Complaints from Jordan

little did he know of my own posting powers in the face of blogger failure..

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jordan M. Davis
Date: Feb 23, 2009 11:49 PM
Subject: Stupid blogger

Stupid blogger wouldn't let me post my comment to your story today. Oh
well. Here it is, enjoy.

You know Jana, no matter how dire my situation here seems you always
bring a smile to my face with your simple joys (this time in the form
of a toilet seat aka. a throne in the garden of eden). I hope that
while you are living the "high life" you will not forget to celebrate
your birthday. Please don't be lame like me. I wish you well in your
journeys and I have gotten more people to follow your blog here at
Rice. Thanks for your constant musings distracting me from the never
ending flood of work, tests, projects, and life. I wish you safety and
adventure in the form of (cute) doggies that lead you places.

itsumo,
Jordan

"I have no magic power; I make personality my Magic Power. "
-The Samurai Code

Living the High Life..??

For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, since arriving in Ethiopia David (generally the hotel-choosing half of our partnership) has abruptly transferred us from lokanda scum-life to Living the High Life.

At first it made sense; we had that memorably long haul crossing the border from Gedaref through Metema and Shihedi all the way to Gondor (never to be forgotten..) So when we finally made it there, it was sort of nice to spend a couple days on relatively clean sheets. We upped the ante a bit, took a break, relaxed. A couple days satiated my luxury quotient - I was actually having a bit of trouble sleeping in such nice beds - and then I was more than ready to return to moth-eaten shabbiness in the next city, Bahr Dar.

I was to be sorely disappointed. Our hotel there was even nicer than the one in Gonder, practically a resort. I have a sneaking suspicion that the sheets were freshly washed. I felt like royalty visiting my satellite palace.

It was here that we both saw our first toilet seat in weeks, the discovery of which was naturally cause for much jubilation. We took turns sitting on it for unnecessarily long periods of time, me before we'd even paid for the room. (I cleverly snatched it while David was handling the bill.) I was forced to relinquish it upon his return, however, at which point he firmly installed himself in the bathroom. Behind the closed door soon came a long, deep sigh of contentment and the glorious declaration I will hereafter always associate with toilet seats: "I'M LIKE A KING ON MY THRONE!!"

While perhaps my audience wouldn't agree with my defining a hotel as the High Life just because it has a toilet seat (a valid definition in the third world, trust me), not even the most well-pampered Westerner could have failed to be impressed by the beautiful and vibrantly blooming flowers in and around the entire compoound. It was amazing; to David's parents, I think you really would have loved it. I felt like I was staying in the Garden of Eden.

This analogy should render it obvious, therefore, why I was fully expecting to be kicked out of paradise and plopped back into cockroach comfort in our next city, Lalibela. I intimated as much to David, anyway, whom I fully trusted to deliver to my expectations (and beyond).

I was to be sorely disappointed. Yet again. If possible, our rooms in Lalibela were EVEN NICER than the ones in Bahir Dar. I hardly got a wink of sleep!

Even now, I'm writing this from the CARPETED floor of yet another unacceptably nice hotel in Mekele. Granted, the carpet is thin, stained, and, my rear tells me, a pitiful attempt at padding very hard concrete, but still. Carpet!! To break another record, this room sports not one but TWO electrical outlets, both of which seem to be functional and which, furthermore, can actually hold the weight of a plug so you dont have to stand there and hold it to charge your camera. (Or jerry-rig it using hairclips and rubber bands, as I did all the way through the Sudan. Fairly cleverly, too, I thought. David occasionally agreed.) None of this ingenuity is called for here in Mekele, however; you just take the prongy bits and plug 'em in and poof! your battery is being charged. It's like magic.

So, you see my pitiful case. I haven't seen a cockroach, mouse turds, or the tell-tale bloody sheet stains of a bed-bug infestation in so long, I almost forget what they look like. As I've explicitly informed David, I'm feeling betrayed. All his promises of soiled, sagging bedding, all my dreams of rusty, barely latching metal doors cut into four cement walls that could only be said to resemble a hotel room with a good deal of imagination, all for naught. We're living the high life!!

Blog for the Dogs

[Backdated: February 1st]

So, I've been having a bit of a harder time making friendly headway with some of the population, and I'd be lying if I said I don't think of the Sudan at least once a day... but I gotta admit. Ethiopia wins major points for its attitude towards dogs, which seems to be considerably friendlier than that of the North and Eastern Sudan.

Religion does apparently make the difference; in this comparison I'm stacking the most historically Christian part of Ethiopia against the traditionally Muslim part of the Sudan. David has explained to me how, while the cat is respected in Islam, the dog is considered to be sort of a dirty animal. (Which I admit provides by itself a pretty strong case against my conversion, were I so tempted.)
Therefore I wasn't surprised to find that the dogs in the Sudan tended to belong to more ferile, sometimes pack-like groups, roaming the streets by night to mate, fight, and scavenge. They coexist with humans in the same way that pigeons do: there's sort of an accidental flow of resources from humans, but mostly the animals interact with each other more than with us.
Considering that I wasn't in much of a position to change anything, I thank the powers that be- Muslim or otherwise- that I never came across a dog in bad shape (which is more than I can say for Taipei). I'm grimly aware that they must exist, but they were not part of my Sudanese experience.

In Ethiopia, however, dogs seem to have reclaimed their role of family pet somewhat. Almost all the dogs here seem to be associated with a person or house, and we've even seen plump puppies tussling about in messy front yards. Interestingly, Ethiopian canines quite often have that characteristic tail-curled trot of bred dogs, though I can't believe that there's any sort of AKC organization of dog-breeding or showing here. (Ethiopia wins points on that, too.)

Of course not even the cutest, high-stepping pup here can hold a candle to my own airhead Charlie (pictured at left), who likely has no idea where I am right now but who will, faithfully, keep my side of the bed warm until I get home.

Gimme-Gimme-Gimme

[backdated: Jan 28th]
This post is a hard one for me to write, particularly since I know how it will portray my character to those I love most, and even to people whom I've never met. However, to write it any differently or less honestly, or not to write it at all, would compromise my authorial integrity, and that is a value I hold dear.

So.. if 'Personal values of mine' was going to be a list, integrity would be pretty high up, but I don't think it would beat compassion out of the top spot. Compassion in others will always win my esteem, and I hope to never grow so cynical (through much-enjoyed re-readings of Catch-22) that I am incapable of compassion.
Respect, however, is a close second to compassion, both self-respect and respect for others, and this is where I have run into trouble in Ethiopia. For me every interpersonal interaction should be characterized by respect - usually in the form of politeness, but not always. In Texan culture we show respect through great friendliness; in Japan I learned to be respectful with specific and stylized manners. Here in Ethiopia, I'm not well-informed about the unique national customs of respect, but I arrived ready to combine politeness with friendliness and the universal catalyst, a big smile.

This attitude (like a few others I've had) was unfortunately a bit naive.

In the 70s and 80s, there was a great deal of attention on Ethiopia's severe problems of poverty and famine, leading to an international surge of aid organizations in the country - which are, it seems, mostly still active. While I have always honored such work as an incredible manifestation of compassion, since arriving in a historically aid-recipient country I have become painfully aware of the ugly underside of this charity - and painfully familiar with the term, "culture of dependency".
It would be unfair to say that Ethiopia has completely acquired a culture of dependency, but that thinking has certainly left its mark, especially with regard to the national attitude towards non-Africans. To be blunt, I have run up against the equation: foreigner = handout.

I might be opening myself here up to charges of racism - but how about the inherent racism in such an equation? A bizarre sort of racism, true, but there nonetheless- that a certain shade of skin incidates 'mondo' (David's word) money, and that any Ethiopian who asks deserves to have their share of it.

It's true I grew up with far more than some of the children who have come running from blocks away at the sight of my skin. And it does bother my conscience not to give them anything. But honestly, I hardly have a chance to reflect on my white guilt because fending off the demands - yes, demands - for money from healthy children who only a moment before were happily playing soccer occupies all of my attention. You don't get a general impresion of desperation, as I would have imagined from the old television ads, but one of entitlement. "You are a walking sack of money, so gimme some."
It's not just money - anything we have is fair game. Carrying a few bananas for our breakfast, David was accosted by a boy who stuck out his hand and declared, "Gimme a banana!" (The former ESL teacher in me was thrilled at such lovely use of the article.) But as his repeated requests had no effect on the beggar-immune David, the boy became quite angry, shocked at our defiance. Couldn't we see that what we had was his for the needing?

