Saludo de ... الخرطوم (El Khartoum)- english

Lord Kitchener`s gunboat Melek which he used to bombed El Khartoum in 1895

[Two letters plus just a day in el Khartoum]
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El Khartoum, 05/08/2012
 

Hi mom
 

Muhammad is the Somali system administrator at the school where I used to work. We were always having fun about Somali pirates (I used to ask him to equip a pirate ship together in order to attack oil tankers!).
 

I'm in El Khartoum right now and camping right besides the Nile, in a sort of garden, a derelict sailing club (no sailing boats but cards-playing- homies.
 

the nile, blue nile sailing club

It is Ramadan now meaning everything (most shops, restaurants, cafes) is closed during the day and it is hardly possible to find a small cafe where one can eat, drink something, quite a change compared to Ethiopia where you tripped over the little cafes and where almost everywhere you could have the delicious Inqoulal fir fir or the injera (though small boutiques here are open).
 

I'm a bit scared about the rest of the journey, the north, the desert .. It's already pretty hot here, over thirty degrees and even during the night the temperature hardly cools down, imagine what to be expected in the desert... It makes cycling tough although there are green spaces (trees, palm trees, lemon trees) because you are always close to the Nile.
 

Also now I camp [illegally] whether in such a garden, or in a madrassa (school) where often trees can be found in the court yard. Towards the evening people come outside their houses, spreading out a mat on the street and have dinner together. Everywhere in Sudan, every town, village during the period of the ramadan is like this.

Wad medeni - El Khartoum, Sudan
 

They always invite me to join them with having dinner (it is almost begging haha), but what annoys me is that they don`t do this between each other but me. After a day of cycling I am that tired that I just want to rest, having peace and eating but alone. SO in response to all these invitations I say all the time `ma, shukran` ( = no thanx), haha ​​...
 

I also need water all the time. Here you find enormous stone amphorae positioned in groups along the road in which the water remains cool throughout the whole day!. I have also seen this in Mali, but here is truly a system, moreover the most are refilled.

 

You talk about all those children [during your Egypt trip in 1979], which sounds promising, aarcchhh. 

I am relieved to be here because here people leave me alone. In Ethiopia, I had to concentrate myself the whole day: on the difficult mountainous terrain, on groups of children shouting at me, throwing stones at me or putting things in my wheels. And then there were the adults with their need for attention (really EVERY moron I passed had to say something to me, or make a comment on me.. very tiring). I hate those people.

the road to Gonder, Ethiopia

 
 Bahir Dar- Gonder, Ethiopie

 




 
 getting wood, barefooted! (Ethiopia)

I am very clear: I want to be left alone and they [the Sudanese] respect that. If someone starts to hang around me or leans against me, I make him very clear that he must fuck off or I ignore him. Here in Sudan I am not bothered by [groups of] people. Many would like to chat with me, but I ignore that [often].
 

Ethiopia

Yesterday I had a fight in a restaurant because the cook treated me in a villainous way. You can just let it go/ accept such rudeness but now I have something like: 'I am now 2 years on the road, it's not easy what I do, so I will not some moron insult me .. `, so I went to this guy to tell him that he was an asshole.
 

Here I am camping in a kind of palm-oil plantation, three adults (workers) see me, look for a short while at me, greet me and continue walking on. Unprecedented! In Ethiopia unthinkable. Even a pause in Ethiopia was difficult, because of children everywhere. At the end I was too tired to be angry with them, and just threw a stone in their direction which also worked fine.
 

Castle- Gonder, Ethiopia


Atsetewodros, Lord of Gonder! (Ethiopia)

In the end I even have beaten up an Habesja very strange, because I naturally am not using violence. But these people began to irritate me enormously. In addition, they are chickenshits. In Gonder was someone in a car making kiss moves towards me. I went over, presto: car door closed, window to the top, locked. I was so furious, I threatened to break his windshield wiper, immediately surrounded by all these ## children ## around me, an adult that had to calm me down, crazy things ...

The road to Sudan! (Gonder- Metama, Ethiopie)

I think it has to do because you are on the edge of the desert sitting in the desert, they leave you alone.
 

Here I must `register` (50 USD) plus extend my visa. It took me half the day to locate them [= the Ministry of Alien Affairs = immigration] plus that almost nobody speaks English. But who cares,  ... what should I do here anyway during the ramadan? Come back tomorrow and maybe insj-allah I manage to do both procedures and then 2 days waiting for the visa extension.
 

