Sudan

Sudan is a wonderful place. There are some places you travel to that amaze you with their natural wonders or perhaps their cultural prowess, but Sudan is different. Sudan is defined by its incredible people.

It's the people that make Sudan the incredible place it is.

For a country that has, in recent decades been through civil war, with severe displacements of people and cultures, Sudanese people and their generous, polite, happy existences have remained intact. The 2005 Peace Agreement has naturally helped in stabilising matters but much of Sudan’s future is uncertain with a national referendum on potential Southern secession due in January. If I can be forgiven for putting politics aside for a minute, I really do rank the Sudanese, both Northern and Southern as some of the nicest people I think I’ve ever met.

However, if I thought Egypt had a crazy start, then I’d soon learn to expect the unexpected. There is only one international border crossing from Egypt to Sudan: the Aswan to Wadi Halfa ferry, via the extensive Lake Nasser. Therein cometh the first problem; you have to get your car on an Egyptian ferry. Sounds trivial, doesn’t it? Getting your car on a ferry at Dover is pretty straightforward. Turn up an hour before departure, wait in orderly queues for the embarking process to begin and drive on to the ferry in an orderly fashion once your lane is called. Not here.

Firstly, there is only one ferry crossing a week, on Monday. Secondly, we were the only vehicle that week, so while we had to grapple our way aboard a passenger ferry designed for probably 300 people with some 500 on board, poor Himba had to deal with this.

And this was after a fair amount had been taken away from her!

Words cannot describe the inefficient, chaotic not to mention dangerous loading method used by the River Nile Company. You can barely make out that Himba on this boat. Fridges, door frames, more tomatoes than I’ve ever seen or likely to see in my life, bizarre looking tea cakes (millions of the beggars) and a wide range of other useful (?!) paraphernalia all littered the boat, stacked some 25ft high in places.

Just look at my Nile River Company representative’s idea of loading a 4.5 tonne Land Rover onto a cargo barge..

How to load a Land Rover onto a barge, Egyptian Style

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I stayed with Himba as long as I could to shield her from her port bullies but eventually we left (the passenger ferry travels separately to the goods barge).

Where is Himba in that pile? Answers on a postcard..

So we arrived in Wadi Halfa and stayed overnight in a hotel (see below – this was one of the better hotels in town..) hoping Himba would arrive in the morning. Naturally she didn’t but by mid afternoon we had confirmation she was in port so we sped down there.

Trust me, this was luxury! It even had bed sheets..

Further chaos ensued, as thousands of articles were offloaded. We waited and waited until eventually the barge captain turned up to move it the 3 feet we needed so we could offload Himba. Now the River Nile Company offloads cars every week, year round and despite us being the only vehicle on the barge we stupidly thought this would make the process simple.. It didn’t. Firstly, the captain in his wisdom had decided to offload us backwards as it would be too much effort to turn the barge around. So I had to drive off backwards. Secondly, they use rickety old offload ramps that quite simply looked horrendous. I protested but to no avail. ‘Truck come many times from Aswan!’ would be the reply, suggesting Himba would be nothing but a feather in comparison (despite me making it clear her weight was nearer 4 and a bit tonnes..). So, sheepishly I began to drive off the barge backwards with minimal clearance either side. I then drove slowly onto the offload ramps, some 12 ft above the water line and on a steep angle. Then disaster struck. One of the two ramps decided it had enough of life (don’t blame it if it had to put up with this every day) and collapsed, sending Himba and me hurtling to the left.

Disaster as the left hand ramp collapses under Himba.

It was the quick thinking of a local Sudanese man, who jumped on Himba’s bonnet to balance her and some small miracle that prevented her tipping over to near certain peril.

Himba strains to stay upright. Luckily the winch keeps her steady..

The story thereafter is long and complex and involved a further day but in essence it took some twenty men, the only crane in northern Sudan, the car’s winch (thank goodness I bought that) and a lot of patience and goodwill to rescue Himba.

