Gorgora, Metemo Border Post, Gedoref, Khartoum.
Day 275:
The unhappy screaming of small German children woke me before the sun came up. I was about to shout some abuse at them when I heard the parent’s feeble attempt to pacify the tantrums. They had no affect what so ever and while trying not to discipline other people’s brats, I could not help but think back at my own childhood. I was allowed a tantrum once… only once.
I actually managed to fall asleep again and when I finally opened my eyes when the sun was warm on the side of the tent I was very pleased to see my surroundings. I was happy to see the northern shores of Lake Tana and the other Farenji overlanders around in the camp site. Bronco the Dutch Alsatian was chilling in the shade and Michael and Sabine were having their morning coffee next to their impressive 7.5 ton Mercedes truck. Natalie and Paul were still fast asleep and the other mini village camped out in the shade of the massive tree towards the restaurant had hardly stirred. It was fairly clear that we had left the party early the night before. It was however the 31st of December and we did not want to peak too soon!
Coffee making turned into a ceremony that morning and I think we managed to share at least one cup with everyone we cared to hang out with. One of the local dogs decided to adopt us a swell and followed us from camp spot to camp spot, turning over onto its back and waiting for belly scratches at every opportunity. He was very cute, so there were many opportunities! When the children of the disobedient German adults returned to their normal amount of decibels by mid morning, the camp site cleared in an instant! We found ourselves, along with every other camper in the place, in the restaurant tanking and complaining about that family. It soon turned to humour though and no grudges were held… Kim wasn’t too pleased though. Apparently the kids had managed not only to waste every drop of water from the solar showers, but also break them. I overheard her telling their father how his offspring prevented them from making the place as nice as what they wanted to and how they were a nuisance to everyone there. She pretty much told him to either keep them under control or move off. I was impressed!
By mid afternoon the campers were all back by their vehicles and Catt and I spoilt everyone (Almost) with a slice of freshly bakes Chocolate or Banana cake ala Cobb. That was accompanied by another round of coffee and set the perfect mood for the evening that lay ahead. As I think everyone does, we sat around reflecting on the year that had passed and was really pleased with what we had achieved. It was very close to the dream and the plan that we had had and that I thought was quite a thing…
By sunset everyone was back up at the restaurant. Tim did not ask anyone about their dinner plans as he assumed, and rightly so, that no one would want to celebrate the New Year by themselves. They had slaughtered two goats the previous day and there was a roaring fire, ready for the “Braai Master” Tim to cook the meat. Kim had prepared a plate of vegetables and salad form everyone and the fridges were stocked to bursting point. The setting was perfect! The company was fantastic and the party that started was indescribable! There was so much joy and happiness amongst the people there that it was almost hard to believe that the world had any problems at all. Mark played his electronic Piano and serenaded us all and there was an elderly lady who was a professional story teller. She entertained us around the fire with tales of Africa and the great lakes for hours. Michael was the self appointed time keeper and once he started the ten second count down everyone had charged glasses, reddish cheeks and big goofy smiles on their faces.
With a shout here and “whoop whoop” there we entered a new year. It had been 9 months since we rolled out of our Pretoria home and about 8 months since we had seen the last of our families. Our travels had taken us though deserts, up mountains, past lakes and through rain forests and in many ways the challenges of the road were close to an end. We had somehow adapted to a completely different and almost bizarrely simple way of life and for a second I could not imagine ever doing anything else. We were happy… A little drunk and proud to be where we were.
We were not the first to go to bed. When the last bottle of Amarula Liqueur was finished and the beers started getting warm and batteries running the fridges started flashing red and could not power the LED lights any more, we decided to call it a night. We staggered down the hill and were delighted to find our Maggie where we had left her. We fell up the ladder and into bed and closed our eyes with huge big smiles on our faces.
Day 276:
The last ones to get to bed tried their very best to be considerate, but lets face it, at that time in the morning it was not really possible to stay quiet and not giggle obsessively. I think it was about 6:00 when I least Paul come back to the camp site. It was wonderful to close my eyes again and sleep until the same warm sun from the previous day woke us up a few hours later. The German family had managed to control their children as per Kim’s instructions and the camp site seemed blissfully peaceful in the early morning light. From the tent I saw the staff fill the drum for the primitive shower and made a mental note to wait until the sun heated the water slightly before braving it. I saw the vultures circle over the top of the hill and the Yellow Billed Kites swooping down low over the camp site in search of early morning snacks. The dog that adopted us (We called him “pied dog”) was at the foot of the ladder when I descended and once I got my sunglasses over my eyes I even managed to boil some water for coffee.
