In the western world 'energy efficiency' is a buzz term. Companies and environmentalists use it to refer to practices which will, in the long-term, help to prevent dangerous climate change and make good economic sense. In Darfur energy efficiency is a matter of survival.
Practical Action (PA) is a charity based in the UK, founded by E.F.Schumacher author of 'Small is Beautiful'. The approach PA takes is one of long term sustainability, which is often lacking in other NGO’s. It is particularly focused on technology's role in the alleviation of poverty, rather than its consequences. We spoke with the Country Director, Mohamed Majzoub Fidiel in Khartoum and with the staff at the Eastern Sudan office in Kassala, in order to better understand the work PA does and the environmental challenges Sudan faces. 
PA has been working for twenty years in North Darfur where wood is the only viable source of fuel for cooking. With the ongoing conflicts women who collect wood are extremely vulnerable to attacks by militias which can result in beatings, rape, mutilation and murder. It is important therefore to minimise the amount of time they are required to collect wood. Energy efficiency is therefore crucial for Darfurian women. With specialist local knowledge PA have developed a cooking stove made with local clay which is extremely energy efficient and can be moulded into individual pots. PA have then trained local people to teach others the relatively simple process of creating these stoves. Through their village networks this knowledge has spread through the region.
The benefit of these stoves in Darfur is very specific as due to the war, people may be forced to leave their homes. The ability to create new cooking equipment from local materials is therefore invaluable. Other charities in the area are trying to promote mass produced efficient stoves which are proving successful under other conditions. However, in Darfur they are inappropriate for the situation because they are expensive and significantly less efficient. The local knowledge that PA utilises is vitally important as in these situations a 'one size fits all' approach is not the most effective. In Darfur PA is also helping by encouraging tree planting of native species and fruit trees providing shelter, food, fuel and potential income.
PA’s work is about more than just survival, it is about development. PA is making markets work for people in Darfur by improving their ability to sell their crops on the domestic and international market. Case in point is hibiscus, which is estimated currently at only 19% of its optimum productivity. By providing a very simple technological tool from Thailand: essentially a small metal pipe, the harvesting process is improved. This improvement allows the farmers to increase the quality of their crop and as a result its market value is increased by 30%. Darfurian farmers have modified the tool to make it more efficient in their environment and are now sharing this knowledge with one another with PA's help
Climate change is a reality in Darfur, the question of whether or not the finger can be pointed at man made emissions for its cause is an impossible and slightly irrelevant one, but the necessity for adaptation to a changing climate is unquestionable. PA is helping local people to better utilise the natural resources available to them. In Darfur PA are focusing upon water, the drought being a contributing factor to the ongoing conflict. The ability given to people by PA to manage their resources properly means they can be sustained long-term.
PA stresses the most important part of its work is capacity building inside villages and creating networks of villages, as well as empowering women by training them in management skills which can therefore allow them an income. This in turn reduces their vulnerability and means in many cases they no longer need the direct support of PA who can rarely travel to the area due to recent attacks upon their staff. Evidence of this includes the fact that villages have been fundraising for themselves, raising over $1 million for their schools.
Through discussions of Sudan's general environmental situation it became apparent how vulnerable the population is to the effects of the climate, most evidently in the form of drought or floods. There is anecdotal evidence that deforestation has also had a major effect in Sudan, resulting in changing rainfall patterns. It seems people are far more aware of the changes in their environment because of their immediate reliance upon it. It directly provides them with food, shelter and fuel.
There is a history of poor environmental management in Sudan which has caused significant problems. Just forty years ago the area near the border with Ethiopia was considered extremely agriculturally rich and it is now semi-desert. In the late 80's there was a significant drought in Sudan so the government decided to plant misquite trees to prevent desertification. While it succeeded in achieving this goal the misquite tree is an alien species that grows extremely rapidly and severely impairs the ability of other plants to grow. Because of the very deep nature of the roots it is also extremely hard to remove. Massive clearance programmes are being undertaken and people are having to adapt to use these trees for charcoal even though it is far poorer quality than traditional wood used. The legacy of these decisions taken decades ago with the best of intentions is causing significant hardship for people today.
All over Sudan people are vulnerable, partly due to conflicts affecting the west, east and south of the country but also largely due to poor environmental management and a changing climate. The work PA is doing in all these areas is vitally important and their utilisation of local knowledge and long-term thinking means their programmes are achieving great success.
For more information on Practical Actions work in Sudan please go to: http://www.practicalaction.org/?id=region_sudan
Friday, 9 May 2008
Taking Practical Action in Sudan
The Trouble with Sudan
Our purpose
The land where Arabic Africa ends and Black Africa begins, where the Sahara ends and the Blue and White Niles converge has a long history of conflict, continuing into the present.
In the north, Sudan bickers with Egypt over borders. In the west the France-sized region of Darfur is in a state of collapse, exacerbating tensions with neighbouring Chad. The southern region continues to bid for independence after signing a peace agreement dampening the fires of two civil wars lasting a total of thirty nine years. Rebel groups are gaining strength in the east. In the deep south the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army continue to pose a real threat.
After spending a month travelling the length of a country the size of Europe by public transport we are in a position to better understand the political state of the country with the luxury of objectivity. Before arriving our knowledge of Sudan was of the conflict in Darfur and the U.S.’s catergorisation of the country as a rogue state. Speaking to people and seeing how they live painted a far more complex picture, although the constant threat of police intervention precluded free dialogue in many instances. Therefore this has been pieced together from half-finished, half-heard half-truths.
Because the different perspectives on Sudan’s strife are so disparate and complex we can only recount what we saw, heard and read as generalisations. However, we will endeavour to relay them as impartially as possible.
Two hundred and forty three peoples and many perspectives
The Northern perspective is one of Sudan as a Muslim country under sharia law plagued by infidel insurgents in the east, south and west.
The Southern and Nuba Mountains’ perspective is that it is a very different country with very different ideals, rich in resources which the North plunders without the due recompense of improving the infrastructure required to allow them to live within the parameters of their basic human rights.
The Darfurian perspective is that the North is not providing them with what they require to survive, let alone progress.
The Khartoum Press perspective was surprisingly freely voiced. An editorial in one paper described in detail the meddling of China into the Darfur region. A rival paper did however describe how the extent of Sudan’s problems were greatly inflated by the Western media. When we spoke to an individual in the Nuba Mountains about the upcoming referendum where the region will be able to vote for independence, he spoke of the Khartoum based radio propaganda which fills the airwaves. The Sudanese television channels were state controlled and generally featured Arabs in an idyllic country setting discussing how fantastically well Sudan was doing.
The Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in conjunction with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) have the perspective that after the peace treaty with the Khartoum based government – the National Congress Party (NCP), to end the civil war was signed they failed to fulfill their promises of an improved infrastructure in the area. Although the area is providing the North with most of its resources and therefore capital, it continues to drag its heels with regards to investment. The SPLM describes the problem as follows,
- …the Sudanese state is essentially an alien political system with a institutional framework that excludes the vast majority of its citizens. The African Sudanese have been excluded from the centre of state power since 1956 while they constitute 69% of the population! How can there be peace? And after the 1989 NIF coup the system further excluded non-fundamentalist moslems, while women have always been excluded at all times. We call this political dispensation the "Old Sudan" based on religion (Islam) and race (Arabism). Some analysts have described the problem of Sudan as "Double Apartheid" or racial and religious apartheid. http://splmtoday.com/
The NGO perspective is that their help is sorely needed but their efforts are regularly thwarted by the National Congress. The UN peacekeeping force of 2006 deployed in an attempt to calm the situation in Darfur was described by the government as ‘foreign invaders’. When collating figures for the death-toll in Darfur the NGOs estimated between 200,000 and 400,000, the UN estimated 200,000 and the National Congress estimated 9000.
The Western media’s perspective, upon which we based our preconceptions, seems to be one of Darfur as the focus of Sudan’s problems and for it to be one of absolute hopelessness, so far down the road to oblivion it is no longer worth the heart-break.
The cradle of conflict
Strategically Sudan has been dealt a bad hand. It nestles amongst warring and unstable nations on all sides. Its main conflicts are with Uganda and Chad. However conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia is causing many people of the Beja tribe to cross the border into Sudan in Kassala where there are huge refugee camps.
Below is an approximate map of the conflicting regions in Sudan
A history of violence
Colonial rule by the British orginally administered the countries as two regions, the Arab North and the Black African South in order to slow the progress of Islam southwards and malaria which was threatening British troops, northwards. After pressure from the North to unite the two regions the Britsh agreed, placing them in charge in 1946. This inevitably led to an exploitation of the South – a wound which runs sore today. After colonial rule ended the country remained with the same administrative structure the British had left it with.
The ‘religious apartheid’ the SPLM refers to is a particular problem as much of the south is Christian due to the work of British missionaries during Colonial rule. This causes conflict with the Muslim South which controlled the entire country under sharia law. It is estimated that Sudan is made up of over two hundred tribes with distinct cultural heritages and practices which are severely impinged upon by strict governmental controls. This also causes problems for many of those in the south who follow animist religions. A long history of slavery is something which the Southerners find hard to forget. It is not that long since the Northerners were systematically snatching young men and women from southern villages.
The first Sudanese civil war (1955-1972), the Anyanya rebellion, ended with the signing of a peace agreement in Addis Ababa costing 500,000 lives. After the then president, Nimeiri, broke the Addis agreement war began again in 1983 and did not end until the death of 1,900,000 people and the displacement of 4,000,000 in 2005.
An uncivil war
The peace agreement which ended Sudan’s second civil war was signed in 2005. It dictated that in 2011 the people of Southern Sudan would be afforded the opportunity to vote on whether or not they want to split from the North and become and autonomous region.
Those we spoke to in the South lived in anticipation of the day when they could make this decision but there was a great deal of trepidation. They feared a repeat of Kenya’s recent polling conflicts. They feared that the vote will be rigged, that they would be terrorised, they feared a lack of democracy and they prayed the West will support them by overseeing the proceedings.
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Relations remain strained
A contentious point for Southerners is education. As their children are not being educated to a high enough standard there is fear that there will be yet another generation of people unaware of their rights and therefore unwilling to demand them. This lack of education is a concern for the referendum in which the South will be able to make its bid for independence. If people are not educated they will not be able to make a considered decision with an awareness of the North’s techniques to make a united Sudan sound more appealing. Many believe that Arabic is used as a controlling tool. Despite the presence of a few token Southerners in the parliament, the language is Arabic, while the main administrative language is English in the South. This is also the case in the country’s universities. We spoke to a man who was studying theology. One day a government decree dictated that the following day all lectures and writing would be in Arabic, which he did not know.
There is also concern that Khartoum’s focus upon Darfur may be seen by southern and eastern rebels as a point of weakness and may result in a dramatic increase in hostilities. Many Northerners believe too many concessions have been made to the SPLA and many Southerners have never trusted the South to fulfill its promises. There are signs that new fronts in the North / South conflicts are opening up in the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and the East. ‘Sudan’s Dual Crisis: refocusing on IGAD’ www.crisisgroup.org
The Sudan we saw
Upon the SPLA controlled Nuba Mountains it felt very much like another country. The area patrolled by a different army, a different flag flew from the governmental buildings and people danced, sang and drank. The soldiers we travelled in a lorry with spoke of their hatred for the war. Many had lost family and livelihood to the conflict yet there was still a strong sense of a want for a united Sudan. ‘We are the same people’ was a repeated theme. Many wanted semi-autonomy in order for the plunder of their natural resources to be abated. They believed their land was rich and they should therefore get a bite of the pie. The north could provide the south with the infrastructure they required, and the south could provide the resources the north required.
Darfur’s dark horizon
The conflict in Darfur began in 2003 but tensions had been increasing long before that. The region is suffering from overpopulation and decades of drought and desertification.
The conflict has arisen mainly between tribal groups with one side being composed of the Sudanese army and the Janjaweed, a militia taken from the Arab Baggara tribes of the Northern Rizeigat. The other side composes various rebel groups including the Sudan Liberation Movement and the justice and equality movement composed of the non-Arab Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleit ethnic groups. The lines are not clearly defined though and there is much infighting among rogue militias out to assert their power without any particular ideology.
The independent advisory body Crisis Group in their 2006 report described the Sudanese government as bearing ‘primary responsibility for the deteriorating situation’ ’To Save Darfur’ www.crisisgroup.org as they unofficially continue a policy of ‘supporting the well-armed Chadian rebels in Western Darfur.’ As the peace keeping troops on the ground are comprised of an ill-equipped African Union force of 7,000 troops there is a desperate need for international involvement. Suggestions as such have been met by Khartoum with threats of Darfur becoming a ‘graveyard’ for multinational forces and that their involvement would be tantamount to an act of colonialism.
A second independent report (2007) describes Khartoum’s purpose in scuppering peace in Darfur as follows:
- The NCP [National Congress Party] wants Darfur in chaos to limit the room for an opposition to emerge, while resettling key allies on cleared land and defying Security Council resolutions by integrating its Janjaweed irregulars into official security structures… ’Darfur’s new Security Reality’ www.crisisgroup.org
Tensions have been raised because of the drought forcing the Northern Arab tribes further south to search for water encroaching onto southern land. These tensions escalated into violence that is now being called genocide or ‘acts of genocide’ by members of the international community including George W. Bush.
Calls from the International Criminal Court (ICC) to bring two leading figures in the atrocities in Darfur identified as Janjaweed commander Ali Kushayb and State Minister for Interior, Ahmed Harum are meeting vitriolic defiance. Khartoum responded to the calls with the threat that it would,
- cut the throat of any international official…who tries to jail a Sudanese official in order to present him
to the international justice. ’Future of the World Court in Balance’ YaleGlobal
This is of great concern internationally as it is seen as a test case for many more similar cases in the future. Khartoum claims that it can try these war criminals itself, with out international assistance yet it continues to bomb areas where peace talks are planned. There are calls for the international community to back the ICC, forcefully with the use of sanctions if necessary. This is not happening and will result in the ICC becoming an impotent talk shop.