I admit I did feel guilty not to give him one; in the U.S., I never give money to people who ask for it, but I give food. And since I never go far without a snack, and sometimes people really are hungry, it's usually a successful interaction. So why did I deny this Ethiopian [read: poor, unfortunate] child?

First off, he wasn't desperate, or homeless: he came running out of a shop upon seeing us, and chased us down the street demanding anything giveable he could see. And frankly, I refuse flat-out to accept that just being Ethiopian makes you needy and automatically in need of charity from strangers. If that's not racism, what is??

Moreover, I know from other experiences that if we had had something else, he would have demanded that instead; in other words, I doubt it was hunger that made him think of the banana. I once had a sweet little girl tell me to give her the shirt I was wearing. (It was the only one I had on, and we were outside of a church, so that didn't get far.) And the pens.. oh, merde, the pens. At some point in the recent past, some foreigner (or perhaps a group working in tandem) came to Ethiopia armed with a metric ton of pens, apparently with the express purpose of distributing them at random among the under-10 population. And every foreigner since then has paid the price. At every turn, David and I are accosted by screaming children who stick out their hands and pull on our clothes, yelling, "PEN! PEN! GIMME PEN!"

While such mobbing is usually (but not always) limited to children, the mindset that prompts it is unfortunately shared by a noticable percentage of the adult population. Hotels, stores, and even museums have prices several times higher for foreigners than for Ethiopians. Arranging transport involves battling the assumption that we are going to cheerfully pay six or seven different parties for the various tasks of getting a seat, keeping a seat, sitting in the seat, having our bags put on top, having our bags tied properly so they don't fall off, and then having our bags taken down again when it's time to inexplicably change buses before departure. (It should go without saying, we are quite cheerfully prepared to pay various parties for several of those privileges, but they do take it a bit far. And the key thing is, none of the locals seem to pay more than once.) Even if we casually ask directions from a 'friendly stranger' on the street, we risk getting charged 'guide fees' for it. On my first afternoon in Ethiopia, I was talking to David in my hotel room when a woman took it upon herself to come right on in and turn on the light.. and then demanded to be paid for it.

What hurts the most is that I've looked for signs that Ethiopians do this to each other as well - hey, perhaps it's just a national custom to tip everyone for everything - but really, they don't. It's the arrival of a foreigner on the scene that turns every frolicking child into a starving beggar in need of pens, every adult into a would-be guide, every establishment into a high-priced affair. I exaggerate. But really, if I thought Japan was bad for making you feel like an outsider, I had another thing coming.

Our apprehension about all this has naturally modified our behavior towards strangers. This once caused an embarassing situation in Lalibela, when a man got up to show us something. David and I both leapt to stop him- "No please don't trouble yourself! We can find it! It's fine!"- at which point he castigated us that we should graciously accept his hospitality, he was helping us, he wasn't going to try to get money from us. I was immediately embarassed (though I couldn't help thinking it funny how he knew exactly what we were afraid of), but shameless David clapped him warmly on the back and laughed, "Well, then you're certainly a bit different from most of your countrymen!"
I couldn't help being a bit secretly pleased at his frankness.

The ironic thing is that Ethiopia is the one nation in Africa that has never been colonized (unless you count Italy's brief and unsuccessful jaunt), and the Ethiopians are the first to say it. Good for them! Ethiopia's got an awesome history, and you have to respect how it's lasted more or less as a healthy, stable unit for thousands of years. But when I'm crowded by people who have come out of the woodwork to beg from me, as a foreigner distributing my munificence, I think horrible thoughts to myself.. For a country that's always proudly enjoyed its independence, you don't really act it..

That same day in Lalibela, there was a bonfire outside our hotel for St. George's Day. Not much of a night person, David declined attending; I too was exhausted, but was equally reluctant to pass up any opportunity for international socializing, especially in a country where I'd been having so little of it. Going down to the fire, I was told to sit at a table full of women. I cheerfully introduced myself and asked their names, only to commence a charade in which the women took turns inventing apparently quite witty monikers in Amharic that set off the rest of the group in hysterics. Having given my own real name, I felt a little embarassed but plunged forth anyway, repeating the false names back at them (amid more laughter) and trying to remember each one. I have learned some Amharic, but after a few minutes, conversation flagged a bit. Mostly they asked whether I already had a 'guide' for the next day (I did). Then they wanted to know who. I was vague. That was it. For some reason, I felt quite awkward and shy. I admit I ended up only waiting out the minimum polite amount of time before I could go to bed.
On the stairs back up to the room, I bumped into one of the women; I was amazed to find that her disdainful manner had turned quite friendly, and then the next minute she was writing her number down so I could call her to meet up the next day. I soon figured out why; she performed the 'coffee ceremony' that Lonely Planet cites as part of the 'siren scam' (invite foreigner over, do coffee ceremony or some other 'cultural activity', charge exorbitant amounts of money at end, etc), and wanted me to come over. Well, mystery of manner-change explained, I suppose, but it didn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy climbing back up to bed. I am useful insofar as I am a wallet.

The whole experience came dangerously close to confirming this horrible suspicion I've been fighting, that interacting positively with Ethiopians as a white person is continget upon a flow of money or goods from me to them.. and even then respect has not been won.

It is unfair of me to write off all Ethiopians on a paltry few weeks' tourist experience, however, and I refuse to do it, or to give up on creating positive relationships. So, I have developed perhaps unusual ways of circumventing the impression my skin gives. Most often, I sing. When children run up to me screaming "Money!" or "Pen!" and stick their hands out, I begin to sing to them. We may not have a language in common, and I refuse to perpetuate the fantasy that foreigners are walking ATMs, but it is perhaps a way to share something. Admittedly, I risk looking a little like Maria Von Trapp, walking down the street singing to an entourage of smiling children. However, it's worth it for this former elementary teacher to be able to actually smile at kids, and have them smile back, and then wave goodbye after five minutes' pleasant walk together and walk away happy.

The Tale of the Sneaky Chicken

I am, as a "blogger" (stupid term), unfortunately prone to rambling on about microscopic quotidian incidents that have little to do with anything, in lieu of actually delivering some sort of useful or relevant description of meaningful experiences and impressions.
I have repeatedly tried to stifle this impulse for this particular blog- mostly out of respect for those of David's acquaintance who are likely less interested in my own eccentricities than they are in the trip generally, or any of the number of adventures that he involves us in.
However, I beg you occasionally to allow me to indulge myself- as I would like to do now- to tell: the Tale of the Sneaky Chicken.

SHIHEDI, ETHIOPIA: David and I were walking down the only dirt road in this tiny village near the Sudanese border. As there as nothing else to do in the town and nowhere in particular we had to be, we were occupying the afternoon chiefly by rambling back and forth on The Town Dirt Road, collecting in our wake assorted bunches of children screaming "you! you! you!", and exerting a maximum effort not to be charged for the privilege by a variety of creative and budding scam artists.

David stopped at one point to more fully devote his attention to this last task. Uninterested in being helpful, I instead started watching a chicken standing next to one of the vegetable stalls set up along the Town Dirt Road. The stand, a crude platform set up about 8" off the ground, played host to potatoes, some leafy green things, and a lovely selection of red tomatoes.
As I gazed aimlessly at this chicken, I began to notice that its behavior was at least a little unusual. Namely, it was positively skulking about the roadside - not clucking, not pecking, not strutting as chickens do - but apparently doing its level best (which was not very good) to be sly.

I am not sure whether you have ever seen a chicken trying to look sly. I never had. Allow me to assure you that it is a wholly ludicrious and hilarious sight.

As I watched this chicken, sneaking back and forth next to the edge of the of the stall, it suddenly made its move - and boldly hopped right up onto the platform. My mouth fell open. Quick as a wink, the chicken leaned down to the nearest tomato and snatched the whole fruit right up in its beak. The thing was easily twice the size of its head. Then, booty in beak, it scooted its way back off the platform, dropped it on the ground, and tucked in.

My face must have been the portrait of astonishment. I had just witnessed, from beginning through to conclusion, a successful Sneaky Chicken raid.

Looking up, I realized I had my own audience. Men, women, and children loitering about the curb were watching me watch the chicken with unconcealed delight. I pointed at the chicken, still in shock: Do you realize you have just been robbed?? by a CHICKEN?? The crowd just nodded and laughed. Any concern over the purloined fruit was wholly forgotten in light of the splendid entertainment afforded by my foreign amazement.
And while everyone's attention was so excellently diverted, the Sneaky Chicken made a clean getaway.

