In 1985, Sudan is in big trouble. Sudan was in trouble before, but this time the country was almost on his knees. I was invited to relatives of a dear friend to visit, a Sudanese girl who I shared an apartment, and I hoped that must be met by her cousin Zuba.
I arrived in Khartoum at the exact moment of Sudan has agreed to waive their president, Gaafar Muhammad Nimeri. From the first moment of my arrival I could feel the tension was almost atangible thing, raw and exciting. I arrived late at night, his feet over the bundles of rags to sleep leaning against the sparse furnishings of foreign arrivals to the items of utility. At least I was assured was the arrival hall.
There were piles of unclaimed luggage scattered in every direction, with locks hanging freely, of course, have been tampered with by a number of looters. In my innocence and inexperience of life, in Khartoum, I had a beautiful white dress worn smart and jacket for my trip, a little 'how to choose a wedding dress to really explore a coal mine, although I was not aware of my stupidity right now.
I was in what can only be described as the final chaos. The plane that had just jumped vomited more than two hundred passengers shocked shell in a room only slightly larger and considerably more dusty a scout hut. Floating sand was everywhere, in the air, on chairs, moved to drift along the counters and the PerspexBarriers> separated from the passengers as soon as immigration officers visible. The children were crying, some Arab foreign anthem was crackling over a loudspeaker outside the building and cars and taxis were honking.
As I sat there, yellowish brown fine sand floating on the shoulders and lapels of my crisp, white dress and jacket and black leather handbag and dress in my case I did, for fear of having my personal belongings to lose in thisBedlam.
A cluster of irregular bodies seemed to be trampling on a pile of luggage just for me. On reflection I was able to attach to the back of the t-shirt closest to me read. "Baggage," he said. The carrier had worn only a few Speedo shorts and slippers. It was blowing away from a foul-smelling clove cigarette, and he and his friends had already opened another case down the line.
They had also opened a birdcage for one reason or another, and the occupier,an African parrot, was carried off in search of protection. The parrot was perched on a slower rotation of the blades of the fan of big that I had ever seen, and was hurling selections from his vast repertoire of sentences on anyone who stood beside him. Each sentence was worded in the most obscene, and had gathered a group of fans who throw peanuts to convince him from his perch. I gathered from one of his young admirers that his name was Maxwell.
L 'collection of rags was now searching through one of my suitcases, so I decided the time had come to rely on the property. As I rose from my chair, Zuba has arrived. I should explain here that Zuba, as we affectionately called, was 36 years old, and yet unmarried. In Sudan, for this great age and they have not engaged or married an unforgivable sin. It was not very attractive in a strange way Zuba. I mean it was of medium height, big brown eyes with heavyedge of the lashes, smooth skin of a coffee complexion, and graceful hands and feet. His voice, however, would cut steel. Most of his comments were quickly followed by laughter first, mostly confused male origin.
Zuba was rude in the extreme, ran as a farmer, how could striding through a pigsty, feet apart, taking measures big and swinging his arms as he went. Zuba loved Bob Marley, Peter Sellers and parties. It was in the armyleaving school and had risen through the ranks, training as a medical officer and later as a psychologist, until in 1985 he reached the rank of colonel.
Where did Zuba, so follow his entourage. There were two private soldiers in uniform informed me that they were his bodyguards, who were both significantly lower than building and terrified her. Four other soldiers seemed to trail just behind the first two and look interested in everything to try Zuba said or done. L 'The seventh member of his small band was his driver who struck them with her purse when she misbehaved.
E 'come to me with the arrival of the airport of Khartoum, dressed in their khaki uniforms, wells and eagles adorn each shoulder, a string of gold waving his coat, looking very official and saying goodbye to the crowd of people waving with his service pistol to anyone who dared get in his way. He hit his arms around me and lifted me off my feet and kissed me on bothcheeks several times. By the time he finished planting kisses all over my face his feelings had passed and started to cry really. His driver gave him a handkerchief and blew his nose before shouting out loud for one of its garbage on my bags.
Zuba took us through immigration in a flurry of handshakes and toothy grin, and introduced to everyone and explain that I am a celebrity in diplomatic circles. I was actually a humble manager of Leeds, soNothing could be further from the truth and was not very clear of them believed her, but she did not seem to care and we were just outside the doors of the terminal.
Our transport was an open army jeep, complete with flags and whistles. We ran through the hot, dusty streets, certainly could not call them roads, and after what seemed like hours, we arrived at the family home Zuba, a suburb of Omdurman. Tired, encrusted with dust and dirt, I ruined the beauty ofZuba home.