China’s involvement in Sudan is a particular concern. As we saw throughout Sudan there are Chinese constructions and firms everywhere and the influence is extending into Darfur. The Chinese supply the government with arms and then turn a blind eye to Darfur, partially as there are rich uranium resources which they hope to exploit in Darfur.
However, there are signs that China’s approach to the Darfur problem are changing for the better. Chinese President Hu Jintao is said to be pressuring Sudanese President Bashir to accept the UN’s plans for the installation of support in the region.
It is perhaps possible to draw some parallels between the situation in Darfur and that in the south of Sudan. Both are calling out for equality and have been forced into the position of calling up arms and asking for it forcefully. Perhaps the fundamental difference and the reason that the Darfur conflict’s future is so much bleaker is that the region does not have oil. The south’s bargaining chip of black gold has perhaps saved many of its people’s lives. Darfur has come to the table relatively empty handed.
The most generous of peoples
Although Sudan’s lot seems almost hopeless and it seems damned to a future of conflict, its people remain optimistic. It is this optimism and defiance towards Sudan spiralling into the abyss which leaves one with a glimmer of hope. The further troubles associated with a future in which there will be further pressures on the country due to climate change will undoubtedly test the resolve of the Sudanese as well as the international committee to assist them into a state of democracy in which its citizens are able to live in accordance with their human rights. There was consensus amongst the people we met that Sudan’s politics had a rotten core. They were desperate to relay to us that this should not reflect the Sudanese people. They wanted us to know and tell those we knew that despite its problems and as a result of its wonderful people Sudan is both beautiful and life affirming. All the majority of the Sudanese people want is the opportunity to be treated with the dignity and respect they showed us as we passed through their country.
Friday, 21 March 2008
Travel Log 8 - Khartoum to Kadugli, Nuba Mountains, Kowda, Hayban and Kassala (Sudan)
22/02/08
After two coaches, one car and fourteen hours we reached Kadugli approximately 800km South of Khartoum. The road from Dilling to Kadugli was in the process of being constructed (as part of the north / south peace agreement) so was regularly blocked by great mounds of dirt which our driver (in a small Kia) either ramped over or avoided by going off road, requiring us to get out and push. There was a great deal of anticipation as we tried to gauge the landscape in the moonlit, forested mountains which looked like the curves of a predator stalking its prey.
We were driven to a lakonda to register with the police at midnight. The area was still fractious after the war between North and South, ending around five years previously: a man from the UN spoke of tribal skirmishing in the hills a few days previously. The area is jointly controlled by the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) with the backing of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Northern run government. We had received permission to travel in the area after a day of traversing Khartoum from one government building of another in order to get the vital military stamp.
On the way back to the lakonda after an uninspiring dinner of mashed beans and onion we followed the sound of distorted music to a tent in which a mass of people were dancing raucously. The music stopped dramatically and they piled out with whoops and yells of intoxication, it seemed like we had arrived in another country.
23/02/08
In the sweltering Kadugli afternoon a man dressed in army fatigues smashed off his face on something mimed swinging a stick at our heads. He lambasted us in a mixture of languages then raised to strike, it was a stark reminder that we needed to watch our backs, although he was an exception judging by the shocked expressions of onlookers.
We spent the day talking around the town, as we had become quite accustomed to doing, even mastering the art of scanning cafés for someone with an authoritative air and a good command of English. We came to the decision that Hayban would give us what we wanted from the few days we had in the Nuba Mountains. So we set about receiving permission to travel there from the SPLA.
We spent our time in the office of first lieutenant Khamis Mugagdam. He made the process as smooth as possible for us and gave us the details of his brother who had a shop in Hayban who would help us find accommodation.
24/02/08
We sat playing cards in the market and visiting the stalls piled high with clothes donated by Americans, until we could find transport to Kowda –further into the mountains and closer to Hayban.
The seven hour Bedford truck ride was in the company of a twenty plus strong division of the SPLA. They wore a mish-mash of uniforms, some in berets some in green baseball caps, some just nonchalantly soaked up the intense sunlight. The only consistency was in the SPLA stamped patent leather boots. Many wore the tassels of a tin pot general, but theirs were hand knitted from wool, strung to the shoulders which were adorned with beads making up vibrant patterns, including the Saint George’s Cross. All carried Kalashnikovs, some were left to bounce around in the spare tire where there safety catches flicked on and off with the uneven track. The truck already created quite a spectacle with the soldiers shouting obscenities at passers by, which they found hilarious, particularly when an old man responded with the apparently uncouth placement of his ring finger into his mouth. The additional presence of three hawajas onboard sent many of the children wild. Unfortunately either modesty or fear of reprisal made the soldiers camera shy.
The mountains were not huge but were still grand as they sprouted from the eerie plains dotted with double headed coconut palms, the baobab or upside down tree and trees without leaves that were covered in bright pink flowers. The villages we passed through were small and a sure sign of the distress the area had suffered was visible not only in the large number of NGOs present but in the abundance of UNICEF tarpaulins covering many of the shelters. The road in points could hardly be described as much more than a steep mountain track. For the last part of the journey a woman got onboard at the German NGO hospital carrying a small package, wrapped in a blanket. The soldiers gave her a great deal of reverence, clearing space in the cab for her. A man who was returning to his village on holiday from his job as the Recreation Manager at the Khartoum Hilton explained that she had given birth that morning. We watched as she clambered down the side of the truck left the truck to show her mother her new grandchild for the first time.
Upon arrival in Kowda we were taken to the police / NGO compound. After the police read through our security passes thoroughly, then thoroughly read the photocopies it was deemed acceptable for us to spend the night there for $20 a discount from the usual $35. The most we had paid in Sudan for accommodation had been the equivalent of $3.50 and this was nothing special so it seemed extortionate. After a great deal of awkward silences, the scraping of chairs the police chief left. The Recreation Manager apologised profusely for the police chief’s behavior saying that he was known locally as ‘Mosquito’ because ‘he is only small but he causes many men a lot of problems.’ He suggested we spend the night in his house. As we left the compound, walking the sandy path back towards the market by torch light Mosquito came tearing up to us on his motorbike and furiously lambasted us over the sound of his engine which he revved angrily, he had come to the conclusion that we were, ‘very bad people!’ The upshot of it all was the security pass given to us by the SPLA stated that our safety was his responsibility and he was therefore obliged to put us up for the night for free. We spent the evening eating the food we had bought in the market under supervision, wondering who was in the wrong because although this man was an annoyance and it was satisfying to get one over on him, there is the potential for huge tourist crop bringing money into the area and our actions may have damaged it. We were reprieved though a few days later upon meeting the Canadian in charge of the compound who explained it is church run and should be free to all.