The "Real" First Impression

So I mentioned something about Ethiopia not deserving the introductory post it would have gotten had I simply described my first impressions.. suffice it to say that the aforementioned bumpy dirt road therating its way through mountains, while potentially picturesque, does not provide the most pleasant way to travel.

We knew our trek from Gedaref, Sudan through to Gonder, Ethiopia was going to be tough. We had limited information about the transport available, and even Lonely Planet only marked the road after the border crossing with a pale dotted line. Our border crossing was slow but uneventful, marked chiefly by the dusty asphalt road petering out into a rutted gravelly dirt tracks. Not the easiest to travel along, but as a dedicated adherent to the "You Pack It, You Carry It" school of thought I sure wasn't going to let it fall to anyone else's responsibility. Certainly not any of the throngs of men and children clustering around me, trying to take it away in a bid to get some money out of me as well. They were to be disappointed.

After 20 minutes of dusty dragging, we located a rat-trap bus that would have put any junkyard resident to shame, perched rather than parked on the edge of the road at a 35-degree angle. After fighting with various parties over our baggage, we hurled it and ourselves onto the tilta-bus, David getting doused in gasoline in the process. Hot, dusty, and flammable, we then spent the next 50 minutes in exceptionally close quarters, straining to keep everything squished and upright in our two small seats. We were charged for three. I ended up sitting sideways in the aisle, my back against David's side and my legs stuffed against the next seat to prevent him toppling into the aisle from the combined weight of our baggage. (Friends of his may hazard what guesses they like as to how many newly-bought books we had with us as well.. but it must be said that he carried them all himself without ever once needing help.)

It was a sincere joy once the bus finally got going, as it meant we were mostly upright; after another sharing my smushed aisle-roost with three other women, however, I gave up and stood. It was wonderful to stand. There was just enough floorspace for two feet, and I could grab the cieling to keep myself from jolting around painfully, as was David's seat-bound, luggage-locked lot. Even better, the top of the bus possessed the occasional whiff of fresh air, otherwise absent in the sweltering, rank, dusty, airless and gasoline-doused interior. There were grimy windows, but for reasons that remain unclear to me they were kept tightly shut.

After a few hours we were blissfully unloaded in a village called Shihedi, where we discovered we would be marooned until at least the following day. David sought any information at all about buses going to Gonder, while I guarded the luggage and fought with the local boys who tried to take it away from me. One of them apparently decided to declare himself my protector, launching himself quite without my support at the most aggressive of my harassers; the fistfight that ensued involved an unfortunate number of people and an alarming amount of violence. My protector was defeated, both in size and numbers, but came limping back to my side to declare something along the lines of how he had fought them off. (Needless to say, not speaking Amharic, my conversational abilities were thus far limited to "NO!!") The would-be knight then asked for payment for his services. However, I felt that starting a violent fight that very nearly physically involved my person- even if it was on my behalf- was not something I was willing to pay for, and I told him so. We were exploring this difference of opinion when David returned - a more welcome sight could not be imagined - to announce that the only transport would leave the next day.
I opined that I was not above hitching. Frankly, I would have joyously boarded Jack the Ripper's carriage had he materialized. But Jack the Ripper and all other vehiculed characters let me down; unless you count Daewoo construction trucks, Shihedi was shy of transport at all. (And the Daewoo trucks were going the wrong way.. we asked.)

So the next morning at 4 a.m., we relived the ringamarole of the day before with a few exciting variables. Squeezing ourselves into seats, getting charged to put up our baggage, waiting half an hour, driving around the block, losing our driver, waiting, getting moved into a different bus, getting charged (again) for our baggage, the squeeze, the wait, the block, the lost driver. At six we finally left for Gonder in seats that almost fit our two butts, on a bus full of swirling hot dust, on a road that was a road only in the sense that it was the accepted route to get to Gonder. It was through those grimy, shut windows that I saw the aforementioned stunning mesas and spectacular valleys, and through my battered rear and queasy stomach that I registered the bumpy, winding path through the mountains. And for those who know me, this wasn't just classic Jana-car-sickness - the kid behind me vomited at regular intervals all over the floor. Hearing that unmistakeable sound, I was incredulous- I had been reassuring my own stomach with the faith that the driver would surely stop for vomit- and so stupidly lifted myself up and twisted myself around to peer down at the hunched youth. Below his head I could see the thick, fluidic mass rolling around on the floor with each bump, and him every moment adding to it.
Needless to say, my skirt, my things, and my legs spent the rest of the ride squinched up against the seat in front of me.

A day and a lifetime later, we unloaded finally in Gonder. Pushed to the end of my tether by having repeatedly had to fight for our bags and pay various parties for the privilege, I shocked the Ethiopians out of their skins by climbing up onto the top of the bus to retrieve our bags myself. Perhaps shamed by a girl (!) doing effortlessly what they were demanding hundreds of Birr for, there were no more scam attempts. We had paid our way, we hefted our bags, and walked into beautiful, historical, fresh-smelling Gonder. Gonder of tasty Ethiopian restaurants and Gonder of old medieval castles. Gonder of soft beds to finally rest in. And I understood, truly: You gotta go through hell to get to heaven.

But you can see why I posted as I did.. Of my first day in Ethiopia, the overriding memory is, unfortunately, of vomit.

Into a new land..

[backdated, January 24, 2009]
And so we crossed the south-eastern Sudanese border into a new land..

Ethiopia deserves for my first post about it not to be about my first impressions. And to be fair, the Sudan is a tough act to follow.

To introduce it properly, I must acknowledge what was perhaps ignorance on my part in expressing my absolute astonishment at this country's breathtaking, jaw-dropping scenic beauty. While I have not yet travelled far outside the Northern highlands, I am already amazed at the landscapes any painter would fall in love with. Winding, bumpy roads threading their way along mesa-style cliffs; wide, shallow Lake Tana blanketed with early morning mist; rolling expanses of pasture dotted with sheep and green-robed herding children. And this is at the end of the dry season !
I've always hated the word 'hut' as carrying so much of a certain type of connotation, but it probably represents exactly the word that would pop into your mind upon seeing the round, thatched-roof dwellings that are clustered around every village and tucked along cliff precipices. Ever one for precision in diction, I will not reject an apt word, but 'hut' still indicates to me a crudeness that is anything but applicable to these sturdy, complex, labor-intensive buildings.

The scenery is all the more impressive for its equally astonishing absence of litter. While trash is not wholly absent from the landscape, streets do not double as a public dump, and intercity highways are not demarkated chiefly by their twin borders of debris. I have even been able to locate trash-cans after a minimum of searching. Honestly, after al-Sudan, it's astoundingly clean. David and I have discovered the subtle treachery of clean streets, however: while in the Sudan we had to watch where we put each foot to avoid something rotting (or worse), here the clean streets have lulled us into the dangerous habit of walking normally. And with disastrous results: both of us have tripped several times on low curbs or uneven pavement, simply because we weren't looking down at the ground.

Coupled with the perpetually photo-worthy scenery (I'm a clicking wonder now that it's legal) is a spectacular panoply of endemic wildlife. Ethiopians are quick to tell you that their twice-Texas-size country boasts some eight hundred different species of birds, several dozen of which are to be found nowhere else in the world. One of the strangest of these I've already seen several times - a small black trilling thing with a fully foot-long flowing white tail that undulates in the most unusual way when it takes flight. We've also had a monkey drop in (somewhat literally) on our breakfast, though my Western background prevented me from recognizing it as anything other than an unusually large, strangely acrobatic cat (and my, what a long tail!).. until it was actually sitting right in front of me (and behind David). Upon successful (if delayed) species identification, I felt not excitement but a vague alarm and the need to immediately inform David. I can't explain it, it just seemed like a bit of a hazard to calmly eat one's omelette with a monkey in such proximity, particularly without one's knowledge. Only later did it occur to me to take a picture, but of course by then it was scampering off. (But at least I warned David.)

Ethiopia cannot, however, compete with the visual rainbow afforded by the various security forces present in even the smallest towns in the Sudan. While I noted uniforms in the carying hues of steel blue, white, khaki, grey, green camo, brown camo, khaki camo(didn't know that one existed), blue camo (in the desert?? really??), black, and the dreaded plainclothes, I've yet to see anything in Ethiopia more than plain old blue, white, and one boring shade of camo (brown). True, Ethiopia more than makes up the color vibrancy with its flowers, which are blooming everywhere, and which I hardly ever saw in a month in the Sudan - I think I might have forgotten that flowers exist, sort of like I forgot that rain exists.