It was officially hang over day and the plan for the day was nothing more than to recover. To be honest, neither Catt nor I felt particularly rough as we still managed an estimated six hours sleep. It was still rather fabulous not to have to do much for a whole day in such a nice place though. By mid morning most people were up and around and Michael and Sabine left for Gondar. Everyone else there made no plans to leave, so the community was pretty much the same as the previous few days. Mark came by our place to trade guide books and information at some point and once we had finished our chat it was time for lunch. In the afternoon I helped Gerhard to purify some lake water into their tank and then did the same for us and before anyone could really realize it or do anything about it, it was evening again.
We were heading into Sudan the next day and as they did not allow alcohol there, we had no prospect of consuming the good stuff for a few weeks. So Catt and I cooked another feast by the car and savoured our very last bottle of red wine. It was a fine Italian wine which we had received as a gift, smuggled though Sudan some weeks before. It was nectar, and the absolutely perfect way to end our wine drinking tradition. After dinner we strolled up to the bar for the last night and found everyone there as the night before. We had another couple of drinks with great people before calling it a night.
In the tent we pulled away the rain cover so that we could see the stars from our bed. They were incredible! I thought back at the stars over the Namibia skies and even the Sutherland Observatory in South Africa, but that was the very first time that I had seen the northern hemisphere night sky so incredibly clearly! I found Orion’s belt, but that was all I recognised before slumbering into the deepest and most comfortable of sleeps.
Day 277:
It was another morning of waking up from bird song and sunshine in a place that could almost be called home by then… or perhaps something as close to paradise in the country that frustrated me so incredibly much. I loved the smell of the plants and the sounds of the animals and the way the sun was shining almost red on the granite rocks beside our humble parking spot. A boy came past herding cattle and sat on a rock watching us as we watched his cows drink from the lake. The dogs were out and playing and the German children were back to their noisy selves, but at least they sounded happy that day.
We were in no rush to leave that nice place by the lake. Gerard and Manaus came to say good bye by mid morning as they were heading out. Their bright yellow VW bus was packed up and Bronco was sitting on the passenger seat, eagerly awaiting his new adventure. I borrowed Paul’s clippers and cropped the lawn that had developed on the top of my head and braved the cold shower all before packing up and saying our good byes. The greetings were dragged out for as long as possible and it was only once we had totally diminished all our excuses to stay that we started Maggie up and slowly drove out. It struck me that we had been standing still for almost five days and the battery running the fridge still had a healthy green light reading. It was the first time that the solar panel had worked as I hoped it would, but then again, it was also the first time that we had parked in the sun and had not seen a single cloud for the time that we had stopped. I was still impressed.
For some strange reason I had it in my head that we only had 75km to travel to the border that day. I knew we had another distance to go to find a place to camp, but I was in no hurry at all. I started enjoying the countryside again and even the people seemed less hostile and more interesting to me. A kid in a village threw a calabash in front of the car and instead of getting angry I simply stopped by it, opened the door and picked up, thanking him for his kind gift before driving off. He seemed very confused. We meandered through fields and crops and villages and saw a few hills in the distance, but the landscape seemed almost as placid as I was feeling. I spent about twenty minutes contemplating if I could actually feel the car pulling to one side on an uneven dirt road or not before stopping to see if anything was wrong…
We had another flat tyre! It was on a front wheel though and the first of the trip, so I put it down to a new experience and decided to try and plug the whole instead of using one of the spares, which were both still brand new. It took very little time to find the problem and trying to mend it was a complete waste of time. It was pretty obvious that a very sharp rock had sliced straight through the tread and made a 5mm long cut straight through the layers. I was not too impressed, but there was not a lot I could do about it. So out came that jack that I thought I would never use and out came the wheel spanner I packed away very deeply. The ground sheet we had carried all that time came in handy to put on the dusty the road and with all the tools in place, the then familiar ritual started all over again. It didn’t take long and it wasn’t that much effort, and it tyres did not cost that damn much money it wouldn’t even have bothered me that much. What was different to the other times though was there wasn’t a single other person around to offer “help”.
