Today I want to rest …
Yesterday I fell asleep at nine, this room does not offer the natural silence of Abu Sara or Melik el Nasir, and in a hotel more or less conventional like this one you cannot take the bed outside, if you wake up you cannot see the stars and moon around you, surrounded by total silence, you see only the light of the fridge and hear the noise of the air con and of the blades of the fan, it is cool like outside but with a energy waste extremely superior.
Sudan is finished, we were very worried at the beginning because on paper this beautiful country seemed not to have sufficient landfalls, instead it was all the opposite, fantastic people and wonderful welcome. The governments and the religions are one thing, the people are another thing. The religious frictions are triggered by those who deal with religion full time, think that our God and their God, or vice versa, are not the same or the same but there is one who is better, or that we are more right, and so on, in difficult moments unfortunately it happens that these people find a following, and frictions and fights can start, which continue for years, so much so that you cannot remember any longer well who has started it and why.
The cakes of Wadi Halfa are not bad and are perfect with yoghurt, the manager of the bakery this morning gave me some yellow fresh dates huge and delicious, who knows why to us only the dry ones arrive … the shops open late and close early because of Ramadan … there are the same Bajai of Ethiopia but here they are black and are called tuk tuk … in the morning there are many women around buying foodstuff which they will cook in the afternoon for the supper of the evening post Ramadan.
One of the first essays I remember, with my teacher Iolanda Maestroni, was on Sadat and Begin, who won the Nobel Prize for peace, after the peace treaty signed in Washington, after the agreements of Camp David facilitated by Jimmy Carter American president famous for the passion for peanuts. I have always been interested in faraway places and their stories, I remember that with my mother I found some magazines speaking about the topic, I cut them and pasted them on my exercise book, it was one of the firsts gaining of awareness of other worlds. I was disappointed when I saw on television that Sadat was killed by extremists who did not see in good light the peace treaty, to Sadat succeeded Mubarak, now I do not know who it is, but there are no doubts that democracy is always a difficult question in Africa. In this context ‘my’ Zambia gave an important signal last September proving that you can and must change peacefully.
It was always difficult to think of Egypt as Africa, these states of North Africa facing the Mediterranean, in my head have always been in a limbo between Europe and Africa, it makes me laugh that here in Sudan at times when I say that I come from Zambia, they tell me ‘ah Africa …’ who knows where it comes from this habit of ours to give importance to the place of origin, and to recognize, with some exceptions the states further South as more jinxed …
As far as my journey is concerned Africa or not Africa, I must not under evaluate the next kilometers up to Cairo or Alexandria, I still do not know from where I will reach Italy, in pure African style, and try at this point that I managed to reach here on time to arrive to London for the opening ceremony of the Paralympics, even though it will not be like a stroll.
The ferry will depart tomorrow in the afternoon, among various bureaucratic formalities, and it will arrive in Aswan after more or less sixteen hours, it seems that some overlanders, have taken all the cabins available, moreover because of the increase of the prices of the flight tickets to Egypt many pass through here, so probably I will sleep on the deck. Of the overlanders on the trucks I do not speak, it is not my type of holiday nor journey, staying on a truck driven by another for 10,000 kilometers, staying inside locked with air con, to then put the T-shirt on with the map from Cape Town to Cairo, is something that I could only take into consideration in 40 years when I will be old and … probably very daft …