Working into the night, the crane combined with lots of manpower and the winch crawls back onto the pontoon.

The crane could only lift 1 ton so it took the extra pull from the winch and a skilful crane operator to get Himba up and back on the barge. A further day later and we finally managed to get Himba off safely. I ended up with two leaking batteries, a new alternator, some new bushes and a heck of a lot of scratches and dents but by some small miracle, Himba could drive off and wasn’t the potential write off she so easily could have been.

And so we continued on through the desert to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. It was stupidly hot, aided by warm desert winds but at least the roads were good.

Crossing the northern Sudanese desert. There was sand in every inch of the Land Rover!

That night we had the misfortune of choosing the scorpion equivalent of the M25 and the camel spider annual jamboree as a camp site.

The campsite of doom..

Rest assured we cooked the quickest meal we’d ever cooked and ate in the car. Look at this fellow – he was one of the smaller ones for Pete’s sake. I couldn’t even go for a pee without a critter running at me like it was possessed.

This was one of the smaller critters..

We had a couple of days in Khartoum to allow our fixer Moez time to sort out all the ludicrous bureaucracy needed here. He was fantastic, handling all the paper work in his stride and with upmost patience that you definitely need in Africa. Police registration for aliens (love being called an alien), camera permits and Southern Sudanese travel permits all take time to get. Luckily we arrived on a Friday, which means one thing in Khartoum; The whirling dervishes of Hamad Al Neel.

The Whirling Dervishes of Hamad Al Neel

Each Friday evening without fail, a sub group of devout Muslims gathers at the tomb of Hamad Al Neel, a local holy man who died some 50 years ago to take part in an incredible display of chanting, dancing and reverence for the great man.

The smell of incense filled the air. No surprise with this chap around!

It truly is an incredible experience, amplified by the distinct lack of tourists and the ensuing curiosity of the locals towards us. We were as much a tourist spectacle as they were to us. Local university students were on hand to practise their English (luckily for us) and explained what was happening before us.

These were just the backing singers..!

The figures you see in green and various other passive colours are all part of several sects, three in total that gather to celebrate in the ritual. The whirling part comes from the unique dance some of the men conduct whereby they spin around, in a trance like state whilst maintaining enough momentum to avoid landing on their backsides. Pretty cool stuff.

The Whirling Dervishes at Hamad Al Neel

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This Morgan Freeman lookalike wanted me to dance for him.. he wasn't ready for what he saw.

I was lucky enough to go twice as I ended up coming back to Khartoum after a brief visit to the UK for some good friend’s weddings so the photos you see are from two trips to Hamad Al Neel.

A dervish whirls! Look at the commitment to the turn on his face. Class.

This chap insisted on me taking photos of him. He particularly wanted me to picture his sectoral pendant (second picture).

A dervish participant.

The Pendant: a very important article to this man, who I affectionately call Steve.

As the sun began to go down, so increased the tempo until suddenly it was all over as the evening call to prayer resounded around the site.

Close to sunset and the atmosphere really warmed!

On my second visit I was alone and, as I’ve grown to learn is typical of Sudan, I wasn’t alone for long. Whilst being goaded to dance by this chap (who has a distinct resemblance to Morgan Freeman – see above) I was eventually rescued by a local Sudanese guy who convinced Morgan that the running man and caterpillar are socially acceptable dance moves in UK public spaces and that he should put his staff down. He invited me for tea with a Chinese guy called Andy who was also working locally (fitting elevators and lifts if you’re interested) and it soon became apparent his invitation extended to a wedding of his cousin that evening. And so the night truly began. It took us about 7 attempts to find the right wedding venue as it is apparently commonplace for brides and grooms to be moved to new wedding venues at the drop of a hat depending on whether they are gazumped by more important couples. We visited the Syrian Club, the Sudanese Officer’s Club, and the Sudanese Football Association headquarters before eventually stumbling upon it. Incredible affairs are weddings out here. Single men sit on one side, women on the other and families are allowed to sit together at tables at the front. There is a professional camera man and videographer and each wedding has its own official singer. I guess the higher your echelon in society, the better the output of the singer becomes although I couldn’t work out the social standing of this couple. Variable would probably best describe it. Just as I thought the night was over (weddings only last 2 hours here including canapés and juices), I was walking home when I fancied a quick bit to eat and was invited to dinner by a local Sudanese man who’d spent time in the UK in the most extraordinary story I’d heard to date. He began as a refugee, working in a dry cleaning shop in central London and ended up linking rich Arab men with various manufacturing houses in the north of the UK. He’d meet new potential investors in some of the poshest venues in London and get pretty decent levels of commission as a result. He now has his own marketing business in Sudan with some offshoots including being an insurance agent (I tried not to talk shop) and exporting Land Rover components to the Middle East and the UK (great chap!).