25/02/08
Over a breakfast of cold, fried dough balls and a slab of pink sogum dumpling in okra stew we discussed Sudanese politics with the Hilton Recreation Manager. Reading about the subject was a very different experience: putting faces to what were previously numbers was an uncomfortable experience. One of the soldiers on the truck had described how he fought on behalf of his brother who was killed in a random act of violence during the war with the North, during the same incident all of his cows had been taken so he was now also poor. He explained how he wanted to learn English and Toby gave him a collection of Yeats poems he had finished. He was very taken by the following lines from ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
The South of Sudan which is predominantly Black Christian is rich in resources such as oil which the Northern, developed, predominantly Arab, Muslim part of Sudan was exploiting but without returning any of the revenues or development benefits. This disparity was the cause of the war between the North and South. In the peace agreement after the war the North promised an equal share of the revenues and development, however, there is still a great deal of friction in the area because these promises are not being fulfilled, the North is dragging its heels.
The people we met recommended that Yuya (the only remaining tortoise with us) ensured that people we met should realise that he is Japanese because the Chinese support of the Khartoum government is making them very unpopular and Arab people are still unwelcome in the areas we passed through, it would likely be dangerous for them to go there.
We managed to hop a lift on a landcruiser heading to Hayban found for us by the helpful Recreation Manger.
26/02/08
There would be no transport to the following village of Delami because market was not until the 28th so we would be in Hayban for at least two days.
Watching the people going about their business was fascinating. Electricity was at a premium and set aside mainly for lighting the cafes and the three ‘video clubs’; one for eighties blockbusters, one for kung fu and one for Bollywood. We watched as they baked bread in a community oven, transported water to the houses and shops from a storage tank by ingenious donkey carts, repaired rickety Chinese bikes with hammers, cooked food with utensils made from tomato tins, fashioned spears from metal construction poles and drank freshly roasted coffee by the light of gas lamps. It was like a post-apocalyptic vision of the future.
The whole village had a lingering smell of jasmine as many of the old trees were in bloom. The village square was a large flat patch of sand dotted with old trees under which shawled women sat heating various mysterious teas.
We were put up by the ‘Norwegian Church Aid’ who had a series of squat, thatched huts a short walk across the tree lined football pitch. Under the boughs of these huge dark trees which were hung with heavy roots to the ground, was the town’s barber. As we went about the place we were treated with looks of disbelief and fear. The younger children followed us in procession singing hawaja! The adults would look at one another and with a flash of teeth and a clap of the hands for acknowledgement of the strangeness of the situation. This was especially the case when we borrowed Victorian style, Chinese bicycles and cycled about the place like country gents. Those we met in more Western dress treated what we said with undue gravitas.
Wandering about the village deciding which of the many, identical eateries in which to have fu’ul, we came across a group in the ruins of a school building drinking sogum wine called assalia. As the women put henna on the soles of one another’s feet and sorted through bowls of peanuts the men drank heavily. They were determined to prove the freedom of the South to us by getting us plastered. We were still unsure whether the sharia law of Khartoum was nationwide so we were a little uncomfortable with the situation. However, the chief drinker’s claim that he was a general in the SPLA was partly confirmed by the arrival of a man in army uniform saluting him stoically who was promptly handed a jam jar to drink from, which made it all slightly less worrying. This soldier was a member of a tribe from the deep south of Sudan where the four bottom lower teeth are ceremonially removed. They showed us a series of mud pots they used to distill a date spirit that they insisted we try. When the finished jam jars of a clear liquid emerge, it became clear that this was no longer a matter of hospitality but a test of our metal and a matter of national pride. The fact that the British had constructed the school we sat in the ruins of, helped stiffen our backs. It had been ruined when commandeered by the army during the war.
At the point when everyone decided they could trust one another, Toby was renamed enfouko which roughly translates as both naked and mad, there was uproar as Stuart attempted to balance on a very small stool and the expression on Yuya’s face when he downed his shots. They explained the kirang festival, which can cover eventualities such as the coming of rain, the harvesting of a crop or a marriage. It generally involves a lot of singing, dancing and alcohol. In the case of a funeral, a bull is locked in a darkened cage at the time of death and fed only milk. Upon the three year anniversary of the death the cow is killed with a spear like the one we saw being made and it is eaten by the whole village. This was all explained in faltering and slurred English so it is difficult to known its accuracy but it made interesting listening. As did the magician who could cure AIDS and the giant snake which lived in a square cave in the mountain which loomed over the village and who had a fist sized diamond in its belly which the general told us about. We tentatively and unsteadily headed back into the town to eat fu’ul with tinned tuna and it never tasted so good.
27/02/08
All of a sudden there was a lift for us to Delami with two women from Save the Children and their driver in a pickup. Raja and Aza were touring the area to promote landmine education project, part of a wider program of child soldier community reintegration.
We stopped in the middle of nowhere for lunch and sat in a shack constructed from branches and World Food Program sacks, the table molded from the earth beneath us. As we ate a woman repaired Toby's flip-flop with a knife heated in the fire. Outside there was a market of three different items; bread, mangoes and grasshoppers. The mangoes went down far easier than the latter. The taste was taken out of our mouths by the surrogate travel sweets – sour yellow berries they collected from a tree.
In the next village we stopped in, a court was in session in a shop. Most of the village vied for a good view of the sentencing. Apparently a man had ‘a problem’ with his wife and the judge (apparently more senior than the village’s two chiefs) was to decide whether or not she should be beaten. Throughout our time in this village we were followed by a ghost-like child, emaciated and covered in a pale dust. 
In Delami it transpired that the information we had been given was wrong and after tomorrow the next truck out of the village would not be until the next week, taking us dangerously close to end of our Sudanese visa. With the help of the two women we got a lift on the back of a pickup owned by the Catholic Church carrying plastic chairs to Dilling, driven by the pastor. As the fat sun set we could see a sea of savannah with a wake of bright flame moving over the light grass like a tide.
Before Dilling we dropped some passengers in a village where we stopped for tea and we moved inside the cabin. The pastor explained that he had his calling after surviving a collision with a landmine in his pickup, which had left him with a deeply scarred face. Our other passenger wrote for various Khartoum papers on politics and described to us his hopes for a new, united Sudan in which Jesus would play an important role. He waited with baited breath for the 2011 referendum in which the South would be offered the opportunity to vote for independence.
28/02/08 – 01/03/08
In Dilling market we found the Nuban knives we had been looking for and we watched a man sharpen them with great skill using a hammer and the dirt below his engine part anvil. The market also offered shoes made from car tires, jewelry made in a hand operated press and all the goat organs you could ever need.
From Dilling we caught the seven hour bus to Khartoum where we parted from Yuya and caught the eight hour bus to Gederaf, slept on the parked bus once we arrived in Gederaf for four hours then caught the two hour bus to Kassala in the East, at six in the morning.
With its large population of Yemenis, Eritrean refugees and Internally Displaced People Kassala was a vibrant place. The most prominent groups were the Bija women with their large, gold, hooped nose rings and the Bija man with their dark waistcoat and four foot swords strapped to their belt. The Rashaida women had spectacular jewelry hanging from their bhurkas. Groups of men with similar hairstyles hung about together, box shaped afros and strange European curls. Many of them carried boomerang shaped sticks with animal skin grips. A man on a bus said he used his to kill cows, which seemed a little unlikely, later we saw it being use as a seat, its two ends resting on the ground.
