Hopefully, this will be the first direct e-mailed report on my travels in Sudan. Here in Khartoum we have reasonably reliable but slow Internet facilities where connections can easily be made with friends and colleagues left behind. In a couple of days time it may be a different story as I am due to depart Khartoum tomorrow (Friday)for the Darfur area in the west of the country.
It might have been a disastrous start to my trip but for the excellent service provided by Anne and Dave Rogers. For my last few journeys abroad I have arranged to fly from Birmingham Airport. It being less hassle than getting to Heathrow or Gatwick, where most of the destinations I visit can be accessed directly. On a few occasions, Manston in Kent has been my departure point when a convenient transport plane has been available, going in my direction, and I have literally been the only passenger and ‘hitched a lift’. They don’t provide seatbelts on those types of aircraft. Your lucky to get a seat, let alone refreshments!
However, last Tuesday morning Dave Rogers took me to Birmingham airport at the ungodly hour of 04.15 in the morning. In plenty of time to catch a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, and onwards to Cairo and eventually Khartoum.
I checked in, went through passport control as normal and was sitting in the lounge when I realised that I had forgotten my wristwatch. I’m ‘not about’ normally at four in the morning. No bother, have spare watch in luggage! Then, horror struck; where was the security wallet containing my dollar float? A search in the hand luggage revealed all, Nothing! Here I was, sat in the departure lounge of a major airport, at the start of six weeks or so of an assignment. Flying to a country where ONLY cash is acceptable and credit cards are absolutely useless. And I only have about £20 on me! A call home on the mobile phone, at five o’clock in the morning, and the missing wallet, together with watch was found in the bedroom. Another call to Anne Rogers, reckon I woke her up as well, (sorry both), where I found that Dave had not yet returned to Martley. A quick turn round and back he came with the missing items. Brilliant! Reversing my steps, came back out of the departure lounge and collected the missing items off Dave on the forecourt of Birmingham Airport with 15 minutes to spare before departure time. Made it. Not quite by the skin of my teeth, but not very far from it!
The flight to Frankfurt was fine, now there was a five-hour wait for the connecting flight to Cairo, with another wait of one hour while the plane was refuelled and cleaned, and then on to Khartoum.
By the time we touched down it was late at night, the scheduled arrival time being 22.50pm.
Getting through customs was a relatively painless affair. I had previously been advised that it could be a nightmare as all bags are thoroughly searched, and any alcohol, or material with the slightest hint of a pornographic nature is absolutely not permitted. Only last week a colleague had a copy of ‘Hallo’ magazine confiscated as the customs inspector considered some of the pictures to be very risqué!
I now have to wait in Khartoum for a couple of days while travel permits are obtained. At present permission has only have granted to visit the capital and one or two other places such as Port Sudan. Travel outside these areas, especially areas of conflict, requires separate documents; with a different travel permit for each area visited. Having been forewarned of this, I brought out with me 18 passport sized photos! Most have already been used, in only the first couple of days! Incidentally, special permission, with appropriate and correctly stamped and dated documents are needed to take photographs. And never ever in certain locations.
It has always surprised me how I keep coming in contact with the same people over and over again, and in different countries. Already here in Khartoum I have met up with a few colleagues, whom I have not spoken to for many years. I don’t know why, but they always seem to recognise me before I do them, and they normally even recall the last time we worked together in similar situations. Once seen never forgotten, I suppose! This time, for instance, a water engineer by the name of Wingching (he was born in Hong Kong but lives in New Zealand) recognised me, the last time we met was in Goma during the refugee crisis. And that was some years ago now.
Altogether I suppose there are at least five humanitarian aid workers here in Khartoum who have ‘crossed my path’ before, when I was in Sudan, Uganda and Angola.
Everywhere there is dust, dust, dust. It is so bad that people are advised not to wear contact lenses. Anyone suffering respiratory problem are definitely advised to stay away. However, the city itself is bustling with people and vehicles or all types, including donkey carts and three wheel taxis. Traffic management is non existent; there are traffic cops around but non-effective, to the point that congestion become chaotic. I suppose, similar to any other major town in the world, although here only the main thoroughfares are covered in tarmac. All side streets are just sandy dirt tracks. To give you an idea, if the same conditions appertained in the UK, ALL roads around Martley would be unmetalled tracks, including most of the A and all B roads a short distance from Worcester. Where, even there in the city, all side roads would become just tracks, complete with rubbish dumped on the roadside. Roads compete with one another for the largest potholes requiring numerous deviations by vehicles as they navigate precariously around the city. Much, much, worse than our present Worcester City High Street! Have already seen numerous vehicles running around without number plates, even bodies missing and bits dropping off. M.O.T.?Never heard of it here! Accident insurance, don’t make me laugh. Many of the drivers have never seen a driving licence let alone had a lesson!
Yesterday, my first full day in Khartoum was spent in acclimatising to the heat and humidity, which is excessive, and in visiting various of the large UN funded organisations, such as WFP (World Food Program) where much useful information regarding the present situation in communications (my field) can be gleaned. In my particular case, it was time well spent, as one or two
satisfactory answers were provided (I hope) to the problems I expect to encounter during the next few weeks.
Have just been informed that I am flying tomorrow, an early morning flight to Nyala, (its on most decent world maps) where I expect to be busy for the next seven days or so before moving to the next location. Providing there is spare seat on the plane! And room for my luggage. And the plane can get off the ground. And the permits are correct, and, and, ETC.
Another thing that surprises me is the way all these towns, tend to spring off the tongue as though they were familiar places. Nyala, El Fasher and El Beneina. What! You’ve never heard of them? Where have you been?