Seeing as we were stationary already and that there were no one around, we decided to have a bite to eat right there. It was the first time since leaving Kenya that we had managed a calm, uninterrupted and relaxed lunch by the roadside and I found it quite satisfying. I was still in no great hurry and but by the time we reached the last turn and the start of the tar road my mood darkened a little. We still had more than 100km to go to the border and it was almost 14:00. Oh well, nothing I could really do about it.
The scenery suddenly changed as well. Instead of the relatively flat driving with rolling hills in the background we entered another mountain pass. The road was good and new, so the driving was easy and that in turn gave me a chance to appreciate the surroundings more. It was as if we were dropping from the sky! I knew that we could expect very warm temperatures in Sudan and I kind of thought that it would not be as high above sea level as Ethiopia was, but I didn’t expect the change to be so rapid. There were no villages and no livestock and no people on the roads either. It was like we had travelled in a different country since leaving Tim and Kim’s and we kind of liked it.
By the time we reached the border town of Metemo we had descended 2000 meters and were only about 500 meters higher than the oceans of the world. The shadows were getting longer and I was in the worse possible frame of mind for border crossings. I was in a hurry. I declined the help of a fixer and again strongly declined it when we did not seem to listen. Every border in the world was the same after all. You visit immigration, which we found by following a sign. Our passports were inspected and stamped within a few minutes and we asked the official where to go next. “Customs” she said, as expected and pointed us towards the customs building. The fixer was waiting for us asking about our Carnet and the more I wanted to get rid of him, the louder he became. Of course, our Carnet was a little problem. In the first place, and most importantly to me, Ethiopia was NOT part of the Carnet agreement, so had no right to stamp the thing and waste a page anyway. In the second place, and a potential issue here, was that we entered the country in a place where there was no customs, so we never cleared customs into Ethiopia. There was no real way to sneak out of there though, so I had to pass close by the officials.
Instead of walking to the window I spotted some travellers camping at the border and headed that way. I knew why they had to. That specific border had decided to start demanding a letter from your embassy to guarantee your Carnet amount. It made sense that they had to as the issuing authority of the Carnet would never pay any money over to a country that was not part of the agreement. However, that was the only border in the whole country that wanted that letter and most travellers only found that out once they arrived there. They then had to find a man with a phone and another man with an internet connection to organise the letter, which the embassies knew about and issued without problems. Only once they could produce a print out of the PDF file would they get their carnet stamped by the customs guy and be allowed to drive their vehicle into Ethiopia.
Anyway, I decided to have a quick chat to them and try and sneak back to the car, start her up and drive her straight though. The security guard had a rope, not a boom and he was half a sleep, so I thought he may just accept that I had done what I had to and let me go. However…. When I got to the entrance my friendly fixer was there to point me in the right direction and would not allow me to ignore him. In the end a customs official saw me and called me over. And so it began: “where is your Carnet?” “Well, I don’t have a Carnet for Ethiopia.” “How did you manage to enter the country without one?” “Well it’s like this: I entered through the Omo valley and visited Omorate Immigration. There is no customs office there” That went back and forth for twenty minutes until I got Catt involved. The man then said that he could only let us go if we had a letter from our embassy guaranteeing the value of the vehicle. That made no sense, as we clearly had the vehicle and were clearly leaving the country. Perhaps he thought we could sell it, or total it in the three meters between the parking space and the end of Ethiopia, but me pointing that out did not really help.
“So what is the solution” I asked, feeling the wallet in my pocket scratch deep furrows into my thigh. “Only one solution” said the man in charge (It took ten minutes to find out who he actually was) “You have to have a carnet, and you have to have a letter and if you don’t have that, I can not let you go” I made him repeat that twice in front of everyone there. OK, I said… “Here is my letter (Which I had) and here is my Carnet which was not stamped into the country, but that is what you needed, yes?” Check mate! Or so I thought anyway. He still made us sit on a bench in front of his office for an hour. In that hour I explained to his college that they were ambassadors for the country and their actions that day would be what I would remember about Ethiopia and its people. I explained that loud enough for the man to hear. So after an hour with us feeling like naughty school children, he called us into the office. He accepted our letter and stamped our Carnet into and out of Ethiopia. He called me a joker and said that he liked my negotiation skills and I actually started liking him as well. At the end of the day he had picture recognition need to fulfil and I provided him with the papers to fulfil it. The fact that I explained that he wasted a page that was worth nothing to him, but cost about the same as two months salary for the average person in Ethiopia meant nothing to him. He had enforced his authority for long enough that we could not go any further that day and he was very pleased indeed when I asked him if we could camp with our fellow travellers in the customs yard.
