The Tina Trip 03 - Sudan

CHAPTER 10 – THE BIG Y

The clit in the crotch of the Nile.

We started our time in Sudan with having our first row. It was about some silly little thing, so small and silly that I have forgotten what it was. Or, more honestly, so small and silly that I´m embarrassed enough to pretend that I have forgotten. Tina stomped off. "Don´t you fucking dare following me!" she warned. I didn´t, but I could see her from a distance, for which I was glad. She climbed a small sandy hill and spent maybe twenty minutes throwing small rocks at bigger rocks. I carefully did not use the line about having a crazy wife when worried locals wondered, which they did.

Eventually she came back. She gave me a hug that would have broken my back if my back had broken that easily. Which, I guess, is true of all hugs when you think about it.

"I´m ok now." she said. "Thanks for giving me space."

"Well, it was my fault, too." I said. "I hereby accept forty nine percent of the blame."

"Forty nine!" she said. "You turd! It was at least fifty! Remember; I have a lot of teeth." The last part in Arabic, of course. Great, she was my sweet little Miss Cuddlybuttocks again. A Cuddlybuttocks with teeth.

Peter, the little dear, had saved two seats for us in the train to Khartoum. We were all supposed to go there, to get stamps in our passports and travel permits to other parts of the country. The journey was long, dusty and hot. We started out in the afternoon and arrived late in the evening the day after, exhausted. Bruno had managed to endear himself to the Sudanese in our compartment by demanding that no one could smoke aboard the train. He even went as far as to take a cigarette out of a guy´s mouth and throw it out the window. Sure, I would have preferred a non-smoking compartment, too, but that just wasn´t the way things were done here. Bruno narrowly escaped following the cigarette out the window and was astounded that we westerners didn´t support him in his fight for The Truth. He sulked in a corner, muttering about non-smoking gorillas.

Between Wadi Haifa and Khartoum the Nile makes a big curve. The train goes straight through the desert. That's all there is, a railway, a lousy road going alongside the railway and the desert. Lots of desert. When we were about halfway we passed a man on a bicycle, with a Japanese flag on his pack. He was determinedly pedaling through the desert. He didn´t even look up when we passed him. I hope he had a lot of water. I hope he survived.

Finally we arrived in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, the junction of the Blue and the White Nile. We staggered off the train, in search of sleep. A few black ladies approached us and asked where we were going and we enquired for the hotel recommended by Lonely Planet. They pointed us in the right direction and it was not far to go, thank God.

"Refreshing to meet women who are about by themselves and even can talk to strangers." I said. "Maybe women have a less constricted role here in Sudan than they had in Egypt."

"My poor, dear, innocent head-in-the-clouds husband." Tina answered. "Those girls were prostitutes." Which gave me something to think about all the way to the hotel. When we arrived, all beds were taken, but we could sleep on their lawn. Fine with us, and we soon slept the sleep of the innocent. At least me. Innocent.

Khartoum was a very big city that didn´t feel like a big city. The streets were broad and sandy, not too many cars. Goats roamed the streets. The houses seldom higher than two stories. One high rise – the Sheraton Hotel. Many travelers went there because American Express had their Khartoum office there. Even more travelers went there to steal toilet paper, since that was not sold in the stores. The grandest building in the city was the main post office, a stately remnant from the colonial days where we could get letters from home, poste restante. My parents sent their regards to Tina and wrote that grand-kids were welcome – cross-eyed or not. They wished us and our relationship well, but hoped we would not settle in Germany. This was a new thought. We felt like we belonged together but for some reason we had not thought about the obvious fact that one of us had to change country. I could see the wheels turning in Tina´s head, too.

Think of Khartoum as a big Y. The trunk is the Nile, the left branch is the Blue Nile the right branch is the White Nile. Between the branches is the part of Khartoum that´s simply called Khartoum. To the left of the trunk is Old Khartoum, to the right is Omdurman. Our hotel was in Khartoum, as was all official buildings. That´s where we spent most of our time. But Omdurman was nice. There were big marketplaces and there were more people in the streets. Right where the rivers met was a large Ferris wheel like a revolving giant clit in the crotch of the Nile. We bravely ventured up in the Ferris clit in spite of its rather scary swaying in the wind. We survived and the view was worth the risk.

