"Steven Spielberg couldn't have done
better," Rob said.
Rob was the only other khawaga
on the ferry and he was also a Canadian. He
was on his way back to Nairobi after backpacking his way overland to Damascus. To get through the war zone in southern Sudan, he
had bummed a ride north with a rebel convoy and they had driven through during the night. His benefactors had put him in an empty cigarette
crate and buried it under other goods. He
could see out. What he saw lit up the night. One of the trucks had hit a land mine and exploded
in a great ball of fire. This was the
Spielberg-style spectacle he was referring to. Rob
leafed through a tattered loose-leaf journal to show me the notes he had made about the
incident.
As
well as being tall and lean and blond-haired, Rob was bearded and tanned. He wore a dull-coloured durable clothing. He looked like a white African adventurer. He had taken a year off from his university studies
to be with his fiancée who had a degree in African studies.
She had gone on to China but would now have returned to Nairobi. I wondered if she knew what Rob had been up to.
The
ferry would take us to a dock a few miles from the relocated town of Wadi Halfa, inside
the Sudanese border. From there, we would
catch a train for Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan, which was located at the confluence
of the White and Blue Nile rivers. This was to
be a 26-hour trip, depending on how well the engine held up.
As
Rob got back to writing in his journal, I wrote in mine, catching up with the times in
Aswan. I heard some live music coming from a
table nearby. It came from a group of young
dark Sudanese guys who had begun to sing some rhythmic songs to the foot-stomping beat of
a bongo. I joined them and brought out my tape
recorder. They flashed big white-toothed grins
and sang a little louder. It was marvelous
fun! Afterwards they informed me that they
were from Khartoum. So that is what I called
this group – The Boys from Khartoum.
I
had already met Arabs from the north and Christians from the south and they were equally
friendly.
I
began to think, Hey, it might not be so scary in the
Sudan after all.
(Of
course, that was an extremely ignorant viewpoint. And
the civil war going on in southern Sudan was no Hollywood spectacle. People were being
dying. And there was no end in sight.
Americans
could relate to bloody conflict that threatened to sever South from North. Whereas slavery was the key issue dividing North
and South in the US, it was religion in the Sudan. The
government in the Sudan is Muslim, based on the population of the Sudan which was about 70
percent Muslim, which resides mostly in the north. The
strict Islamic Shaira laws were being imposed on the people of tradtional and Christian
religions that dominated the South. The South
was fighting for autonomy.
If peace
in the Sudan hinged on religious tolerance, it seemed there was no easy answer. Muslim life itself was governened by Islam and the
Koran. Muslims are
commanded to wage an everlasting war – Jehad – against the unbelievers and are
assured victory in the struggle.
It was the bitter and violent divisions between
Hindus and Muslims that resulted in the partition of India at the time of its
independence, and the assassination of Mohatma Gandhi.
But I was
here not to take sides in a nation's internal conflict, but simply to meet some of its
people and find commonalities.)
I went outside on various decks and took photos in the dwindling
light of evening. Goods where pilled
everywhere. The decks will filled with
dark-skinned passengers who milled together in small groups, looked out over the lake at
the barren shore, or sat on carpets (with shoes off to one side) and played cards. Most of them wore western-style clothes. Many were Negro and some sported big Afro hairdos
and sunglasses.
On
another deck, laying on the floor or leaning against the railing was a small group of
Arabs. They were covered in colourful
patterned blankets – completely covered if they were sleeping or head propped up on a
duffel bag if not. Most were reading from the
Koran. One man was somewhat separate from the
group, alone under the davits that supported one of the orange-painted lifeboats. He saw me and beckoned me to come over.
His
name was Ali Ahmed. He was from Kassala, an
agriculture-based city west of Khartoum, near the border with Ethiopia. He was a well-groomed, bearded man with salt and
pepper hair. He wore a dark green galabiyah with a matching headwrap that were made of
high-quality fabric. He sat upright on a
pillow. With an air of serene confidence on
his face he seemed to be a man who was at peace with himself and the world. Without the
shadowy features, Ali looked like the Ayatollah Khomeni (but only if you could picture him
younger and with a kind, grandfatherly face and manner).
Ali was just 41 years old.
I
took off my shoes and sat with him. He asked
where I was from and where I was going.
"Ah,
you are Canadian and are travelling the world," he said. "You are a good man."
We
exchanged more introductory conversation. As
we did, Ali would see some of his friends go by and he would call to them.
"This
is my good friend, Tom," he said.
"Ali,
will you tell me of Allah?" I said.
"It
will be my pleasure, Tom."
With
this, Ali seemed to go into a state of tranquility, but in a much more relaxed way than
had my aggravated instructor near the mosque in El Minya.
For a moment Ali closed his eyes and a smile of calm came to his face. He waved at the sky, to the waters of Lake Nasser,
to the people on deck – Allah had created all. He
closed his eyes and breathed in, raising his hands toward his lungs in a gesture of
gathering. He exhaled slowly, spreading his
arms in kind as he slowly opened his eyes. This
was to show the tranquility of thoughts of and prayers to Allah.
He
rose. It was time for Isha, the fifth and last prayer of the day. I would observe Ali and many other Muslims at dawn
the next morning on deck, with carpets spread on the open deck. Their shoes were off to one side. This was Fajr,
the first prayer of the day. Ali and the
others stood, bowed, knelt, touched their foreheads to the floor, stood again and said
prayers softly, the sun bathing their faces in gold as the looked in the direction of
Mecca.
*****************
I'll
diverge a bit, dear reader, to give you more detail of the Muslim prayer ritual…
There
are five prayers during a day:
·
Fajr around
sunrise
·
Zuhr early afternoon
·
Asr mid-late
afternoon
·
Maghrib around sunset
·
Isha after
sunset
The
Imam is the prayer leader.
