I do not think hell really exists …
… but if I am wrong it probably will be similar to today’s stage …
On the map a semi stage to get closer to Wadi Halfa, I thought I was going to be there before one, instead I arrived at six … 13 km/h on average … hotter than yesterday and a adverse wind and very strong … it seemed to have a air-drier pointed straight all over the body but where it is the most annoying is on the face … I feel the need to breath like when you are swimming … I have a constant thought to the Picornell my favorite swimming pool … I see myself diving in … doing a couple of laps and drinking a ice cold beer with the Monjuic around … instead on my stops I have to make do with some drinks, a yoghurt, and a lot of water a bit sandy of the water containers which I drink only when my mouth risks the spontaneous combustion … beers are forbidden in Sudan … that may be why you can find a series of fizzy drinks in the taste of apple, cherry, mango, … which I can manage to drink only in extreme cases … bottled water cannot be found often … it makes me laugh that at times these fizzy drinks have the bottle and the label similar to those of a Belgian beer …
Seventy kilometers against this wind have literally destroyed me! In a stop around two in the afternoon, when the heat is at its maximum, I am welcomed by some travelers on a break on a green carpet under a thatched shelter, they look at me like you would a mad person, they ask me where I am from, they tell me that today there is an exceptional heat, I would like a ice cold Sprite, fantastic to revitalize the mouth, but there are only warm drinks … after 10 minutes a truck arrives … they are offloading something … ice … it really looks like ice … it is ice in slabs of one meter … I would get one hug it and kiss it until it melts completely … the place of the ice is next to my place on the carpet … I take advantage to let my body temperature go down to an acceptable level … and I put a coca cola there so that it freezes fast …
Today I met for the third time the Romanian couple going back to Romania from South Africa, they gave me cool water, and told me that at ten this morning the temperature was only 40 degrees …
A part from the second ten kilometers the wind gave me no truce, I arrived in Abri exhausted, thank God, I was invited for a after Ramadan supper, a bit different than others, with few people and a variety of different foods, which put me back on my feet again, I am on a hotel which means that on the usual bed with the base made out of string to hang laundry I have a mattress, view to the open sky on a antenna with a blinking red light, from a bar nearby you can hear the running commentary to a summer European tournament where they spoke about Ancelotti … football has a huge social communicative power … guys who are in difficulties speaking English are fluent when speaking about football from Zambia to here …
In a cold winter evening few years ago, my mother while taking the dog for a walk, found a non-EU immigrant on the road asking her for help, she did not have a place where to sleep, so she took her home and let her sleep in the guest rooms. I remember that she called me in Zambia and told me that many had told her that she had done wrong, she should not have trusted her, she did not know who she was and what she was doing … but for her it was a normal thing to do and was happy to have done it … thank God the Sudanese think like my mother otherwise between Ramadan and the lack of accommodation I would have really struggled in Sudan …
Abu Sara N 20° 18.346’ E 30° 34.660’ – Abri N 20° 78.580’ E 30° 33.668’
80 km