Adventures of Tom Sako and Damien Waterford

Sudan

The Sudanese embassy nazi's (officials) in Addis Ababa lived up to their reputation of making Sudan a hard place to get into and kept us waiting for weeks before giving us a visa. The excuses, misinformation and lack of reasoning were incredible. "Its just got to come from here to there and in 48 hours you'll have your visa". "We're waiting on a fax from Khartoum . Try again this afternoon or come back in two days". After the tenth time we're told "It still hasn't arrived". We ask "What's your fax number so we can call Khartoum to get it faxed". They reply "We don't know the fax number here". Many times we were scraping our jaws up off the ground from some of the statements they were making.

Weeks later we find out the embassy doesn't even have a fax. With the right contacts in Khartoum and Addis Ababa on our side, the documents mysteriously turned up and we ended up getting our visa applications processed and approved. All up it took over 2 months from the initial enquiry.

So it was great to get on the road again and we headed straight for the border. No worries about the border crossing but we had to pay another registration fee. Many police barrier points once in and the first 150kms to the bitumen was very rough and corrugated. Some roadwork's but no one around doing anything, probably waiting on a late payment from the government. Got through with the usual little mechanical issues and hitchhikers. Had some kebabs in the first main town of Gederef which went down well as we had had enough of Ethiopian food and headed on towards the capital Khartoum.

Driving through a desert, there were many trucks broken down on the road and others that had crashed and burned just off it. Then another that had just had a head on accident with a bus. We pulled into the next town as it was getting hard to see and went to Khartoum the next morning. It was Friday and an Islamic day off so the capital was quiet which was good for us. The few Arabic street signs didn't help us find our way to the Blue Nile Sailing Club where we were to meet our sponsor Tarig. Tarig helped us get our visa and was a great host for our stay here. He took us to many good eateries and spent Easter Monday with him at his mango farm on the White Nile. Khartoum is about the size of Sydney and Tarig said it was developing fast with more and more international trading.

Sudan is about the size of Western Australia , very dry except for the very south and has basically two types of cultures, the Arab Muslim north and the black African south. They have been in a civil war for about 40 or 50 years which has recently ended. There is still some conflict in the west of Sudan in Darfur which has to do with refugees from Chad . This conflict is one thousand kilometres from Khartoum and apart from a few UN cars around there's no other indication of a so called war torn country.

Islamic men here greet each other in an interesting way usually touching the opposites left shoulder with their right hand with something between a touch and a slap and then shaking each others right hands. I've seen one guy meet up with four others and with two of them he did this, with one he just shook hands and with the other, his best mate, he did the shoulder thing, the big hug and then what looked like being a boxing punch, the big roundhouse into a handshake.

During a normal morning business day while sitting in traffic in a busy street in Khartoum the whole street shook at the sound of a loud explosion. Our newly purchased tyre blew a massive 5" square section out of it scaring the hell out of us and all the people in the street. After a sigh of relief from everyone around we changed the faulty tyre and returned it for a different brand. The most noticeable thing in Sudan is the character of the people. They are warm, genuine, friendly, hospitable, helpful, gentle, generous, honest, shy and in central and northern Sudan religious. They follow Islamic law called Shari'a which includes getting 40 lashes if found to be drunk. The police probably say "I can tell by your eyes". We are pretty safe from this as there is no alcohol available. In 1983 when they started the Shari'a here, they had one month of drunkenness and then tipped all of their remaining supplies into the Nile .

The bars in Khartoum certainly have a quieter feel about them and apart from these bars, the men and women here are very much separated. We haven't seen a male and a female holding hands in public. There are many other Islamic laws which I won't mention but it leads me to the safety within the community. Damien and I have been to downtown and the outer suburbs till late and have felt very safe and comfortable. Khartoum has to be one of the safest cities in the world and the religion and Shari'a must be the reasons behind it. Everywhere that we have been to in Sudan gives us this feeling. It is quite a contrast to some other places.

Damien and I had hoped to meet up with his mum Patricia and sister Marianne in Egypt but we were not going to make it up there in time. So Damien flew to Cairo and I was hoping to meet them in Aswan which is closer to the Sudan border. I headed straight up but heard the next boat to cross into Egypt wasn't until the following Thursday so I had a week to get up there. First was a 350 kms desert crossing to get back to the Nile and then went and checked out some ruins. Had many hitchhikers but not many that could speak English. Had one guy who kept talking to me in Arabic and spitting out the window but the poor woman and child in the back were getting the spray.