For all their loveliness and photographicableness, however, flowers don't provide quite the same sort of fun potential as we've seen with Sudanese security forces... so yes. Am still missing the Sudan!

Al-Sudan

[original date: January 22, 2009]

Today is my last day in the Sudan. And despite my excitement to cross the border into Ethiopia tomorrow morning, I cannot hide that I am sincerely sad to leave this dusty, carefree, generous country that has shown me such an amazing welcome for the past few weeks. It is not a welcome I will soon forget.

Knowing my memory, though, I'd like to leave a fresh record of my impressions of this country while I'm still in it. I can't vouch for their implicit accuracy, other than that they accurately represent my experience while here. So take them with a pinch of salt.. or perhaps a pinch of sugar's more accurate.

The Scenery: A Dusty Faded Glory
Throughout much of the Sudan I have gotten an impression of past prosperity. The buildings look old and somewhat neglected, though many show signs of having once been somewhat luxurious. Everything is dusty, which I suppose is natural in a country situated at the end of the Saharan winds. The roads are paved, if a bit unevenly, in the largest cities and between them, but otherwise streets of packed dirt are rather common and a mouthful of dust with each passing car is a more common experience of pedestrianhood than I'd like.
Omar al-Bashir's face is everywhere in Khartoum, and is even quite common in city centers throughout the north and east. All the intellectuals who we've spoken to have referred to him quite frankly and without fear as a dictator, though, so I suppose the repression isn't complete (though it must be admitted that not all of our former interviewees are currently at liberty).
The landscape outside cities, not surprisingly, is mostly very flat (and sandy), populated by camels in the north and herds of goats, sheep, and occasionally cows in the east. The sheep - are you sitting for this? - have LONG, ROPY, FLUFFY, FLOPPY TAILS that remind me of a doggie-tail. They reach almost to the ground and caused me huge amounts of excitement that David struggled to understand when I first saw them. The sheep flip them around too, like horse tails, only they're not hair at all but fleshy, quite fluffy furry things well over 30 inches long. INSANE.
I've seen grass a few places, generally in small plots within more luxurious (usually governmental) complexes; each time I've gotten quite excited. It's no longer so strange to me to just see empty earth in places where there's no established human presence - or trash. Trash is everywhere. No, really. Everywhere. In the streets, in the buildings, in the hallways, in the desert stuck to bushes, in the hotel rooms. I long for a trash can. Don't ask me if I've littered here. Just don't. I cannot yet face the truth on that.

The Food: Tasty, Hearty Monotony
I have eaten very well here, but I'd be lying if I claimed not to be a bit excited about the prospect of a new country and new culinary options. The same staples of the Sudanese diet have largely comprised my own diet for the past few weeks:
* fuul, a dish of beans and spices, sometimes with a bit of meat included, eaten with a sort of bland but thick white bread bun instead of with silverware
* shwarma meat, deliciously spiced, but with little variety, always served in that same thick white bread bun
* falafel balls, also delicious, also universal no matter where you go, also served in aforementioned heavy white bread on any street corner in even the smallest city
* hard-boiled eggs, served alongside the falafel on streets
* the sweets: delicious, flaky pastry absolutely drenched in honey and further sweetened with unique, sometimes nutty flavors. Basbusa, kokha, baklawa (baklava), all delectable, all delightful, all worth a trip to the dentist
* peanuts, which we've snacked on repeatedly, and which I discovered (to my stomach's chagrin) CAN actually go bad. Don't eat black peanuts.
So the summarized statement - very tasty, a bit heavy, and kind of .. always the same... is unfortunately pretty true. UNTIL you come to the tea.
The tea is too amazing for words.
Tea is a huge part of Sudanese culture, and women set themselves up on every corner and along every street, on little stools with rickety tables crammed with glass jars full of various different herbs they mix in with their tea. There's always a jar for sugar, too. Almost all the tea drinks are very, very sweet. Every woman's tea is a little different, and seems to be a matter of personal pride. For one sudanese pound (about fifty cents), or even less sometimes, you can go up to one of these ladies and order any kind of tea - mint tea with na'an, karkade tea with cranberry-like flavor, black tea with milk - and she'll prepare it piping hot for you right there on the spot. She's got a little charcoal fire going next to her with brass kettles simmering on it, and a bucket of soapy water for washing glasses in between customers. After she makes it, you can hunker down on one of the little stools she might have littered about her - of course anyone else already sitting with their own cup of tea will always insist you take their chair, at the very least - and use your fingertips to hold the very rim of the piping-hot glass to sip your tea. Which is always delicious, and (amazingly) always a little bit different. Needless to say, this tea culture has been one of my very favorite culinary experiences in the Sudan.
Tastiest thing eaten: a close call, but my sweet tooth prevails. The pastry.
Worst thing ingested: At each interview, we were invariably presented with hot tea. On one unfortunate afternoon, however, I was obliged to drink the greater part of the worst cup of instant coffee I have ever tasted or smelled in my life. Burnt, heavily sweetened, and reeking in flavor of strong, black pepper. PEPPER!! Why??

The Music: Beautiful and Touching
One of my best ideas yet was to hassle the students we met at Khartoum's Al-Nilein University for music recommendations, and to then follow those up. The CD I bought off the street for SDD4 (about $1.80) of Nadeer Khder is one of my favorites, and one of the few possessions I have with me that I really hope make it home.

The People: Effortless Dignity
The people here are by far Sudan's most wonderful resource. They're warm, generous, curious, friendly, funny, casual, hospitable, and overwhelmingly kind. People treat us to tea all the time. Strangers insist on sharing their fuul and bread with us. Everyone always asks where we're from, and no one seems to think less of us for being from a country whose government has hardly seen eye to eye with their own in recent past. Most of all, however, I must emphasize the inherent, unforced, natural dignity of the Sudanese people. They are fundamentally dignified.

There's an image that comes to mind when I think of the Sudanese.. it's an image of a personality I've seen in every city or town here, no matter how small. This personality is a man, middle-aged to older, dressed in the typical long white robe with the typical dusty bits at the bottom hem, striding very slowly with long steps around the trash-spotted streets with his arms folded behind his back and a bit of a paunch thrust out in front of him like a proud statement of self-worth. He is casually proud in manner, but warm, generous, and inquisitive when you speak to him. This man always carries with him a weighty sort of solemn dignity that I always think of now when I think of these wonderful people.

Sudanese coinage: Tattered but colorful
Sudanese money is minted in a series of vibrantly colored bills, in denominations of 1 pound (chartreuse), 2 (pale blue), 5 (red), 10 (peach and white), and 20 (red and purple), supplemented by three coins: a 50-piastre piece (golden rim with silver interior), a 20-piastre (the opposite), and a 10 (plain silver). The relatively modest value of the paper money, however, means that circulation of anything other than the "nuss-guinnea" (50-piastre) piece is uncommon, and indeed the coin-lover in me had to wait pretty patiently before I managed to get all three. I've never seen any coin lower than 10p, nor any bill higher than 20 pounds, though they may indeed exist.
I have had to conclude that either the minting authority of the Sudan has unusually low circulation standards, or the general population, an unusually low respect for the care of their own bills. It is extremely common, especially with the low 1-pound bills, to receive fraying, grimy currency severely ripped in one or more places; thankfully I've never had a problem when (somewhat guiltily) offering these bills to merchants. On at least one occasion a vendor busted out a roll of tape to literally piece together some small change for me, and on occasions where change cannot be made several enterprising taxidrivers have attempted to simply rip our larger bills in half - thus acquiring (presumably) exactly half their value.
Needless to say, we both put our feet down on that.

New Words Learned: some Arabic: greetings, basic questions, responses, my numbers 1-100. A pretty poor showing, I admit.
Telling phrases: If God wills it (Insha'allah), WHATEVER God wills (mash'allah), Everything's great! (Koolshi tamam), paradise (my name!)
It should go without saying I have had to learn the word for 'hiccup' (sha'kri).

Classic Quote: Booking ourselves into Wad Medani's Hotel Doha, we were repeatedly told to wait just a few minutes [more] for someone to come to bring us our room key.
After waiting half an hour, and receiving renewed assurances that someone would come "in thirty minutes", David wryly asked, "Is that a promise?"
The hotel manager's quick reply was classic: "In the Sudan, there are no promises."

