Khartoum And Thereabouts - 7 March 2002
Khartoum & The Way Ahead
Monday to Meroe
Tuesday back Again
Wednesday Woe for Wanderers
Thursday Early Start
Still in Khartoum. We discussed plans to move on with Stevie and Sculley, both of whom had agreed to travel together as far as Kenya. We were so grateful to Stevie for having borne a huge burden for us that we wanted to offer her our company for the next bit if it made her more comfortable. The roads in the north of Ethiopia are said to be quite hard and rough (but not sandy, thankfully) but the rainy season tends to make them slippery. We carry on together.
Pat watched enviously as some of the Hot Rockers acted as crew in a sailing race on the Nile. This is one of the few perks on staying at the Blue Nile Sailing Club. You may say why wasn't Pat out there doing his stuff, well the falls in the sand had taken their toll on his back and he was nursing an aching spine. To avoid feeling too jealous we went to see the charging of the guard at Khartoum Palace and the opening of the Palace for the first time in 30 years - i.e. when they kicked the Brits out.
A lot of marching, snazzy uniform and band playing, quite reminiscent of the Armistice Day in Georgetown. The opening of the palace was a disappointment. It only seemed to be open for the posh nobs and merely a little museum was open to us.
Interestingly the vintage cars revealed that the old British governor had been content with a Humber and when the president got into power it was upgraded to a Rolls or three.
Mostly the museum had a bunch of random plaques for the opening of this that or the other and presents that were given to various presidents to presumably win their favour. One plaque in particular was rather poignant. It was beautifully inlaid with complex Arabic Scribe as a present from Saudi to celebrate the opening of the Medical Factory in Khartoum in '97 - which the Americans bombed in 2000 believing that they were making Napalm. For some reason it is OK for the US to make chemical and biological warfare but not for anyone else!
The rest of this day and the next were taken up with trying to get up to date with emails and the journal. It is a pretty slow process out here. None of your ISDN lines and fast computers. As with Eastern Europe, all of the computers are ex-Europe or US and so are strictly last generation. We are told that things get worse further on so journal offerings may get less and less frequent. The major problem for us is that the more time we spend between jounaling, the longer the session catching up. Spending two days in the confines of a Khartoum cyber-cafe is not the most momentous event in our lives.
Saturday brought a draw against Blackburn due to a poor defensive performance by the sound of it. The World Service did at least dedicate the second half as the featured match commentary. I resolved to take the scarf to further temples for more mystic charging. Fortunately, 150 miles up the road are the pyramids of Meroe.
Fortunately, the Hot Rockers were sorting out visas for Ethiopia at the same time as us and graciously took our passports away for processing. A major advantage was that the letter that is required from the Brit Embassy was shared by a whole lot of us and so did not cost 35 quid for once.
Other bits of paperwork required in Sudan include travel permits for any areas to be visited, permits to take photos and permits to visit sites of antiquity. Fortunately, getting all of these was quite harmless even though various trips had to be made hither and thither to get photocopies done. At least all of the officials we dealt with were quite charming. At the Department for Antiquities, our permit was reduced in cost from 80 US dollars to 0 after we had a bit of a moan about the fact that their prices were much higher than Syria, Jordan and Egypt.
We blasted up an asphalt road to Meroe, only to get confused as to where the actual site was. The pyramids were clear to see from the road, but there seemed to be no particular tracks leading off to them. There was mention of a local guesthouse and so we went to look for it hoping to get further info. What appeared to be a guesthouse had clearly been closed for some time and had sand banked up against the doors. We decided to go back and just head off road. My experiences in the sand had left my confidence a bit shattered and so we made very slow progress over the few hundred yards to the site entrance. Once inside, we sweated our way around some rather charming little pyramids. Regrettably, an Italian adventurer had removed the tops from these 50 tombs in an effort to rob them. Of course, there was only one that had any contents and so his net effect was simply the desecration of a lovely set of monuments.