E 'was easy to see how the old days his family had great wealth and influence. Now, the marble floors beneath my feet were coarse sand, brown at the edges where the floor met the walls, bare light bulbs hanging lamps, carpets worn everywhere. Zuba two girls brought forward and presented them as servants. "It 's good in January, do not kiss, they are very black!" he said! Shocked I ambegan his rebuke of the girls talk like that, but she laughed loudly and began to drag me upstairs to unpack.
Zuba bedroom was decorated when he was nine years old and was still pink, painted furniture and posters of pop stars of the sixties that adorn the walls. A young Donny Osmond grinned at me from above a bed, I thought Zubas, cotton throws in bright colors were draped over the seats for the transfer of Child Disney Snow White Hideattached to the back. Zuba explained that his bedroom had left in this state by his mother as a punishment for not having married to a respectable age. I mumbled something nice and she continued to show me around his private accommodation.
There was a heavy metal door on one side of the room has the door to the flat roof. I walked into the door, impatient to see a roof garden with perhaps a dining area. Instead I was greeted by a collection ofdiscarded cardboard boxes, some of which were the stinking remains of fruit adhere to the sides. Outside the box is another door, this time for a bathroom, with a touch high on the wall that was the only way to shower and toilet, the smell that was the beginning for me gag. Here, everything is dusty brown. The rest of the roof was an open space with a wall.
A drunk clothesline was strung between the bathroom wall and a hook at theparapet and, of course, it would be impossible to link the clothes, except at the highest point. At the end of the roof was a plastic chair and a table with a suspicious object, looking for a wire out through the wall. "Here, in January you can call your family and tell them that you're beautiful home Zuba," he said, pointing to the object I have a cell phone is detected, without plastic cover.
Zuba discreetly pulled to the ground floor, which I call home.It 'was then that I realized that there is no dial tone for the object, so there were no figures to choose from. I sat on the plastic chair and laughed.
I stayed with Zuba and her wonderful family for six months. I was 31 and had worked as a secretary in a branch of engineering services in the last two years. I have suffered for so long that boredom was now beginning to adapt to the eternal annoyance of my routine and I wake up a frightenedMorning on the wrong side of fifty and wondering where my life was gone. Sudan was exactly the kind of adventure that I needed and I started in the business of living on a knife edge with the leave enthusiast. I found a temporary job as a secretary of a local oil company and agreed to every function I have been invited for the next three months to participate.
Khartoum has been invaded by American pilots who were there to train local air force. He invited me to their parties andBBQ and treated me like a king. I joined the Sudanese Club, the last remnant of British occupation and is still inhabited by one or two live-in residents of the fifties when the Sudan had yet left the streets and sidewalks.
At first I was happy to be with Zuba and Sudanese families lived on the way to learn. After a few weeks, I began to understand that I am a waste of family resources in a city where food shortages are becoming more alarming everydays.
The bread was in the queue, sometimes for hours. The two girls were sent a servant to wait for hours in the sun outside food from the oven, and worst of all, the storage of gas cylinders which were rationed to the people who had enough money to bribe officials deposit making cooking and lighting their homes. The storage of gas was a long way to run, no shelter from the sun when you got there, and no guarantee of returning home with gas.
Zuba is one of thecousins, Ozzy, was a regular visitor to the house. It was late morning arrival of educated and healthy Zuba, retreat to the backyard with his brothers, smoking and drinking 'Sid' - a disgusting mixture of ninety alcohol went for a cocktail in these difficult times. The whole family was devout Muslim, I would, and then forbidden to consume alcohol. As in all things, the consumption of alcohol neglected and considered a necessary evilhelp to overcome the daily grind of life in limited circumstances.
One night, about a week after my arrival, Ozzy has invited me to visit her mother. I was happy to be invited as Ozzy mother was famous for a great beauty of his generation and a very sophisticated woman. We did not just before dinner and I was fascinated as Ozzy could find its way in the wilderness of sand in Khartoum. There were no street signs, no signs and no signs of stopping. The Sands of Time connected to a once beautiful city. Ozzy told me long ago, when the British in the residence, the city had fire hydrants, mailboxes, well-paved sidewalks, shops and taxis, post offices. Now we are just tired, dusty houses facing another tired, dusty houses a wasteland between. It was necessary to use a compass to move.