RITUAL:
1.
It begins with
raising the hands, palms forward to each side of his head, with thumbs parallel to or even
touching the ear lobes. He utters: "God
is great."
2.
Then he
recites the al-fatihah ("the opening"
– first chapter from the Koran).
3.
He bows low,
uttering words, "Glory be to my Lord most august."
4.
He straightens
up, then kneels and touches his forehead to the ground and saying "Glory be to my
Lord most high."
5.
He sits back
on his heels, then prostrates himself once more.
6.
This is rak'ah – the basic sequence. Obligatory prayers consists of 2 – 4 rak'ahs.
7.
It concludes
by sitting back on his heels to recite a qira'ah
– a recitation of passages from the Koran.
*****************
After
my instruction by Ali, I roamed the decks until nightfall and then retired to the dining
room. Rob was explaining Christianity to
Muhammad, a receptive Muslim from Somalia. He
was a look-alike for Clarence Williams III, the actor with the Afro-hairdo who played Linc
Hayes on the 1969-1973 TV series, The Mod Squad. I joined them for a late dinner (included with the
price of my passenger ticket). We had
macaroni, chicken and pita bread, which we would dip in a tasty dark soup of greens. Soon after, people began staking out places for the
night on the padded benches. This made for an
uncomfortable bed. I slept restlessly, but without fear.
"Tom, you'd better get up," Rob said. "We're passing Abu Simbel."
It
was 7:35 a.m. I grabbed my gear and rushed up
into the cool early-morning air on deck. I
raised my camera just in time to snap a couple of profile shots of the massive sitting
images of Rameses II. I thanked Rob for waking
me, but admonished myself for having missed most of our passing of this archeological
wonder.
There
were two temples at Abu Simbel. These were
built around 1250 B.C., during the reign of Rameses II.
They had been carved into a sandstone cliff 210 feet (64 meters) below us on
the old banks of the Nile River. Rameses
dedicated the smaller temple to his queen, Nefertari, and to the goddess Hathor. Its façade had statues of Rameses II, Nefertari
and their children. The façade of the larger
temple had four sitting images of Rameses II that were 65 feet (20 m) high. And I had just barely caught the profiles of two of
them in my viewfinder.
These
temples had marked the southern gate of Egypt and were not seen by westerners until the
Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt discovered them in 1812 (the same year that Fort Erie was besieged by American
troops.)
In
1964, with the coming of the High Dam, the temples were put under a Swedish plan to save
them from a watery grave. Italian stone
cutters took on the job of cutting the poor quality limestone into 1,042 blocks. Not one broke in transport. They were reassembled in precisely the same
orientation as before. Concrete domes were
built over the temples and new bluffs created to match the originals were placed over the
domes. The project was completed at the same
time as the High Dam and cost $42 million. It
was quite possible that some my visa costs were used against what was left of the debt.
Three
hours later, we pulled into the small jetty near Wadi Halfa.
The hallways on the ferry were already jammed with people and their goods,
anxious to disembark through the doors in the side of the ship. After the first group of people that stood in front
of Melawend left the ship, two Customs officials kept the hallway clear so that Melawend
could be brought out.
We
wheeled up a maze of planks to a crude open customs office that was on one side of the
covered disembarkation platform. There were
just a few simple questions, a modest fee to admit Melawend and a couple chalk marks on
her packs and we were away. Three Customs
officials helped me lower Melawend ten inches to a long ramp that led us down to another
ramp that took us to hill of rock and sand. Two
men helped me push Melawend up until the ground was solid enough for me to motor her over
and down the steep bank to a narrow beach of hard-packed sand – in all, about 300
feet from the ship.
Many
people sat scattered on a barren rocky hillside with their goods. I had to go back to the ship to get my packs. There were lots of porters eager to help. I found a stocky 30ish guy and he insisted on
carrying the heavy-laden platform by himself on his back the whole way back to Melawend. Several men stood by watching as I put the
saddlebags on Melawend and bolted down the platform. There
were lots of smiles and waves as we rolled way. We
rode past refreshment kiosks and many old trucks on our way to find the road to Wadi
Halfa.
But
where was Wadi Halfa? And where was the road? Beyond the bustle around the jetty there was
nothing but dark gray gravel, rocky outcroppings and distant low hills. I followed what appeared to be a main track. It was soft and Melawend almost dumped a couple
times but I quickly got the hang of riding it. I
came to a place where the track forked every which way into the bleak empty countryside. There was no "road" sign. What to do?
I
waited until a truck came by. I let it go on
probably a couple of miles until the white-gold dust it raised began to settle, then I
simply followed the distant moving cloud of dust. The
going got extremely difficult in the sandy ruts left by more able vehicles. The track had turned into sand and Melawend
fishtailed wildly. Still, there was no obvious
sign of Wadi Halfa except for a place in the distance where the dust trail seemed to stop. The track seemed to lead in a wide arc toward the
spot, which was at least a few miles away.
I
thought, This is insane!
In
a bold move, I drove Melawend off the track and across the virgin sand. Don Travers had told me that the way to ride a bike
over sand was to throttle up – to go fast. The
momentum would keep the bike upright. First I
had to get beyond the tendency to go slow and easy – this is actually what made
riding in sand difficult. I thought, What the hell. I throttled up.
Melawend began to stabilize. I
throttled still higher and Melawend seemed to float over the sand. Al-riiiight!
Soon,
I saw what seemed to be a skyline of low squarish pastel-coloured buildings ahead.