There is no turd anyway to experience because of the Ramadan. There are places where you can eat and drink but they are scarce and hidden. In that respect I think they have a double moral here. So I discovered by chance behind two rows advertising signs perpendicular to eachother a huge space spanned by a huge canvas tent crammed with people drinking tea or eating fuul (stewed beans).
 
 
homies in a discussion

If it is dark then things start coming alive: people will come into the streets very nice. EVERYTHING is outside, trade, food. Huge housing blocks here in Khartoum where on the bottom, in the caverns people swarm.
 

Occasionally I see a Dinka with his protruding teeth that remind me of the south. They talk the same kinda language a kind of market-arabic .. Much difference with the southerners I do not see, though they are here maybe a bit lighter in color of the skin. Here you have people from everywhere: Darfur, Kordofan, Nuba ...
 

 
During the day it is possible to buy some stuff but the cozy كافيتيريا (cafeteria) that serves delicious coffee together with a cake unfortunately doesn`t exist [during daytime], Al Qadaref, Sudan

200 km before Khartoum my back wheel rim said suddenly 'crac' ... Fortunately I had a spare one with me, but going to the bicycle mechanic seems becoming almost routine. I decided to stay in that town, it was very cozy, with a green madrassa, three mosques ..... really amazing how religious one can be ...
 

SO I will go now and find myself a bicycle mechanic and a nice shey bi nana (= mint tea).
 

have fun on your trip with the disabled!
 

JW

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El Khartoum, 07/08/2012
 

Ca va pere?
 

... And what `s so amazing is that you can produce such a versatile mail adressing all of us [four suns, one daughter] where no one deficits attention hahhahahaha.
 

I got my visa extended!! ALLAHHHH AKKHHBARRRR! . Now you will think is he crazy or something that he writes something banal, but no, those guys HERE are crazy seriously!. For 1 additional month you are obliged to find a 'sponsor'. I had no idea what that was but now I do. A sponsor is a Sudanese citizen who more or less is responsible for you. So you must first find a Real Sudanese Friend, then he must be taken to the immigration, sign something and then finally you get the visa ..
 
 
potential Sudanese friends where the gentleman in the white skirt has some kind of leaf stick in his mouth with which he brushes his teeth, Al Qadaref Sudan

After three frustrating days where I could not find a Sudanese friend (really, no one here wants or dares to stand guarantee for you plus that I might not be a very social type which also didn`t really help), miscommunication ('no English', meaning you may drop dead), lost in a Sudanese Kafkian labyrinth where I was sent from counter A to B, C ,D and again to A  I was finally brought to a female (!) general, an obese lady with a purple head scarf and a quite handsome face, a personage that seemed just walked away from the set of the  movie Star Wars.
 

I got the chance to explain myself to here, she was interested and impressed that I had cycled from Addis Ababa all the way to Khartoum. After paying 260 genuine Sudanese pounds (43 USD = 30 euros) waiting two hours (! ) (which in this kind of bandit states is really fast!!) I was the proud owner of a registration stamp and a one month visa!!.

 

beautiful calligraphy, although I don`t really know what it means

You see that I become happy of different things than a tropical island or sitting on an elephant hahhahah ..... 

STILL a month to hurt myself, what a masochist one would think, but it's actually a very interesting country I'm right now. It is now Ramadan where at the evening paople gather into the streets, spreading a mat in the middle of street (there is absolutely no traffic, great, and that in the busy metropolis Khartoum!) .. Everyone eats together, they want me also to join them but I say all the time `Ma, Shukran` (no, thanx), hahaha
 
 
bush, Sudan

Towards the north I will pass many pharaoh sjit from the past! Pyramids, forts, a Roman bath ... Wadi Halfa is the village on the northern border with Egypt, located on Lake Nasser, up to where you, honorable father, have cycled [1979]??!. Hence, I will follow the same route as you but in reverse ... Did you also then cycle from Eilat to Suez? Or from Gaza into Egypt?.
 

 
flat landscape like the netherlands ...

 
... only the Tukols don`t fit in the picture

Now I am camping in a kind of sailing club two meters from the river Nile. A wonderful place for 5 U.S. dollars were it not that it hardly cools down, even  during the night I am swimming in my sweat. Only at 02:30 it is a bit cooler ... Cruel, but I love it ... It makes me really think of Curacao, and such a heat is a bit difficult but actually also nice (yes, like you I'm referring to Curacao :)).  I look like you in that sense, daddy!.
 

street view, El Khartoum

Yet I think I will leave that idyllic spot for a `Lokanda` (= rancid local hotel) because they have fans. Moreover, I found one on a very lively place in the city, where all the homies gather during the evening slobbing from their `shey bi nana` (= mint tea) and eating their `ta`hamea` or `Funguul` (= Stewed beans)...

 
the `Khartoum Al Kabir mosque`. Somewhat left in such a bunker-like unpainted building that looks like it has been stormed by Soviet troops plus the melodic warbling of  the Mouahzzin for free  I have pitched my tent!.

 
a room in a Lokanda, with my exposed things, Al Qadaref (Sudan)



A magic apparatus indeed (the bicycle) although every part has been replaced except the saddle and the frame

This tea is served here by very handsome Peki `s hahhaha, African queens really, no kidding!. They all have a headscarf, but as a kind of veil wrapped around their heads and their faces are fascinating, very handsome.  