John got sick. We went with him to a doctor, who took him to the nearby hospital. They didn´t have much. John was in a small room where they somehow managed to fit in eight beds. John was a hawadia, so he got VIP-treatment and had a bed of his own. All the other beds were shared. We took turns staying with him. They thought it was malaria, but needed to make a test to be sure.

When I was there with him I needed to go to the toilet. The toilet in the hospital. The hospital toilet. If you are easily grossed out, just move on to the next paragraph. When people compete about who has experienced the worst toilet I always win, especially since this was, as I think I mentioned, a hospital toilet. I open the door, I step in and I wonder what I´ve stepped in. Lights on, I see that I am standing in shit. There must have been a clogging in the toilet, which was of the hole-in-the-floor kind, and people had shat on the floor, closer and closer to the door until, now, you couldn´t get in without...what I said. In a hospital! If in Sudan, don´t get sick. It was malaria, by the way. John had eaten his profylactics, but got sick anyway. Happens. Too bad.

People were generally un-hurried in Khartoum. Particularly government officials. They were so un-hurried that they almost stuck to whatever surface they were on, leisurely wielding their stamping tools and occasionally actually stamping something. The longer the lines the more relaxed they seemed, like a big bird hovering in the thermals, leisurely looking down on us earth-bound scurriers, perhaps not with contempt but with a profound gratitude that they were they and not us. Waiting with grace was a necessary skill, impatience and anger were frowned upon and slowed down the process even further. You gained a bit of respect if you could wait for half a day to get the stamp that proved that you where were you were and still be courteous when you reached the stampman. Patience was seen as a virtue. Separated the men from the boys.

A guy with a big black beard bought me a coffee and wanted to talk religion. Fine with me as he was quite talkable. He was studying to be an imam, and was interested in how I thought about his faith and mine. We eventually agreed to disagree on many points, but we agreed that we could be certain of nothing. Doubt is an important part of faith, it certainly must be important to God (if he exists) since he could have proven his existence conclusively at any time and has not chosen to do so. God seemed to find doubt and the freedom of choice to be essential, including the freedom to mess up and misinterpret his messages to humanity. We parted as friends.

One day Bruno was at the please-stamp-my-papers-place. He made his entrance while we were standing docilely in line, playing a game we had invented with a pen, a rubber band and two buttons. Bruno was aggressively waving his aggressive little black beard about, telling everyone how this worthless den of bureaucracy ought to have been organized. Again, I could see his point. Again, I found him obnoxious, as did the officials. Again, he was close to get thrown out the window, which this time I rather hoped for since we were on the ground floor and the sand outside was softish. A little trip through a window might have learned him a lesson in humility. Or maybe not.

Another guy who was there was Per, a Swedish engineer. He was very old, I felt – though not as old as I am now. In spite of his age he was fun to talk to and we made friends. He was in Sudan to work on a big dam in the Blue Nile, close to the Ethiopian border. After talking for a goodly while in the non-moving line he asked if we wanted to come with him. He was only going to be there for a few days and then he would go back to Khartoum. Why not? Sounded like fun.

CHAPTER 11 – PER´S DAM

Cum guzzling creatures and un-kicked balls.

With Per, we travelled in a Land Rover with a driver. The height of luxury, except the roads were not what we back home would even call roads. The going was slow but that was fine with us. We watched the scenery, which was a bit boring except for the piece of scenery which was Tina. Her I never tired of looking at. Otherwise the landscape was rather dull. Plains. Occasional trees. No animals. That was rather disappointing. After having seen a zillion films about African wild-life we had expected to see at least some animals other than birds and cockroaches. As yet, though, nothing.

Somewhere halfway we stopped to have dinner with some engineers who worked on another dam. They were locals who Per coached from time to time. Very nice meal. One of them had actually been to Sweden. His main memory of his short time in Sweden was when he, at an official dinner, was served chicken and was supposed to eat with a knife and fork – utensils rarely used in Sudan. That had been a rather humiliating experience. Another had been to Italy and was certain that Sweden and Germany had to be warmer countries than Italy, which had been unbearably cold. We slept there that night, in a cot in the workers´ dormitory.