Next bulletin, when and where I can in between tasks.
October 2004
John Layton
Have a nice day.
Keep taking the tablets!
This is John's next letter from the Sudan:
All, I will be here in Nyala for the next few days
after that will be losing any e-mail connections
probably for about 2 weeks. Any replies until I return
please send via g4aal@yahoo.com. It takes hours to
download from my other accounts so I have abandonded
the idea until I return to Khartoum. Do not have a
particular time schedule to keep, just complete the
necessary work in various places and then move on. So
far all progressing slowly but surely. Tomorrow I
cause complete chaos as I try to reprogram all the
vehicle radios in one go. And they are in use all the
time. Easier said than done! next stop, either El
Fasher (no telephones) or Beneina (very limited comms,
no e-mail) so don't expect and you won't get.
have a nice day and consider how lucky you all are.
John.
Sudan Correspondent
An entirely unprecedented event has occurred. My personal travel permits have arrived, complete with passport photographs stapled to the A4 documents printed entirely in Arabic. A language of which I have absolutely no knowledge. I know that everyone reads backwards from right to left! Even calendars are marked: sun, sat, fri, thurs, etc. The authorities provide a completely separate document for each area you expect to visit. They all looked identical but I have been informed that photocopies may not be accepted. This depends a great deal upon the mood of the person, or persons, who ‘need to know’. Anyway, it seems that the application was approved in record time so maybe Tony’s visit did some good after all. Of course it may have been my exceedingly fine passport photographs, which spurred the authorities into action!
The journey to Nyala took nearly three hours at a speed of 350 miles an hour flying at a height of 20,000 feet. I suppose, having glanced at the map, from Khartoum to my destination we travelled around 1000 miles. Which, in terms of distance, is around half way across the country; such is the size of Sudan!
Domestic departures, as against International standards in Khartoum Airport, are a complete shambles. The check in area was the size of a postage stamp in which hundreds of people were all trying to get to one of the desks with loads of boxes, parcels, bags and other sundry items all at once. There are numerous airlines running internal flights in Sudan and from what I could see they were all operating at full capacity the morning I arranged to travel. After a lot of shoving and barging I managed to reach the check in counter with my 30kg or so of luggage to be informed that, before a ticket could be issued, I had to pay an airport tax. To a lady who sat some distance away, surrounded by loads of other passengers all of whom were also paying taxes. Eventually all requirements and formalities were completed, a boarding card was issued and the time came for the next stage of the journey.
The departure lounge was a similar size to the baggage hall except that many rows of metal chairs had been randomly set so as to cause the maximum damage to ones legs. In one corner a refreshment kiosk had been strategically placed, right next door to the ladies and gents loo! And that was it! Passengers were everywhere; I was even convinced that some had been there all night, by the look on their faces. It was now 9.30am and I started out at 6am. The airport being only about half an hours ride from my lodgings! The plane was scheduled to leave prompt at 8am. An announcement on the public address system every so often, by a lady with a very loud voice who held the microphone so close to her mouth that everything came out distorted, resulted in many people suddenly getting up and rushing around trying to force themselves out of the door to the runway. The first time it happened I thought we were in for a terrorist attack!
Eventually, I got quite adept at looking for the boarding cards of these herds, trying to decide whether this was my particular stampede. I spoke to one passenger later who told me that he had joined in three of these exoduses and been sent back each time, just because he was trying to catch the wrong flight! We are so used to announcements and television screens giving times and details of flights that when these are not available you have to rely more on gut instinct than anything else.
With plenty of time to ‘stand and stare’ I noticed a rather peculiar thing. At a guess I would say that over 80 per cent of the people waiting for a flight were Sudanese, about 15% were from other African races and the rest were from various other countries worldwide. With what looked like 5 Europeans although they could have been Americans. And there were probably 4 to 5 hundred people altogether in the hall. Though many people were reading papers, looking at boarding cards, etc, only six were wearing any type of spectacles and of those five, four were white skinned of European ancestry. I now wonder whether many here in the UK really need glasses and maybe people are wooed by the constant adverts reminding us that it is fashionable to wear them? Considering that many thousands of people suffer from eye diseases on the African continent and we were in a region noted for its dusty atmosphere, the lack of eye wear was surprising. Maybe they couldn’t see properly anyway, and just couldn’t afford to purchase glasses.
Eventually, the right time came and we boarded the plane. Which was preceded by the usual x-raying of hand luggage, followed by another physical search of all luggage and body. All this for just an internal flight!
The only unusual incident for me during the flight, was that refreshments were offered at all. Of the passengers, only a small handful took up the offer of food as most were Muslim and everyone fasts during Ramadan. Flying, as we did, fairly low down without the benefit of pressurised cabins, the ground for the whole of the flight was clearly visible. In all the three hours we were in the air, and for a thousand miles I saw nothing but desert. Not soft sandy desert of the Sahara, but a hard looking and parched land with only a few scrub like trees, widely spaced, dotted here and there. No people, no roads, no animals, no nothing. Plenty of evidence was to be seen of old watercourses, appearing as nothing but a depression in the sandy soil now that the rainy season is over. Occasionally the odd row of small trees appeared looking as though they could have once lined a stream. Only twice during the whole journey was any standing water to be seen, two small pools that occurred right towards the end of the flight. A thousand miles of nothing. Truly a desolate and uninviting terrain for mile, after mile, after mile. How lucky we are in the UK with our green countryside and ever changing seasons.
Nyala. October 17th 2004
John
P.S. It’s bloody hot and dusty here. Never dropping below 85, except in the middle of the night. The sweat rolls off just doing nothing!