Melawend's wheels began to roll over more solid-packed sand and stones. After several minutes, we reached the new town of
Wadi Halfa.
(The original Wadi Halfa was about 10 miles to the north
where it was drowned by Lake Nasser.)
At
the Nile Hotel, I met a gruff-looking girl from England.
This was Nikki. She was short
with bushy dirty brown hair and thick eyebrows and dark brown eyes. She looked like she had been in the desert for some
time. In fact, she had been traveling in the
Sudan for three months, alone. Now she was
heading back to Nottingham. She told me she
saw Rob in another hotel.
Melawend
and I rode about a quarter mile further on and found him.
We ate beans, pita bread and some potatoes that were in a greasy liquid. Nikki came in followed by a Swiss guy who was a
singer now living in Vienna. He was on his way
to Aswan. Rob left to find the immigration
office. Talk between Nikki and the Swiss guy
got boring so I left.
I
had to find a place to sleep and someone had suggested that I try the railway station. In a dark shop that was not much bigger than a
kiosk, I bought biscuits and water. I rode
over the doorless railway station. Rob was set
up inside on the floor inside along with many other people.
I wheeled Melawend inside and found a spot for the night beside a vacant
wall.
Ahmed
was here. He was one of "The Boys from
Khartoum. He was tall and thin and dark and he
worked with the Red Cross in Khartoum, an office that was headed by Canadians. There were
now about forty people set up for the night on the concrete floor of the station. Ahmed invited me to join his group and to share
some tahina (a paste made from sesame seeds)
which we fingered out of a tub. I stayed for a
few games of poker while we listened to some high-pitched Sudanese music that was their
version of rock and roll.
I
awoke at 7:00 a.m. to the crack of high-spirited whoops and shouts as third-class
passengers mobbed the train, grabbed onto iron bars and stuffed themselves into doorways
and windows. The police kicked them off. This happened again at 7:30 but they were allowed
to stay. Such a rush for a train that was not
to leave for Khartoum until 5:00 p.m.!
I
had to get my travel permit first and then a ticket for the train. There was more shuttling between buildings that
were separated by wide areas of sandy land (there were no definable streets). There were more chicken scratchings, this time on
the photocopied hand-written Sudanese travel permit and the Foreign Currency Declaration.
I
went to get my ticket and was informed that First and Second Class had sold out. I bought a ticket to Third Class. I met Ali Ahmed here and once again he affirmed
that I was a good man. He gave me a bag of balah, a sweet-tasting shell with a nut inside
I
had to take Melawend over to an official who handed me a hose so I could suck all the gas
out of the tank. We put her on a scale and
then wheeled her to the last car, which was the Baggage car.
It was a rickety cream-coloured carriage with wood louvers in the windows
and a few missing boards in the wall so that you saw daylight coming in from may places. I stepped aside as three men loaded her into double
hung doors in the side of the car. One man
wore a windbreaker and a baseball cap; another wore a white galabiyah. They were led by a brawny police officer who looked
like the football player-turned-actor, Jim Brown. He
did most of the work. They insisted on being
photographed while touching Melawend for good luck.
I
returned to the station. I was about to take a
photo, which would have included a tall lean black-skinned man who was wearing a dirty
white galabiyah. He was alone and he looked
tense. He saw me and my camera and became
angry. He came at me. A slim man from Khartoum intervened and translated
to the man that I was only trying to take a general shot of the station – that the
black man just happened to be in the scene. This
pacified him and we ended up shaking hands. My
rescuer was Hashim, a graduate of a four-year agriculture program taken at a university
about eight miles from Cairo. He was on his
way home.
One
last hassle came as a police officer came confronted me.
"Your
passport, please," he said. "You
were to come at 8:00 am to the Customs Office to complete the forms for your motorcycle. Why did you not come?
No
one had told me about this.
I
went with him to a small dark office. I gulped
when I was asked to sign the Payment of Duty Deposit.
This said that I had to pay 12,000 Sudanese pounds to import Melawend. Fortunately, there was also a Form of
Security by which I promised to re-export Melawend – this waived the duty deposit!
Finally,
we boarded. Ahmed was disappointed that I
would not be able to join him in First Class. I
stepped over goods and passengers that were already crammed into the entrance and aisle
and found an empty seat by a window. The seats
were thinly padded wood with backs that were rigidly upright. Here I was joined by Hassim and James (he pronounced his name as "Jay-mis") who
sat in the middle. James' skin was virtually
black. His forehead bore the raised scar lines
that were traditional in the Nuer tribe. He
lived in the area of Nasir in southern Sudan. He
was on his way home for a visit from his studies in Civil Engineering at Cairo University.
There
were three attractive dark-skinned girls seated across the isle from us. I asked James about courting and marriage rituals
where he came from.
"The
father will advise his son about a girl to marry," he said. "The son can refuse. But if he accepts, his father will make a deal with
the girl's father to pay him for the girl. This
would be perhaps 35 cows or such as the son's father could afford."
"How
do they court each other?" I said.
"Oh,
at first they talk with each other," he said "Then
they may go to a cinema or to dances and such things, get to know each other over some
weeks or months."
And
what of the wedding?"
"That
is a big celebration with all their families and friends," he said. "But sometimes they elope. Afterwards, they will live with his parents until
they can manage on their own."
James
was a modern Christian.
I
couldn't help noticing the beauty of the darkest of the girls across the isle. She wore a pale pink loose-fitting gown of almost
sheer material, something like a sari with a hood. She
looked exquisite with her high cheekbones, almond eyes, flawless skin and full lips. She looked like a vision out of a exotic movie or
fashion magazine. But she looked bored or
troubled by something. She seemed to look our
way a few times.