New Hygienic Lows: As the Sudan represents my first real experience with the third world, there has understandably been a consistently plunging progress of my own admittedly lax standards of personal hygiene. Memorable slashings perhaps include: a much higher tolerance of dirt on my body, caked on my feet, and under my fingernails; a willingness to sleep on soiled bedding (previously absent from my character); a newfound, almost joyous appreciation for squat toilets, which I actually prefer now as the toilet requiring the least intimate interaction on my part.

Bizarre (and potentially unhealthy) Habits Acquired: To while away the hours on long-distance bus-rides (reading leads to vomit, and even I have to wake up from naps some time), I have begun to perform math calculations in my head. A crippling lifelong dependency on pen and paper to do any decent math at all means that even a minute's worth of long division can entertain me for the ten minutes it takes me to puzzle out the solution without mixing up any decimals. Consequently, I have calculated that, including end-dates, this trip comprises exactly 233 days, or 33.285714 (repeating from the tenth's place) weeks. I also discovered that January 20th represented the 25th day of this trip, at which sunset 10.729% lay behind us, and 89.281% of adventure was yet to come. (I couldn't be assed to work out the ten-thousanth's place.) Somebody get a calculator and check me. God, I'm a loser.

Worst experience in the Sudan: The mob moment comes to mind, or the Great Bug-Bivy Bedbug Bedevilment of Port Sudan in which I sustained no less than 141 itchy red lumps in a single night... but really, I've got to go with the black peanuts, or my five days of sick sick sickness

Best Experience in the Sudan: the competition for this prize is considerably stiffer, and the Sudanis themselves are to blame. My enriching and satisfying experiences interacting with them on issues both small and significant rival the number of different delicious teas I've tasted.

One experience does stand out a bit, however: in Gedaref we happened upon a rickshaw driver who was studying English, and who was more than enthusiastic to talk to us for practice. We ended up spending the afternoon together as Ahmed took us out to a lake from his childhood, and in strolling about its borders it came out that this very bright young man was a university graduate whose political differences with General B's National Congress Party (NCP) had made it all but impossible for him to find a proper job. Thus, the rickshaw. Upon my inquiring further, he revealed that he was alone in his views even among his family, who seemed to side with pragmatism over the luxury of political skepticism. I was touched by his quiet courage, and even more by his warm-hearted eagerness to treat us to his generosity.

It happened that Gedaref became our last stop in the Sudan before crossing the Ethiopian border, so we arranged to see Ahmed again as we passed back through. I cannot think of a better way to bring our Sudanese sojourn to a close than that final evening, spent sharing conversation and culture over honeyed sweets (that we had to fight to pay for) with an open-minded and intellectually curious Sudani. We left him with warm handshakes and photographs, and I hope he has a chance at a better life someday very, very soon. Like all Sudanis, and all people, he deserves better than dictatorship.

I will miss you, al-Sudan.

The Sudanese Security Forces.. at their finest

[real date: January 21, 2009]

Though our time in the Sudan is drawing to a close, it is perhaps fitting to tell one last adventure before we head to Ethiopia.. not to return (sniff).
This particular adventure involved an encounter with the police, and constitutes my most extensive experience with the security forces of another country. (Though that record may not hold up for long here.)

It started with the travel permits. David has often quipped, very aptly, that here in the Sudan we have "The best visas money can buy!" .. that is, the most expensive. What with the visas themselves, the registrations, various permissions and other fees, we have probably donated about USD$1,100 to the government of Sudan just for the privilege of getting in the door. (And no, that doesn't include taking any pictures - too much of a skinflint to purchase the scam-esque
'Photographer's Permit', I have chosen simply to snap my shots as surreptitiously as possible.)
Part of that sum went to finagling city-specific 'Travel Permits' to allow us to get out from the capital. In each city or town, we've had to produce these papers alongside our visas, with their explicit endorsement of our legality in the area, and register ourselves - me usually just as "Jana" or under David's name because the harassed police officers lose heart when they see my surname. [Side note added later: There would be no record whatsoever of Jana Marie Hutchinson ever exiting the Sudan for this same reason.]

In only one city did we have problems: one plainclothes officer in Sennar, after struggling to find a hole in our documentation, finally hit upon the one town that was just outside the border of our included provinces, Kosti. We had planned to make a day-trip there from Sennar, but the officer
explicitly forbade it.
After he left, David and I discussed the possibilities. We both really wanted to see Kosti, and if we hired a taxi to take us there and back we might easily slip under the radar of the next town, whose security forces might not be so finicky, and we could get away with not registering as we wouldn't stay the night. Ultimately we abandoned this idea for its costliness (resisting a pun for "Kosti" here), and glad we were that we did: not an hour after we left our hotel to innocently walk about Sennar's market, we realized that we were being tailed. Subtlety was unfortunately beyond the grasp of the local kid obviously assigned to spy on us, and as the (three) of us meandered together through the town we couldn't help being a bit pleased with ourselves for having decided to keep it legal.

Ironically, for all our legality, we were to spend the next night in a police compound anyway.
Making our way to the tiny town of Dinder the next morning, we immediately became the most exciting thing to be seen in weeks- and the best entertainment to be had in at least as long- for the good but bored men of Dinder's provincial security headquarters. Registering upon arrival, we received only dumbfounded stares in reply to our inquiries after a hotel. There was no hotel. There was no hostel. There was no guesthouse. There was, in fact, no tourism at all, and running shy of ideas about what to do with us, the kind officers decided to put us up themselves (free of charge) in their own headquarters.

For the rest of that day, spent in an elaborate but fruitless quest for a bank, moneychanger, or other person able to offer forex services, we enjoyed a full escort of several delighted members of Sudan's finest. Though the grimy, tired faces of David and myself that day may have betrayed fatigue and frustration with our vain attempts to do, really, ANYTHING in tiny Dinder OR its vicinity, the officers were positively radiant with the responsibility of guarding us. Don't let the stern, official-looking expressions they both immediately adopted for the sake of my forbidden (but joyously-welcomed) photo-taking fool you: they were thrilled to be along for the ride. And what a ride it was..

Day over, settling into our quarters at Dinder's police compound, I reflected on the somewhat satisfying symmetrical irony of it all. We may have narrowly escaped official arrestation that morning.. but we didn't get out of spending the night under governmental guard. Mash'allah..

In- if not Honor, at least Respect- for Hasan al-Turabi

I REALIZE THAT it might seem (particularly to those who talk to me on Gchat) that I am traipsing about this continent on a rollicking expenses-paid tourist trip that constitutes without question the most benevolent and interesting act of random generosity in my life thus far.
HOWEVER, I must establish that this characterization is not entirely true. (Mostly it is, yes.) But technically I am doing Busy and Important Work for Important Religious Studies Research. And to prove it to those detractors who know my foolishness all too well, I'll blog all about one of the most interesting interviews we've done here: an evening chat with none other than Sheikh Hasan al-Turabi.

The elderly sheikh has a long and convoluted history in Sudanese politics and the radical Islam movement; this former mentor to General B himself later broke with the dictator in the legislature and was repeatedly imprisoned by the regime throughout the 2000s for his noisy criticism. In arranging to meet him, David and I were told just to show up at his house in Khartoum, just to walk right in after 7 p.m., and that he would be happy to talk to us. Needless to say, we were both skeptical, but we figured we'd try it anyway, and around 7:30 on a Wednesday night we showed up on the posh doorstop of the politician's semi-suburbian residence.
We were immediately shown into one of the poshest rooms I have seen yet or since in the Sudan, a sort of reception room for greeting guests. While we waited to hear whether the sheikh was available, I very surreptitiously snapped a secret photo (for later publication on this blog, of course- please enjoy).

To our surprise, al-Turabi pushed aside whatever prior evening arrangements he had, and after a few minutes we were ushered into a more intimate reception room to meet with him. Having prepared myself to meet (and perhaps not be acknowledged whatsoever by) an austere champion of radical Islam, I was blown away by the elderly chap who came out to greet us. Hasan al-Turabi is, in a word, charming. He's warm, witty, chatty, gregarious, hilarious, and in many respects, charming. I could see right away the politician in him: the three solid hours we were to spend in his house that evening were not so much an interview, or even really a discussion, but an incredible stream-of-consciousness-style flow of energetic speech from him to us, his more or less captive (and silent) audience. His English was flawless, as was his French and (I'm assuming) his German, fluency he attributed with a good-natured chortle to long years of political detainment with only books for company. (Al-Turabi on prison: it's quite the ideal setting for quiet and uninterrupted study!)

