‘Why are you wearing underwear?’
There is no water …
Despite the dam is a couple of kilometres way full of water this morning there is no water …
I do not have my passport yet, but Magdi seems trustworthy, I called him last night he said he had come but did not find me … I was at the internet point or the bakery … then as I watch the highlights of Korea – Japan on the television at the bar, Magdi arrives with the ticket and the various stamps and the water too arrives, literally, because the water in brought by a tanker and pumped in the tank on the roof, we give each other an appointment at the port at 10 …
I have to pay the internet point which did not have change the day before, I stop for the last time at the bakery for the last low fat yoghurt, with honey cakes, and I arrive at the port at 10,45, but there is no problem, there are still all there waiting and with Magdi’s help, I am one of the firsts to finish the procedure, forms, stamps, custom, blue sticker on the bicycle and I can pedal on the sand for about two kilometers where there is the boat, on this stretch anything could happen, boat and the last check are too far and in the middle nobody is checking … During our bureaucratic procedure, we met and helped Dae a Japanese who has been out and about for more than a year and thinks to keep doing it for at least another two … the cabins are all booked … Magdi suggests we sit in the second class department, next to the air con, it is midday, the boat will leave just before six in the evening … at a certain point I have to take my goretex jacket out because it seems to be at the North Pole … the boat fills up slowly slowly at the end the people will be more than six hundred … from a calculation of Dae it seems the life jackets are not enough for all … next to us mother and daughter sit down, the mum is going to visit some relatives and the daughter imports household appliances from Egypt, on the washing machines they tell us that they have profit margin of more than 100%, and in any case the washing machines are still cheaper than those found in Sudan they say … the mother speaks English well, she studied in Khartoum with Comboni sisters, but she is Muslim … the daughter understands but does not want to speak it …
We joke on my sun tan, they share with us a cake and some carcadè, and shoot each other questions, both Dae and I have always seen Sudan from the side of the men, so we are interested in knowing a bit more on the women in a Muslim country, since it is full of children in Western clothing I ask at what age they start wearing the veil, and the mother tells us that the daughter under the abaya wears Western clothes, and the daughter shows us that under the tunic she is wearing a pair of fashionable Capri jeans … I could have taken a kind of cabin courtesy of the captain but the company was fun and I let go …
The cold was unbearable, so I go on the deck where I find all the musungu I met in the last stretch of this journey the Swedish couple my age, on the way back after an year in Africa, the fifty year old Romanian couple living in South Africa on the way back to Romania by car, the young Swiss-German couple on the way back after ten months, couple of sixty year old Australians going from Melbourne to London, finally father and son in law, South Africans of Indian origins, who are finishing their journey started in Cape Town, stories, laughter and essential dinner with the meal ticket, help letting time pass by. Many of these people have left their job, they will go back sensibly poorer than when they started off, they do not know what they will do once back, but the desire to see, understand and challenge oneself is stronger and probably the interior wealth will at the end have increased.
Before nine we pass in front of the Abu Simbel temple, which is illuminated and can be seen quite well but not enough to take pictures …
When we get back down to the second class where we think to sleep wrapped up seen the temperature, we start again our conversation, with our neighbors and other Sudanese who join us, while we are talking a short and bold Egyptian comes closer, his eyes obsessed saying that I cannot stay there with that underwear … that is my cycling shorts … we have to go to the second class reserved to men only because that is the place of families … the two Sudanese families next to us say not to pay him attention that there is no problem … after half an hour he comes back with a manager of the ship and other three people saying that we have to go … I can wear another pair of trousers … but now he says it is no longer a matter of trousers … we have to go that is it … the Sudanese tell us to stay and chase them away … they come back again … but are chased again … at the end they caome back with the head of security the situation between Sudanese and Egyptians becomes tense harsh words fly … and I think it would be better to go … we bid farewell to our Sudanese friends … and we go up to the deck next to the captain’s cabin … as we go up one of the frantic tells us ‘I am very sad but I have to defend our roots’ … this affirmation is heard in Europe too … taking too much care of one’s roots at times makes them rot … Dae puts his sleeping mat next to the cockpit … myself on top … we are quite ok it is hot but the sky is fantastic … it will probably be my last sleep on a open sky …
We reach Aswan sooner than expected, even to exit the boat we take relatively short, I am already thinking about doing a semi stage, I have already done my visa in Zambia … I will get out fast … I thought … I do not remember a passport check longer than this one … when on the boat you have to give the passport to an officer … this only happen to me at the airport in Harare … you will see the passport again the they after in the passport control office … after passing with the bicycle in a scan like the ones at airports’ check-ins … passing custom … and waiting at the passport office for about three hours … the captain allowed me to charge my Blackberry Naif in his office at the end the battery was 100% … it was the occasion to bid farewell properly from the other musungu and Dae …
Exiting there was a weighbridge for tracks we all weighted ourselves and the bicycle and I together made 114 kg, luckily I did not know it in Ethiopia! Bicycle and panniers weigh more than 40 kg, and I limited myself to the essential …
Wadi Halfa N 21° 79.285’ E 31° 37.13’ – Aswan N 23° 96.868’ E 32° 87.796’
550 km on the ferry boat