Per showed us his dam. He was proud of it. It was big and grey and dammy. Compared to the Assuan dam it was puny, but compared to everything else it was big enough. Close by was a small town and a refugee camp. Ethiopia was a bad country to live in for many. Not that Sudan was all that idyllic. There was a lot of shit going on. There were several groups of guerillas, the government was repressive and there was famine here and there now and then. But it was a reasonably safe country for hawadias to travel in. The most unruly corners of the country were off limit and the ones that hated didn´t particularly hate westerners. It was an Arab north versus black south kind of conflict. The south wanted to be independent and the north, where most of the power was, did not want them to.

The dam was funded by Swedish aid, and Per was not the only Swedish engineer involved. We met Anders and Torsten and the fat one who was too drunk to remember his name. I was glad there were no Danes around, they would have been much too happy having their preconceptions vindicated. Per didn´t like him at all, and made no secret of that fact. According to him drunk-and-useless was continuously smashed and didn´t do a lick of work on the dam. Only thing he did was drink and buy sex in the camp, where the female refugees were desperate enough for anything. He himself referred to those activities as his own refugee aid project. Tina was of the firm opinion that there were too many unkicked balls in the world and offered to make it her project to rectify that situation. Per sympathized with her just cause, but told her that it would put the locals in a difficult position. Mr Unkicked was a guest here and guests were sacred, however despicable.

We went for a swim in the Blue Nile. There was a place with rapidly moving water that was pronounced safe. Safe from crocodiles? No, from bilharzia. Disgusting parasites that infest a large percentage of lakes and rivers in Africa. They bore through your skin and breed in your liver. May cause blindness, too. This was in fact the only swim we had on the whole trip, apart from the concrete tubs of Bawiti.

We now realized that only in the really big cities were we expected to sleep in a hotel. Everywhere else we were guests and if we were not invited to someone´s home we could sleep in any official building. During our time in Sudan we slept in churches, schools, hospitals (one night in an emergency room, kind of weird when a woman was admitted to have a baby in the middle of the night and her husband seemed more interested in us than the birth) and, first and foremost, police stations. All police stations had gardens with lawns and you didn´t even have to ask if you could sleep there, it was taken for granted. Once we were invited to sleep in the policemen´s dormitory. Not here, though, here we slept on the standard issue police station dusty lawn.

Tina and I went for long walks. The area was attractive; a bit of forest, the river, lots of birds. We had quite a bit of outdoor sex. I enjoyed Tina´s bush behind a bush in the African bush. We were wary of insects, not knowing which ones were biters and not much wanting to find out. And we had a problem with condom-disposal. You can´t just throw them away, it´s not all right environmentally. Non bio-degradable, and what if an animal eats it. Probably smelled delicious to a lot of them. Carrying round a heap (brag, brag) of used condoms wasn´t the perfect solution, but a man´s gotta do what a man´s gotta do. We emptied the contents on the ground to see who else than Tina was interested in swallowing my cum. Mainly ants as long as we hung around, but maybe there were others, like rodents, who were too shy to make their fetishes public and waited until we left.

Now Per was done engineering and wanted to get back. The road was still unworthy of the word road and the wild life was dead or elsewhere. The car broke down a bit, but the driver and Per fixed it. Tina pointed out that it was nice to be around real men who could fix things. I must admit that it stung a bit, although I know it was a joke. I had always had lousy self-confidence in the real man department, as you may have gathered. The only area where my self-confidence was even lower was fixing things. I tried to be cool about it but Tina noticed, like she notices everything. There´s no slipping anything past her. She reminded me that I was the only man she would ever want or need, making her point as empathically as was possible with an audience. No bushes here to hide behind.

My male confidence had, of course, been improved greatly by my time with Tina. But a bad confidence is a stubborn thing. I felt fine as long as everything went well, but at this stage it didn´t take much for me to have a relapse. But on the whole I was very happy with my progress and I gave all the credit to Tina. According to her I was good for her, too. She was less crazy when she was crazy – her impulsivity was mainly focused on making me embarrassed because my ears were cute when they were red. I had by now used the line about my crazy wife several times, and as yet no one had gainsaid me. Her depressive periods were better too. Shorter. Grey rather than black.

