The Tina Trip 03 - Sudan

"You will leave me!" she muttered. I assured her in all possible ways that, while I sometimes was stupid, I would never be so stupid as to leave her when there was the least chance of her being my sweet sweaty saucylass. "You will so leave me!" she persisted. "You will go back to Sweden and now that you realize what a prize you are you will have your pick of all these tall, blond Regina-like cows. Sure, I believe that you believe that I´m the best, but you have nothing to compare with. It´s different with me. I have a pretty broad base of comparison, thank you, and so I can tell for sure that you are the one for me."

"I don´t need to sleep around to know that you are the cleverest, sexiest chick in the world."

"That´s easy to say now, but you will start to wonder. Hey, we have to get you a bit of experience. I can ask Manuela, she´s a sweet girl and I know she likes you. Little risky, though – you may like her better than me, she´s so fucking pretty."

While at least a part of me was quite interested in this idea – as I am sure that some of the readers are – the main part of me voted solidly against it. "No way! You are the only one I want. If I die having only had sex with one girl in my whole life I can die happy since that girl was you. So there!"

"What about where we shall live? I don´t know if I can live in Sweden."

"Well, I´m pretty sure I can live in Berlin if it comes to that. But I would like to get a real education and I don´t know if I can get that in Germany. But we´ll work something out, hunnybug."

Finally, the boat arrived. All tickets promptly sold out and for a while it seemed that we, and the rest of the travelers, had waited in vain. All compartments were full and it was strictly forbidden to let people sleep on the deck. But, us being hawadias and guests and all that, they let us do just that. We set out a sunny day and merrily went down the river, past metropolises like Malakal and Renk.

ALL days had been sunny since that rainy day in Athens, by the way.

A group of four Englishmen with binoculars and sensible shoes were ornithologists. Sudan was apparently a great country to watch birds in, having more different species of birds than all of Europe. Or something. One Sudanese man, when understanding that they were seriously interested in birds, broke down laughing. He reacted like someone back home might react if told that people had come there from afar to watch mail-boxes. It had never occurred to him that birds were something that you could be interested in.

After a few hours the binoculared crew raised a wild-life alert. Elephants in sight! They pointed to two unevenesses on the horizon which might have been elephants, might have been big rocks. But I believe them and feel that I can claim that I have seen elephants in the wild. And the inside of a hippo. We passed a village where they had caught and killed a hippopotamus, which is said to be very difficult, them having a very thick skin. They had it opened up and there was blood and guts everywhere. And we did, of course, see birds. The most impressive one was the shoebill, the ornithologists were very pleased with that.

I looked forward to the swamp. I had seen mangrove swamps on TV and imagined something like that, narrow channels of water between tree-clumps and small islands. Monkeys chattering in the treetops. I fell asleep in a state of high expectation. When I awoke we were in the middle of an endless sea of reeds. That was it. Reeds and narrow, slow-moving arms of water, forming a labyrinth. I really wonder how they found their way. I must admit I was a little disappointed, but I learned that this sea of reeds was home to a very diverse and interesting echo-system with a rich animal life of which we saw zip. Apart from the birds and the bugs. In theory, there´s something erotic about a big swamp. Moist, earthy and smelly, warm, fertile, easy to get lost or drown in. The only sex-related metaphor that felt appropriate in real life was a giant yeast-infection. Smelled like it, too.

CHAPTER 13 – THIS IS JUBA COUNTRY

Time and nose is out of joint.

Our destination was Juba, the capital of the south. The boat didn´t go all the way, though, (unlike Tina these days) and we had to travel the last bit by lorry. This was a lorry specialized in transporting people. No other load, but packed with passengers. If there was a dress-code it was very inclusive. I kid you not when I tell you that there were people dressed in a suit carrying an attaché case and people dressed in a loincloth carrying a spear. On this short trip into Juba we saw several antelopes, almost ran over one too.

