I awoke at 7:00 this morning in dire need of coffee, the accommodation was more than adequate and definitely an improvement on the hotel we had been staying in. We each had a room, there were provisions for making tea and coffee (sachets Nescafe of 3 in 1 coffee). We had a few jobs to tidy up on the servers, have breakfast then head off to the refugee camp before the long drive back to Khartoum. I had woken with a degree of nervous anticipation about what the conditions would be like, how the people would look, all those things were running through my mind. But it was time to put those aside and to get all tasks completed. We got the migration data restored to the server, the backup and restore scripts were completed, that was it, it was time for breakfast.

Again it was Sudanese style, lots of dishes on the table and using fingers or pieces of bread to combine the next mouthful you wanted to eat. I must admit, it was a cool way of eating and it gave me understanding why the right hand was to be kept away certain parts of the body and tasks (if you know what I mean). Anyway, I ate my fill and decided to visit the bathroom before heading off. I was glad that in the house we stayed in there was a conventional. When I had arrived the previous day I asked where the bathroom was and was lead to a small outhouse with a hole in the floor and a hose pipe… no toilet paper… hmmm nice… J

We started packing up our items and putting them into the jeep when we were told that Andy a Civil Engineer would be travelling to Khartoum with us. He needed to stop in Gadarf for 5 minutes to drop off some papers and then we would be on our way. Of course, knew this 5 minutes would be an indeterminate time frame as all time is in Sudan.

We did the introductions, said our good byes to our friends we had made for less than a day, jumped into the jeep and Mansul followed the guide jeep to take us to the refugee camp. The journey was around 20 minutes a long a dirt track heading north out of Shuwak. It was a really bumpy journey and we regularly lost sight of the jeep in front because of the dust cloud if generated.

The nerves were starting to build at this point, wondering again what was coming up, all those visions of refugee’s in the news, the sadness and the horrible stories that people told…

We passed a group of camels to the right of the road, all munching away on the dry grass that lined the fields to the left and right. A man was trying to shoo them along but they weren’t having any of it… they were happy to stand and eat. The only successful method I had see of directing a camel so far was to tie one of its legs up so it was effectively hopping on three legs… this way you could just give them a push in the general direction you wanted to move them in and they would hop in that direction. Now, I’m not saying I agree with that, I’m sure that the RSPCA would have something to say about it, but it is the way it is done out here… Oh that reminds me, Shuwak has actually the second largest camel market in Sudan, just a little FYI.

In the distance I could see one of the black and white water tower. This was the first sign of the refugee camp that we were approaching the refugee camp. As we got closer I began to see the roof tops come into sight, more of the conical thatched roofs which had been so familiar as we had travelled to Shuwak the previous day. As we go closer I could see cattle and the definition of the houses getting clearer as we approached. There were a few people milling around outside of some of the houses, but it was a very hot day so I assumed the majority would be inside in the shade.

We entered the perimeter of the refugee camp and started to approach what was obviously the school. There were maybe a hundred children outside, it was “break time”, and they looked and saw the jeep and separated so that we could pass, all smiling and waving as we passed by. Their faces beamed as we drove through, this was obviously a regular occurrence, random people turning up in UNHCR jeeps, there were no quizzical looks, just smiling ones. We continued to drive through the camp past row after row of huts. There was only one brick building at the centre of the camp and this was pointed out to me as being the hospital. It seemed fairly quiet and there didn’t seem to be the queue of sick of people I perhaps expected to see there.

We arrived at the Offices for the Shuwak refugee camp and were invited in. We were taken into the administrators office and he explained about the camp and what was happening there. The people in the camp were Eritrean, the camp had been in place for the past 15 years, they had a school, hospital, fresh water and food supplies were brought to the town regularly. I asked when they would be resettled to their home country if at all and was told that the environment is good for them and it appears that they we will be here indefinitely because of both persecution and the village itself was better than the quality of life they had experienced before.

We go into the jeeps and went for a tour around the camp, it was a bit of whistle stop tour as it was already 11:30 and we didn’t want to be on the road when it got dark. I was a little disappointed as I was hoping that we could have walked through the camp and “feel” the environment but this was not to be.

The drive through the camp was fairly brief, lasting all of 10 minutes which wasn’t really enough to understand how things worked there but we were guided past an old bakery, the school and hospital again, we went past the Sukh (market place) where the men were gathered haggling, bartering and drinking Chai. As we drove through the streets something began to dawn on me, the conditions here in comparison to the journey I had taken yesterday through some of the places were better a lot better than expected. From the outside people looked happy, smiled and waved and there was a general air of “good”. There were silage pits throughout the village which most farms out in the country have, so waste and refuse was not left anywhere. There wasn’t rubbish lying around on the ground as I had seen on the journey to Shuwak, it was as clean as a dust and sand based habitat could be.

My thoughts then went to the average person who is not a refugee in Sudan, but just a standard resident of Sudan trying to live. All they have is what they work for, which isn’t much, there isn’t much focus from what I can see from the Sudanese government for the small man on the street as I said in previous blogs. Refugee status was a good thing and it worked to protect the refugee’s, they had moved for good cause and internationally there is understanding of need to support those people who are displaced. Either through resettlement in member nations of the UN or by creating camps such as these.