One thing you have to do when you enter a new town is register yourself with the police or security. In Dongola, a nice palm treed town on the river, I walked into the police station to do this but they were all glued to the TV watching a Sudanese soap. I had to wait and watch it with them and they got around to my business in the ads.

The White Nile river that comes up from the south of the country to Khartoum , loses over half of its water to evaporation is an area called the Sudd. The Sudd is like a low lying swamp the size of Tasmania . The British said 100 years ago that it wanted to build a 360km long c ana l to pass this area so more water would travel to Egypt and it got started on about 30 years ago. The biggest mechanical digger in the world was being used but was blown up by the South in the civil war between Sudan and Southern Sudan .

The South said it was another example of the North exploiting the South's resources. The environmental effects of this c ana l would have been disastrous as local people and wildlife in this area would have been lost. All the water projects on the Nile seem to be poorly planned or used in self consideration. I am currently at a place called Wadi Halfa at the very north of Sudan . Wadi Halfa is on the edge of the biggest artificial lake in the world, Lake Nasser . Lake Nasser exists because the Egyptians built a dam 360kms away down the Nile at Aswan and the dam's backwaters stretch all the way from Egypt to here.

That's like building a dam in Sydney and its waters stretching all the way passed Canberra . Wadi Halfa now is a disappointing dusty town built beyond the floodwaters of the dam. Old Wadi Halfa some 50kms from here is now covered by water and the 50000 Nubian (locals) people in the area were forced to move. 15 per cent to here and 85 per cent to an area 1000kms from here where they were again flooded out and then had to move to the capital. I saw pictures of old Wadi Halfa and it was a typically beautiful Nile river town with shaded tree lined streets and palm groves around old Nubian buildings. The Sudanese are now building a massive new dam on the Nile at the 4th cataract about 500kms north of Khartoum to meet their growing energy needs. It started some years ago and is expected to be finished in 2008. I went to see this dam and got through the first security gate and then got turned back at the second. People have told me that many more people will be displaced by this and that this government does not compensate these people.

Travelling along the Nile river just about right through Sudan , you feel its importance to the people. To the north of Khartoum 99 per cent of the people live near it and depend on it. On a lot of the rivers edge are palm groves and greenery up to a kilometre from it and then its just desert. On other parts of the river, its edge and the desert meet. Also a common thing with people here is to sleep outside under brilliant night skies. Its very comfortable and peaceful.Around 1500 years before Christ, Sudan was known as the Land of Cush . It was the source of ivory, ebony, gold and slaves for the powerful Egyptians who would have raiding parties into the area.

About 300 kilometres south of the Egyptian border are the Soleb Temple ruins built by an Egyptian pharaoh over 3000 years ago. I got to these ruins by seeing a guy called Mohammed (about one in six males around here are called Mohammed, maybe one in each family) in a village called Wawa and walked 500 metres, took a motor boat across the Nile which was about 1 km wide and then walked another 300 metres to this impressive isolated place. Damien told me about seeing historical sites in Egypt where there are many touts and crowds so it was good to take this place in without that. There were some columns still standing but others are just lying where they collapsed. Broken clay pots and other ornaments just lying around for all this time hardly touched.

Sudan is a great country to visit mainly because of its people and travelling the Nile here has been most memorable. The last 200km section on the northern roads were testing with them being so corrugated that there are many side tracks, but they were risky as they don't necessarily stay close to the main track and can turn into soft sand. It's like rolling the dice and hoping not to get a bad one but being a gambler I rolled once too many times and found myself a kilometre off the main track with the sand getting softer and deeper. I aborted the side track and made it back but not before having to do a bit of spade work to dig myself out. It was a thrilling ride.

Leaving the dock from Sudan , the guy that had helped me for 3 days the get the barge, customs, immigration, the bank, the food and the security in order insisted on not receiving anything for his services. This was typical of all the Nubian people I met and most of the Sudanese. The Sudanese treat all people equally no matter what religion or nationality one is and to see an angry person around here is as rare as seeing Sudanese roadwork's. It is a special place and has been the first country in Africa I haven't wanted to leave. Thank you to the wonderful people of Sudan and so as it turned out, it became harder to leave than it was to get in.