Juba felt more like a big city than Khartoum did, in spite of there being very few cars. It was busier, somehow, a hustle in the air. Less sand. Fewer goats. We found a funky hotel, or whatever. It was an old park which seemed to be a remnant from the colonial time. A big stage, with a roof. Scattered small gazebos, also roofed. Roofs were kind of important now. We were told that the rainy season was coming. It was not quite there yet, but the first rains were expected any time now. We settled in a gazebo and very cozy it was. Cheap too. We were neighbors with a pair of Marabou storks. They had a large nest in a tree and they looked just like Pterodactyls when they flew.

Juba had their own officials and their own stamps. We needed new travel-permits. They made very clear that this was Juba country where it was played by Juba roles. These rules were the same as further north, as far as we were concerned. We waited in line and they carefully considered the most aesthetically pleasing page to put their stamps, asking each other´s opinions. But the pace was a little more hectic, the officials bustled about rather than hovered on updrafts. They were no quicker stamping, though.

My original plan had been to get to Kenya and take a plane back to Europe from Nairobi. Kenya was where most of our fellow travelers were heading too. But we had grown increasingly dubious that we really wanted to go that route. Sudan bordered on Kenya but the roads were so atrocious that hardly anyone used them. Most lorries and trucks – which were the only means of transport further south – went to Kenya by Uganda. Uganda was iffy, we felt. There were a lot of weapons and confused and aggressive people. A bit like USA, we smug Europeans agreed. Some travelers had been killed. We did not want to be killed, and going further south seemed less and less appealing. We decided that Sudan was as far as we were going this time. Sudan borders on a lot of countries, but right then there wasn´t a single one of them, apart from Egypt of course, that wasn´t too dangerous.

Peter and the Danish girls didn´t want to risk it either. I don´t know if they slept together and, if so, in which combinations. But while awake the three of them were always together and there definitely were sparks there. You could see that the three of them were confusing to the locals. This was not an area where polygamy was done, unlike Bawiti, for instance, where we met one man with the maximum allowed four wives. They were not hostile but a little wary. We, being "married" were less strange and more likely to be invited to people´s homes. Thanks Maud.

They frequently asked about children. We were apparently very old to be childless and I had good use for the sentence about soon making babies like crazy that Ali taught me. I had pretty good use for the line about a crazy wife, too. Tina only used her teeth-sentence with me, but the one about my head in the clouds was sadly useful. We had also learned to praise babies, food and houses as well as other handy little phrases. But here in the south far from all spoke Arabic. There were more than four hundred languages spoken in Sudan so there were many to choose from.

There was a large marketplace close to where we stayed. This was a fun place to be, but the meat-selling area was...well, a Swedish health inspector (they are known for their excitable nature) would have fainted if he had seen the meat just laying there in the sun, covered in flies. And I do mean covered. The slabs of meat were black until handled and a cloud of flies lifted. Kites were hovering above, waiting for an opening. We once saw the butcher put a piece of meat on his scales and turn his back. BANG! – and a kite was off with it. He just shrugged, used to it.

We bought tea. You had to cover the tea with your hand at all times, to stop the flies from getting in. When Tina was halfway she slipped up and some suicidal flies dived in. We watched how her glass, now unguarded, rapidly filled up with flies. A young boy asked her if she didn´t want her tea and if he could have it. He gulped it down, flies and all. Looked happy about it, too.

This was one of the many times we were reminded of how much richer we were than the locals. There were dried dates to be had just about everywhere. To us they were cheap, and we bought ourselves some dates when we wanted something sweet. After a while we realized that to most locals dates were an unaffordable luxury. Once, when we were chatting with a guy, we offered him some dates and he reverently asked if it was ok if he didn´t eat them himself. He wanted to bring them home to his kids.

Many people spoke English. It was an official language and in theory everyone learned English in school. We met an English couple who were in Sudan for a year. They were teachers in a small town by the Ethiopian border, north of Per´s dam. Apparently Sudanese teachers were in demand in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis paid the wages for English teachers who came to Sudan as sort of subs. Not very large wages, they were in it for the adventure. The school system was different from what they were used to. Big classes, at least sixty people. The teacher put the best pupils up front and ignored the rest. If anyone disturbed the lessons in any way they were sent to the custodian with a note telling how many strokes they should have. He then stamped the note, rather more promptly than the professional stampers.

