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Ramadan ended a week ago and with it ended the fear one can only feel when late for an iftar, driving full speed towards a junction with a hunger crazed taxi driver, racing with the mirror image of your ride coming from three other directions all intent on reaching the junction, their turning and subsequently home before sunset hits.
During ramadan the drivers in Khartoum drive as if the pregnant woman in their car has not only just burst her waters but just asked them to deliver her baby. Survival is ensured by either going home early or walking in incense filled deserted streets post sunset, the only sign of life being the large gatherings of food road stops for travellers who need to break their fast. These walks have the same atmosphere as going out alone in London on christmas day, the party is elsewhere, if you’re not at home you’re not anywhere.
Eid on the other hand is supposed to be a much livelier affair, I wouldn’t know having committed to a week long boat ride in the Red Sea starting just before Eid and ending yesterday. The boat was booked, seven of us were going, most relative strangers, and five Italians were booked as a separate party on the same boat. Everything was arranged, scuba equipment, two dives a day, conversation topics, food, berth, coral reefs pre-prepared. Utterly organised except the small matter of getting the seven of us to Port Sudan where the boat was docked.
The dillemma ran thus - drive a relatively unknown route, face roadblocks and a desert road where breakdowns could be fairly dodgy or fly via a Sudanese airline, in the full knowledge that the US embargo meant that Sudanese planes replace their worn parts with equally worn rejects from Ethiopian airlines. The flight from Khartoum to Port Sudan on the other hand was only an hour, the drive a full day at least. But then, as someone else pointed out by email, landing in Port Sudan involved flying over the wreck of the last plane to crash there, a couple of months ago, which the airport authorities still hadn’t gotten round to clearing up. Another email was sent shortly after, listing Sudanese airline urban myths floating around included one where the pilot, bored halfway through the flight, went to talk to someone in the back of the plane before returning to find he had locked himself out of the cockpit. This email debate between car lovers and plane fetishists became increasingly polarised and personal, smear campaigns were started, outrageous stories spread via bcc, houses set on fire.
In the balance of things I decided to go by car. Unfortunately I don’t have a license so it was more of an academic decision dependant on other’s compliance. After killing the beloved pets of half of my rivals I managed to force three others to brave the journey with me, Sergio, Audrey and Sam; all young and tired of life. We arranged to start on Friday morning along the longer route to Port Sudan with a night stop in the mountains of Kassala and two eight hour drives to look forward to. Seeing as we agreed on this 8.30 am start as I stumbled drunk out of the car Thursday night, being dropped off from a party at 3am, happily proclaiming I was off to pack, it was a huge surprise, both to me and the three people I tried to wake up with an 8am call, that I managed to keep to to the bargain. At 11am we eventually set off, hungover, haggard and racing through our two day supply of water as we perused towns, landmarks and palm groves on what seemed like a map of fairly well developed roads in Sudan. Well developed until we realised that the road marking key contained entries like “dirt road, unfinished - main road, un-tarmac-ed - mountain road, here be dragons”.
An added element of uncertainty to our journey that none of us had planned for, having unfortunately omitted to add it to our list between ‘extra rations of water’ and ‘make sure there is a spare tire’ was the decision by the SPLM to leave the GONU. In non acronym terms, the separate government in the south decided to leave the joint government of national unity that had been the main prop of the peace agreement. As we drove out of Khartoum it was still uncertain whether this was a political gambit or a precursor to the renewal of civil war. It says a lot for the pace of news and life in Sudan that while the capital was abuzz with the news, an hour out of Khartoum there was next to no impact. Anyway we reasoned that were the shit to hit the fan there was no better place to be than 20 metres under water with reef sharks.
The journey went pretty much as predicted by our rivals, the roads were at times so worn and hole ridden that it seemed safer to drive on the desert sand. Buses would rush by with the speed only attainable when the drivers are paid per number of trips logged in a day. Dead tires littered the sidetracks, splayed in tragic poses where they had expired, innards ripped out by cruel roads whose jagged chasms had compounded the injury of the impossible heat and insane speeds. Occasionally the tires would be dismissed into the background by the skeleton of a truck or coach, spilling its innards of grain sacks and cargo out onto the roadside where it had fallen. Sometimes the drivers would still be sitting by their trucks, like farmers with their dying prize breed, having set up a bed and warning triangles around the wreck, (usually a useful two paces away from the original crash site). At one point we overtook an eighteen wheel truck (or something along those lines) just as one of its wheels broke free and ran happily off into the desert crying out something about camels and the life of nomad free for him. As we pulled in in front of the truck we could see the driver looking in his rear view mirror with a look of confused disbelief. I don’t blame him, tires don’t usually talk.
It was inevitable that our car should somehow join this list of road trip casualties and it happened just at the peak of our optimism, our ipod dj-ing had resulted in relatively few executive vetoes, the sugar high from the car snacks was at its peak and the car games had been mercifully short lived. We were an hour from our first night stop - Kassala and its rounded peaks and soft cricket ridden beds of the UNDP guest house, when suddenly the car started clapping along to the music. After initially criticizing it for being out of beat we clocked that something may be wrong and we stopped the car to find a small ropey portion lining the treads of the tyre had sprung free and was flapping around with happy abandon. Being practical types we cut it off and decided to advance at a steady pace of 40 km/hr instead of 120. Twenty minutes later as I gazed out at the nomad tents and herds of goats clustered under the lone desert shrub I was treated to a firework display of flying rubber dancing past my window. Luckily Sergio, who was driving, was quicker on the uptake than me, as I was cooing at the pretty display he already had the car at a halt and was heading to the back to get the equipment to change the tyre.
This however was where our practicality and efficiency ended. It turned out half the equipment we needed wasn’t there or if it was was well hidden. A four way debate sprang up about how to get the spare tire off the back. It rested with a man named Abdallah who crossed the road from the tent where he had been celebrating Eid to sort out the situation. He quietly took the jack off me that I had been alternatively shaking and then examining and had it under the car and was prising the worn tire off as the debate was still ongoing “I think we need a long pointy thing to get the jack to work, Yoshi can you please tell that guy he can’t get the tyre off that way … no, not that sort of long pointy thing, a shorter long pointy thing, it should be grey, can you see one in the boot?… Yoshi please tell him thank you but we’re ok… What do you mean there’s no pointy thing? Have you tried under the seats? Yoshi can you please tell him… oh” We left still shouting thank you from the windows and waving sheepishly until he fell out of sight and Kassala came into view.
After a cricket infested night in Kassala where going to the toilet involved vying with the insects for standing space ( I found most of the time I lost the argument “we were here first” tended to stump me ) we set off again for Port Sudan. As we came closer to our predicted time of arrival in Port Sudan (roads being unsigned and routes becoming a matter of guesswork and shouted inquiries to the inevitable groups of people who gathered round roadblocks (to get out meant possibly being singled out and properly stopped)) we would take it in turns to lean out of the window and try to smell the sea. “I smell sand” said Sergio excitedly until we pointed out we were driving through the desert. The variety of terrain in Sudan is unbelievable. On our journey we went through desert, farmland, mountains, desert again and then came into the port on the edge of the Red Sea. It took us two days, approximately 1300 kms and we had barely covered a portion of Sudan’s width. We passed nomadic tents, Eritrean refugees, camel herders, small villages and bustling cities mingling slums and Hilton hotels propped on the tip of prosperity and development. Whatever the discomfort of the journey was worth it to finally get an idea of the expanse of Sudan as opposed to the petri dish of Khartoum where all Sudan gathers to become a representation of what is Sudanese.
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