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Published: April 11th 2008
"I would sooner live like a Dervish with the Mahdi than go out to dinner every night in London"
General Gordon (who was defeated and killed in the Mahdist Siege of Khartoum, 1885). Sudan gets a lot of bad press, with good reason. But I found the people to be the friendliest and most hospitable I've met anywhere in the world. There were numerous incidents during my time in Sudan when people treated me as an honoured guest.
I entered the Sudan by ferry from Aswan. The very slow ferry to Wadi Halfa is the only way to cross the border from Egypt. It was a slow trip in an old, broken down boat, which left when the cargo was loaded. Which meant I had to wait 11 hours in the bowels of the boat before it started to inch away from its berth.
The next afternoon the boat finally arrived in the town of Wadi Halfa. It is a sand blown town, that would probably die without the weekly ferry from Egypt. The original Wadi Halfa was drowned when the Aswan Dam was built. My intention was to catch the train the next day.
As a result I was in a queue waiting for a ticket at 7.30am.
Time passed...nothing happened. After a few hours some people gave up waiting. It wasn't until 11.45am that someone from the train company turned up to tell us that the train wouldn't be leaving today. Although they did open the train ticket window. I found that I was in a queue for 3rd class tickets. So, I bought a 3rd class ticket as it was the only tickets that they were selling.
The train journey from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum is one of the classic train journeys of the world, even if the carriages are old and falling apart. The journey all the way to Khartoum can take from 36 to 48 hours. I though got myself a ticket to the town of Atbara, a mere 24 hour journey.
The journey in my third class carriage was uncomfortable. The seats were hard wooden benches in a open carriage and often the carriage would fill with sand blown in from the desert. The journey though was made bearable by the small kindnesses of the other passengers.
Fairly early on a man walked down the carriage selling tea. There was a wiry old man sat opposite me,
wearing a white Jalabi and turban. He bought me a tea and wouldn't accept payment. Then at one of the stops in the desert I got off the train. There were men selling cups of tea. When I tried to buy a cup of tea a stranger paid for my tea and wouldn't accept anything from me. That stop was a weird desert train station, in the middle of nowhere. I had to look twice when I saw old gas lights next to the train track. They had undoubtedly been there ever since the British built the line over a hundred years ago.
The War Train
The train line was built by the British as a weapon of war to provide a supply line across the desert for the invasion of Sudan by General Kitchener. The speed of the invasion was governed by the building of the tracks. It was an avenging British army that re-took Khartoum in 1898 from the brief Mahdist government.
The
Mahdi had defeated General Gordon in the Siege of Khartoum in 1885. Mohammed Ahmed (the Mahdi) is seen as the fist African anti-colonialist by many Muslim Sudanese.
Rudolf Slatin described the Mahdi in his 1898 book, Fire and Sword in the Sudan:
I now had a good opportunity of making a careful study of Mohammed Ahmed; he was a tall, broad shouldered man of light brown colour, and powerfully built; he had a large head and sparkling black eyes; he wore a black beard, and had the usual three slits on each cheek; his nose and mouth were well shaped, and he had a habit of always smiling, showing his white teeth and exposing the V shaped aperture between the two front ones which is considered a sign of good luck in Sudan, and is known as 'falja'. This was one of the principal causes which made the Mahdi so popular with the fair sex, by whom he was dubbed “Abu Falja” (the man with separated teeth). He wore a short quilted jibba, beautifully washed, and perfumed with sandalwood, musk, and attar of roses; this perfume was celebrated amongst his disciples as Rihet el Mahdi (the odour of the Mahdi), and was supposed to equal, if not surpass, that of the dwellers in Paradise.
At 9pm the train pulled into the town of Abu Hamid. Many people got off the train, apparently there is a good tarred road to Khartoum from Abu Hamid. Someone was struggling with the string they had used to tie their luggage to the overhead rack. (A necessary precaution - it wasn't a smooth ride!)
The old man who was sat opposite me got up and produced a large dagger from his left arm which he used the cut the string. The sheathed dagger marked the old man out as belonging to the Kababish.
Sudan is a very ethnically and religiously diverse country.
A group of passengers insisted on buying some dinner for me. They came back onto the train with plates of food which was shared collectively. That wasn't the only offer of food I got that night. In fact I lost count of the number of people that were keen to feed me.
The Pyramids of Meroe
There were other examples of the hospitality of the Sudanese. I visited the Pyramids of
Meroe from the town of Shendi. Its a little known fact that Sudan has more Pyramids than Egypt. The Kushite kings of Sudan were also pharaohs of Egypt for about 100 years.
After I had visited the Pyramids I returned to the town of Shendi, In the evening I was stood in front of a street stall when someone insisted on buying some food for me. He then invited me to a cafe, his mothers house, another cafe and finally his house which he appeared to share with other young men. I was fed again! If I hadn't insisted that I needed to get back to
Khartoum I'm sure my new found friends would have looked after me for days!
I would recommend anyone to travel to Sudan. The people are ethnically and culturally diverse and very friendly. The government of al-Bashir is a very different matter. For those that think I've gone soft here are a few links:
Amnesty International Report on Sudan War and Slavery in Sudan Merowe Dam
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aspiringnomad
Jason
Softened by The Sudan?
Sudanese people "The friendliest and most hospitable people you've met anywhere in the world"(???) You and me both traveller!!! I agree with that statement wholeheartedly; and would add it's one of the most challenging, exotic and adventuress locations on the planet...The panorama picture you posted with this blog actually made my pulse quicken and the video of the dervishes is superb...hopefully you stuck around a while and they softened you up some more...