We were very happy with our little gazebo. The walls were made of glass, but it was in a secluded spot and what with the dark nights we felt quite un-observed and were able to explore and expand sexually. The most spectacular time was when the rain finally came. Fucking in a glass-house in the midst of a tropical thunderstorm with ferocious lightning is something I recommend to everyone. I felt small, dwarfed by the majestic thundering. Then, when we really got going, I felt gigantic – like I was part of the storm. Tina was blown away, tossed and drenched by my passion until we came with a roar of thunder. The storm moved on and we slowly stroked each other to sleep, listening to the receding rumble.

The fanciest place in Juba was the Greek Club. There, we had a conversation with a Greek gentleman who bemoaned the times we were living in. Apparently this region had once been dominated by Greek landowners, hence the name of the Greek Club. These degenerate days anyone was allowed to eat there. Not be admitted as a member, thank God, that was still restricted. But the sight of black people eating there, and not just serve as waiters, was hard to bear. Us, he could tolerate, if not appreciate, but time was severely out of joint, as was his nose. Guerillas, bureaucrats and uppity blacks were ruining the business for him and his peers and you could not sell because no one was buying.

We felt we were done with Juba. In fact, we were getting tired of the travelling thing altogether. We felt that we wanted to sink our teeth into the rest of our lives. Travelling was a great way to get away from everyday life, but since we never had had an everyday life we didn´t have anything to get away from. No hurry, though. We wanted to go a different route back so we decided to go west. There was a lorry going to Yambio, close to the border to Zaire, as it still was called back then. From there you could get to Wau and then to Aweil, where there was a railway back to Khartoum.

It was tough travelling a longer distance by lorry. I´ve told you about the state of the roads, and the lorry-drivers were in a hurry. We were bouncing around in the back. It was sort of fun at first, but the further we went the less fun it became. When we arrived I felt like my entrails had shaken loose, been totally rearranged and not liking it at all. I also felt sick, weak and totally exhausted. We were directed to a school-house where we could sleep. Very practical, since it was still a holiday and we had the building to ourselves. Gaining entrance was easy, since there were no doors. It took me a few days to get back to normal. It probably was exposure from sitting in the sun the whole day. It hadn´t felt all that hot when the lorry was moving, but my brain got fried anyway.

Yambio was a nice little town, Tina reported. I didn´t venture far from the school in the beginning, but I was entertained by the persistent practicing of a marching band in the schoolyard. They needed the practice, they sounded like crap, but they played with enthusiasm and marched in little patterns in the yard while they played. I became their number one fan and applauded vigorously after each song they played. That was fun, but I was glad when I felt well enough to go for walks. Tina knew the area by now and wanted to show me her favorite spots. The forest was denser here, almost jungle. Lots of mango trees, and they said that sometimes elephants came to eat of the fallen down mango. They also informed us that you could get brained by a falling mango, the trees were high and the mangos heavy. Here, we saw monkeys. Small ones. There was a pretty little lake I would have loved to swim in but we were told that was out. Bilharzia.

Surprisingly, a bus turned up. It looked almost dead, but was still moving. It bore the proud name "The Pineapple Express" and it was going to Wau. The driver agreed to have a tea on us and wait while we got our stuff. It was a little sad to miss the official performance of the marching band, but that was in a week and this pineapple opportunity was too good to miss. The trip was hot and bouncy, we pretended we were popcorn and hummed that old early synthesizer popcorn melody until we realized that the rest of the bus felt that we had hummed quite enough, thank you.

A few kids watched us with big eyes, looking apprehensive. We knew that look by now. The people round here firmly believed in ghosts and ghosts looked like real people, but white. Quite a few kids, who were unused to hawadias up close, were not quite sure that we did not want to eat their liver. Raw liver was a dish that did not appeal to us, though. There´s an affliction where your body is really bad at absorbing some kind of vitamin. Nowadays they can fix it with a pill, but in the good old days the only way to survive was to eat several pounds of raw liver. Every day. I think I´d rather die. Once you were dead apparently raw liver would be the tastiest thing in the world too.