The only part that I could not understand was that there was no money that changed hands. He was not after a bribe and I think offering him one would have delayed us even longer. He seemed to be a serious, professional and honest border official in Africa… something that should be on the extreme endangered species list. Once we had made camp and started cooking he came by for a chat. Nothing more, just a chat about how we fond his country and what advice we had for it. I was honest with him as I believed he deserved and wanted honesty. He took everything in and pondered it before saying “I know… we are working on it” and then wished us a pleasant evening in time for the black market money changer to do his deal. Even he did not try to cheat us which was also a first on our travels.
So there at the customs house on the border to Sudan we sat around a camp fire with four South African bikers and a father and son team from Belgium in a Land Cruiser. We swopped stories and cell phone sim cards as we had done in other places and grilled some Kenyan beef fillet over Ethiopian coals. The toilet was grim and the shower cold, but not that far off what we had seen in camp sites around. We were not asked to pay for our stay and no bribes were solicited from us. We had no less than nine men with big guns protecting us and the ladies in the kitchen even invited us to evening coffee. It was all a little too bizarre, but quite a fantastic end to travelling the country of Ethiopia. The man from customs ended up being the best ambassador a country could hope for and I suspected that he knew it.
Day 278:
We heard my fellow countrymen pack up and start their motorbikes before the birds started singing. The border was still closed and the trucks were still lining the dusty tracks. We got up and swiftly closed the tent before brewing the morning coffee. I visited the hole with a peg over my nose and within half an hour we were also ready to depart. The man from customs arrived for work and looked at us perplexed. He wanted to know what the hell we were still doing there and asked if he could organise us resident ID Cards for Ethiopia. It seemed that he was the joker, and not me. We had a chat to the Belgium’s and ended up leaving after 8:00.
The drive to Sudan took about thirty second and Maggie’s engine wasn’t even at running temperature by the time we found immigration. The staff were all sitting outside, soaking in the morning sunshine and drinking tea, as we had been warned they would in Sudan. One official got up reluctantly and followed us into the office. He checked our passports, had us fill in another form, hand over another photograph and sent us on our way after stamping us into our 10th country. As with every other border post in the world, customs was next and as Sudan was actually part of the Carnet agreement, we decided to let them use a page. The customs house was the next building along as pointed out my the immigration officials and the in camouflage uniform sitting outside in the sun drinking tea led us into his office and spent ten minutes cleaning a chair for Catt to sit on. It was only when he sat behind the desk and asked for our carnet that we realized that he was actually the man in charge. It took another twenty minutes for him to fill in the required paperwork, but in that time I had a chance to practice my “joker” skills with the rest of the office inhabitants. None of them spoke a word of English and Arabic was totally Greek to me, so communication was just not happening. We were sent to another office to pay a fee… for something… but it was only $5 and there was an official receipt… in Arabic. With a stack of papers and receipts our Carnet was stamped and as per every other border post in the world I asked if we were done. The man in uniform pointed me to another building and told me to see the security police there. So I did and another person recorded our identities in another book and then confirmed that we were in fact done with all formalities and free to go, so we did. Although that ended up being our longest border crossing ever, as we actually slept at the border, the Sudan side was completed in about an hour and as painless as most other places. I’m not sure why we though tit would be different. Perhaps the fact that we were not in a hurry meant that things went smoothly.