"James,"
I whispered. "What do you think of that
girl over there?"
"Hmm,
she is pretty," he said.
"I'd
like to photograph her," I said.
"If
you know someone, it is alright," he said. "But girls would probably would not
do this. It is considered shameful."
James
was a very handsome guy and I could imagine the two of them together. And I still wanted to try to take her photograph.
"Would
you ask her for her name?"
He
looked down and was quiet for a moment.
"I
cannot," he said quietly. "She is
Muslim. I am Christian."
The
5:00 p.m. train finally pulled out of Wadi Halfa at 10:05 p.m. There were no operable lights in the car (you saw
the occasional burst of light from flashlights carried by some passengers). The small fans in the ceiling did not work either. There was a jolly short balding guy who wore an
aviator-style cap who sat across the isle. His
name was Mohamed and he was from Kosti. He
appeared to be travelling with the three girls. He
was loud and out-spoken but full of laughter and good humour. He was curious about Canada.
You
could hear other conversations as the train rumbled through the night. Sometimes conversations mingled with exchanged
comments and questions. It was a convivial
time and despite the uncomfortable seats, I was relaxed.
We talked into the night like old friends.
In the darkness, race was not noticed.
The next day, we rolled on through the Nubian Desert. This railroad was born of war in 1897. Then-correspondent 2nd Lieutenant
Winston Churchill wrote of the area:
"It is scarcely within the power of words to describe the
savage desolation of the regions into which the line and its constructors plunged."
Sir Herbert Kitchener had it built and led his Anglo-Egyptian
forces to victory over the Khalifa, avenging the 1885 massacre by the Mahdists at Khartoum
that took the life of General Charles Gordon.
(This violent era was portrayed in the movie Khartoum, which stared Charlton Heston as Gordon
and Lawrence Oliver as the Mahdi.)
Churchill continued:
"The Khalifa was conquered on the railway."
This railway.
The victorious Anglo-Egyptians stayed in the Sudan until
independence was gained in 1956. On the day I
turned three years old, the Republic of the Sudan was born again as a free nation.
There was nothing out here except desert and distant mountains of
barren rock. Beside the railway was what was
indicated as a road on the map – it was nothing more than vehicle tracks in the sand,
running parallel to the railroad tracks. This
made me wonder how Don and Murray were doing in their desert travels. From my window on the west side of the train,
facing south, I saw the shadows of three men that were on the roof. Two were standing up as the train rolled along.
As dust would sometimes filter in through the louvered windows, I
rode on the rooftop through sunset and under the stars, up again for the sunrise. The other rooftop riders were friendly but most
preferred just to watch the countryside as we rolled along.
There were several stops where, beside the tracks, women sold
sandwiches and a ful mixture or eggs and children sold chai from large old pots. We stopped at the town of Shendi where larger
purchases of food were made. Stops were made
during the night and sales went on by the light of lanterns.
We stopped in the late afternoon to watch the end of a soccer
game (essentially to let the engine cool down). On
restarts, some would hang back until the train was moving, then dash across the sand to
jump on, much to the delight of fellow passengers. We
passed through villages of clean-lined mud-brick, one level houses with clean yards
surrounded by mud-brick walls. In one of those
yards, a television set was on. People old and
young would wave at the train with waves returned from inside and topside. Many delighted to pose for a passing photograph
– men on camels and donkeys, women and children by doorways and under acacias.
No matter that I was not in the right Arab country, I still
amused myself to think that I was "on location" and that I would soon see Omar
Sharif and Peter "Lawrence of Arabia" O'Toole riding camels out there and that
David Lean would soon yell, "Cut!" But
all that I was seeing was real.
Between two of the stops, I rode with The Boys from Khartoum in
First Class, and was glad I had had to take Third Class.
The seats in First Class were padded but were also hard and lumpy as you
shifted position to keep from having broken springs poke you in the butt. The toilet was nothing more than a hole in the
floor. But it was great to be with the group
again. It was also here that I met a solemn
Palestinian guy who was about twenty-five years old.
"You sit here, please," he said, gesturing to the seat
beside him. When I told him about my journey,
he said he had heard about me in Cairo on a BBC Radio broadcast.
"It is my pleasure to meet you, Tom Smith," he said.
"Where are you going," I asked.
"Just to visit friends in Khartoum," he said. "I often go back and forth between Khartoum
and Cairo."
He looked tired and
forlorn.
"All this back and forth travel must be tiring for
you," I said.
"It is," he said.
"Do you live in Cairo?" I said.
"For now. What I
really want is a place to call home. A homeland."
(During the
First World War, during which "Lawrence of Arabia" had helped in the victory
over the Ottoman Turks, Zionists found a diplomatic opening for their claim to Palestine
as a national home. In 1917, British Foreign
Secretary Arthur Balfour declared his country's support for the idea of a Jewish homeland
in Palestine, although without prejudice to the rights of its Arab inhabitants. That concept was incorporated into the mandate over
Palestine granted to Britain by the League of Nations in 1922 – the Balfour
Declaration. And so began the plight of the
dispossessed Palestinians, culminating in the partitioning of the area by the UN General
Assembly in 1947. There had not been peace in
the Middle East since.)
That afternoon and evening, Rob and I rode together on top of the
train. As we rumbled under the stars, he said
he had been a bit more that good friends four years earlier with the girl who was now his
fiancée. They went to different universities
that were over a thousand miles apart. She had
taken up with someone else where she was. She
eventually learned the guy was a jerk, he said, and called Rob to see if he wanted to go
to Africa with her. It would mean that he
would have to postpone taking the last year of his degree program. He went for it.
"The sparks were still there," he said.
Finally, we arrived in Khartoum.