After a couple of days in Kassala we were heading back to Gedaref to cross to Ethiopia, we had hoped to cross at Kassala to Eritrea but we had no luck with the visa. Taking a small bus to Gederaf seemed like a simple enough journey but half an hour outside Kassala the inner tube of the front tire inexplicably exploded causing the outer tire to also fly off the wheel. We swerved dramatically off the road towards the embankment, the drop onto the dessert plain was undoubtedly steep enough to have tipped us over. However, the driver fought bravely and when we came to rest everyone shook hands with one another and repeated inshallah, meaning 'god willing', joyfully. We sat outside the bus looking out towards Aweitila, Totil and Taka, the three dramatic mountains which dominated the landscape. When asked a lengthy and complex question about our opinion of the accident, the response, inshallah was met with great uproar. In Gedaref there was no room at the inn, we wandered about the stinking town for a hotel where the manager could be bothered to find the forms that would be necessary to accommodate a couple of hawajas. First prize for worst accommodation goes to the beds we were given in the corridor outside the toilets. The Spanish and German tortoises we had been travelling with previously were staying in the same place so we went with them the next morning in a minibus to the border with Ethiopia.
Sunday, 2 March 2008
Travel log 7 - Dongola, Karima and Khartoum
There were too many crippled people on the streets. There were children who crawled across the road with flip-flops on their hands. People with missing limbs, blind, no toes, broken backs. When we ate at one particular restaurant a silent procession of mutilated people stood looking in at us, arms outstretched until they were moved on by the management.
During one night, Khartoum’s power went out. There was a stillness over the city that made it clear that everyone had been shouting. It coughed back into life as thousands of generators started up, providing power for the classy hotels and big shops. The cities refuse system appeared to involving putting rubbish into the street and then at night the outcasts in green boiler suits collect it. One such man, bearded, with one milky eye and child’s flip flops stood too close to us as we sat in stools on the curb drinking tea in the night, ‘Where is God? God has left Sudan! …You will find God in Africa’ he proclaimed, jabbing at us and the heavens.
As with most developing nations cities there is a huge gulf between rich and poor and between modern and old but they all get thrown in together. Women in burkas on cell phones, the minimalist, iridescent blue ‘Ministry for Justice’ which administers lashes to criminals above the age of ten, amputations for robbery and women are sentenced to being stoned to death for adultery. All part of sharia law which is supposed to govern the land although it is more relaxed these days than it used to be.
Excluding the wrestling Khartoum was a relatively uninteresting place and although appreciating more about the reality of modern Sudanese life. We were looking forward to heading South of Khartoum to escape the dreariness and bureaucracy that’s has plauged our time here.
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Environmental Log 1 - A few environmental issues in North Africa
Waste
Everywhere we have traveled throughout the North of Africa, rubbish has been strewn throughout the streets, river banks, roads, roadsides and anywhere the wind so chooses to place it. Obviously, the root cause of this is the lack of proper waste disposal system. However, it has surprised us the lack of concern the general population show for the issue. The attitude of the general populous clearly led the Sudanese teachers we met in the Northern Village of Kerma some despair: the rubbish was providing an environment for a glaucoma causing fly. In previous travels and living in Guyana we found that in the absence of a proper disposal system people generally devise a system to prevent their village / town from stinking, be it something as simple as putting the rubbish in one place, often in a pit essentially creating their own landfill / incinerator. For some reason this mentality simply does not exist in the places we have been through.
Water
The most prevalent and pressing issue we have encountered on our travels has undoubtedly been water. In Libya the construction of the Great Man Made River demonstrates a country under severe water stress. The long term environmental impact of this is unclear but unlikely to be without consequences. Necessitating a 2000km pipe, 4m in diameter to pump into a reservoir with a capacity of 6.8 million cubic metres smacks of a country with a drink problem that needs to be addressed to achieve a sustainable balance.
The Ankh we saw adorning the wall of pharaoh's tomb was the symbol of life for the Ancient Egyptians, it is in fact a representation of the Nile and its delta. This is still the case in modern day Egypt, the country is utterly dependent upon it as a provider food and electricity. If one is to look at Egypt from above, it is clear that there is not much else other than desert over the rest of the country. As we travel we will be reaching the sources of both the Blue and White Nile as far south as Uganda and we currently sit at the confluence of these rivers in Khartoum. The number of countries that the river runs through makes Egypt precariously dependant on the agreements that are in place over the management of the river. At present the agreements appear strong but if water demand begins to dramatically out way supply it is hard to imagine this becoming a source of friction in the region. 
The building of Aswan high dam in 1973 was Egypt’s attempt to master the Nile, a sign describing the wonders of the dam, strategically placed at the tourist friendly viewing point, proudly proclaimed, 'The High Dam project is considered the Egyptian challenge against the silent nature.' The social impact of the dam was dramatic: hundreds of hugely significant monuments and historic sights were only saved from submerging by a unprecedented international rescue effort (including Abu Simbel temple below). The dam also internally displaced 40,000 people who the Sudanese government forcefully relocated to the present day Wadi Halfa, where the ferry from Egypt docks. The dam now blocks vital sediment from traveling down river. This has lead to the erosion of farmland at the Nile Delta. Unquestionably the dam has made Egypt more productive at the present but if there is more erosion as a result of a reduction in volume of sediment being transported, then this productivity will be short lived. The cheap electricity the dam and the old dam provide is central to the functioning of the country but, once again, the dam appears to be a relatively short term solution to a long term environmental issue.
Short term needs against long term sustainability
A key question that arises again and again is, how do you balance the short term needs of the people against the needs of future generations to be able to continue to use the land and be productive? We cannot claim to have answers and in our brief time traveling we cannot claim to know if these issues are being addressed, we would be interested to hear if anyone reading this has greater knowledge. Short term thinking in the developed world is driven by profit or election cycles but in the developing world it is driven also by survival. This was something made patently clear when we walked through the slums of Cairo. An obvious and legitimate culprit for a major stress on the environment is the human population. Once we find the human population guilty, it is very hard to see how population can be part of any solution.
Environmental awareness
It’s hard to judge the level of environmental awareness in countries where you don't speak the language or spend much time. However it is clearly in the public consciousness, in Egypt we did speak to a number of people with an awareness of and concern for environmental issues. In the weekly Al Ahram English newspaper there was a big article about climate change focusing on the effects on Cairo. Particularly it commented on the increased rainfall over the past few years which the drainage system has not been able to cope with, something we paid testament to with sodden feet. In Sudan we have also encountered anecdotal evidence from farmers that in recent years it rains a lot less in the North and more in the South. In the North at least this has not had any effect yet as the crops grown are entirely dependent on irrigation using diesel pumps to draw water from the Nile. It has also been said that the conflict in Darfur was in part caused by climate change and China’s interest in the area are both issues we shall return to in a later log.
