The Good and the Bad (Sudan)

Sudan somehow draws you in. Despite the barrenness and inhospitable climes, there is something about the land of the Nubians that can leave you feeling touched, humbled, delighted, saddened, frustrated, and exasperated at the same time. And yet the trials and tribulations of traveling in this extremely deprived and remote part of the world can invoke rewards that far outweigh the troubles encountered along the way.

When you least expect it, Sudan unleashes powers so overwhelming that they put you on a soul-searching journey, mold your worldview, and entice you to leave your baggage, both emotional and physical, behind.

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Wadi Halfa is a dusty, rundown port of entry whose only purpose is to serve as a temporary waystation for businesspeople, returning expatriates, and occasional visitors. The entire town's activity revolves around the weekly ferry and its passengers, people stopping only so long as to wait for ongoing connections to Khartoum, the South and even as far as Ethiopia. When the train and minibuses depart, the village recedes into silence once again, with nothing more to suggest of its former grandeur as a commercial capital thriving on trade with el Norte--Egypt.

Wadi Halfa, however, is a place I must stay for a longer time than most others. The headache and diarrhea I caught from eating salad washed with Nile's water while on the ferry forced me to sleep in for hours at the unkempt lokanda that had neither fans, electricity, tap water, nor locked doors. But at least it did shelter me from the sweltering 50-degree heat. And after two days without shower, the buckets of murky water collected straight from the Nile did offer some measure of comfort to the body, even if the stench from the makeshift loo hole was very shocking.

Much of two days I spent in Halfa involved the drudgery process of getting registered with the police, paying exorbitant fees, exchanging money, and finding a way to leave Halfa once and for all. It was then that I realised what it was meant when westerners utter the words, "This is Africa." In this part of the world, things run much more slowly and you simply cannot rush or expect "efficiency" to prevail. Much of the "African curse", of course, stems from the glaring absence of governance and accountability on the part of governments; ordinary Africans are not to be blamed for taking things slowly as they simply lack the means to speed things up. The dearth of development, compounded by bureaucratic corruption, inefficiency, and political repression have created nightmares for many Africans struggling to make ends meet on a day to day basis.

As a traveler, you only encounter small jigsaws of these puzzles. But the frustrating entanglements of red tape can be so physically draining that you sometimes lose track of the wider picture of their underlying causes.

(To be continued...)