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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.
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