But the difficult bit was to come; the long drive down to Luanyaker village, near Wau where I was to drop off all the school equipment I’d brought over from London (and the additional 48kg I’d somehow managed to take with me on the plane when I came back the second time..)

Southern Sudan is a world away from its northern counterpart. Troubled with inter tribal conflicts and severe friction with the North, from which there have been many casualties over the years, the South is now a massive UN operation. Their shiny, brand new trucks are everywhere, with very little else on the roads. Living is basic with subsistence farming most common and living is in communal mud huts with beautifully thatched roofs. But the most challenging aspect to travelling here are the roads.

This was one of the better roads..

It took us five days to cover the ground from Khartoum to Wau. Clay roads, many without corrugations punished Himba, and us. Many of the smaller roads allowed us to go no quicker than 15 mph and I gave up count on the potholes and ditches the size of small herds of Sudanese cattle.

There's some of that cattle I was talking about, and the bad roads..

On one occasion we ended up digging out Himba for over 6 hours, cutting down acacia trees to aid as mud mats. A UN World Food Programme truck with its charismatic and wonderful lead driver Moses had been stuck for two days before we reached them and tried to help.

The UN World Food Programme truck we tried to help.

Several hours of winch attempts and digging couldn’t free them however and we had to leave in the end so I could somehow make it to the airport for my flight back to the UK the following morning. We helped another minibus out of trouble, who then subsequently turned back after hearing how much worse the road was ahead! There are no maps for the roads here. You simply have to stop at each village and ask for the next one.

A world apart from the North: A typical South Sudanese village.

If three people all point in the same general direction you go for it, sometimes having to double back up to hours on yourself if you choose the wrong route.. At least we could buy decent fuel from occasional roadside oil barrels..

Filling up a filthy Himba with the ever present kids!

3 flights (including one from a dirt runway of a UN controlled airport) and a very brief visit back to the UK for Mayad and Sara and Pat and Kat’s weddings (which were fantastic!) and I was back to Khartoum, awaiting a flight back to the southern town of Wau where I’d be reunited with Hillary, Conor and Himba. I would also now have the opportunity to visit the school I’d planned on helping for the prior 8 months!

But not before a quick visit to a Nubian wrestling match. Now I’d heard if you’re ever in Khartoum you should try and get to a match but little did I know how popular the sport is. I jumped on a local bus, thinking it would be a short hop away as everyone told me but it wasn’t.. About 30 minutes later, with the chap opposite me on the bus reassuring me I wasn’t half way to Ethiopia we turned up at a busy market. The guy said this was the place so I took his word for it and headed into the market. This place sold everything. Chickens, goat meat, batteries, baskets, clothing, espressos (well maybe not espressos but a bloody good cup of tea). I walked through the market and suddenly came to a clearing where a full on footie game was being conducted on a rough piece of open land. They even had a referee, corner flags, goal posts and hundreds of supporters!

They even had corner flags for goodness sake!

