Bureaucracy Blues - How to Get a Sudanese Visa - 24th Jan 2002
Starting Optimistically
British Bureaucracy - The Red Mist Descends
Secure Ablutions
An Early Lunch Then Some Tyre Shopping
Guidebooks and Such
It Was Intended as a Compliment
A Bad Penny
He's A Lovely Man
So, we went to the Sudan embassy. We were armed with copious quantities of photos (4 each) and contact information for Ismat (our guy in Khartoum) along with passports, huge quantities of Egyptian cash, backup US dollars, marriage certificate et al.
We got the forms for application and filled them in and took them to the appropriate window. Standing in the queue, we noticed that the Sudanese require 5 photos. God knows what for. I can't imagine that anyone ever looks at them anyway. The very nice man told us that four would be sufficient and we were mightily relieved...but we needed to get four photocopies of our application.
No problem, the next guy back in the queue pointed us in the direction of a copy bureau and the manager there needed no communication at all, he simply looked at the form, said "four copies?" and nodded. Clearly this guy makes his living off the back of Sudanese bureaucracy. He had a nice line in passport photos, too. Back to the queue and the very nice man pointed out that we needed a letter of recommendation from our embassy.
British Bureaucracy - The Red Mist Descends
Last time, in Istanbul, the only hitch was power to the computers and so we expected a very quick trip to get this sorted as the British Embassy was just around the corner. This time, the lass behind the counter told us that British Embassies do not issue letters any more even though we had pointed out the Istanbul had done the biz. She gave us, instead, a photocopy of a statement saying that the Brits do not have to give letters out any more as we don't expect them off anyone else.
It is worthwhile noting here that Britain does not require them of anyone else simply because she does not let anyone else in! This photocopy cost us 84 Egyptian pounds - that's 14 quid to you. The copies that we had got of our applications had cost us 0.25 Egyptian pounds each. The total of our other day's expenses - hotel, food, transport, beer and Internet came to a total of 58 Egyptian pounds. Talk about rip-off Britain International. Stop paying your taxes, everyone, you get bugger all for it.
While Pat was getting all heated up by the injustice of it all, I had other things on my mind. For some reason my bowels had decided to go into overdrive and I knew that a trip to the toilet was imperative. To get to the consulates desk we had had to go through several levels of security. Somehow I could not imagine that they would simply allow me to nip into the office area and use the Ladies. But I am a British citizen and I have paid my dues the least they can do when charging exorbitant fees is to allow a lady to relieve herself in comfort. So I asked!
Her kind reply was that I could use the ones in the commercial area but I couldn't go until we were escorted back to the perimeter. The griping pains increasing in intensity and frequency by the time our escort arrived, I mumbled to her that I needed to pop into the commercial section. This of course created complications, for if she was to escort me to the toilet this left Pat free to plant bombs around the Embassy. Depositing Pat under the watch of a guard she guided me to the toilet, stood outside and seemed highly embarrassed when I left having heard every detail of my explosion. I was not at all embarrassment as the relief was far more delightful.
An Early Lunch Then Some Tyre Shopping
Back at the Sudanese, we waited by our favourite window again for about 10 minutes smiling politely, as one should in these situations. Shortly, the guy behind the window told us: it was too late for today as it was past eleven and that we had to come back tomorrow. My how we laughed.
We filled in the rest of the day with traipsing about Cairo on errands. After a bit of a nightmare with the first rear tyre on the bike, I was keen to get a new spare or at least a decent dirt tyre for the back as we are heading for a sandy bit shortly. On the way back from Giza on the ill-fated bus, I had noticed from the overpass where we got stuck that there was a BMW dealer next to a Kawasaki dealer. This could only mean a bike shop. When we walked the width of Cairo, we discovered a car dealership. It had been impossible to see the plate glass from our elevated position of the day before! Still, we got to meet the head of BMW (Egypt) who happened to be visiting the shop at that time.
He was incredibly good to us and spent loads of time ringing around to try and find the bits that we wanted. Replete with tea and a working knowledge of the BMW assembly policy in Egypt along with a couple of addresses, we returned to our hotel.
Next up on the agenda was the search for information on the next stage of our journey. So far, we have survived from Turkey with "Istanbul to Cairo on a shoestring". Although it is the habit of travellers to constantly knock Lonely Planet guides, to be fair, we have found this to be a god send. Our trawl of the bookstores of Cairo ended in the American University Bookstore (complete with armed guards, of course).
Here we discovered that Sudan is so insignificant on the scale of visitable countries, Lonely Planet only has 6 pages dedicated to it in a guide on the whole of Africa. We decided that we'll play Sudan by ear, but bought a guide for Ethiopia which certainly seems to have a lot going for it. No maps are available of Sudan. This could be due to the fact that there are no roads to map. We hope not.