David came to talk about Islam, the Sudan, and the future of both, but al-Turabi was obviously much more excited about the opportunity to discourse at length on the West and Western history for the past thousand years. His unsolicited, definitive summary of our own [Connecticut-born-and-bred] * former * president Bush - that he was fundamentally a Southern product and "never could have come from New England" - provides a good example of how his interpretation of the world, though interesting, is not always factually accurate. (Readers who know me can imagine the polite strain I suffered when he uttered those words, but really, I needn't have worried about how to respond to such nonsense. Even his pauses for breath were so rare and brief as to preclude any expectation of comment from his audience.) The polite hints from my professor friend, thrust into the scanty pauses Turabi used to suck in new breath, that he (David) was already "familiar" with the material- "Yes, I did my doctoral dissertation on the Umayyads"- did not perterb our chatty host in the slightest. Or even affect him. They also unfortunately failed to steer him whatsoever from his chosen topic.

The nature of our host's conversational style - intellectual excitement to talk to us, expressed flamboyanty through gestures and words that surged forth as if from a dam - led both David and I to privately wonder if this respected and learned sheikh was not a bit lonely for intellectual companionship. Sure, he's surrounded by people all the time, but never any who are interested in more than just hearing him spout wisdom. (Which he is obviously accustomed to doing.) He could barely let us go even after three hours, past the time when we should have left, even when troops of other men in white robes were obviously waiting for him to attend their previous appointment, talking with us right up to the door and into the hallway.

All in all, I liked him. I accept that, intellectually, I might have next to nothing in common with him, but I couldn't help it. I liked him right away, and found him immensely entertaining. He joked with me in French and David in Arabic, but respected me enough to suggest we do the entire interview in English, which remains David's and my only common language. (Not having another one is definitely a severe drawback, as it has repeatedly interfered with our ability to gossip discretely about those around us. I've suggested Pig Latin. David is skeptical.)

David and I both left the sumptuous residence a bit overwhelmed and (I have to admit it) relieved to be free, but we still both enjoyed talking him over a bit on the way home.
One week later, the BBC reported in this article that Hasan al-Turabi has been arrested for his criticism against General B. (He had been making statements to the effect that Gen. B should face his genocidal guilt before the ICC.) The article, which includes an action-shot style picture of the face still fresh in my memory, describes how al-Turabi is now in interrogation and solitary confinement, and that his family is worried about him. Thinking back to our meeting a few days before, David hazarded the opinion that perhaps al-Turabi knew it was coming, and that it might explain a bit his eagerness to talk to us.

Although I have no sympathies for Hasan al-Turabi's politics or his cause, I do for him as an individual. He is the only person I have ever known personally who is now a political prisoner. While I cannot in good conscience honor him with this post, I will dedicate it to my respect for him - as I respect anyone who has the courage to speak out against a dictator.
To Hasan al-Turabi, 76 years old and in interrogation: ganbatte kudasai.

The Day of Rage

So to continue my tale from yesterday.. This dude Qaradawi (Preacher Q) decided to declare Friday, January 9th an international "Day of Rage" for all Muslims against what was happening vis-a-vis Israel and Gaza. David warned me about this that morning, just mentioning it as something to be aware of, so we could both keep a bit of a lower profile.
That day, we had also had plans to go to the traditional Muslim quarter of the capital, Omduraman, for the sufi religious Hamda'nile Festival (spelling?). This is a delightful, noisy, frolicsome celebration held every evening (but especially on Fridays) in conjunction with the evening mass. The festival's quite a hoot, with all kinds of people drumming and chanting and praying and (in some memorable cases) cavorting wildly around a large circle. We both thorougly enjoyed it, even though it was hardly David's first time seeing it.

The negativity began quite suddenly; I was talking in English to a Sudani after the ceremony ended when another man came up to me and began speaking incoherently in English. David and I, on comparing notes later, were both reminded of those odd paragraphs of almost randomly-chosen English words or phrases that appear inexplicably at the bottom of spam emails offering certain personal enhancements for men. This dude's speech was similar- he was loud and he was nonsensical, and he was up in my face so intensely and suddenly that I was almost too bewildered to reply. When I came to understand that he wanted to know my country of origin, and explained that I was American, he got yet noisier and began trying to determine which part of the country I harked from. As I began to try to explain that I was not from Washington D.C. or Chicago (the places he guessed), I very suddenly noticed that he was flanked on both sides by sullen-looking men. Confused, I looked around to see more and more men arriving every moment, and the hostility emanated from them in waves. Before I knew it, I was completely surrounded by sullen, silent men who towered over me with scowls on their faces even as I stammered to try to answer the nonsensical questions put to me by the rabblerouser.

Thank goodness David is a faster thinker than I am, and he grabbed my arm and yanked us both out of there. We walked quickly away from the men and the crowd, robbed of its curio, fizzled out and dissipated. My heart was pounding and neither of us really relaxed until we were considerably away from anyone else, at which point I exhaled a huge amount of air that I abruptly realized I had been holding captive in my lungs. Oh my goodness, I thought. So that's how mob violence begins.
Unfortunately the would-be mob-leader had not even begin to lose interest in us, and when I turned around he was right there again, this time getting up in my face about the "occasional preposition" or some similarly unintelligible subject that I believe was vaguely grammar-related.
David and I kept walking away from him, but gradually it became more and more obvious that he was following us. Night was falling, we needed to find a way to get back to Khartoum, the streets were beginning to empty, and every time I looked back the same lone figure was ambling along after us. I took out my kubaton, and David and I walked faster. Ahead of us, we glimsped the safety of a public bus, and after bolting across the street, we hid behind one bus, and then leapt aboard another just as it was beginning to leave. I leaned out to look back, and just managed to catch the sight of that same figure, still on the opposite side of the street, peering at the buses behind us. We had lost him. And I laughed. David laughed too. We laughed with the sheer joy of life, of safety, of being alive. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Ultimately, what stayed with either of us was not the brief, scary moment of hostility we felt in that crowd, or the alarming realization that we were being persistently followed by a weirdo. The night had more to offer for us.
Perhaps our crazy laughter endeared us to the old jolly busdriver, for we ended up befriending him along the bumpy ride back to the city center. Such a friendly chap he was that upon our arrival, he invited us to a spot of tea right there in the bus, as it was the end of his routes for the day, and so we all sat around the gearshift for a bit drinking lovely na'na mint tea prepared by one of the many tea-ladies who always set up around Sudanese bus stations. Of course he insisted on paying for all of us. (In truth, neither David or I were much amazed at any of this somewhat amazing and unlooked-for generosity; it had happened so many times before, and would continue to happen throughout our time in the Sudan.)
Then we all said goodnight, and David and I went back to our hotel.. full of tea, full of the joy of life, and full of the contentment that comes from being in a country of- despite anything Preacher Q or the occasional rabblerousing psycho tries to incite- fundamentally warm, hospitable, and generous people.
Thank you, Sudan.

As the world turns.. (taking a look outside my cocoon of ignorance)

So I suppose I owe it to the trip to deliver a comment or two about the phenomenon of traveling in a Muslim country as a Westerner in the present political climate, and that it is my responsibility to at least acknowledge a skeleton of current-events context.
Unfortunately, my current events knowledge tends to be highly patchy, and vast tracts of information exist outside the scope of my rather limited understanding. So PLEASE add your two-cents' worth to correct or explain anything I do badly here. Comments below.

The most important global event in the Sudan's consciousness is of course the fighting going on in the Gaza strip. Regardless of any of my readers' particular political sympathies, it is my general impression that the Sudanese people support Palestine (despite the official positions of several governments in the Arab world). As David and I travel, every time we see a television it seems to be tuned to Al-Gezira news media channel, with extensive footage of the destruction caused by Israeli bombings. There are occasionally broadcasted speeches by various political or religious figures condemning Israel's actions, and it seems fairly clear (even to non-Arabic-speaking me) which side of the table Al-Gezira news sits on.