Behind the footie game was what could best be described as a giant tent. A little compound had been made out of nothing using a few poles and lots of sheets; a true African wrestling arena! I soon noticed that a) I was late and b) I was the only tourist in the venue. The sum of these two parts meant I walked around to find a bit of space to sit on and ended up doing a full tour of the stadium much to the delight of the locals who all seemed to want me to sit next to them. I plonked myself down next to a pleasant chap who was convinced for the next hour and a half that not only did I understand fluent Arabic but that I was also a European expert on Sudanese Nubian wrestling. I eventually found my place and began shouting random words in the general direction of the fighters, expecting them to fully recognise my incoherent advice and follow it. They didn’t and by chance, it worked in their favour..

A Nubian wrestler waits for his turn to go into battle..

As I left the stadium I noticed this huge towering cumulonimbus cloud (one for the geography lovers out there) that had formed in the time I was in the arena.

This cloud formed in the short time I was in the stadium!

Marol Academy, Marol (near Luanyaker village), Southern Sudan

And so, after about 50 days of travel through northern Africa we finally reached the Marol Academy, Marol, near Luanyaker. I flew back from my weddings into a town, large by Southern Sudan standards called Wau, not before an aborted landing on the approach which spiced things up in the twin prop plane I was travelling in.

We established ourselves in our home for the coming week, a NGO compound (World Vision) together with its bore hole water source and thatched huts. Again, relative to our village neighbours we were in a state of luxury but by western standards this was pretty basic to say the least. Bucket showers next to the tree by my hut I grew to love, rice and beans can be tasty (if doused in chilli powder..) and the visiting vultures began to take on an air of grace. It’s amazing what you get used to!

However, the drive to the school was pretty challenging. Just getting to Wau and then Luanyaker village seemed remote and yet it was another hour or so drive to Marol village and the school. Deep water, treacherous mud and acacia trees lining every escape route, it really was a mission! Take a look at this…

Not your everyday drive to work..

But eventually I got my first glimpse of the school and boy was it special. There are two concrete buildings which are being built but asides from those all the classrooms are either outdoor huts constructed from local wood or simply a tree with stools beneath it.

My favourite classroom; a tree for shade and logs for stools.

Considering the school was originally built for 250 odd students, it seems amazing they get up to 600 regular attendees.

My favourite class…

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I’ve finally managed to get some reliable(ish) internet access so here’s part two of the tale! I’ll add videos when I next get a good connection so make

Coping under such strain takes a special team of teachers and that is something the school is blessed with. Naomi, a teacher from the UK leads the charge, representing HART (the charity I was helping) and assisting in the training of the teachers and the overall development of the school. It takes guts and determination to live in such a remote place, with limited resources and still maintain a drive to improve the lives of hundreds of children and their parents. My hat goes off to her.

The kids and teachers at Marol Academy, Marol, Southern Sudan.

The pressures of a subsistence based living for many means the team of teachers often changes as outside responsibilities dictate but one gets the overwhelming impression that the teachers at Marol take pride in taking forward the education of their pupils. Subjects vary from traditional varieties including maths, English and science to more specialised topics that are more relevant to the Dinka tribe communities that dominate the attendees such as agricultural studies, covering topics from health and hygiene to cattle care.  Parents are incentivised to send their kids to school as it naturally develops their future and importantly, they receive a cooked meal most days, alleviating the pressure on them to have to provide in a land of depravity. It’s a very basic World Food Programme dish of sorghum and water. That’s it. Bowls are laid out and the kids tuck in. If I ever hear a British child complain about school dinners I’ll send them to South Sudan for a month or longer, depending on how much they moan.

UN Food Programme rations, otherwise known as school dinner.

I had brought some 400kg of equipment from London to South Sudan to donate to the school including a generator (not an easy thing to fit in a loaded Land Rover!), a laptop and projector and lots and lots of stationary, books, sports and teaching equipment. Much of my time at the school was thus spent teaching the teachers how to use the equipment.

Me attempting to teach…

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Some of these children have never seen electricity in action let alone a full projected DVD on one of their bare school walls so you can imagine it was pretty incredible for us and them to experience all of the equipment in use. I’ll never forget the faces of the younger kids especially as we showed them pictures and audio of them that we’d taken over the past week.