It was full night. I had
returned to my seat in Third Class and hastily exchanged addresses with Hashim, James and
a guy named Abdalla. I climbed out of the
window and James handed my blue daypack down to me. He
passed out his battered old suitcase and climbed out.
Third Class was near the back of this long train and there was no platform
here: we got out right on the tracks. We shook
hands and James disappeared into the hastily departing crowd. In the darkness, Rob was nowhere to be seen. My tall lean friend Ahmed who was with the Red
Cross came and found me to say good-bye. He
helped me to get Melawend out of the baggage car. She
was covered in dust. With much struggling, we
got her down to the tracks. I thanked him and
he too was away. I went back in for the
platform, which still bore most of my belongings under the orange tarp. I went back one last time for the saddlebags. With a blast of the whistle, the train started to
move away. I threw my bags to the ground and
jumped off as the train gathered speed.
A young Arab in a white galabiyah seemed to appear from nowhere
and urged me to make haste – the police would be coming. I finished loading Melawend and was grateful she
still had a little gas in the tank. I had to
power her over the first few sets of tracks but had to make little ramps of dirt to get
Melawend over the last one, much to the impatience of this young guy. He took off. As
I was finishing the ramp, a skinny policeman showed up but he was simply interested in
Melawend rather than in causing me trouble or lending a hand. I finally got her onto solid ground and over to the
main road to Khartoum.
At a small shop just down the road, the proprietor said there
were no gas stations open and there was no place nearby to sleep. A tall skinny customer in casual western clothes
overheard this and promptly went about sucking about half a gallon of gas out of his small
car through a plastic hose, gagging on it as he did so.
He refused payment.
The Port of Sudan Hotel was on a stony street near the station.
Rob's gear was there. He had left to get
something to eat. The manager was a short,
thin Ethiopian with a small head. He took me
up a main street to a restaurant where he bought me a kebab sandwich. I bought milk for us.
He bought me a piece of cake.
When we returned, Rob was back and we shared tales of our trip. Within an hour, I fell asleep on a cot in the open
courtyard, happy to be in Khartoum.
The next day was orientation – reporting to the Alien
Registration Centre, admiring the scenery along the tree-lined Corniche along the Nile and
the white-painted bases on the trees near the palace.
It might have been the Niagara Boulevard except that the White Nile was
muddy. Tuti Island could have been Grand
Island, but was not so grand.
(It's funny
how you sometimes look for familiarity in strange places.)
I ventured over to the American Club and learned that a guest had
to be signed in by a member.
"Why don't you wait for a member to come along," one of
the guards said.
Several arrived – all white Americans, Europeans and
Canadians including a blond-haired girl who came on a motorcycle. Other girls came holding infants. Finally a tall lean dark-featured Dutch guy named
Robert Taen rode in on a Yamaha 175 and readily offered to sign me in. He was with the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP). Robert also paid my entrance fee. I followed Robert to some chairs and tables around
a large swimming pool. Everyone here was
white. And for the first time since the
Mediterranean, I saw girls in bikinis. We were
joined by a blond Dutch couple. Food was
ordered and we all shared a pitcher of karkadet. Robert
went to swim some laps in the pool. The Dutch
couple drifted into private conversation and I sat and admired the girls in bikinis. This was not part of my diplomatic mission. It was simply restful. And it helped me to forget about Audrey.
Robert had told me about the WUSC (World Universities Services,
Canada).
"They might be interested in giving you a story about their
work and perhaps some accommodation."
I thanked Robert for his hospitality and the directions to the
WUSC house.
Then I experienced one of those extremely fortunate bits of
timing. On a pot-holed residential street near
the house, I met a lean red-haired guy with glasses as he was jogging toward me. His eyes widened in amazement to see a Canadian
scooter and rider. His name was David Pluth
and he was the Chief of Party for an American energy and development firm that was
headquartered in Washington, D.C. He was 41
and was from Calgary. He was a friend of Paul
Ziff, the son of Louis Ziff who was a prominent lawyer in Fort Erie with whom I was well
acquainted.
Small
world!
"If they won't let you stay at WUSC, come over and have a
beer and crash at my place," he said.
I thought he might also like to meet Rob. Bringing another guest was fine.
The WUSC house was white and had a wall around it, like most
homes in the area. The walls were usually
concrete, about five to seven feet high, with steel doors.
Inside I met an attractive petite Negro girl who was wearing a short dark
robe. She spoke perfect English and explained
that this was the WUSC staff house and that the office, where I would need to get
permission to stay, was nearby. On the wall
nearest her were many 8-by-10-inch photographs of Canadian scenes. In the living room, I saw a young guy walk across
the room wearing what looked like under-shorts. David's
offer was too hard to pass up.
I went back to the Port of Sudan Hotel, picked up Rob and we
talked with David over Heinekens on his rooftop patio.
Afterwards, David played host to an executive from Atlanta, Georgia who was
a technical advisor on a 6-million-dollar project to bring brikett stoves to the Sudan.
Rob and I went back at the Port of Sudan Hotel. He had already arranged a flight for himself to
Juba, a major government-held city in southern Sudan.
All he needed now was to obtain a travel permit and a security clearance. We had dinner that evening in an open-air
restaurant in the company of Muhammad (the guy from Somalia) and Daniel, a friendly,
small-featured man from Ethiopia who had a permit to work in Khartoum, but no job. As we ate our kebabs, foul, salads and bread in the
typical dirty, market atmosphere, Rob pointed out a tall skeletal building that was under
construction across the road.
"That could be the set for Hollywood Squares," he said.
(That was a popular TV game
show that had its original run from 1965 to 1981. I
was revived in 1984 and 1984, 1986-1989, and 1998-2004.)