As for Sudan news in particular, there are a few special things going on that have made our visit more interesting. Most particularly, Sudan's general-dictator Omar al-Bashir could potentially face an International Criminal Court arrest warrant. The ICC prosecutor has recommended issing this warrant due to the genocide and humanitarian crimes that have been and are being perpetrated in the western Sudanese states of Darfur.
The ICC met to begin deliberating on this on or around January 7th. Any arrest action on their part has already been officially condemned by the Sudan as masking a political agenda, but governmental forces here have nonetheless gotten a bit testy about it. Walking around the capital of Khartoum on January 6th and 7th, David and I noticed an increased military and security presence. (I really wanted to get a closer look at the freakin-huge light-bedecked presidential palace that preens itself at the end of a major avenue, but ultimately followed David's recommendation that we give security forces a bit of space at this particular junction in time.)
The increased security is also a reflection of the global current events, as the city held a large demonstration January 8th, the purpose of which was apparently to 'demonstrate' to Israel how cranky they are with it. (I'm not sure whether PM Olmert was listening, but they can always say they tried.)

The anti-Israeli demonstration and the ICC case have not necessarily informed my own experience of the Sudan, but it's definitely important to be aware of both situations. Atrocity of ignorance aside, it's not an impossibility that current events could come to play a role, however small, in my largely-tourist experience of the Sudan. For example, the head of Sudan's intelligence agency warned last weekend that if General B (my euphamism for the ol' dictator)'s warrant comes through, foreigners in the Sudan could be targeted for violence.

In a similar trend, a certain religious figure in the Arab world, Qaradayi (Preacher Q), called for a "Day of Rage" on the part of Muslims over what's going on in Gaza. Unlike the ICC business, this DID come to slightly affect David and I, but we both managed to get out of the situation quickly and painlessly. (More on that tomorrow.)Still, it's worth being aware of things like that.. and I'm very happy that at least one of us (David) is!

Not for those with weak stomachs

PORT SUDAN: I think I'm beginning to realize that this trip is going to be a lesson in cheerful, resigned acceptance of my own dirt.

In the last two hotels we've been in, the shower was too repulsive for me to bring myself to use it, with the result that it's actually been about five days since I've showered. I don't actually mind it that much however, because I continue to get so very dirty with each successive day that attempting to shower would be an exercise in futility. Wind blows the Sahara sand into my hair; my feet have black lines from dirty sandals and dirtier streets; my fingernails are caked with black gunk; my entire body has not seen soap in days.

My feet probably deserve their own paragraph. By black, I do mean actually black; black-and-tan, if you count the upper bit, sort of like a Guinness. Only not that pale a shade of tan. And the tan has stripes in it where my sandal straps go. And it's not actually a tan. This morning a piece of beans from my fuul breakfast fell between my toes and, as usual, I had no way to clean it off. I kind of flicked it away with one fingernail but the mashed residue remained to more or less become a part of the next layer on that foot. (Hey - you're reading this far, you obviously ignored the warning in the title.)

I have to admit, it's kind of entertaining on a disturbing level to see how very shockingly I can smash my own hygenic tolerances with these things attached to my legs. I now fully understand and appreciate the traditional Muslim abhorrence of feet. The Muslims have got it right. Feet are dirty things. They are not necessarily so if certain implements (socks, close-toed shoes, paved roads, clean sidewalks) are a part of your daily life, but otherwise, they really shouldn't ever be seen or touched. By anybody. Ew.

A Cocoon Found.. and Lost

A few days before I was preparing to leave for this trip, amid the bustle of the holidays, David called to remind me to bring along some mosquito netting. Happy-inducing malaria pills aside, no one likes mosquito bites, and he was quite right in suggesting I might occasionally like to get some peace at night in mosquitoey areas.
My mum quite generously offered to pick up this last item from our local outdooring store, to give me a bit of extra time packing and getting myself together. I was quite grateful and expected her to bring home a simple, small, light-weight and easily stuffable ball of mosquito netting, to be draped over myself or slept in with the edges tucked under in just the fashion David is currently sporting over on his cot. However, such primitive expectations far underestimated my mother's creativity and her dedication, and it was with great pride that she presented me that night with an Outdoor Explorers BugBivvy (TM) 2000.

I'm afraid it was with less enthusiasm, and only due to the lateness of the game, that I accepted the BugBivvy (TM). It was large, bulky, weighty and of alarmingly low stuffability, but I did my best to stuff it all the same into the one tiny suitcase that would come with me to Africa.

The BugBivvy was first produced about four nights into the trip at one particularly mosquito-friendly hotel, pulled out of my bag to the shock and great entertainment of David. The thing looked like a half mesh, half plastic sleeping bag with enough volume for five people and a single inexplicable collapsing stick that poked its way awkwardly through a paucity of badly-organized loops for about seven seconds before demonstrating its definitive quality and collapsing on itself. Much to the continued merriment of David, happily ensconced beneath his own simple net in roughly the same amount of time. I set the pole aright again and again, if only for the sake of photographing the pathetic construction for my review at a later date when I would presumably find it funny as well, before admitting defeat and clamboring inside its zippered depths, fabric pooling on my face and feeble pole poking one or the other of my arms whichever way I turned.

I have slept in this way three times now, the most recent of which was characterized by David as a battle between myself and the 'cocoon', his moniker for the miserable set of mesh and pole that I spent much of my pre-dawn hours thrashing about in. My mother's dedication shall always be appreciated, but the BugBivvy was not exactly a success.


IT IS THE MISERABLE FATE of a miserable traveling Murphy's Law that the night I finally realized how to properly put together my cocoon, the night I declared I would spend the rest of my nights abroad comfortably ensconced in its protective zippered depths, a night that should have remained one of unbridled elation and triumph, was the same night that I discovered I had, with the introduction of an unsavory bedsheet the night before, invited into said cocoon an army of the hungriest bedbugs the third world has ever seen. By 2 a.m., I had 47 new bites. Unable to sleep with frantic scratching, I spent from 2:15 to 2:25 a.m. locating and cataloguing all my various new bites. I then spent from 2:25 to 2:50 ruefully reflecting on the bitterness of irony to the regular respiration sounds of the enviably slumbering David in the next cot. I then spent from 2:50 to 3:16 a.m. writing this very blog post, scribbling it out on my notepad between scratching sessions, and deciding upon its title: truly, a Cocoon Found and Lost.

Sick, Sick, Sick !

KHARTOUM, SUDAN: I might occasionally include a week of silence in this blogging trip, but I hadn't planned on taking one quite so early. Allow me to explain, I've been taken a bit out of commission. One of the several dooms foretold me- the medical doom I would deserve for pursuing these foolish travel plans- has come to pass. Africa got me!

I suppose I knew it would happen, sooner or later, but it turned out to happen a lot sooner than later, about eight days into the trip in fact. 0.4% complete for statisticians. Depressing for me. During the six days (six!!) that I spent suffering from what I can only describe as a battalion of medical ills, my uppermost worry was often that David, knowing me for only a week prior, would by lack of information be forced to conclude that I'm a sickly, whining, low-energy weakling who prefers her own sagging hotel cot to the excitement of Sudan's dusty capital. A horrible representation of myself, one I can hardly bear, but one that was not so far from the truth this past week.

In my defense, I would like to stress that it took the aforementioned battalion of ailments to bring me down. Viral influenza paired up with a foul, pus-draining eye infection and the worst case of asthma problems I have ever had; I spent a week discovering the unique combination of headaches/ bodyaches/ chest tightness/ nausea/ coughing/ eye pus/ sore throat/ exhaustion/ inability to see and the madcap fun of alternating fever and chills. A veritable battalion of disease. My phrasing it such to David prompted him to wax poetic, and he proposed the following metaphor: Like an elephant pursued by an entire village of hunters, only brought down in stages, so I (and my effervescent spirits) were brought down, slowly but truly, over days, to a self-pitying state of cranky pain.

I think it's a remarkably accurate metaphor, and I archly told him so over the snorts of laughter that accompanied his poetic recitation. (Humph.)

It's the Small Triumphs

I discovered my hatred of flies on a (short) long-distance bus today.

We were traisping from Dongola to Kareima across North Sudan, out to see some sights and have a bit of fun while we were at it, and the lots of bits of accumulative fun already had thus far had tuckered me out. I desperately wanted to spend the four hours in our quiet, dark and comfortable bus taking a nice little nap, and few things short of celestial wrath could have prevented me.

I was shocked to discover that an insolent creature no larger or more significant than A Common Fly could stand in my way.

