brief attempt at a handstand (I’m never going to manage one) I returned to my seat and, as we sailed over the safari park, coming in to land, I started to sing the Out of Africa theme tune to myself - and the people sitting in front and behind me (Karen Blixen’s dodgy politics aside you can’t help being nostalgic about the film) - they, obviously, loved it.

Being in a safari park is a strange experience, the animals don’t behave as they ought, which is in a segregated stationary manner behind bars. They march around you either curious or indifferent and slow down time to their rhythm which is something primeval and out of sync with the tens of jeeps that roam with them in automated herds. (The big white jeeps with more than ten people are females, the nippier green ones without roofs (ours) are the territorial males. They mate by winching). The way in which we cut through vegetation and roared around with our cameras and carbon trailing behind us made it all too clear that it’s them or us, these two rhythms of life just seem out of place and incommensurable when put together.

Visitors compete in the evenings at the camp bar as to who saw what, extra points are given for the distance of the sighting and unusual behaviour. Kudos is given to the lucky ones - "I saw three cheetahs kill and then an elephant suckle it’s young, shortly before a leopard fell out of a tree", shame and a beer alone in the corner is dolled out to those who came back with only photos of the mongeese hiding - "they kept ducking down everytime my camera clicked".

I was exiled to my tent with only a buttered roll and a tonic water for my story of the elephant that pratfalled over a tap-dancing cheetah troupe into a rhino tied to a hippo, thus ensuring the giraffe and secretary bird’s victory in the three legged race they were all engaged in.

Had I had some sort of photographic evidence of the fall at least I think I might have gotten away with it.

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