Blogs from Sudan, Africa - page 8

Well, it's been a while since my last entry, so probably just a quickie. Sudan is still extremely hot, though the air-con (blasts of cold air) do keep me a bit cool at night. I've just seen my first cockroach. It was bloody huge. It was out in the garden, but Pat informed me that there'd been an even bigger one in the living room earlier!! After a twitchy half-hour, during which I resembled someone with Tourette's, head constantly twitching to make sure it hadn't come anywhere near me, rolling up my trouser legs to stop it crawling up them, spraying my bedroom with the strongest, most lethal bug-repellent you've ever smelt, she informed me that she had zapped the living-room one stone dead. I know logically that cockroaches are clean, that they are totally harmless ... read more

Well, progress of a sort! I've known for a while that I didn't want to go back to Ahfad so have been having discussions with all and sundry, left right and centre. I let SVP know that under no circumstances did I want to return to Ahfad (this was after they had told me that if I stayed at Ahfad I would not be regarded as an SVP volunteer). Anyway, to cut a very long, circuitous and possibly boring, story short, the outcome so far is: I went to El Nielen University today to discuss the possibility of teaching there. They were really happy to have me except: hell, there's alway a get-out clause - except that I'll be teaching 'formal' classes (from a syllabus that needs marking at the end) and, as I'm leaving in ... read more

Wednesday 16 October 2008 A pretty long day - 11.30 am Phil picked me up to give me a lift to the coach station. Precedby this by Jill ringing me up to say goodbye, find until final 'bye, then floods of tears from her. She nearly set me off. I promised I would phone/contact her asap. Met up with another volunteerat airport. Uneventful two flights, arrived Khartoum 3.45am (2 hrs ahead of us). Met SVP representatives (lovely older couple) who whisked me off to their house. I'm staying till about 5pm tomorrow when I'll get taken to Dr Amna's house in Omdufrman, swhere I'll be staying. So, I can relax for the day. According to the woman (whose name I simply didn't manage to get) I'll be about a five minute walk from the Nile and ... read more

The Ethiopian side took a long time, and while the truck is parked lots of people hooting at us and money changers prowl about, we managed to change our last dibdobs to Sudanese money at a back alley somewhere, the guy tried to cheat us but his competition told us and so we got a better rate in the end. Soon as we're done we crossed to Sudan, we need to pay for registration so we walked back to the Ethiopian side to change more money as they have better rates, we queued up to get entry stamps and at the same time we registered, it was cumbersome task as they have to translate into Arabic some informations. After that off we went only to be turned back 30 minutes later by a checkpoint saying we ... read more

I start my travels on 6th September 2008 when I travel to Canada. I'll be there for a month, coming back on 4th October (arriving back in England on 5th October). I'm going with a really good friend of mine and we're hoping to hire a camper van and just go where the fancy takes us. Having said that, we're arriving in Calgary, travelling up through the Rockies - Banff, Lake Louise etc. Then we're travelling across country to Vancouver and Vancouver Island, stopping off for a few days in Whistler where my son lives. So I'll get to see him, which is a bonus. Then it's on to Vancouver Island to catch a boat to take an all day trip up the coast to Prince Rupert. After a couple of days in Prince Rupert, we'll ... read more