The House of the (Hot) Rising Sun

There is a lot of talk about the heat, here in Sudan. As I enter the office every morning, the security guard greeting me will ask me “keef el sakhana?” (how’s the heat?) with a smile that is part solidarity, part apology.  It was sweet the first few days, but three weeks in, it’s getting tired. The same goes for the number of (extremely) sweet counterparts that I am meeting, each of which will not end a conversation with me without mentioning the heat.  This carried me through the spectrum of graceful gratitude for their small talk about the weather, to wondering whether I was exhibiting some undesirable side effects of the heat and this is their polite way of excusing me (paranoia much?).

There are no two ways about it – Khartoum is hot!  It’s hot and dry. I spent my first few days moisturizing my dried skin and soothing my itchy, dried out nose (and clean up whatever imagery that conjures up, there was no unseemly picking taking place, just a lot of incessant nose-blowing).  It is sufficiently hot, even with air conditioning, that my hair is tied up and away from my neck for all but a few short periods during the day.  It’s hot that, when I took too long to find water on my first walk out and about town, I could almost feel my body absorbing any hydrated cells, and felt I was dehydrating as quickly as litmus paper changes colour. Yes, it’s hot… but it was hot yesterday, hot today, and will probably be hot again tomorrow – can we stop talking about it and wrecking my attempts at tuning it out and getting on with my day?

There is really only one point in the day where the heat truly bothers me, physically moving me out of my spot, and that is during the afternoon when it chooses my exact corner of the office to beat against rather persistently. It’s a completely unfair fight where the air-conditioner and ceiling fan simply cannot abate its power despite their best efforts.  As I try to withstand this lapping heat in the last hour or so of the workshift, I cannot help but silently hum the song; house of the rising (or afternoon-setting) sun, indeed.

This also always brings me back to thinking of the little compound that makes up our offices. A series of six villas, three on either side of a central driveway, which also leads off to a small tennis court/football field, swimming pool (I’ve only seen one, I’m told there’s another) and underground gym.  Though this lends itself to much suspicion as to what sort of financial management would allow such premises, let me explain the situation as it was explained to me on my first day.  We are apparently located in an affluent part of town, an area that used to consist of orchards leading up to the Nile (very close by), and was then sold off plot by plot to rich Sudanis who wanted to build lavish homes for themselves, and their families. Yes, that’s plural – it’s apparently common for fathers to build a mini-compound of villas or apartments to be inhabited by himself and each of his sons. When I was told this of our office complex, I jumped to the mistaken conclusion that it was a one-off type of construction.  That was, until I walked around some structures in the neighbourhood. I was passing this one gate to the driveway of a three storey building, which seemed like semi-detached houses, and had taken many strides before I started wondering why there were no other gates along this long wall. My question was soon answered at the other end of the wall, when I found the entrance gate and the sign “Ahmad Moussa & Sons Residence”.  I did not even have time to giggle at this company-name-type format to the houses before I came upon another one and another, and I wondered how these fathers had succeeded in persuading their sons to live next door when the owner of our office complex had clearly failed – we were the villas’ first inhabitants.  There is many a day when I walk through the re-divisioned office-villas and wonder how they were meant to be lived in… and wonder, as well, who would have occupied my hot corner in the sun, we might have had a few stories to share.

Haboob

My first encounter with Sudan came in the form of a lovable sounding phenomenon: ‘haboob’.  I can assure you that nobody in Khartoum was referring to it in loving or endearing tones, but whoever thought of calling this phenomenon of a ‘soft’, continuous sand-carrying wind something as cute as ‘haboob’ knew that newcomers would not be able to utter the name without following it with a comical smile.  Good on them, because shortly after encountering haboob, it becomes a central nuisance to your daily life.


Haboob made an appearance before I even got here – it was active the night I was flying in and there were some concerns that the flight might not be able to land, or possibly be delayed.  If a 3am flight is delayed does that mean it’s arriving late or early? Doesn’t the ‘late clock’ reset at dawn?  But I digress.  The plane landed safely, and I decided that too much of nothing was being made of this haboob… until I got to the guest house.  This seemingly mild-mannered wind has sneaky ways, literally.  The moment you enter any room, you sense that something else is already there, and you find it as soon as you touch anything: the thinnest film of orange sand – on – everything!  Slighter than Gulf desert sand, but more tangible than dust, it immediately colours the soles of your feet, and wraps itself around the toilet seat, wash basin, cups and utensils, and practically anything else exposed to light.  But it’s still haboob, so I smile, wipe the surface and carry on.  The locals have developed many a trick to deal with haboob, I’ll try to learn them quickly.


In the meantime, I’ve been implementing a few of my tricks to settle in.  My familiar pillow, sheets, towels, soaps, etc. everything was quickly unpacked and put in place, with the additional cozy accommodation being provided by a dear friend’s home.  This is so much better than any prior move, but it still took me a couple of days to gain my bearings and settle in.  I assign one part of that to the early hour arrival on the first day, and I can’t but acknowledge that the last piece fell into place when I finally obtained my very own local phone chip.  I was utterly restless for two days, got the chip, made two phone calls – just two calls – and that’s it, I was settled.  When did we (I) get so spoiled by technology?  Those two days without a local phone felt like an eternity, and I felt completely suspended out of time and place.  How did this happen?  When I went to university for the first time many (many) years ago, my only certain form of contact was a landline somewhere in the vicinity of what would be my room, and I took great care to register and share that number as appropriate. Now, we travel half way across the world without paying much attention to our points of contact, we hold on to our cell phone and its roaming capacities like a lifeline, and we feel abandoned and lost without the full use of those services – either roaming or from a freshly acquired local cell.  As if that weren’t enough, I have now developed an additional dependency on internet access through my phone.  You may share such a dependency with me, and if you do, I invite you in joining me in this exercise: go to a mirror, look yourself squarely in the eyes and say “Seriously??!”


If you’re wondering what this has to do with a short travel note about Sudan, it is because I have spent this, my first day off in the city, in the cooled comfort of this flat and the familiar company of my internet world.  I promise to head out tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll have more to share then, and it will, no doubt, be hot!