The last checkpoint was uninterested in us after checking our Carnet and in front of us laid the massive wide open and unpopulated country of Sudan! We took to the roads and headed towards our very first town and arrived in Gedoref before the clock struck 12:00. We decided to put the theory of friendly people to the test and drove straight into the market in the centre of town. We parked Maggie in front of a new building with a security guard and after establishing that that was legal, we went for a walk. We passed different small shops selling different small things and happened upon a bakery that was in the process of unpacking their oven. We bought 5 massive bread rolls for 1 SDG (Sudanese Pound) which was about $0.33. On our way back to Maggie we were called over by another man who insisted that we try some tea. There was no real reason for it, apart from him working out that we were new to his town. We sat down on a wooden bench and were served the strongest, sweetest tea the world had ever seen and were given a cup of water each to quench our thirst. It was surprisingly nice in the heat of the day and our host relished in the fact that we liked it. Once our glasses were empty we got up to leave and I held out some money for the tea seller to take. We never asked what the cost was going to be and I wasn’t sure how much to offer. The seller shook his head though and simply refused to take payment. He explained that our host, who had already left, had paid for our tea already. I was dumbstruck! I had heard many stories of other travellers experiencing similar hospitality in Sudan, but I never really expected it to happen to us, especially on our very first contact with local people.
We took a walk through the rest of the market and found the fruit and vegetables. Oh what bliss that was! They had everything we had been missing since Kenya. Well ok, not everything, but a lot of it! The place was stacked with citrus fruit and they had big and healthy tomatoes, cucumber and various other vegetables. We bought what we needed and were, to be honest; a little shocked by the price, but did not feel cheated in any way. It was about the same price per kg as we would have paid in South Africa, but quite a bit more than what we had come accustomed to. However, on our way out of town we filled Maggie’s tanks with diesel and that was nowhere near as expensive as what we were used to! In fat, at was about half the price of Ethiopia and about one third of the cost in South Africa.
Outside of town we pulled off the road to eat our fresh bread and big tomatoes and suddenly experienced something that no one had told us about. As soon as we got out the car and opened the back doors we were invaded. Not by people, but by flies. It was incredible! There were millions of them and they seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere! We ate while using plates to wave them away and could not wait to get back into the car and drive away. I thought surely travellers before us would have noticed that, but no one had ever spoken of it… By mid afternoon we had reached a point on a map that was recommended as a place to camp. We left the tar road and tucked in behind a rocky hill. We could hear the trucks drive on the road and we could see a village about three kilometres away and we were very unsure of our decision. We decided to make some shade with the awning and hang out for a couple of hours to see what happened. The flies were around again, but not as many as before and it was HOT. I mean really hot! We sat in the shade and chatted about our plans while consuming litre after litre of water.
In the late afternoon a single man herding goats came past and greeted us with a smile. He did not even pause, he just said hello and moved on. It was all a little strange and we both expected the cavalry to pounce on us before long. A little later a car drove by and turned to the village and a little after that the sun tucked in behind the opposite rocky hill turning the lone baobab tree into a perfect silhouette. We pulled out our bush shower and used that for the very first time on our trip and soon after that it was dark. We made a small fire and cooked some food and marvelled at the stars once the coals went dead. There was no light pollution at all and the skies seemed closer than ever before. We pitched the tent just before going to bed and still not trusting the peace and quiet we lay awake for a while listening to the new night sounds. It was still pretty hot…. A breeze started blowing at some point and with that most of the sounds was dulled out and only then did we fall sleep, still not fully trusting our surroundings.
Day 279:
The alarm sounded at 6:30 and at first I wasn’t too sure where we were or that we had the time correct. It was still pitch black outside and the stars were even still out. Once I worked out that we were camped in the bush of Sudan and all by ourselves I slumbered fro another half an hour before the first glow of the morning showed above the high rocky hills. We got up; packed the tent away and made drank our usual coffee before starting Maggie up and heading back to the road. The place we were could have been anywhere in semi desert Africa. We had stayed in places almost identical to that in Namibia and the Northern Cape of South Africa. The ground looked the same, the rocks were the same colour and so was the sky. Even the Acacia trees were the same, but somehow the smells were different.
We pulled out onto the tar road and I almost forgot which side of the road to drive on. There was a massive luxury tour bus that reminded me though and with that the reality of our location sunk in again. It had been a fantastically peaceful night where we could have been the only people in the whole wide world and even though we were not used to that idea it made me smile. We had arrived in a country where you could just camp in the bush without being disturbed and there were not many of those left in the world.
