Illumination

The pale orange of the streetlight put into relief the painted wall front-left. A radio aerial stuck up like a cartoon heron. To the right, the fern frond details of a tree layered by the light. An unfinished brown concrete and brick block full of squares and rectangles further round.

And above, the quiet, patient dark blue of an African sky infused with grey. You could pick out stars if you concentrated, one almost flashing red as an aircraft. Down again, along the low wall of the roof terrace were posted decorative squat asparagus heads, butch flames on quadripods as though stolen from a Victorian train station.

On the wall sat a small, untidy old man, hair slightly longer, his loose features illuminated by the black and white from the big screen. He moved back to his plastic chair, discoloured by dust even in the semi-dark. The audience sat still, contrasted to the flowing pictures on the screen. Two birds wheeled in the light of the film before gliding down and away.

A Syrian lament in Arabic to dissidents, driven overseas after seasons in chains and now returning, it moved slowly. The camera rested on the lined face of an old woman, daughter of Armenian genocide survivors and now mother of more suffering. Her eyes huge and expressive, spilling coffee on the stove.

If you tried to concentrate, you would quickly become bored. If you looked for beauty, the ugly shapes around would disenchant any enthusiasm. But there is peace here. The film and the sky, the comforting air, a man in a scruffy shirt sprawled in concentration. This is something that is not England, and that is good.

Supa Juba

Last week I travelled to the southern town of Juba. As I left Khartoum our plane was half empty, yet I noticed many people on a waiting list, desperate to get on it. So I enquired to the pilot who helpfully explained that it was normal, that landing strips are rather short in that part of the country, that the plane would most probably crash if it reached its full capacity. Suddenly, I felt less guilty about the poor guys who were refused boarding that morning.

Juba is a bit of a cowboy town. A wild wild west, only with flip-flops instead of boots, gin & tonic instead of whiskey. As if someone had found gold and rounded up all their friends to join the party. As the new capital of the autonomous region of Southern Sudan, Juba abounds with relief and development workers. This part of the country is one of the most under-developed areas in the world, and as such most NGOs and UN agencies have set up camp there.

The first thing that strikes you as you arrive in Juba, is how different the place is from Khartoum. It literally feels like a different country. No more white turbans and long jallabiyas, no more mosques and calls to prayer, no more dust and desert and overwhelming dry heat. Here people look like NBA players, wear jeans and short sleeves t-shirts and are often spotted reading their Bible. Juba is green, humid, surrounded by swampland, with only two tarmac roads that meet at a central roundabout. The town is built on one side of the river Nile, probably due to the fact that apart from the one bridge that links it to the opposite shore, the next bridge is located further 400 miles north, in the town of Kosti.

Part of my visit brings me to the Bangladeshi Military Demining Company who take me to a nearby minefield they are clearing. Landmines have been laid in Sudan for the past 40 years until the civil war ended in 2002, and people here are accustomed to them.

As I carefully follow my guide through the cleared lanes (gulp!), I marvel at the work of these men who work relentlessly from 7am to 2pm by 40 degrees’ heat, cut and clear the tall grass, scan the ground with their metal detector and prod the earth in search of the lethal device. Since there is so much junk in the ground (broken glass, cans…) the metal detector will signal almost anything irrelevant. However the men still have to remove the soil meticulously around the signal to make sure there isn’t anything dangerous left there. One man clears on average 12m2 a day and it will take them 2 years to complete their work on the minefield.

We drive back to the camp and I enjoy the green scenery while praising the maker of Toyotas, that enable us to make it safely though the mud and ridiculously huge potholes. I go back to my hotel and consider getting a drink. Since I am now “khartoumised”, there is something almost indecent about sitting in a bar with loud music and ordering myself a cold beer. But tonight, I will shove my morality down my throat.

A pain in the bum, Sudan style

All you potential health tourists out there, you are in luck. This week, your intrepid journalist will help you get the bottom of those thorny medical questions you have always wanted to ask. For I have done no less than (courageously) develop an abscess in my bottom last week in order to go infiltrate the Khartoum health system.

It all began with a lump 10 days ago. Holding out with the help of ibuprofen and some stubbornness, until it could only be rectified by a full-scale operation, I made my first move. I turned up realistically white and shaky to the recommended doctor’s surgery to find a young lady in her twenties standing in for the normal doctor. She was clearly a little nervous as she plucked at her hijab. She listened attentively to my ailment, asking about my general health, occupation, the weather, anything really to put off the fateful moment. But no longer: ‘Could you show me what is wrong then?’ She bent her head for some moments in a silent desperate prayer. Cheering up though having survived the ordeal of inspecting a man’s bottom, she confidently told me that she really didn’t know what to do, but perhaps I would like some painkillers?

With the pain bursting through all available pills, I thought this would be a good time for a second opinion. The office nurse was aghast and immediately warned the local hospital to expect me. Incidentally, navigating the agony of mud rut bumps while sitting on an abscess is much more difficult when you are driving the car.

The surgeon was equally impressed, pronouncing it ‘quite huge’. Dropping my trousers was now a formality, unfazed even by an old man in a dashing white turban clambering out of his bed to see what the fuss was about. Waiting for the hours to pass before the op and clearly the only khawaja in the hospital, my celebrity was spreading. I was getting meals at an alarming rate (despite not being allowed to eat), and an endless stream of medical staff wanting to get in on the action with injections, blood tests and the like.

Then the operation was nigh. Two nurses tried to manoeuvre me into a wheelchair to go to theatre. An animated little discussion in broken arabic convinced them that as I couldn’t sit down, this wasn’t the best option. On the operating table, anaesthetised from the tummy down, I have never before had the experience of not feeling anything while my body is physically moving up and down. Why the force was so necessary when an array of sharp little knives was at their disposal will remain a mystery. Maybe they weren’t so sharp.

A slightly traumatic experience later, I was back in my hospital room, the nice clean effect only slightly spoilt by a lack of soap or loo paper. More food; pills; blood pressure machines; injections; and nurses trying to convince me that two wives is definitely better than one. Though not up to working out if they were offering their services, my arabic was good enough to explain that drugged and with a large hole in me, I might like to be alone with my thoughts. All very entertaining though when you are still high on opiates.

Sadly the anaesthesia wore off during the night. The dressing change the next morning was excruciatingly thorough. A nurse, luckily for all concerned with no English, enthusiastically worked away at the hole in my flesh. Our office nurse, horrified, negotiated that she would do the dressings from then on. Small mercies…