Khartoum, Sudan - A Betty Crocker Oven with a View...

It was crazy hot in the room last night. Something like 38C. The walls retain a lot of heat. There's something in the mattresses that made me itch. So, I'm sleeping on my sleep pad (not good because the springs poke through). Anyway, it's difficult to get any kind of rest, especially when I woke up in a pool of my own sweat with great frequency.

Suffice to say, I'm trying to stay out of the room. I tend to hide in the internet cafe across the way for some of its sweet air conditioning. I know. That's pathetic.

Today I started early with the tasks at hand, hoping to avoid moving around in the heat of day. Went to change money (they profess not to like America but they sure like it's cash). At the first bank, the security guy referred me to his friend "the moneychanger" and not the Bank of Khartoum which, according to him did not perform foreign exchange. Yah, whatever...

Then I tried to find the alien registration office. Tourists are suppose to register within a few days of entry into the country. They moved it. Swell. This snafu will be troublesome because I'm not sure where it is on my map. Got the security guy to write down in Arabic the name of the registration office. I hope that will help...

After the registration debacle, I started to wilt from the heat. It was almost noon. I had to find something to drink fast. Heat exhaustion is a killer. I had to quickly duck into a dark cool internet cafe.

Not a productive day. To top it off, I tried quizzing the hotel reception on the whereabouts of the train to Wadi Halfa. With my pathetic Arabic and the receptionist's pathetic English, nothing intelligent came out of that conversation. He did find a resident of the hotel that might be able to help me. a really old guy (perhaps in his eighties?), a retired professor. He spoke English! (According to him, it was not uncommon for his generation to understand English because of the colonization. He said to forget about the current generation of Sudanese wrt English.) He directed me to the train ticket office, AND wrote down in Arabic the phrase I needed to help me find it. What a swell guy. That's until I followed his directions and found that the train services had move and now were all centralized in North Khartoum.

I gave up, for today.

I've been using the fact that I'm Chinese more often. Of course, I'm ethnically Chinese but not nationally Chinese, a fact that doesn't seem to matter to most Sudanese. I'm not ashamed. Anything to gain an advantage or be seen in better light is good. Today, I was called a "sendeega" at the railway station. It's supposed to be a term of endearment (meaning "friend") applied to the supposed 5 million Chinese (PRC) expats living here and "helping" out the Sudanese by making their country a better place. Surprisingly, I haven't seen a Chinatown, or Chinese-run laundry or restaurant, yet...

I was buying some detergent when the vendor asked me if I knew how to speak in English. That was hilarious because I had been speaking to him in English for a least a minute beforehand. I guess "sendeegas" can't speak English...

Out of Canuckistan: A travel blog, May 10/07
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