My sincere thanks go to Findel Education, Russell Merrett, Davy Sports, Tim Oliver and the team at SNAG, St Vincent de Paul School, Hiscox and it’s intrepid Ardeche canoeists amongst many others for donating money and goods towards the school. You will never know how great an impact you’ve made on the children and families of South Sudan.

Thank you to you all! x

I also went shopping with Naomi for additional teaching goods in the nearest town and best of all, I spent an afternoon teaching the teachers and kids how to play golf using some innovative golf teaching equipment from Start New At Golf (SNAG).

Teaching a teacher golf!

Dinka culture is fascinating and we were lucky to spend time learning more about it. To say that cattle dominate the everyday lives of the Dinka would be a gross understatement. Cattle mean everything. They act as financial barometers, with one single beast being worth in excess of 200 US dollars. They are used as dowry payments. When we asked how many cows one would have to part with to marry a Dinka lady the response went along the lines of 100 for an educated woman and 50 for one with less academic stature! Cattle also indicate status, with large herd owners dominating the rungs of the Dinka social ladder. Bizarrely the cattle are not intensively milked, used for meat or hides. They are simply the Dinka equivelant of stuffing money under your mattress or holding a bank account. Huge cattle camps are found all along South Sudan, with some of the larger ones containing hundreds of herders and their families, surrounded by thousands of grazing cattle. The video below shows one such camp that we came across. I loved the way the kids helped herd the cattle away from Himba. Check out one of the young lads running away from the front of the car at the end of the video! Very amusing.

South Sudanese Cattle Camp

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Unfortunately the accumulation of wealth in any form often leads to greed, envy and conflict and the Dinka and other cattle tribes of South Sudan are no exception. Cattle raiding, whereby rival cattle herders steal each other’s cattle is commonplace and the loss of life is both regrettable and unnecessary but sadly inevitable.

The coming of age for a Dinka boy means two things. One is a clear progression into manhood and access to the many accompanying benefits but the second is far more painful.. The big downside (if you ask me) to such a rite of passage is the permanent scarring of the forehead using sharp utensils.

Proud to be Dinka; Tribal scars clearly visible on one of the school workers foreheads.

Every blog needs a horrendous animal or insect section and mine will be no exception. Let me tell you about the Guinea worm. An occupational hazard for the people of remote Southern Sudan, the Guinea worm is a nasty bit of work. This photo was taken of a medium sized worm in a plastic bottle. Cute isn’t it?! The worm begins it’s life as an egg laid in water, where water fleas act as a temporary host. A human then consumes the water containing the fleas and inadvertently begins their Guinea worm experience. The flea dies once in the body and the eggs hatch and meander their way through the body as worms to the lower parts of the body. The worms then sit and wait until they feel contact with water and then expel themselves from their human host by breaking through the skin. I hope you’re not on your lunch break reading this. A human body can (and often do) host more than one worm and the little critters can grow over a metre long. This is the best bit. Because of the work of people like Kerry at the Carter Centre (who told me all this and showed me the little fellow in the bottle) the Guinea worm has become eradicated through the promotion of good hygiene practices in most parts of the world. I know what you’re thinking; this is a great business opportunity. Well it is. Because Guinea worm researchers need sample worms to put under a microscope and study, they need donor worms. Their scarcity means a Guinea worm can fetch up to 3,000 US dollars. Yes I did consider donating a leg to science..

A guinea worm presented appropriately in a coca cola bottle.. Nasty little buggers..

To counter the grotesque nature of that story let me tell you about the Dinka fat man of the year competition. This made me laugh a heck of a lot. Basically, once a year Dinka men will gorge themselves on milk and milk alone in order to gain the highly coveted title of Dinka Fat Man of the Year. Bizarre in a region of scarcity and subsistence farming but a cracking story.