As an apology for the popcorn hum and our literally ghastly appearance Tina went round and treated everyone to dates. There was enough for an extra date to the kids, too. One guy who spoke good English translated questions and everybody wanted to know everything about us. One thing I usually lied about was my job. I worked in a facility for mentally retarded. They had nothing like that here and taking care of "idiots" would have had very low status. So I lied. I wanted to keep it close to the truth, so I wanted it to be in health-care. At the same time I didn´t want to pretend to be a doctor or nurse I case someone wanted help I could not give. So I told them I was an X-Ray technician, who took pictures of people´s insides.

Besides job-questions they asked about babies, of course. Some asked about how rich we were, what things we owned back home. Some asked about religion. The passengers seemed to be about one third Muslims, the rest Christians. We detected no sign of enmity. We also asked about their lives. Jobs were very few. There was a lot of small scale farming going on. They had high hopes for the oil prospection that was going on. If oil was found things would be well. Ha!

All in all this was a fun trip. Probably the nicest journey we had in Sudan and although the road had been just as bouncy as last trip we were feeling much better when we left our busload of friends forever we´d never see again.

CHAPTER 14 – THE LONG WAY HOME

Sad and lonesome? Eat it!

Wau. This is where we slept in the hospital, by the way. Bigger place than Yambio. In the restaurant we were led into the kitchen to point out what we wanted. There was the usual ful and addes, but also some kind of stew we hadn't had before and both wanted. Tomato salad, not bad. The stew tasted...well not good, but acceptable, the gravy part of it at least. But in that gravy swam like tubes of thick, ridged cartilage. We came to the conclusion that they must have chopped up lungs and boiled them. We didn´t quite know if we were expected to eat the tubes or if they were just there for decoration. We didn´t eat them, but the salad was good. Tina stole the last tomato from my plate.

"Hey", I yelled.

"I had to", Tina said. "It looked so sad and lonesome."

"So, your reaction when someone seems sad and alone is to eat him."

"Sure is. Like you. You were sad and alone when we met and you don´t complain at all when I munch on you."

"Very true."

"Like wolves. If they meet some sad and lonesome moose kid who has lost his mother, what do they do? Eat it!"

I wanted dessert. There was none. There had been one place in Khartoum where you could get ice cream. Cones, artificial strawberry flavor. I wished we´d been in Khartoum. Or back in Europe where you could get, not only ice cream but good ice cream. Tina wanted a beer. Shit, I really wanted a beer too. I wanted a big glass of cold milk. Tina really did NOT want milk too. Tina wanted German sausages. I wanted pickled herring. Then we both were dying for pizza. I don´t even like pizza all that much, but right now, compared to my half-eaten plate of boiled lung, pizza seemed like the food of gods.

All in all, this longing for the comforts of home was a confirmation that it was time for us to be homeward bound. We talked more and more often about things like toilet paper, showers that worked, sleeping in a real bed and playing music. We had long nerd-conversations about what song we were going to play first when we got home. This changed all the time, of course, depending on current mood.

So – we slept in the hospital, experienced a birth, were shaken to the core, particularly when allowed to hold the baby, swaddled in a blanket three times too big. It was a tiny girl, all wrinkled and purple and super-cute. They said they would name her Tina, and Big Tina (a first for her, to be big) was moved to tears as she kissed Purple Tina on her purple raisin nose. We got their address and Tina planned to send gifts. She wanted to be an extra, ghostwhite, godparent beyond the sea and the desert. We hung around in the morning and Purple Tina peed when I held her. She was wrapped up and didn´t have all that much to offer yet, but there was a tiny spot. Tina pointed triumphantly.

"Told you! Series of three!"

We wanted to go home. Tina was inspired and wanted to do what we had told so many people here – go home and make babies. Like crazy. I was curious about what school I had been admitted to.

"Are you sure you´re admitted somewhere?"

"Well. Yes."

"How? Doctorschools are tough to get into back home and I bet it´s the same in Sweden."

"Well..."

"You are the lousiest bragger in the world. Humility is all very well, but it´s ok to tell me, your beloved, about things you are proud of."