Amusingly, the store manager of the American University Bookstore's chosen daily paper is the Daily Mail. We berated him for his lack of decency and pointed him in the direction of the broadsheets on display. (still, I did have a quick sneak at the footy reports to see whether Bolton had indeed been robbed at 'boro. It seems it was a fair result)
It Was Intended as a Compliment
We tend not to walk around hand in hand on the streets as it seems to cause a little consternation in people despite the fact that it is the norm for men to walk, hand in hand, arm in arm, and hug and kiss openly. Not the place to be heterosexual. Anyway, we tend to make sure even without physical contact it's pretty clear we are together.
So there we are walking casually down a highstreet when a man about mid thirties walks in the opposite direction and as he passes his hand unceremoniously grabs my arse! Now the last time this happened to me was in a souq in Tunisia and I hadn't told Pat for fear of a scene.
This time, it was so unexpected, as up until then there had been no hassle in that direction, that I instinctively blurted out ' that man felt my arse' and simultaneously we both swung round to confront the 'pervert'.
Pat shouted 'Oy you' in broad Arabic Boltonian, as I pointed to the bloke making a quick get away over a 4 lane road. His guilt was obvious as he gave us a quick glance and ran off weaving through the traffic. It was not that I'm not really that bothered about someone feeling my arse, it's more the implication that he thinks it's OK and I am sure that he would not have done it to an Egyptian women. So for him a white tourist is fair game, apparently.
It reminds me of a little sad scene I saw in Aleppo, we had been walking through a souq and there was many a shop with sedate women's underwear, flannel nighties, and nylon full length petticoats that kind of thing. My attention was drawn to the stance of an old bloke looking in the window. The intensity on his gaze and the rapid movement of his hand down his baggy pants could only mean one thing. It is at times like these that I think Freud may have been right that a bit of cathartic pornography may save the public from being harrassed.
We set off bright and early to get our forms lodged at the Sudanese Embassy in good time. This would allow to pick them up the same afternoon. Not. When we handed our forms in, the guy looked up at us and said "Sunday". This is five days by anyone's reckoning and we questioned his prediction stating that everything was in order and that confirmation had been sent through from Khartoum. It made no difference and we sat licking our wounds for a moment when in walked Scully.
SCULLY UPDATE: Bike now in a compound at Nuweiba awaiting clearance for import tax and all that. Still no carnet. No chance of raising a carnet in England/Ireland. In cahoots with an English lady (Stevie) with a Landrover who is in the same position. Nuweiba customs had asked for a non-returnable tax deposit of 1500 quid for his bike and he considered it excessive - the bike only being worth 500. He had looked at all sorts of other options e.g. Saudi and sea passage to Port Sudan, but it wasn't happening. Still, he did get told that his visa would only take two days.
Went to look at tyres and found nothing more suitable for off-roading than my present arrangement and so decided not to fork out excessive quantities of wonga at this stage. Spent the rest of the day shambling around again and trying to ring Khartoum to raise a bit of interest on the visa front. Couldn't get through.
At least we found out how to use Internet phones and send text messages from the Internet.
Met up with Scully and Stevie in the evening and went out for some chomps. Lovely food and the usual mad banter made for a jolly evening until Hippy was struck down with bad guts again.
During the night the sore throat I'd had for a couple of days worsened and I awoke feeling that someone had unwittingly pulled the plug on my energy circuits. I could not raise the energy to go to breakfast and Pat, being not one to waste food, ate mine.
Up with the larks and I went out and got hospital snacks for Hippy. Fruit, chocolate croissants and pop. No Lucozade available, so the recovery may take longer than expected.
Meanwhile, I attempted to read, but I mostly slept, with the intermittent interuption of that whine of a mosquito in my earhole, that I didn't seem to have the will to swot.
Headed down to the Embassy to have the crack and try to put a bit of pressure on to get things shifting only to find that the visas were ready and issued to me within five minutes of me stumping up the cash. 55 dollars each.
This is turning out to be one of the greatest expenses that we face. But, to be fair, given that we are travelling like a pair of tight wads, it is probably the only decent sum of money some of these countries will see from us and I can't grumble too much. At least we do have the freedom to go there.
Rest of day nursing the sick one and reading her the latest novel to keep the spirits up. Hippy can in fact read by herself, but lacks discipline and tends to drop the book with far too great a frequency. The upshot is that I tend to have got through all of our reading material while she (the cat's mother) is still leafing through a prologue or some such. The joint reading of books has something of a Basil Brush air to it. Boom! boom!
He can be a sweetheart when he wants to be.
We decided to do one more day based in Cairo and head down to Memphis and Saqarra (spelt variously).
The road down was a real change of scenery. Very reminiscent of Guyana as there were canals, palm trees and fantastic greenery. It was mostly flat, too, which just about clinches it.
The sites were worthy and we were much impressed by the condition of the carvings and painting of same. A little naive in their composition, but a damn sight better than I could do! I think the carvings of the animals was the most impressive feature. There was the usual range of 'helpful' folk who unsurprisingly asked for baksheesh at every turn but got none. Most of the card sellers were fairly easy to dispatch and so it turned out to be a fairly stress free visit.
Poor Hippy is still suffering, though and I am beginning to get concerned that the lass seems to be permanently run down. This was not part of the plan. More fruit needed!