We grabbed our gear from the hotel and went over to David's
place. Rob had long legs that stuck out at the
sides as we rode through traffic. As in
England, I split-laned my way through and this made Rob, the hide-in-the-cigarette-case,
"Spielberg-could-not-have-done-better" Rob, nervous as his knees came close to
touching other vehicles. He would call this
“the Khartoum syndrome” aspect of our times in Sudan.
David's
house was surrounded by a high concrete wall that was topped with barbed wire. Two guards helped me get Melawend up two steps and
into the courtyard by the front door. The
house was large with spacious rooms that had wooden and upholstered furniture. The downstairs rooms had 11-foot-high ceilings. In the living room, there was a Sudanese sword on a
wall. On another was a poster of the Calgary
Stampede. In tall modern bookcases were
volumes on Africa, Canada and economics. All
the windows on the main floor were barred with decorative iron.
David employed two refugees from Ethiopia's northern province of
Eritrea where a long and bloody civil war was still raging.
Tzehai (sa-hai) was a fine-featured soft-spoken girl of twenty-five who had
escaped, leaving behind her family, including her ten-year-old daughter. Her husband had been in the Ethiopian Air Force but
had been killed six years earlier. Afwerki,
whom David called Fred, had been imprisoned and tortured in Ethiopia for over two years. David was trying to get Fred sponsored to live in
Canada. Plans were in the works to try to get
Tzehai's daughter to the Sudan.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dear
reader: here is some background to the hardships that were being faced in this region of
Africa:
Though this was not obvious to tourists, including me, Khartoum
was a city that was flooded with refugees – from the civil wars and the famines in
Ethiopia and southern Sudan.
A 1988 article in Time
magazine would call Eritrea "A Crucible of Misery". I was next door when Ethiopia was in the 25th
year of its civil war. The Soviets had been
supporting the Ethiopian army to the tune of $500 million per year. Both sides had used regions of chronic hunger as a
weapon. Rebels had been attacking relief
convoys and most foreign aid workers were ordered out of Eritrea.
During Ethiopia's famine of 1984 – 1985, the world poured
aid into the country: 1.5 million tons of food and $1.3 billion worth of non-food relief. Still, as many as 1 million people died. Bob Geldof, the Irish rock musician whose Band Aid
– Live Aid organization raised $182 million in relief aid since 1985, was frustrated
because the situation was about to repeat itself in 1987 with the Ethiopian government
pouring money into fighting insurgency instead of preparing for famine.
I was in the Sudan in the 18th year of a drought that
had devastated the semi-arid sub-Sahara regions right across Africa, hitting Ethiopia,
Sudan, Malia and Chad the hardest. I read in a
1986 report in Maclean's magazine that UN
officials had said food shortages in southern Sudan were caused in part by a savage civil
war. Since 1983, the civil war in southern
Sudan had displaced hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed the agricultural base in
the vast and largely inaccessible interior. Earlier
in 1986, the Sudan People's Liberation army (SPLA) – Christians and Animists fighting
for southern autonomy – began attacking convoys of donated food. After Sudanese rebels shot down a Sudan Airways
passenger plane on August 16, 1986, killing all 60 people on board, the International
Committee of the Red Cross indefinitely halted its emergency flights of food and aid to
this strife-torn country.
Rebels claimed that food aid from UN agencies intended for as
many as two million starving southerners was being seized by the Sudanese army. The area was threatened by war, drought, famine and
locust invasion. In recent months, thousands
of southern Sudanese fled the war-torn countryside in search of food and safety in the
North, neighbouring countries or in government-held towns such as Juba. The southern part of Sudan had the largest refugee
population in Africa – over half a million people.
From Senegal on the Atlantic to Ethiopia on the Red Sea, famine
and civil wars tore apart lives, families and countries right across the sub-Sahara
regions of Africa – the Sahel – an area that encompassed 2.3 million square
miles (about nine times the size of Texas). Most
people of the Sahel sustained themselves by herding cattle on the natural grasslands or by
farming subsistence grains. They were
dependent on seasonal rains that fell chiefly from June to September. Traditional life was harsh and infant mortality was
high. A premium was placed on large
families for labour and to support aging parents. Their
salvation was viewed through their fecundity, which was also their curse –
over-population.
Over-cultivation of soil already taxed by grazing made the land
more vulnerable to erosion of precious topsoil. Cooking
meant open wood fires, which meant stripping the land of soil preserving trees. The droughts that began in 1968 were
alleviated by modest rains in the 70's, but returned in early 1980's. Rivers dried up.
Lake Chad in the heart of the Sahel, which had 10,000 square miles of water
in the 1960’s, lost almost 90% of its area by 1985.
Satellite photographs revealed that Senegal lost more than 95% of its plant
life since 1981.
With no herds and no crops, of course people starved. Village life disintegrated, populations shifted and
families broke apart. Parched fields were
abandoned, topsoil was lost to dust storms and flowing sand dunes. The media of 1984-1985 had brought
these images, especially from Ethiopia, to wealthy countries. Two million people died during that time, half from
Ethiopia. This had led to the outpouring of
aid from Europe, the US and other countries. However
much of the shipments of grain were diverted by corrupt local officials or blocked by
civil strife. This also undermined the income
of local farmers.
All this turmoil was intensified by the greenhouse effect, which
was heating up the world and drying up these areas. (But
the green house monster was not created here.)
So the mid 1980's were hell in the central regions of Africa.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Tzehai made Ethiopian coffee for us outside the wood frame
quarters that had been built for her on the back patio.