When back in Khartoum we said farewell to Per and Tina kissed him on the nose. He promised to call our parents when he got home, to inform them that we were alive and happy. My mum later told me she got really scared when an official-sounding voice asked if she was my mother. Visions of me eaten by giraffes or something. But she appreciated the call very much. We sent letters home now and then to bring them up to date, but it took a long while for them to get there. Now, they had confirmation that I had been alive just a few days ago. And still together with that girl, whom Per said was adorable.

CHAPTER 12 – IN THE GIANT YEAST-INFECTION

That hippo had guts.

We wanted to move on to the south now. By boat if possible. It sounded nice to travel the White Nile in a river-boat, through the Sudd, the largest swamp in Africa. While standing in line for travel permit stamps someone stole my jeans from the clothes line at the hotel. I didn´t care shit. They were too warm anyway. I was happy they left the rest, two pairs of thin cotton trousers I had had sewn in Egypt. Tina was rather domestic, I found. I don´t know why that was a surprise to me, but it was. She had thoroughly washed our clothes in the hotel sink, using some sort of brown laundry soap they used there. She was pissed that the jeans were stolen after she had worked so hard getting them clean.

The last night in Khartoum we went to a fancy restaurant with a menu. We had Nile Perch in a nice sauce and baked potato. This was way and beyond the best food we had had or would have in Sudan. I entertained Tina by informing her about the atrocity of introducing the Nile Perch to Lake Victoria. The Nile Perch is a large, voracious predator which has gobbled a lot of indigenous species to extinction. Tina then told me to shut the fuck up and talk about something more romantic, like herself. I saw her point. Pretty girl. Candle light. Right - the perch will (alas) still be there tomorrow.

The north end of the river boat route is Kosti. You could take a bus there. I mention that because it´s an exception to the rule. Generally there are no buses. Most of the time you travel on lorries, sitting in the back on the load. These lorries leave when they leave, there is no schedule and it´s up to you to get aboard. In bigger cities there are truck-stops where you talk to the drivers to find a lorry going in the right direction. In smaller villages, where the lorries generally don´t stop, you just hang around until a lorry passes and flag it down. This could be in five minutes or in five days.

In Kosti we met a lot of old aquaintances. We were not the only ones wanting to go south by boat. John, Dieter, Peter, the Danish Girls and Manuela all were there. Not Marcel though. He didn´t have time to go south, Manuela told us with a deep sigh. There were a goodly bunch of other travelers, too. They all camped in the police-station garden and most had been there for weeks. Since they arrived they had been told that the boat would be there very soon and sooner or later it had to be true. We didn´t mind waiting for a while. Kosti was a pleasant place to be. We could understand that they´d loitered here for weeks. It was a lot like what I told you about Khartoum, only more so. Broader and sandier streets, even more goats, even slower pace and lower houses – here they just had a ground floor. It was easy to sit for hours at a café, drinking peppermint tea (chai ba nana) with as little sugar as possible. The Sudanese didn´t understand why we did not want all the sugar we could get. They insisted that sugar was good for you, good for the brain, you think better. It was locally produced, too. Kosti had the largest sugar factory in Sudan. The main road to Kosti was paved with something that looked like asphalt but was actually some by-product from the sugar making process.

The goats often came to our little campground to check for goodies like banana-peels. We could not leave stuff lying about as the goats, undeterred by the fact that this was a police garden, were happy to steal just about anything. The stories about the omnivorous nature of goats are not totally exaggerated. We had a favorite goat named Willy Brandt after an old German president. He was not adverse to being petted and we saved our banana-peels for him. Konrad Adenauer was a surly creature who considered himself the Alpha politician and therefore the rightful owner of our peels. We, the voters, did not agree and continued to support Willy. The ladygoats were nameless since there had yet been no Angela Merkel.

There was a sleepy, somnambulant feel to our time in Kosti. I had no problems with that, being quite happy to read and drink tea for days, turning to weeks. Or something, it was hard to tell. Tina was more restless than me and wanted to explore. But however far we walked all we found was sandy streets, low houses and goats. She had a depressive episode then, to have something to do, she said. She brooded about the future.