The quality of the roads was still surprising me and I had to keep a keen eye on the speedometer to keep the pace down. For the first time since South Africa we managed a great average speed and completed our day’s distance through arid lands on the shores of the Blue Nile right into the heart of Khartoum before mid day. Our stores were running a little low so we stopped at a shopping centre close to the airport, thinking that we may find a supermarket inside. To my utter astonishment we walked into an amazing world of shops, cinemas and fully stocked, first world luxury supermarkets. It took us 40 minutes just to see what the place had to offer and once we walked up and down every isle we were utterly speechless! You could get absolutely everything your heart desired from that one big place. We walked out with bread and cream cheese…
The place that every overlander seemed to end up at in Khartoum was the Blue Nile Sailing Club and that was where we headed. The same sounded fantastically good, but we knew that that was about all the good about the place. It was not difficult to find at all and all our expectations were met as we drove in. We parked Maggie in the shade of some trees and found the facilities to be more disgusting that any human should be willing to put up with. In fact, before I could use the shower in the men’s toilet I had to fish the used sanitary pad out to unblock the drain. However, they had safe and comfortable parking, a place to sleep in your own tent and free wifi… so we decided to hang out for a while. We ate our lunch and checked our emails and met a few other desperate souls who were braving the place.
In the early evening the manager came round to collect our camping fee and I almost fell off my chair! The charge was $15 for the two of us per night, which was criminal if you kept the facilities in mind. He wanted another $15 to register us as “legal aliens” with the department of “alien affairs” the next day. I declined that and said that we would do that ourselves. Besides, our GPS maps had the place to do this at marked and it was only about three km from the Sailing Club. It felt like quite an easy and productive day by the time dinner was cooked and we sat down to eat. It almost felt too easy, but we did not argue and went to bed later than usual. The place was indeed safe and fairly quiet as far as city camp sites were concerned and we tried desperately not to think about the dirty bathrooms.
Day 280:
We woke up early with the help of the alarm and decided to get the show on the road. We knew exactly what to do and how to do it and even where to have it all done. We had our coffee and braved the toilets before heading out of the nasty sailing club and down the road towards the Alien Registration. All foreigners entering Sudan had to register their arrival not only with immigration, but also with the security police. You had three days to do that in and that was our 3rd day in the country. We also need photocopies done, but thought we would find a place along the way.
So… right then the GPS fell over. Well, not literally, but since our maps were created Khartoum had changed into a one way street hell. So every turn we wanted to make was not allowed. We finally found a way and a block before the waypoint I spotted a photocopier through a shop window. We parked up and had the copies in hand within five minutes and I started planning the rest of my leisurely day. I knew the registration office was only a block away and that the sailing club was only minutes away. I saw myself sitting by the Nile watching the boats go by while doing some writing, or perhaps reading some of the book I had been struggling with since Kenya. We drove the block and parked right in front of the big sign confirming the purpose of the building and walked inside. It was deserted. Well, almost deserted. There was a lone policeman who spoke only Arabic and could just about communicate that what we wanted was not possible. I was a little at a loss right then and wondered about the value of the $15 fee our man at the sailing club wanted for his services…
Back in the car I found another point on another GPS map that claimed to be the place to go. We punched that waypoint in and headed towards it. The area was really promising and littered with government type buildings. We followed the GPS to the last meter and found nothing but street side parking. The sign were all in Arabic and we did not have a clue. We tried to ask for help and directions, but no one shared any knowledge of any language we could communicate in. We had to admit it… it was not that easy. We were however convinced that we were in the right area so the vision of gently floating boats on the Nile was still there.
Consulting the guide book we came up with another location and another theory, so headed in that direction. We passed a travel agent and walked in there for advice. Two possible places were explained to us and the first was actually right across the road from the modern Mall we had been to the day before. That sounded perfect, so we headed that way. It was 11:00 by the time we parked and started walking up and down the street to find the right building. We walked in the wrong direction without realizing it and it took twenty minutes to find an English speaking person to tell us that. We finally found the building just before 12:00, walked inside and was faced with mile long cues of Sudanese trying to register to vote in the upcoming referendum. We eventually found someone who could speak a little English and he told us that we were in the wrong place. Only Sudanese people could use their services but he could not explain to us where we actually needed to go. I was ready to give up! I could not really understand what the registration process was all about anyway and I was loosing interest in finding out very fast! The image of me sitting on the banks of the Nile watching boats float by dissipated like ice cream melting in the Sudan sun!