She used a small charcoal stove that was made of aluminum to heat an
earthenware pot. It was a round ball at the
bottom with a tall spout and handle at the top. David
admired how frequent use had turned the patina of the pot a deep rich brown. To make the coffee, Tzehai took raw cream-colored
beans that had been roasted black in a frying pan on the stove and put them into a tall
mortar with some ginger. She pounded the
contents into grounds with a steel pestle. The
grounds were then put into the small pot with some water.
A screen was put in the open end of the spout and the pot was placed on the
hot coals to boil. Tzehai poured the brew into
tiny cups. The result was a grainy dark coffee
with a robust taste.
I awoke in the night wondering how I was going to get through the
Sudan. I had talked with other travelers about
possibilities. To go overland on Melawend
south of Khartoum would be impossible, I was told.
"The rebels would probably kill you and steal your scooter
and supplies," a Swiss guy had said.
There was a remote chance of getting a flight to Juba and from
there hitching a ride with a military convoy that would take Melawend and me into Uganda. But there was danger from bandits in both
countries. And having the scooter would be an
added burden. This was the route Rob had
chosen because it was the way he had come north.
Then there was the "Western Loop" – through the
Central African Republic, Zaire, Rwanda, Tanzania and up into Kenya. That route required a lot of time and money as
there were no roads in many places, demanding transport by water, four-wheel drive or
whatever, and "probably a lot of payoffs along the way." I was down to $66 and no advances against my VISA
card were to be had in Khartoum. (Since 1985,
the establishment of foreign banks in the Sudan had been prohibited.)
(I can't
really tell you the name of the transport company that was to take Rob to Juba. Though their business was to transport goods by
air, they had helped other struggling tourists get out for free. I don't want to start a stampede to their door,
especially if peace and many more tourists should come to the Sudan. So I have invented a name.)
"Why don't you try African Air Transport," Rob said. It was the company that was flying him to Juba. "I saw one of their big cargo planes in
Nairobi – they could surely get you and your scooter there."
Air was certainly the best way out.
Rob awoke about an hour later.
I took him on Melawend over to the company's office at the airport for his
5:30 a.m. flight. In the way of new
acquaintances, there was that notion that maybe we would meet again someday.
"See ya, buddy," he said.
Back at David's, I slept until David awoke at 6:15. We had a quick breakfast of Grape Nuts cereal,
bananas and juice. David then settled in a
love seat in the living room and tuned a BBC stock market broadcast, making notes as he
listened. He was planning to go to Europe when
his contract was finished here. His wife was
currently in Paris.
"Europe is going to be the place to be," he said.
After the broadcast, David left for his office downtown. He had said that the British ambassador to the
Sudan was a nice guy and that a letter of support from him might help me win a government
sponsored flight to Nairobi. I rode Melawend
over to the British Embassy. Its foyer was a
large octagonal room with a vaulted ceiling and walls of dark brown exterior brick. An octagonal fountain was spurting in the center of
the room. There were a few dark gray
upholstered wall bench chairs and a phone. The
ambassador was out until Monday, his secretary told me.
I was put through to the Vice Counselor.
He sounded very British, very aristocratic and very disinterested in my
project. He had no time to spare for a
face-to-face meeting.
"You should have no problem in making direct contact with
the Khartoum government," he said.
Since the British Embassy represented Canadian interests in the
Sudan (there was no Canadian embassy in the Sudan), I felt obliged to seek their help in
getting an appointment with one of Khartoum's top officials.
But like most embassies, they had little to do with the country's capital
city government. So he saw no point in
providing me with a letter of introduction from his embassy.
I saw no point in asking for a letter to the national government for
possible help with onward passage. I was
on my own.
Maybe they had been just too damn busy to deal with me. I would
be told later that the British Embassy received over 30,000 refugee applications annually
for Canada, alone, and that only 300 would be accepted.
I stopped at David's office and made photocopies of my diplomatic
papers and took these to the Ministry of Information where a woman who pronounced her name
as "Joe-whur" produced a letter of introduction from them. The Director of Information came out and said he
would meet me the next day to provide me with photos and a photography permit.
(I had said
I was a journalist.)
I took the letter to the Khartoum government office. This was a decrepit, dark red-brown building with a
typically dingy interior. I was taken to Ali
Saad Ali who was the Executive Director of the Commissioner's Office. He was a trim young man in a lightweight suit that
was a compromise between east and west and was apparently typical here. The top was usually tapered, had four pockets, went
down to the thighs, had short sleeves and was split at the seam either in at the bottom of
the back or sides. Some had epaulets. Ali's suit was tan-coloured. They looked comfortable.
I've got to
get myself one of those.
We talked of my project and of the structure of the Khartoum
government.
Khartoum was divided into four districts:
1. Khartoum
(included the area between the two Nile rivers)
2. Omdurman
(including the barren area west of the Nile)
3. Khartoum
North (the main part of the city itself)
4. Rural
Khartoum (the agricultural and industrial district to the west of the Nile)
And so I knew a little of the geo-political divisions of
Khartoum. Ali seemed quite interested in my
tour and said he would arrange meetings for me tomorrow.
He accompanied me back to Melawend.
To further acquaint myself with the goings on in the Sudan, I
picked up a copy of the Sudan Times. I was pleased that it criticized the Sudanese
government for devoting too much of its energies to the problems in Chad and bringing an
end to the Gulf War than to ending its own civil war.
The article went on to indirectly acknowledge some validity to the civil
war. Though it referred to it as
"the rat hole of the Southern Sudan civil war", it did say this: "Nor is it
any more convincing to think that if Ethiopia could be persuaded to stop arming the
S.P.L.A. and providing it with sanctuary, that the struggle, and all the real economic, social and political causes
that gave rise to it, would somehow disappear."