In both Sudan and Egypt we have noticed an under utilization of naturally available renewable sources of energy, in particular solar hot water. This was a cost effective and common sense solution to a everyday problem we saw in Tunisia but not elsewhere. The areas we have traveled through are obvious candidates for solar panels, which we have seen used minimally, attached to telecommunication masts. It is an encouraging sign that the Sudanese five pound note carries images of wind turbines and solar panels. How much this is talking the talk as opposed to walking the walk we do not yet know. What is not in doubt is that there are powerful resources available which need to be utilised.
Saturday, 16 February 2008
Travel Log 6 - Aswan to Sudan, Wadi Halfa, Abri, Kerma and Dongola
We woke early and caught the rickety train with its doors wedged open and all of its fabric, ceiling mounted handles severed, as if it had traveled as slowly as it was taking us from Aswan to the High Dam, all the way from some distant metropolis. We were fast tracked through the passport control to leave Egypt, joined by a different breed of tortoise (traveler / backpacker), two Peruvians (smartly dressed and seeming out of place), two Japanese, two Spaniards and one German (The last three nationalities of which we would travel with on and off till at least Khartoum). Later we also met the three Russian cyclists we had met at the Sudanese Embassy.
We were scheduled to leave at 12.00 and instructed by the man who sold us the tickets to be at the ferry at 10.00 to get seats. We eventually set off at 21.00 on our seventeen hour ride to Sudan. We successfully vied for a bench each to sleep on and took it in shifts to guard as we the other took the opportunity to get some air. The wait for departure was a wait without air. With the boat stationary and the low-ceilinged seating area rammed with people, many of whom were smoking the air was clammy and toxic.
There was an uplifting atmosphere where we sat. A powerful lady led a group of passengers in a song which she MCed over with high-pitched, rapid 'lalalalalala's. The whole thing kept together with ingenious clapping rhythms, skipping on and off the beat. There was a colorful array of passengers – a brightly dressed woman with henna covered feet (meaning she was recently married), there was a man in a huge head scarf and an ill fitting Mafioso blazer, staring toddlers all vied for space. The space on the luggage racks was at a premium, as it meant the passenger would not have to wait for their luggage to leave the cramped hold, it was therefore the source of a great deal of heated arguments, placated and in some cases compeered by a tiny waif of a man. His job was to shout louder than anyone else, strutting around the boat with veins bulging from the side of his delicate head.
When we got moving some cool air came from Lake Nasser came through the portholes but it was not enough to prevent it from feeling like a steaming, mildewed flannel on the face. Above deck was an encampment floored with individuals blankets, surrounded by boxed held together with string, the lucky ones in the shade below the lifeboats. To get hold of our in-flight meals we handed in a ticket we had previously exchanged for a different ticket – presumably to keep a ferry official's relative in work.
Upon returning to our bench from the café on the mid-deck (a million miles from the Marseilles – Tunis ferry café) a man who had earlier positioned himself at the end of the bench and had been sleeping on it while we were away, insisted on positioning himself on the floor.
It is likely that actions of this man and a holy man in the café who bought us tea are more to do with the way of life of the passengers of the boat – being mainly vendors of wares for natives of their country as opposed to tourists but we felt a warm glow at the possibility that we were traveling to a place where people had a different mindset to that which we knew. This transition mindset was something we were privileged enough to feel change with the landscape, gradually.
05/02/08
We caught a lift in the back of a pickup from the Sudanese passport control to Wadi Halfa and after almost a month of travel, we found ourselves in what we had expected to find when we came to Africa. We left our bags in the mud brick hotel and went in search of food. A boy stood outside a darkened room with newspaper piled high with fried fish, seemed indifferent to our decision to come to his restaurant. Inside, there was a welcoming silence presided over by three men in immaculately white robes who responded to our salaams (hellos) with undue reverence.
06/02/08
From 8.30 till 12.00 we moved from room to room with in the police station in order to fulfil the required registration process. Our paths crossed those of the other tortoises, occasionally overtaking one another and keeping each other up-dated on how many officials we had seen.
The day before we had written our names in the book of a bus driver who said he would take us to the next significant village, eight hours away Abri for SP15 (about £3.20) but we had found a Bedford truck driver who would let us sit on his bags of cement for SP5 which would be far less stuffy. As we set off with some of the other tortoises four hours late (roughly on time, African time) the bus we had put our names down for pulled up in front of lorry. A great deal of shouting and shoving ensued and the bus driver offered us a ride in his heaving carriage for SP5 which we declined and he got in quite a huff.
At the back of the lorry was a white robed man with a strange arrangement of material on his head. He remained cross-legged in a Zen –like state of peace, seemingly motionless and unblinking in the clouds of dust. Periodically we stopped to refill the radiator and our bellies. It was good to enjoy the rough ride provided by the road which will soon be paved as Sudan is currently doing rapidly with all its major roads. The landscape was harsh desert but yet there was an alluring appeal to it, perhaps more of a sense of adventure.
As dusk rose from the horizon like ink on blotting paper, we were able to watch the stars fade into the blue sky to accompany the sliver of moon. When darkness fell the desert sky was so full of stars it looked deep as if it were the sea and we were fish held above its surface.
In the dead of night we passed what looked like a staged crime scene. Three people stood solemly watching the back of the head of a man on the ground, lit by the lights of their stationary truck in the middle of nowhere. One of our passengers mimed that they were praying
We spent the night in Abri's only lokanda (a very basic hostel) and ate the only thing on the restaurants menu, fu'ul (beans mashed with the bottom of a glass Pepsi bottle with oil and chopped onions and tomatoes with bread. We spent the night talking to a man from Darfur who eulogized about Sudan.
07/02/08
Our day spent unsuccessfully looking for a lift to Kerma by boksi (Toyota pickup with improvised roof rack and benches) lorry or bus turned out to be a good way of meeting the people of the village which had been built upon its market of ten or so stalls and people stopping on their way to Dongola and then to Khartoum.
We were sent from person to person about the town, fuelled by the tea they gave us. We were given high fives by the police who talked to us about the Queen Mother. A female teacher in the school instructed her prize pupil to speak English to us. We were told that we would be able to leave on Sunday at the earliest (two days time) so we prepared ourselves for another night in the mud brick hotel. Showering from a bucket in a silver basin used for mashing fu'ul, in the stinking toilet.
We spent the evening watching the semi-finals of the African Cup with most of the village, who all paid the equivalent of two cups of tea for the privilege and were boisterous company. It was strange to see the reverence with which they watched the premium adverts which were offering Saudi golfing and bespoke bathrooms and brought to mind the question of how these people perceive the world base upon the information received by State Radio, BBC Arabic service and satellite TV for Arabia.
Spectators with and without English were keen to speak to us. The police captain, then wearing his garabea moved the tobacco wad behind his bottom lip slowly smiling at us like Little John. He stood by us dumbly as if his very presence spoke for its self, shifting the weight on his feet several times then mooching off with the same grin fixed across his face.
That evening we were treated to an unexpected appearance of local hero on television – Muhammed Wordi. An eighty year old Nubian crooner sat upon a wooden throne with an extensive backing group sat in front of 1970's Top of the Pops backdrop, singing to the Sudanese glitterati who were sat upon plastic garden furniture. He had an impressive voice and sang in Nubian and Arabic.