It was a hairy ride from the area the school was in to Uganda. First you have the security situation. The huge cattle camps that exist along the road are often raided by bandits and even a day before we set off, 22 people were killed along the stretch we had to take. Secondly, the roads are simply punishing. I spent many an hour under Himba tightening or changing bolts, bushes and so forth. On one particular stretch we came across there must have been 7 or more trucks that had flipped over. Here are just a few examples from a 1 mile stretch of road!

Just one at this spot..!

A NGO vehicle decided to go round an overturned lorry....

How are you supposed to drive past that...?!

One example of a bad road!

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The last picture shows two lorries blocking the road. Basically, impatient lorry drivers often try to go round stuck vehicles but usually to no avail and end up stuck themselves. These trucks had been here five days and didn’t look like they were leaving any time soon. In fact, if it rained more they could have been there for weeks. Even the small regional dirt run strips have their problems. Take a look at this plane who had a bit of a rough landing..

"Charlie Alpha Tango, we've got a slight technical issue with one of our wheels.."

We passed through one particular stretch where David Attenborough would have wept with joy. In a ten mile strip we saw baboons, other types of monkeys, a huge monitor lizard and more crazy bird varieties than you could shake a stick at, including this cute little fellow who sat patiently on a bent bit of grass whilst pruning himself!

A little bright yellow bird after a hefty lunch flexes some local grass..!

A heron makes a leap for it on the wilderness road!

Another heron flies after spotting a fish 250km away in a pond near the Ugandan border..

Driving through south eastern Sudan you realise even more how many NGOs and UN representatives there really are in this part of the world. We stayed in the capital city of the south, Juba one night and found out there were over 230 NGOs present here. While driving in the evening on the way to Juba we came across a broken down NGO vehicle and decided, upon closer inspection to stop to help. The vehicle and it’s NGO representative Barclay and driver worked for the Malaria Consortium, a UK based charity. After helping to strip down their wheel bearings (that had cracked to shreds on the roads out here!) they offered us to stay at their compound in Juba, naturally a welcome offer. Turns out it saved us 160 dollars each a night in guest house fees. It’s now very obvious to us that wherever NGOs are, so are greedy lowlifes (a small portion of the local community) who decide to cash in on the presence of foreign aid workers. A measly, non descript hostel can charge in excess of 100 USD a night and NGOs often end up paying these sorts of fees for their field workers to stay at. Disgusting really. Sudan and particularly the south has been the most expensive region of my trip. Crazy when one thinks the locals survive off World Food Programme rations and live in mud brick houses. It’s a messed up world out here.

A challenging aspect to driving in any country in the world that has a recent history of conflict is avoiding explosive devices laid during the violence. Sudan, sadly, is no exception. Landmines are a sad, brutal reality to the South Sudanese. Between 2003 and 2009 over 4100 people have been killed or seriously maimed by these improvised vehicles of sheer evil. I have no expletive in my vocabulary worthy of use against the people that lay these devices. They are an effective military tool to keep people in their involuntary pens but their legacy occupies the lowest ebb of human morality. Our route from Juba to Gulu involved some very remote stretches where, in parts there must have been an unexploded device every 200m or so and just feet from the tread marks of my tyres. Even a decade after the serious fighting in the south stopped, there are still thousands of devices present and often found in the middle of villages or their pathways, such as this device.

Village path with a land mine right in the middle of it..!

It takes an asshole 2 minutes to lay and activate a landmine and yet can take weeks to months to clear just a couple of kilometres of laid mines. One can only hope people learn from their mistakes.

How did they manage to put up that USAID sign without getting blown up...?!

A couple of days drive and we arrived in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Unfortunately we couldn’t get Chimpanze or Gorilla permits so our stay in Uganda was limited to a R&R stop and an opportunity for me to work on the car for a couple of days. The suspension was stripped and re fitted, the fuel tank was punctured after the punishing roads so was welded, the hand brake was recalibrated, the cracks in the wind shield were filled, the water tank was stripped and new parts bought and a new alternator was fitted. All in all a complete make over in overlanding terms! After a productive few days we drove on to Kenya and our first experience of Safari on the trip, something I’d looked forward to from the start!