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Goodbye Ethiopia, welcome Ramadan!
The last 35 kilometers passed quite fast, with the bicycle making strange noises like it usually happens when the day before we catch a lot of water.
Arrived at the border to enter Sudan you pass through a barrier made by a rope, I pass under, a typical Ethiopian Sheppard tells me that he wants to check my luggage … I pay no attention … and I go to the office where they stamp passports … the sheppard runs after me … and repeats the same story … I ask him to show me his card … he has it! We go back again he checks, he asks me if I have a laptop, and who can prove that it is mine … he checks roughly in the panniers and lets me go …
Sudanese side, at the immigration office a group of friendly soldiers stamp the passport with the clause ‘that I have to register within 3 days’ … ‘where?’ … ‘in Khartoum’ … ‘but I am on a bicycle and it is more than 500 km!’ … ‘no problem if you do not make it on time you will pay a surcharge …’ … then the boss, who will later cheer me along the road, tells me that it is Ramadan to trust him and that he does not feel like talking too much …
I go to the bank close to the office to change the dollars … they do not change them because of Ramadan … I start a negotiation worth of uncle Scrooge and Rockerduck until they exchange 1 dollar for 5 pounds … As we negotiate in front of a tire-dealer, I have the bicycle cleaned with compressed air, he asks me for 10 pounds, I give him twenty, he gives me change for 5 … all the people who were there told him not to be a smart ass and one called a policemen … I liked this civic sense …
The side effect of this civic sense is that the policeman orders me to go to the security office … passport check, where are you going and what are you doing, then he wants to see the camera and the pictures in the memory card … what could I have photographed in those 400 meters of Sudan?
Then he sends me to the custom office, which he calls customer are office …, again passport control, transcription of my data on another book and finally we have finished.
I go, but it is late to reach Al Qadarif, not getting there today means skipping it all together because then tomorrow the kilometers would be too little, it is a shame because then the next city is at more than 300 km …
In Doka I look for a likundi, I find one with a group dormitory, beds made out of branches and sprung bed base with no mattress made of interwoven laundry ropes … I go on … after a dozen kilometers I see a school where I ask if there is a place for the night … they call me Idle who speaks English and takes me to his house.
In his propriety there are four small houses with a decorated thatched roof, plus a kitchen where the women are busy preparing the food for the imminent end of Ramadan, there is a toilet only for the ‘short call’, wee-wee, for the ‘long call’ you have to go 300 meters next to a mobile booster tower, there are some beautiful plants, which Idle who is also a gardener cares for personally.
The dinner is awesome for me the best since I started off! We start with sweetened lemon juice, some kind of lentils with dates, then carcadè, some kind of sweet porridge which I think will be good for my stomach, on one side women and children on the other men. The moon is half full, but it makes enough light.
Idle’s parents moved here from Darfur sixty years ago, he has never been there and he does not want to go, he is in love with English and of Ethiopian women who according to him have enchanting eyes. Black farmers in Darfur, had to leave space to the sheppards/breeders of Arabic ethnic armed by the government, slowly slowly for the blacks of Darfur there were no rights, schools and religion. This is why his father came here. He dreams to go to the United States, but he has taken charge of a big and demanding family, he manages because he is a good farmer and expert in seeds’ production. This reminded me also of my responsibilities which I will have to face again in September … He is 28 years, he loves his country, even though he does not feel free, and despite being a good Muslim he suffers the religious intromission in is private sphere … ‘if I drink a glass of beer I get arrested’ … he has understood that English is important and wants to get better, not to stop, because when he walks in Khartoum he does not feel secure, and he cannot take it for granted that he will remain in Tawarit all his life.
He has prepared me two beds one inside and one outside because at times in the small thatched house it is very hot … wonderful welcome to Sudan!
Seheti N 12° 78,065’ E 36° 40,937’ – Tawarit N 13° 33,0’ E 35° 39,0
132 km