08/2/08
We were woken by an irritating runt repeating ‘Now truck!’ We followed him outside, ‘When is the truck?’, ‘Eight’, ‘Its nine now’, ‘Yes’, ‘Where is it?’, ‘Here’, ‘Where?’. At this point the farce was ended by a half Egyptian half Sudanese pizza chef from Berlin who translated for us via our German traveling companion, Johan, that the bus would come tomorrow.
A seemingly dead day was put to good use as there would not be transport on this day being Friday (the Muslim day of rest). We paid a man to take us down the Nile to look for crocodiles. The crocs nervousness was explained as he pointed towards them and mimed that they tasted delicious. As they came into view they shuffled awkwardly into the dark water. They seemed far from threatening despite their relatively large size (7ftish).
Upon our return to the hotel a man with the drooping moustache and facial scars of a panto villain bundled us into a boksi and all of a sudden, we were on our way to Kerma, just as we had relaxed into the bokra (tomorrow or bokra bokra for the day after and so on) mentality. Johan took exception to the driver’s technique of generally off road, straight through the desert sand, very fast and stopping at most of the hamlets to embrace friends and family. At regular intervals he would say, ‘this man is so stupid! No? He is crazy!’, he repeated this like a mantra it is interesting to see different people coping mechanisms for quite a rough journey. The sugar coated peanuts were got in Cairo went down well with the children who came running to the back of the boksi when it stopped as we shook hands with the men authoritatively and the women tittered from behind their veils , chasing us down the road through he clouds of dust the children were filmic. The sight of women in jet black hijabs bordered in colors, iridescent like beetle backs gliding through the yellow of the desert was beautiful. We ate fu'ul and slept in a room with ten other snoring men.
09/02/08
The Spanish German extremely tight budget prevented then from seeing the Deffufa, a mud temple built three thousand years BC. After a session of lackadaisical bargaining with the armed guar we were allowed clamber all over it. It was reminiscent of the twenty foot tall contemporary mud domes we had seen in the graveyards we had passed. Inside the thick towers hundreds of birds nested and shot out as we passed under. There did not seem to be an inside to it – it was all wall and crevice. Any explanation we may have received in the recently opened museum was denied as the guards could not find the key.
The Spanish and German tortoises headed for Dongola while we and Yuya (Japanese) decided to stay another night in order to see the market the next day. We found a café and sat by the Nile drinking guava juice. We watched as three people within ten metres of one another, one fished, the other bathed and the other threw in the waste from his restaurant. Our lunchtime mission to find something other than fu’ul was a success. We were invited in the kitchen of the restaurant and pointed out what we wanted – omelet, goat, fried fish, beans, rice and lettuce. Our stomachs were very pleased with us.
To walk it off, we headed out of town and came across a maze of brightly painted houses and alleys ruled by gangs of small children who darted from building to building, peering around corners. We were greeted on the road by a lanky man in a garreba (local dress, long flowing gown) and wrap-around sunglasses. He invited us to his relatively grand house and plied us with spiced tea, telling us about his farm and life. More men from the village turned up and tried their hand at speaking English. This continued until dusk, all the while, a stream of women passed in front of us, through our host’s garden. From our laid back chairs and with the conversation flowing sedately from the universal humor of mild sexism to matters of gravity we got a glimpse at what they got up to. Within the context of the history of conflict between the north and the south it was interesting to hear that it was invariably Southerners who were given the public whipping. As they did not have houses to stay in, they were seen on the streets drunk and punished.
We were offered a date alcohol but declined as no one else was drinking it. Maybe we were overcautious but the penalty for drinking in Sudan is forty lashes. Our host offered to take us his farm on an island in the Nile the following day. A teacher who had joined us suggested we visit the school he taught at – Sukdo Primary.
10/02/08
A man in Western dress and very proper English ushered us into the school. We were brought to the headmistress’ office and were given tea and toffee and introduced to all the school’s teachers. It transpired that Said (the teacher from the previous day) taught in the boy’s school and we were in the girl’s. Said would arrive shortly, as was explained to us with all finger-tips of one hand touching and pointing upwards like a sleeping snake. Until he arrived we were taken from class to class to give our royal approval to the students. They were instructed to sing songs for us as we stood at the front of the class, after introducing ourselves. We clapped politely as and nodded approvingly, relishing the smiling awkwardness of it all.
Said arrived and took us to his school where lessons were postponed and we ate a delicious breakfast of grahna (pancake-like bread and mashed, spiced okra)with all of the schools teachers. Everyone was keen to emphasize that not all of Sudan was like what we had seen on TV, that was the west and we were in the north – a reasonable point in a country the size of Western Europe, Darfur alone the size of France. Several teachers walked with us to the riverbank to catch the boat to the island where we had arranged to visit the farm previously.
We sat below the date palms and ate what the teachers had knocked down with rocks. They explained they did not talk about politics in general as we probed as this would lead to a jail sentence. One of our company, wearing fetching mock leopard skin shoes, explained the scarring we had seen on many people’s faces. This practice was unusual in the north but still widespread in the south. All over Sudan people still used ritualistic burning for its medicinal qualities, which does not seem that dissimilar to acupuncture. A burn to the arm for stomach aliments, a burn to the back of the head for throat problems, two burns to the temple for eye problems. On dark skin these burns did not look as gruesome as they might on white, no more obtrusive than a tattoo.
We retuned to our hostel by donkey cart hoping to find transport to Dongola. We headed for the market while our boksi driver ate his lunch before departing. The market was a meeting for people all over the area who brought their fruit, vegetable, spices and cakes to sell to one another. The small stringed instruments some men from our room had been making at the hotel seemed to go down well, with people, perhaps a little too old, strutting about the place, playing them enthusiastically. There was a great deal of bawdy slapstick that could have been lifted from the Canterbury Tales, like the midget selling papers from the back of his cart was taunted by a group of teenagers and retaliated with his donkey whip.
To enter the town we took a ferry across the Nile where we met a man with a fancy Chinese motorbike and either an overactive imagination or an amazing tale. Perhaps, he had studied in California and Russia and received is PhD in New Dehli. Perhaps for a time he shared a house with a man who flew one of 9/11 planes. Perhaps, as a result of this he was kidnapped in Sri Lanka, almost shot and ended up spending three years in Guantánamo Bay, then the police took us into an office to take our passport details so we never got to hear the end of his articulate and well told story even if the reality of it is in doubt.
Three of us, luggage included, just about fitted into the tuk-tuk the police instructed us to get into. Upon arrival at the hotel we walked for half an hour to find the police station to register ourselves in the town. We spent the night watching Rigobert Song loose the Africa Cup for Cameroon in a gloomy club, where people smoked and watched TV as if they were in an opium den, on a TV balanced on a bottle crate.
11/02/08
Dongla was an unappealing place interested in the shifting of Chinese tat. When we met our lokanda owner he would get us to repeat the Nubian ‘hello’, ‘Mescargis’ we had originally greeted him with, as it was a joke which did not grow old for him. We spent our time mooching from shade to shade drinking tea. We met a student of pharmaceuticals a lawyer who told us legally, we could drink alcohol in Sudan and a very short man with a huge gold-buttoned blazer who thoroughly confused us.