Obviously this camp had been in place for 15 years and what had forced the creation of the camp had long since passed, this was now a stable community. But what was way out west in Darfur, again images from the news came into my mind. The creation of this community had taken time and all those refugees in Darfur were in a position where they were waiting for food shipments, hoping for a ration card to get the food and just survive what is happening in the region. I hope that the peace agreement is signed so that at least they can have the stability of an environment such as this and without the threat of attacks. Life here isn’t perfect and far from it, but it could indeed be worse.

We continued to follow the leader jeep and eventually broke to the outside of the camp I took one final look back over my shoulder and said an internal good bye and good luck to the people there.

It was time to hit the road, it was now around 12:00 and with the six hours it had taken to get here and the extra stop off we estimated we would be back by 6:30… how wrong could we be…

Firstly it was into Gadarf to drop of the papers that Andy wanted to take to a partner company for building additional facilities in one of the other camps. He said again it would be 5 minutes. We stopped outside a shop, to the side of the shop were three men sat on a pile of bricks, they were taking the bricks and smashing them with hammers to make rubble. I thought to myself, if I ask them what they are doing, will they say, “We’re smashing the bricks to make bricks from the rubble”. I know there wasn’t much chance of that, but it was just one of those Monty Python moments.

Andy had wandered off into what was a group of offices a full 45 minutes ago, we were getting pretty restless at this point, we just wanted to be on the road and we had only done 45 minutes of the 6 hours ahead. Andy eventually appeared with a line of waiters behind him bearing food, this was a gift of recompense for the delay and so off we headed, stuffing our faces with chicken.

It had a been a full 35 minutes of driving before we got to the first toll station check point and surprisingly rather than just waving us through the check point the guards stopped us. Hmmm what’s happening here, he was pointing at the back wheel, we had another flat tyre starting to show. Oh dear, not again. Luckily on the other side of the toll was a rest stop and we headed that way towards the compressor pump in the middle of the huts. A man came across from the tea stand and Mansul started to discuss the problems. Carlo, Adbul Bassit and I all looked at each other and simply said Chai, yup it was tea time again.

We walked over to where the mechanic had come from and proceeded to have afternoon tea. The heat was blistering, a real scorcher of a day, I’m glad I wasn’t the one working on a car in the direct sun. After 20 minutes of drinking tea and chatting Mansul beckoned us over, the spare wheel had been put on and we were ready to go again.

We hit the road again and I started to slip into a dreamy state, before I knew it I was asleep… the late night and early morning plus the heat had taken its toll.

Thud, Thud, Thud, thud…. What the! Oh dear, what had happened, my eyes opened quickly and we were pulling over to the side of the road, I had been asleep and was brought from my slumber by, you guessed it, another flat tyre. 3 flat tyres in 2 days, that has to be some sort of record, the only thing was, we didn’t have another spare, after this change in the middle of nowhere that was it, if we got another flat it would be a full 2:30 minutes sitting in the shade waiting for someone from Shuwak to arrive.

Mansul went ahead and changed the tyre, we offered to help but he was happier performing this task by himself. We went and sat on the other side of the road and chatted. The only thing that was missing was more Chai…

Twenty minutes later we were on the road again, this was it, no more tyre changes available, the next town was 50 minutes away from us and we had to drive there on this roughshod road which seemed to love to eat tyres… not exactly a good staple diet, but the road seemed to like it. I could no longer sleep, I was eagerly awaiting arrival at the next village to ensure we repaired the spares. The last time I slept we ended up with a flat, I wasn’t sure whether this was an omen, but I decided to stay awake rather than tempt fate. J

We arrived safely at the village and Carlo, Abdul Bassit and I went for Chai while the tyres were vulcanised, a full 45 minutes later it was back on the back breaking road again. My thoughts of arriving back to the hotel around 6:30 had diminished, we were already running 2 hours over schedule and it would be closer to eight hours.

The sights we saw were pretty much a rewound repeat of the previous days other than a truck on its side on the right hand lane. It was one of the trucks that was obviously over loaded and shouldn’t really have been driving on the road. More likely one of the causes for the state of the road in the first place… I hope that no one had been hurt in the accident, there was a man laying in the shade by the truck and was obviously guarding the contents until another truck arrived. Hopefully this was the driver and all would be well once he was picked up.

So, pressing the fast forward button, by 9:00pm we had started to hit the outskirts of Khartoum and by 9:30 I was back at the hotel. I was tired, aching and couldn’t wait to take a shower and clear off the daily dust followed by bed… tomorrow was the last day, I couldn’t believe how quickly the entire of this journey has passed…

This is me signing off on the second to last edition of blogerrama. I’ll be heading to the airport at 11:15 tonight and the flight leaves at 1:30 am, by 10:15 tomorrow morning I should be back in blighty. I’ll give you full details of the exciting journey home although I assume this is mainly going to involve sleeping…