(The italics are mine.)
There was an article in which Israel was referred to as "The
Teflon Country" because it seemed protected from criticism from the US over such
issues as the Iran arms scandal by all the "violence, the religious fanaticism and
the hatred of Western values that now consumes the Middle East." The article quoted
Eytan Gilbon, a Hebrew University political scientist: "The anti-American terrorism
in Lebanon has been so vicious and brutal that Israel unavoidably emerged in the U.S.
public view as an oasis of friendship and democracy."
In international news, a man became the first known South Korean
to die of AIDS. Korean doctors suspected the
man became infected when he received a blood transfusion two years earlier in a Kenyan
hospital. An earthquake measuring 5.4 on the
Richter scale rocked Tokyo. In Mobile,
Alabama, a $7 million judgement against members of the white-supremacist United Klans of
America was awarded by an all-white jury to the family of a Black teenager who was beaten,
strangled and left hanging in a tree. In
Marseilles, a gang robbed a bank of 200 million francs (US$33.3 million) and vanished. As a rouse against the 500 heavily-armed police
that surrounded the bank, they had taken hostages and demanded ransom while making good
their getaway down a prepared tunnel.
In India, Rajiv Gandhi was described as "directionless"
for not keeping promises, for not being in control, for being prone to "smart-aleck
responses", and for (prophetically) being "paralyzed by his well-grounded fear
of assassination."
Locally, the Governor of Bahr El Ghalzal Region met with the
Commissioner of Khartoum to discuss the problems of Southerners who had migrated from his
region after fighting there. They discussed
chances for their employment in the North and in Khartoum in particular.
As mentioned, Khartoum was a city that was flooded with refugees.
The next day I met the Director of the Photographic Section of
the Ministry of Information. He was a
dignified middle-aged man and wore the typical lightweight suit. We talked of my journey and he asked that I return
after my appointment with the Commissioner of Khartoum so I could select some photographs
for my records.
At the Commissioner's office, Ali had me fill out what he called
a "civee" – a short résumé and a summary of the purpose of my project. He had this typed up in Arabic and submitted it to
the Commissioner. While I was waiting, I
sat by an open window. From the parking lot
below, I heard one of those programmable car horns – it was bizarre to hear in this
strange remote place such a tuneful rendition of Walt Disney's "It's a Small, Small
World". Ali emerged a few minutes later
and escorted me in.
The Commissioner's office was brighter but had the same dignified
look and quietness about it, as did the office of Governor Badr in Aswan. Ali introduced me to "His Excellency, Karam
Mohamed Karam, General Commissioner of Khartoum."
"Welcome, Mr. Smith," he said. His voice was deep and subdued. "Won't you please have a seat."
Mr. Karam was an average-built man in his early fifty's, I
guessed, dressed in a grey-blue Sudanese suit. He
received and examined the letters of greeting that I brought and the trinkets from Fort
Erie. He was a relaxed, stern-faced man but
kind in his manner and he looked at me every moment that I explained my journey to him.
"I admire your goals, Mr. Smith," he said. "We have arranged programs of your choice for
tomorrow. Would you would like to tour one of
our new sanitation projects or perhaps visit one of our schools?
I chose the school.
"You are welcome to join the council in our meeting this
morning."
I thanked him and asked if I could take a photo of the council. He gave his permission.
Mr. Karam presented me with a metal plaque of the National
Capital, which featured the head of an elephant. With
this, he said, "Welcome to Khartoum."
He signed the Odyssey book: "Knowing much about people
helps in more understanding and promoting peace. Your
mission fulfills this."
Ali was summoned and told of my wishes. We left Mr. Karam.
Ali was pleased that my meeting with the Commissioner had gone well. He then had another letter typed up in Arabic that
was directed to the Commissioner of Education, Mr. Ibrihim Mohamed Arbab. It explained my visit and the General
Commissioner's support for this request.
The Council Chambers was a small room that barely held a large
simple wood veneer table and the spindly wooden chairs that the twelve members sat in. On the wall behind Mr. Karam who sat at the head of
the table, there were a couple of small pictures of former members, I assumed, an art
image of an open Koran with glittering type. There
we a modest hotel-style air conditioner built into the wall.
Another wall had a display case with built into it. I think the gentlemen were a little uncomfortable
with me standing at the other end of the table from Mr. Karam with my camera and flash
held up. They all looked down toward the table
and the notes they had in front of them as I took the shot.
I left after that.
Back at the Photographic Section of the Ministry of Information,
the Director introduced me to Hassan, a young assistant who laid out several photo albums
for me to examine.
"You may choose as many photographs as you wish,"
Hassan said.
All the images were positive in content: a shot of a smiling
Prime Minister Sadig El Mahdi with entourage walking along a hallway; a popular female
singer; a ceremonial charge by Sudanese horsemen near a grove of acacias; a relief truck
brimming with food that was being sorted by troops; an officer supervising distribution of
what looked like small pizzas from a large platter; a healthy-looking woman refugee
cradling a chubby baby to which she was proffering a nipple from a well-rounded breast;
and a staged wedding of an attractive little girl and boy.
The next day at the Office of Education for the District of
Khartoum, I talked with Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Subr, Manager of the Directorate Office of
Education – I might as well have been talking with someone on a North American school
board. He was a friendly man who went into
great detail of the structure of schools (Pre-school, Kindergarten, Elementary,
Intermediate, Secondary, College and University) and the school curriculums: Arabic,
religion, geography, science, history, mathematics, sports and arts. Home Economics and Industrial Arts, English and
Music were added at the Intermediate level; French instruction came at the Secondary
level. The school year ran from July to March. </
