Khartoum, Sudan

 Khartoum 

It has been a hectic week of briefings and meetings and my head is bursting with humanitarian jargon, contextual  instructions and the slightly uneasy stage that typifies the start of a new assignment. I’ve lost track of who is Aziz, Hassan, Ahmed or Hamid and seem to be making heavy weather of memorising even the most basic of Arabic greetings. The briefings outline all the various operations and support services from water and habitation to premises to security and the vibe in the delegation is friendly and welcoming. Even my driving test is somewhat entertaining and jovial with a friendly chat with an humanitarian veteran of more than 30 years, who recalls to me his journey to Europe to be celebrated for long service.  

The situation in the country seems vague and tense with the previous president in a Khartoum jail and a precarious interim alliance of politicians and military forming the transitional council. The country seems to be drifting precariously.

Austerity measures and removal of subsidies, in place in an effort to attract IMF funding,  have resulted in record inflation which has steadied out at about 400%,  making life brutal for most and crime starts to climb. 

Africans are resilient though and the heat seems to pacify, as prayers drift from the minarets and people make the most of what they have.

We spend the morning crisscrossing the city and the wide brown Blue Nile, guided by our expert driver who does his best to show us some of the sights and explain the complexities of this broken city. Litter and decay abound, and construction sights seem abandoned and skeletal. We stop at a luxury hotel and watch expats feasting on decadent buffets and paddling in an aquarium like pool or straining in the magnificent gymnasium. We sip an expensive coffee in air conditioned luxury, sucking up free wifi. 

The evening is spent in the company of two Palestinians who explain to me the turbulent history of their small entrapped homeland, where prospects of freedom and independence seem impossible. We hire a motorboat and cruise on the fast flowing Nile as the sun slips behind a murky horizon. 

Off to Kassala, Sudan

 Sudan arrival; October 2021

The heat hits you like a brick wall.
I hesitate at the top of the gangway, exiting my Air Ethiopian flight from Addis Ababa to the capital of Sudan, Khartoum.
Hot air scalds my lungs and the shimmering heat scorches my eyes.
Only moments before, as we glided down towards the sleek black runway and basked in air conditioned luxury, I’d caught a glimpse of the cool Blue Nile on the right and the much larger, sluggish, wide and brown, White Nile on the left. The Blue Nile originates at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and travels for nearly 1500km in Ethiopia and Sudan before its confluence with the White Nile in Khartoum. The White Nile flows from Lake Victoria in Uganda with its source disputed between Burundi and Rwanda. We have swum in its fresh clean water at Jinja  Falls below Lake Victoria, on our family “Africa trip” in 2011. Its length is said to be 3700km from source to the confluence with the Blue Nile and crossing Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, DRC, South Sudan and Sudan, if all the tributaries are to be included. The Nile is the longest river in Africa, and possibly the world, but the Amazon may hold this title. It is 6,650km long flowing into the Mediterranean at Alexandria.(Wikipedia)
We are lucky. Arriving in the middle of the day, the airport queues are short and we pass immigration and customs relatively easily and I look anxiously for my bag on the luggage carousel. It drifts towards me and I am always impressed how I can drop off a bag at Charles de Gaulle in Paris, watching it disappear down an anonymous black hole, and then see it reappear from a similar hole on the other side of the world, intact, despite multiple stops and flight changes!
Ahmed, in his fluoro jacket and waving his banner, is patiently waiting for me. He helps me with my bag, loads us into the van and off we drive, ready to take on honking horns, deep potholes, masses of people and the general lively chaos that is Africa.