It's an islamic country here but you see Muslim women everywhere, working, also in the civil service, not tucked away as Morocco... though it is mainly men who go out to sip from their tea or on the street to read the newspaper ..

just the sight of those wonderful shaped cones increases my heartbeat, Wad Medeni, Sudan
 

Anyway, I keep you no longer bored with this mail, Dad, your birthday on September 1th I probably will not make but insj-allah maybe next year haha.
 

Hermanos y hermana, disfrute, un `brazo muy fuerte desde el Khartoum!
 

JW

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Khartoum, 12/ 08/ 2012

Today I slept until 12.30, really bad but yes, I'm again in a kind of paradise (= rest, good food, chill out and sleep a lot) moreover where the rhythm is somehow dictated by the Ramadan: the evening comes to life here. It is the moment you can sit on a `terrace '(= imagine a type of stools at half knee height without backrest posted on the street opposed to a small lectern where an african queen graciously donates aqueous shey bi nana.

I eat fuul and djedjeez (a kind porridge of beans and chicken) and I love' it haha. So I eat it every day. There is not much different stuff anyway besides kebab or kibda (= liver).

a Sudanese menu plus that it is a good occasion to practice Arabic

 

... although this remains for the time being Chinese for me

me on the balcony of my little palace (el khartoum)

The traditional clothing here is white with a white turban wrapped around the head. On inquiry it turned out to be traditional clothing and not to protect you against swirling sand, as in the Western Sahara.

                               an Omar Al B. `look alike figure

Today I tried to visit the national  museum which contains lots of stuff from the Pharaoh's time , but thanks (again) to the # # Ramadan  ### they were closed. It is a challenge here to visit a museum, maybe insj-allah they are open the day after tomorrow!

... So I used the released time to [let] repair things that had been broken (my watch strap was replaced by an enormous stuffed gentleman who looked like a rebel from Darfur, [let] repair a broken sandal , glue a sandal sole) or add supplies (4 enormous pots of jam that will by my fuel to cross a desert).

And not to mention the bicycle things like: [let] replace the rear axis, unscrew the freewheel and put it on the stronger wheel, calibrating the brakes, map stages up to Eilat ...

 

... the road to Eilat

Even something like sending postcards is quite a happening. If you enter the post office it is like entering 1920: a wooden counter with bars, a gentleman in a white robe with a yarmulke on his head and the proud possessor of 1 eye turning all the time a page which he stamps.

I caused a lot of problems there because I don`t speak Arabic plus that I complained about the stamp price (5 pounds each which is about 60 cents, a capital when you consider that for 14  pound you have a  plate fuul AND a chicken broast ) ... These postcards are a sting in my financial heart!.

But it is a reunion with an old friend: John Garang from South Sudan! (see 4th foto, http://pescadorcamino.blogspot.com/2012/03/saludo-de-juba.html).

And of course Omar El B. (in discretion I do not mention his full name because he is wanted by the ICC (International Criminal Court) and Interpol.

From right to left: a somehow fat John Garang (caused by the good life in Nairobi, Kenya) and Omar Al B.

Here they are still good friends but due to the current quarrel between neighbors Omar el B. and Silva Kirr (the successor of John Garang) I had to make an odyssey of 4000 km through three countries in order to avoid the border between the two Sudans!.

Juba- Kampala- Nairobi- Addis Abeba- El Khartoum and after `Ila Misrah, insj- allah`! (to Egypt if-Allah-wants-it)

 

Silva Kirr: successor of the deceased John Garang [ who died under suspicious circumstances in a helicopter crash]

Anyway, I forgive them, I had the chance to visit three extra countries haha ...

Actually, it's just pure necessity (immigration) or if I need something that propels me through this doomed city. So today I was on a little `quest` to find a gas cartridge [that was impossible to find] (while in the north, west and central Africa it was never a problem, grrrr) ..... So I guess I finally will have the chance to use the white gas burner that I carry now for more then a year with me ...

I don`t like the city. I would throw a huge bomb on it and rebuild it from scratch but everything greener, with loads of trees. For God sake, the river Nile is nearby!. But they don`t care! ...

Tomorrow I'll evaluate whether I continue or wait another day to visit that museum ... I have at least one more reason to stay a bit longer in this paradise ... haha

 
... ready for the desert!