It was impossible to actually get inside the pyramids and so I fretted that the magic would not be put into the scarf - for it is well known that the power of a pyramid is focussed at a point one third of the way up. I had to make do with sitting on the top of a few of them.
The guest book revealed that there was a steady stream of tourists - about 6 a week. Of course, we had the whole site to ourselves and wandered about the sand dunes like explorers. Quite a romantic experience. Apart from the heat, that is.
Over the main road, one gets to the Royal City of Meroe which was not really up to much. I get the impression that because of its proximity to the edge of the Nile, it has been seen as a handy source of stone and been raided steadily for donkeys years. The environment here is also pretty tough on the rock and only the black basalt features were in anything like presentable condition.
We rough camped outside the gate next to a railway line. We had difficulty explaining to the guard that trains adjacent to us has no effect after the many years spent at Crossing Cottage.
In the morning, we were faced with the usual crowd of rubbernecking local children. I guess the site of a Landrover ambulance and a huge motorcycle is as alien to them as Ferrari parking in Moss Side. The interest does not seem to fade at all, though, and they will just stare at us for hours on end. Hippy, of course can stare with the best of them and they start shifting uneasily after a while before almost breaking into a trot to escape the mad psycho-starer.
On the way up and the way back to Khartoum, we did our best to look in at the Sablooka falls which are located at the sixth cataract of this stretch of the Nile. The guidebook describes them as seldom visited and this is blindingly obvious, as it is impossible to find them. We went up and down a stretch of road being told to turn off 5 km that way and 7 km back the other way... We decided that we'll wait for the more famous and more easily visited falls in Ethiopia.
We nearly got invited back to a BBQ when we got back to Khartoum. In fact, a van arrived to collect a group of us from the sailing club and wafted us down to diplomatic land. The house we pulled up at had a lovely large pool and a generally charming layout. Very reminiscent of the High Commissioner's house in Georgetown - but that's another story.
Our major problem here was that although the guard graciously allowed us through the gate, it was clear that there was no one home. It transpired that our host had been called to the UK in a hurry but had forgotten to cancel the minibus. We weren't too disappointed as we had a nice ride out anyway.
We ate in town instead at a burger bar. After chomping through pretty top burgers, we got to chatting with some local Uni students who wanted the chance to practise speaking English. They were a charming group who sadly were hoping that their qualification would give them the chance to get abroad. It's so common in these countries that people see TV and other stuff that shows the American way and they want a piece of it.
Who wouldn't? Oh, Hippy and me. These guys were very outspoken about their government and its handling of the war in the south. It seems that the British - or at least that is the commonly held local reasoning - created the division in the country. We can well imagine a bit of divide and rule policy being employed.
We got back just in time for the scarf to be worn for the mid-week match at the Stadium of Light. As usual, the World Service does not cover the mid-week matches and so I went to sleep unaware of developments in the North East.
Next day, Stevie had a bit of a cold and so we decided to chill a bit more at the campsite. Besides helping out with a Brazilian guy's motorcycle reassembly, washing a load of gear and Hippy patching trousers, we did not a lot. Come evening and another overland truck spilled its contents of illegally imported hooch and sold same to selves. Thankyou. I know that at this point Big Al will be muttering about our likely arrest and imprisonment, but lets not go calling kettles black, eh?
We missed out on the chance of having lunch with the Rotary Club by virtue of inertia. Hippy was quite keen, but I find it hard to blag this kind of thing. It was not a full blag as our mate Ismat Mihamied from the Khartoum Hilton had invited us. It was more of a question of why we were going. It was intimated that he may want us to speak about our journey and reasons for it and I'm not too keen on stuff like that. There was the chance that Jimmy Carter was going to be there as he was in town for a health conference - "Why?" you may ask.
We aimed to get away early on Thursday to head for the Ethiopian border. We got about 200 yards after a promising 8:30 start before we ground to a halt with Brumus the Landy making nasty geary noises. Investigation showed that the radius arm bushes attaching the front axle had bitten the dust allowing the front diff to swivel dramatically and straining the swivel on the drive shaft. I think we'll get that fixed!