We stopped at the Mall for lunch and met Justin there. Justin used to be the manager of the Zambeef Farm where we stayed outside of Lusaka some months before. Alastair, the manager who hosted us then gave us his contact details and suggested that we look him up when in Khartoum. He kindly invited us to stay at his apartment instead of braving the Blue Nile’s filth and also volunteered to show us where the aliens were… Or where the aliens (Us) had to register. Our lunch was in a modern food court type place and we made short work of fresh fruit juice and hamburgers. On the way out the mall we purchased some mobile internet vouchers and headed towards the other side of town, following Justine in his company Hilux. He got us to the area where we needed to be and suggested that we ask one of the hotels where the office was that we needed. He was late for a meeting, so could not help us any more, but we would never have found the place without him, so we were grateful.
Catt walked inside a hotel and got directions from an English speaking person. We followed the directions to the letter and then bent the letters and then looked at them sideways, upside down and back to front. We ended up driving every dusty street and alley in the area, but no alien building was found. We did find the embassy of Iraq, which I supposed could be seen as fairly alien and the guidebook suggested that the place we sought was next to it, so we stopped. Once again Catt braved the outside world and asked for directions. The man said that the office used to be next tot hem, but had closed down and suggested another place, with directions, so we headed in that direction.
Once again we followed the letters of his directions in every possible way we knew how and found nothing. We found the American embassy and asked the security staff there. They were all Sudanese and only spoke Arabic, which I also found quite alien, but did not judge. We found the Embassy of Holland and an English speaking embassy employee who insisted on helping us. We liked him. He even disappeared inside the building to find us a city map. It was 14:30 and that $15 fee was starting to sound pretty reasonable. It was only due to the ridiculously low cost of fuel in Sudan that we had not managed to blow that amount of smoke out our exhaust, but the day was taking its toll on me for sure! The traffic was hectic and the drivers almost as mad as in Dar es Salaam. To top all that we were still driving a right hand drive car on the wrong side of the road!
With the directions of the man from the Netherlands we managed to find the right road, the right turn and the right building! It was painted in baby blue and orange and had a huge sign up that read “Alien affairs” (I shit you not!) and we were welcomed by a strangely normal security officer and told that we may park inside. I had seen Men in Black and I did not trust a single thing about that ridiculously brightly painted building, but we had no choice. We parked up and walked inside the biggest office and were flatly ignored. All the information signs were in Arabic and no one could speak English, a perfect place for foreigners to register their arrival. We eventually found out that we were in the wrong building and walked into a small side office with some counters instead. There was a lady manning a photo copier which gave us great confidence and we even managed to find someone who could speak three words of English. They were: “Closed” and “Try Tomorrow”
NNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I took a deep breath and put on my best and most charming smile. I explained that it had taken us 6 hours of driving in Khartoum to actually find them and that it was our last day to register. I said that we were new to the country and that we really did not want to get into trouble for not registering or registering late. Then came one Arabic phrase I did understand: Inshallah, followed by someone else saying that as long we registered within a month of arriving in the country we would probably not get into trouble. So we left, defeated but not before marking the point on the GPS as “Alien world”.
We fought the traffic back to Justin’s flat and collapsed by the dining room table. By the time he came back from work we had managed some recovery and even formulated a plan for dinner. We had a whole kitchen to our disposal and used it well. After dinner we had a quick chat and the day’s fun and games definitely took its toll so we snuck off to bed fairly early.
Day 281:
With no time to waste and Aliens to see we set an alarm for early. Justin had left for work at 6:30 and I have to be honest and admit that I did not even hear him leave. The bed we were given was so comfortable that the sleep was incredible and I felt refreshed and ready to take on the world when I got up. The best surprise of the day was the shower though! It was the best, nicest most incredible shower I had experienced since moving out of our own house in South Africa. I was utterly shocked by the amount of dirt that I managed to wash off my body and totally amazed what difference the presence of hot water actually made. It was quick and easy to make coffee using electrical appliances and we were out the door by the time the aliens told us that they started work.