He stopped suddenly in front of a house with a locked metal gate. There was a Mercedes parked outside the home and Ozzy came fromCar, opened the trunk and pulled out a plastic container and a hose. To my horror and disbelief, began the process of transferring fuel from the Mercedes parked in the car, I strongly objected to this blatant theft, but Ozzy smiled, ignored me and continued to its destination.
My visit to Ozzy's mother, Una, was the first in a series of visits, each funnier than the last, and we became good friends. She helped me find an apartment inKhartoum and was able to decorate with furniture made from a collection of friends in question.
I felt more at ease now that I was not Zuba family of power supply is limited and in fact now in a position to provide a few luxuries such as shampoo and toothpaste that I bought the American commissioner, a tribute to work for an American Oil Company. Some days were good and some were unspeakably bad.
One morning I woke up to find my apartment flooded. Therewas no water for three days and I stupidly left the taps on the location. The water supply was restored in the middle of the night and flooded the whole world. Upon his arrival in the street I found my driver, Khamis, crowded under the hood of the car at my disposal. After recruiting the help of a number of passers-by, it was concluded that no fuel in the car.
It was hot in the back and I wanted to know why I could not openwindows. Khamis told me solemnly that he had super glued the windows shut to deter thieves. The front windows were glued, I recalled. No, said it was because he thought it was too hot with them closed.
Arriving at my office would be quite normal to find the phones do not work, electricity was cut, the board of water, or the caregiver had not shown up to the building to open, resulting in mass arrests of endless cups of coffee barsAfternoon. Sudan Club provided food days. It would not be too demanding, you had to eat what's on the menu for the day. My lunch consisted of a few days of a curious collection of pickles and a slice of bread, other times it would be a great celebration for the arrival of a consignment of food, which was then the imaginative characters shared responsibility for the imported goods be through the doors.
Zuba was a regular visitor to my apartment and she ishome, the same organization on the sofa with her feet on the coffee table and watching my videos from the library each week I borrowed from the shop U.S. Commissioner. He would tuck into a big bowl of cereal, his latest obsession, glue themselves to television and refuse to speak until he had reached the end of his film.
I was surprised one morning to leave the spy Zuba his staff car outside my apartment, in full dress uniform, complete with white gloves and sunglasses,looks like a female version of Idi Amin, accompanied by his driver with no hope of not taking her when she went out the window from her jeep and he tripped in a pothole in the road, hit him on the head with her purse and shout abuse at him more volume. She had been to the hairdresser, and shoulder-length hair was braided into hundreds of tiny braids, and fixed at the end of multicolored beads, costumes very attractive, but hardly suited to accessorizearmy uniform. Over the top of his uniform cap, had blocked a headset, and dancing on the stairs of the building to the tune of Bob Marley.
Zuba casually asked me what I did at work, and when I told her that I typed, processed paper, consisting of coffee, etc., froze in shock. What I mean by "coffee?" I explained that the secretaries in the modern world coffee for their bosses, it was not a big problem. The next day was seen in my office, complete withentourage and service revolver, which he greeted my boss and warned him that it was not dark for his friend to ask her coffee again if he wanted his term of service in Sudan survive. I assured him, after she had gone he did not have to worry, I was very excited to have coffee. Yet he has never asked me again.
During my time in Khartoum, I explored the seam where the Blue and White Niles meet, helped by a crocodile hunt, survived the attack of a large numberhaboobs (sand storms) and is flown in the desert near El Obeid, courtesy of the World Bank geologists studying the life of the desert in isolated camps with the needs of his family, two years in the wilderness without any contact with the outside world , was very happy to see us.
I experienced the discomfort of tear gas during the coup and had to bath in bottled water and carbonated water all dried up, and I was happy to Nimeri finally ousted from powercombines dance and party in the streets went on for days. I visited the camps where my friend was charged with Marguerita vaccines, providing children with diseases related to hunger, so much, and eventually nursed Marguerite, as she died of cholera in my small apartment. She was so brave and strong, it seemed unthinkable that she has her days in terrible conditions at the end.
My stay in Sudan ended when I had the opportunity to visit Dubai for more than a year later.I found the desert of modern life and a new and promising platform adventure. Sudan and Dubai are at opposite ends of the spectrum of civilization. Considering that the Sudan was poor, downtrodden and worn, Dubai was thin, rich and super efficient. I needed a change and went to my new life in the modern race Emirates same emotion I felt when I stepped off the plane in Khartoum. I will always remember them, the Sudan, Khartoum, Marguerita and Zuba.
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