You didn't notice it at first. You'd be drifting off, you were almost gone, and you could barely feel the little tickle on the back of your hand. But then SUDDENLY you felt it - you'd make an involuntary flap with your hand to get it off - and then you would start to drift back to that warm place. Drift, drift.. and there it'd be again. The tickle. You'd slap your hand again, more violently, more uselessly, and tuck it somewhere else as you curled back up to go back to that nap. The fly would find the other hand. Again, the tickle.. the almost ignorable.. you try to ignore it.. you could feel it moving around, exploring, until you JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. You flap that hand too. You open your eyes to find the offending creature. It's zooming around stupidly in the square foot of air right in front of you, waiting for you to settle down so it can too. You swat at it and miss. You sigh. You are too tired for this game. You tuck both hands under your arms, Sharia law means the rest of you is pretty much covered anyway, you smirk to yourself, and you close your eyes to go back to sleep. Let it land where it wants.
At which point it lands ON YOUR FACE.
You want to scream with rage. You flap both of your hands madly at your face. The fly resumes its orbiting of your head. You have rarely hated something so intensely in your life. You NEED this nap. You have a stroke of genius. Despite the relative warmth of the bus, you flop your entire sweatshirt over your head.

Darkness.
And Triumph.
And, you notice a moment later, Stinkiness.
(This sweatshirt has not yet been washed, and has lately shared a lot in common with your body.)
(This also might explain the fly.)
You decide you can bear the stinkiness and set about trying to fall asleep anyway.

Ten minutes later, gasping desperately for air, you emerge from the dark, hot, stinky, airless environment created by your sweatshirt-tent. Perhaps the fly is gone. You close your eyes and take in huge quantities of the delicious stale bus air. But within two minutes of tent dismantling.. there it is again ON YOUR CHEEK.

You swat at your face. You open your tired, red eyes, which perceive the Cursed Fly perched on the window curtain. As a spectator you watch your same fly-tortured hand sail through the air with a cat-like precision born of rage, and land with lightning swiftness upon the Bastard Fly before it has time to perceive that for one sorry sucker's life it is (quite appropriately): Curtains.

You watch the dead fly drop to the floor.

And you know the meaning of Bliss.

That old-time religion

ATBARA, SUDAN:
I'm a non-Christian
with no religious tendencies
in an overwhelmingly Muslim area
of a nation currently under Sharia Islamic law,
yet I'm in church.

Sometimes, god impresses even me.

It's actually my fault that we're in here, not David's, though he is the only one of religious bent (intellectual or otherwise) between the two of us; despite my wicked lack of faith there's something I've always loved about all religious places. I love churches in America, and cathedrals in Europe, and shrines in Japan, and it's been the great tragedy of my time in the Sudan thus far that I haven't been able to go into a mosque. (That, and not yet having a shower.)

So we were walking by, and the huge cross said to me what all the arabic signage in the world couldn't have, and I was just drawn like a magnet. As luck would have it it's Sunday, and the evening mass was already going on; I never would have dreamed of barging into it, but as soon as someone noticed us in the courtyard we were excitedly ushered in and shown a pew. I didn't understand the sermon, but I liked listening to the voice of the pastor and looking around the bare little building. One high-ceilinged room, whitewashed walls and cement floor, fluorescent bulbs paired up to form crosses on each side of a large fresco at the back of the room. Wooden bookcase stacked with old hymnals by the door. Dusty wooden pews in three columns facing a lone wooden podium, with a few smaller sideways pews at the front where eight or nine bescarved women sat. Presumably the choir. Choir, preacher, and ushers included, there were not more than five dozen parishoners, most of them children squirming in the five pews in front of me, twisting around to get a better look.
Suddenly we all stood to pray; one woman's quiet voice rose over us in song from the front choir corner. I peeked with one eye, but every woman's head was bowed, there was no sign who was singing. Even as I peeked, her delicate voice was joined by another, and several others, until there was a chorus of women's voices swelling in song. Without a sign but in apparent coordination, like the gentle, slow pooling of water, the singing spread around us from pew to pew until five dozen voices, male and female, deep and high, were lifted up in a beautiful song I had never heard, and will never hear again. The richness of the sound, the depth of it bloomed like warm dough in an oven. Standing among singers but not singing myself, I had the unusual impression of being inside the song, as if the power of these voices was a phsyical force that could lift you and expand you with every chorus.
It was beautiful.

Sweeping Generalizations

As I have now been in the Sudan for more than one cycle of 24 hours, and have managed to wrangle my way into other parts of the country, I feel justified in making a few summarial comments:

(a) the Sudan is sunny
(b) the Sudanese are fantastically friendly
(c) the Sudan is poor
(d) there are not very many white people/ foreigners here

(While I suppose I could gather most or all of these facts from a variety of easily available information sources, I would venture to say I feel them to be true much more than I knew them to be before. And in this derive my justification for expounding them so grandiosly.)

The Tale of Yasser Arafat and the Sado Okesa

Warning: following tangential dribble has nothing to do with the Sudan, Africa, or really anything important and/or factual.

SO sleeping in a new bed makes me have really vivid dreams, and the shuffling around we've been doing here means that my head has been the setting for some very unusual visions lately. One in particular could possibly deserve recounting.

In this dream, I was telling prof. David about the island where I lived in Japan, and getting really into it; I even went so far as to hum the Sado Okesa, a traditional folk song and dance famous for being a part of Sado's unique culture. Before I even finished my hum, however, David got a sort of wry look on his face and quipped that he was surprised to hear I was blindly singing such a song, as it was the Official Theme Song of Yasser Arafat.
I was dumbfounded.
It is a testament to the level of my respect for David that I did not for a moment consider that he was mistaken. If he was saying it, it must be so. However the concept that this crooned tune, taught to me by little old ladies of an isolated island in rural Japan, could simultaneously represent some sort of political message in a different part of the world, was difficult to swallow. As I sat there, unable to believe that the professor was lying or wrong but equally unable to buy that the Sado Okesa had anything to do with Yasser Arafat, Palestine, or the Middle East, I decided that logically the situation itself was an impossibility, and I must therefore be having a dream. And I promptly woke up.

Vivid as it was, only the extent of David's hearty laughs as I recounted it to him later really convinced me it was only fiction.

(but when I think of the song now, who comes to mind but Yasser...)

Recording My Spoiled Naivete

Well, all my harassment about unfulfilled promises has had an effect, and David has finally managed to deliver a satisfactorially-sketchy hotel room. He's actually described it as 'very nice' comparatively speaking, so I've understood that this hotel is among the nicer that I will be calling home over the course of the next eight months.
Nevertheless, it has managed to set a new low for my personal experience. (And I have pretty low standards.)

While complaining isn't going to make anything any better, and I don't really feel the need to vent, in the interest of preserving a record of this initial innocent disdain for the benefit of my presumably jaded later self, I'll record my various grievances here:
* floors, wall, ceiling, furniture and all facilities are in a general dumpster-level state of age and disrepair, though not offensively
* the bathroom rivals that featured in Trainspotting, offensively: no counter, soap, separate shower, flooring, covered drain, or door handle; the toilet lacks a seat, back cover, flusher, and toilet paper; extensive leaking, dripping, and consequent splashing everywhere from hanging showerhead/ faucet/ toilet/ wall leads to a sticky and wet floor and generally wet experience while using the loo; large hole in the ceiling leads to a wide and dusty metal duct
(perks must be acknowleged: operational door lock; water present in the toilet bowl, if foul; functional flush and tap; apparently functional showerhead- though temperature control would be a fantasy, and accidentally inserting one's naked foot into the toilet bowl, a risk)
* the only bedding provided on my bed is a faded sheet adorned with multiple small bloodstains
* the metal duct leading out of the bathroom 'ceiling' traverses the top of the room to exit presumably outside, and has played host several times in the past few hours to either the death or mating of a loud, heavy, and madly scrambling rat and/or other animal. We considered throwing a shoe at it to stop it but I was mildly concerned that such an assault might completely rupture the rickety duct, or otherwise upset the rat's stability on the gently sloping path leading directly to the aforementioned large hole in bathroom ceiling (said hole's merits as an escape route in the event of a zombie apocalypse have duly been noted and explained to David, the zombie-risk-uninitiated. I will do my best to enlighten him.)

Despite all this, the room is large and high-ceilinged, making it spacious, and quite comfortably generally speaking due to the two strong fans. There are also two patio chairs and a relatively new color television for our use, which blows my mind: for me, television rates far lower on the scale of hotel priorities than, say, a presumably-cheaper toilet seat.


POSTSCRIPT (next day): my failure to duly acknowledge the functional bathroom light earlier has duly been punished, as it now no longer works. flashlights ain't just for camping..