The morning traffic was light and we stopped at the saved waypoint in front of the blue and orange monstrosity by 9:30. It was all looking good for an easy and successful day and all we needed to do was find someone we could communicate with. I tried the photocopy lady, but he English was limited to copying lingo. I tried someone else behind a counter. She was clearly the wrong person, but she took pity on us, so tried to help. She organised the forms for us to fill in and explained with some difficulty, what we needed copies of. We never thought about pens, so had to go back to the car to get some of those. We filled in the forms and found the next counter. That lady took our passports and told us to wait… so we did…
A few minutes later we had our passports back with a few added pieces of paper and some more stamps on them and were shown to the next counter. There we had to pay some money and when I opened my wallet and started counting I went cold… The 5 SDG notes were the same colour as the 20 SDG notes and I though I had 20’s. The fee however was 200 SDG and I had 205 SDG, so we were in luck. I handed it over with a great sign of relief thinking that we were done. But nothing is ever that simple! We were pointed to the next counter, which was the final one and the man took our passports, lifted his stamp and said “20 Pounds please” Mmmm. I asked if I could pay in $, but I could not. I asked if there was anyone there who would change $, but it was illegal in Alien world. So, like a numpty I walked back to the car with my tail between my legs, got in, started her up and drove 5.6km to the Afra Mall to change currency. As I walked into the exchange place I had a brief thought about how funny it would be if I needed my passport to change money, but could not get it without money… It was too depressing, so I blocked it out. As it happened the changing was quick and easy and required no paperwork at all. So I drove the 5.6km back, found Catt by the counters, paid the man the 20 SDG and sat down on his instruction to wait… again…
By 11:00 we were all done. No one cared about the fact that we were a day late and no one really cared about the fact that our Blue Nile Sailing Club booking was not for the night before we registered. All they wanted was for us to go and visit the aliens, to become legal aliens… or something.
With that mammoth task completed in two days only we decided to inspect the local market. The alien building backed onto it, so it made sense to go walk around while we were there. It was huge! It was really impressive as well as the whole market seemed to be under one big metal roof. It was not that different to the roofs our friends from UNESCO built over the Ethiopian churches to be honest, but at least they did not seem so incredibly out of place. We walked through alleys and hallways and looked at fabrics and shoes and jewellery. We looked at kitchenware and electrical appliances and bizarrely enough in the hour and a half we spent walking around not a single person hassled us. The rumours were apparently true: Sudan was sparsely inhabited by really friendly people! We left the market with a dress for Catt and a 20l water can for shower water for me and found Maggie where we had left her, unharmed without needing to pay anything for the right.
The day was going so well that we decided to visit the major Toyota dealer in search of those elusive Shock absorber washers. The company Justin worked for also owned the Sudan Toyota Franchise so he referred us to the general manager there. The man to see was Alla, not Allah, but I assumed he was close enough. We found the shop, met Alla and were sent to the spares department manager. He in turn had a look on his computer and found the part numbers and within fifteen minutes of arriving we left with the brand new spares we needed. It was that easy! It was expensive, but the parts were clearly in a different class to the ones that we had and I really just wanted to be able to put the shock absorber ordeal behind us.
On the way back to the flat we stopped at the Lila Patisserie on the main road. It was brand new place with a shady and leafy courtyard offering refuge form the hot and busy streets outside. They had a whole room full of sweet and salty baked goods and a whole fridge of ice cream. It was really just what we needed to celebrate the success of the day so we sat down and indulged. We shared three different kinds of ice cream and a huge slab of chocolate cake, washing it all down with freshly brewed Arabica coffee. It was simply marvellous!
We arrived back at the flat a mere 8 hours since leaving it, but managed to solve two sizeable problems and have a treat all on the same day. We abused the kitchen again and Catt served up her famous Bobotie before having another shower, just because we could. We spent the rest of the evening lazing around the dining room table until the hour forced us into the bedroom and onto the insanely comfortable bed!
If I had to do it again:
Well, that’s pretty easy… I should have had our Carnet stamped in Addis Ababa when we were there. That would have solved the border issues. I should have investigated our travel distance from Tim and Kim’s a little better as well. However, if I did those two things we would not have spent time at the border and we would not have had the experience with the honest and brilliant customs official.
In Khartoum I have to honestly say that unless you have the right address for the Alien HQ off Street 16, don’t bother trying it by yourself, rather endure the filth of the Blue Nile and get the man there to do that for you. If not, get your patience ready and prepare for a very well rounded tour of Khartoum.
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