Sunday, 3 February 2008
Travel Log 5 - Cairo to Luxor and Aswan
The train ride from Cairo to Luxor was relatively comfy and mildly amusing. Before boarding the train we thanked our lucky stars that we had asked someone to right the Arabic numbers down for us. The station was a mass of confusion. During the hour delay, as we fretted about whether we were going to be getting on the right train, we were able to watch some kind of ruckus involving wailing women and a surging crowd forming around one man. Men in various uniforms (navy, army, dog handler, police), tourism police nonchalantly crossed the train track and had a look. Upon arrival, the heavily armed guards at either end of the train gave a sense that were going to be entering Red Indian country. The carriage TVs were not working, and looked as if they had not, for quite some time. Our alternative entertainment was a group of young Muslim girls playing charades.
29/01/08 – 31/01/08
The boat from Aswan to Sudan would not leave until Monday so we saw the standard Luxor sites as part of a group; Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens and the Hatshepsut Temple.
After sixty tourists were shot ten years ago, one left with a note stuffed inside his eviscerated body reading 'no tourists' the crowds at the sites were a quarter of what they had been a few years before. Even so, they heaved with all nationalities. The sugar cane on the roads to these sites was cut back to make an area of no mans land, twenty metres in width, in order to discourage terrorists from attacking the buses. This seemed like a rather cosmetic solution.
The first tomb we entered was the most spectacular – that of Rameses II. Much of the colour was as fresh as that of Egyptian shop fronts a few years in age. It was the first occasion when the imaginary and garish Egypt of school books was in any way realised. The imagery and repetition of imagery was even more alien than that of the Islamic art.
A man with an elongated head (a hereditary condition and in some cases, induced with the use of a wooden press) was offered a symbolic feather by a god with a beetle for a head.
The anatomical accuracy of the horses and be-headed Nubian slaves far exceeded any of the Roman art we saw in Libya. However, we did pine for the empty ruins to saunter through.
The graffiti from antiquity had rendered many of the depicted faceless and the fertility god with one arm, one leg and a giant penis had been castrated. It seemed to be lacklustre defacement because everything above arm height was in tact.
We visited the temple of Hatshepsut or 'hot chicken soup' as she is otherwise known by tour guides who took advanced humour in their tourism certificates. She ruled Egypt as the daughter of a god and her embalming temple of three stories which took eighteen years to build and was closed after the seventy days required to complete the embalming process.
Although these sites were busy and our guide seemed far more interested in selling us key rings than anything else, it was hard not to find the enormity of their vision and execution of it awe inspiring. Trying to imagine these places at there respective times of construction (a time period spanning several hundred years, yet with such an unnervingly consistent perception and depiction of the sublunary and preternatural) was like looking over the edge of precipice.
We hired clapped out bikes and negotiated the assault course of Luxor's roads to the temple of Karnak with its hall of a hundred and thirty four huge lotus or papyrus pillars (depending on your source). The way the afternoon light presented them and the hieroglyphs, statues and obelisks gave the place a forceful air made it partly unwelcoming, like a proud old man in his sick bed, who did not want visitors. This was compounded by tourists who did not treat the sites with a semblance of the tact usually associated with holy places, irrespective of religion.
Cycling along the Continental side of the Nile in the with hot sun and a cool breeze, lined with globe shaped street lighting and absurdly uniformed cruise ship workmen, allowed the cries of the felucca sailors (the felucca is a white, curve-masted, single sailed Egpytian boat), taxi drivers and the horse drawn carriage drivers float gently out of ear shot.
01/02/08 – 02/02/08
We went on the train from Luxor to Aswan, along a track following the Nile as in gently meandered through the landscape. We were able to watch the architecture become more Nubian as we headed south.
We later visited the Nubian Museum to find out more about this intriguing and persecuted ethnic group that was almost decimated by the construction of the Aswan Dam. Its construction forced them to relocate and much of their homeland and culture was submerged by Lake Nasser. We saw thousands of years of their beautiful jewellery and painting and statues. There were descriptions of the incredible feats of engineering performed by international teams of engineers and scientists to preserve Nubian monuments, which in one case involved the winching of a temple to higher ground.
It would be nice to think that the Czech funding of the museum was inspired by an ancient Eastern European atonement – it was a group of marauding Bosnians who deposed one of the Nubian kings as part of the expansion of the Byzantine Empire. It was clear as well from the pictures of the Nubian people, that there faces are quite un-Arabian alluding to the next phase we waited for with baited breath as we prepared to travel further south.
Aswan was picturesque enough to warrant it banks to be rammed with cruise ships. As light flickered on the Nile excitedly like millions of silver fish leaping above the surface, with feluccas in the background and an old man fishing with a simple line from a boat in the foreground, it was all a little saccharine. It may have been cynical to think so, but surely the very same image from the perspective of someone in his position would be to think, that man has a hard life, I bet he wishes he had a trawler. Profiting from poverty via tourism seemed unsustainable, but with tourism as Egypt's primary source of income, something for the time being, unavoidable.
We managed to reduce the increasing annoyance of the curb-crawling, hooting taxis and felucca sailors and shop owners by treating their monotonous questions, 'hello my friend, where you from?', 'what you want?' and 'where you going?' as an opportunity to give more and more brazened answers.
Our top three Egyptian sales patters are as follows;
΄Bedouin coffee never end, you stop when you see the pink elephant΄
΄What you want?΄ ΄Nothing΄ ΄I have nothing!΄
΄How can I take your money?΄
During our visit Aswan was a hive of activity as the school children were in there winter holidays. It was interesting to see how the resort treated them differently to the non-Africans. It would be unfair to begrudge the Egyptians whatever money they can harvest from the tourist crop because it the same crop that sails around in cruise ships that are polluting the Nile. Having spent relatively little time in Egypt though and only at major tourist destinations it feels like we have not been able to see a genuine side to Egypt as we understandably are seen immediately as a source of cash and along with the language barrier which makes interesting debate and gaining a real insight pretty much impossible.
A Canadian man we met who visited the town thirty five years ago had seen it without the cruise ships and without its riverside promenade an extremely different vision, although, how different were most places thirty five years ago. When we took a boat to the west bank of the Nile it was just about possible to imagine what he had seen. After the initial nonsense of being told that the hill we wanted to climb closed at four and we were only permitted out of the village on camel back, we sneaked our way through the back of the village. The pace of life after a five minute boat ride was entirely different. There were children playing football under the date palms and old women huddled together, dressed head to toe in jet black chuckling away and finding the very sight of us hilarious, in a joyful and inclusive way. Of course the children chasing us through the streets asked us for money but when we declined, they did not take it as a personal affront, it was more of a game than a career. As the sun set we had birds eye view of both banks from our unauthorised hill, backing onto the endless desert, it was a chance to ponder which side of the Nile had it better, the one with the big road and the railway line or the one without.
