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"Never forget where you've come here from" </br> Take That

Aswan, Egypt to Khartoum, Sudan (1 March 2002)

Roundtheworldbybike
2005-11-18 10:53:49

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So I was able to derive some grim satisfaction from my bike frame snapping. I wiggled the jagged steel tubing masochistically like a wobbly tooth and then started walking. Fortunately it was only about 20km before I came across a kind bed maker who welded the metal together (I chose not to watch as he gleefully and crudely fried poor Rita!), refused payment, fed me and sent me off with a large bag of cookies (he was also the local baker). A snapped frame in the desert classifies as ‘not good news’. There is no way the bike will survive to Cape Town: I just prayed it would get me as far as Khartoum…. Otherwise I was in for a long walk.

I wake on the riverbank at sunrise on Valentine’s Day. As is traditional the postman did not arrive bearing gifts from secret admirers. Even 6000 miles from home some things do not change!

I buy tea, the price established between us by writing with our grubby fingers in the sugar bowl. The price agreed, I seal the deal by digging my spoon into the bowl and scooping out sugar to sweeten my drink.

For Alice in Wonderland the rule was “jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today”. But my diet is even more depressing than hers. Bread and jam every single day then pasta and a stock cube for dinner. I crave fresh food (not to mention pies, ice cream, burgers and a MiniDisc player…!). My culinary highlight is a new box of stock cubes or a new flavour of jam. Roll on Khartoum.

After days and days of quiet arriving in Dongola is unsettling- from nothing into crowds of men flowing past in white robes and turbans, visions of noisy ghosts. A deeply black young woman is swathed in blue, ceremonial scars framing her piercing white eyes. She looks at me and through me, her haughty dignity and poise mocking me to lower my eyes and break the gaze that seems to bore deep into my mind and my past. A teenage girl prepares tea, henna tattooed hands gracefully ...