Hotel- and moneyproblems

After a tiresome search in dusty Khartoum we end up in the Sally Hotel, despite the very meagre relation between price and quality. We'll find something better in due time. Drawing money turns out to be a problem: there are no ATM's, creditcards are not accepted, no more than travellers cheques. To have some Sudanese pounds, we exchange forty euro of the cash that is getting quite scarce now.
While looking for a cheaper hotel we drink lots and lots of fresh and cooled fruit-juices at the many stalls in town. Cheap and marvellous thirst-quenchers. The temperature in Khartoum is a bit lower than in the northern desert at 42 degrees Celsius. At the New Rihab Hotel we meet two Nigerian men that are on their way to a country with better perspective. Their very cheap hotel unfortunately is fully booked, tomorrow we'll try there again. Most cheap hotels don't seem to be willing to accept whites or in any case women. The orthodox Islamic culture seems to cause this.

During our second day in Khartoum we buy our visa for Ethiopia and visit the Dutch embassy, a green oasis with airco and swimming pool. They know about the trouble travellers have when wanting to change money, but declare not to be able to do anything about it. We don't get the impression that they care, even when we tell them we'll starve when our cash will be finished soon. They refer us to the Acropole Hotel, where the management does have a lot of information for foreigners. On our way back to town we see our first white person, who turns out to be Dutch: Han Kok from Nijmegen, working as an consultant in Khartoum. This is a small world! He invites us for dinner in an Indian restaurant the same night. We talk and talk and talk during the meal.

Our third day is filled with all kinds of business that has to be taken care of: registration at the Aliens Registration Office, getting permits for our cameras and a permit to travel to Ethiopia at the tourist-police. We also visit the Acropole Hotel, where the brothers Pagulatos help us with the right forms and advise without charging anything. They refer us to the Bank of Abu Dhabi, this is the only bank in Sudan that has business-connections with the western world. There they can transfer money by telephone from the Netherlands, which should take about 48 hours and would be our financial salvation.
Our third visit to the New Rihab Hotel finally pays of: there is a room and we can have it. One hour later we have moved; this costs us 1.300 dinar less per day and the neighbourhood is really nice. A few days later the money from the Netherlands still hasn't arrived. The fact that it's Easter seems to be the reason, although even if it wouldn't be Easter it's taking far longer than promised.

Friday-night we hurry by taxi to Omdurman, where the whirling dervish perform their weekly religious dancing. This takes place at the Hamed An Nil-mosque, a small and colourful mosque in the middle of a huge graveyard. It's quite busy already when we arrive, everywhere people are strolling about, there are stalls that sell nuts, tea and ice-cream. One hour before sunset the spectacle starts, which is no performance especially for tourists, but the genuine religious ritual. In Cairo we've seen the whirling dervish in the citadel, this is completely different from what we've ever seen or imagined. Within a large circle men dressed in red and green robes and patch-work robes walk in circles, while singing. Some of them spin around quite fast, whilst singing, so their robes whirl around them. A music-installation spreads a lot of static noise, sometimes you can hear some music as well, far away. A lot of handicapped men walk in the circle, happily clapping their hands. All in all there's more chatting than dancing inside the circle, the people that form the circle sing, dance and clap very enthusiastically. After an hour the 'religious' men retreat to the mosque and the party is over.

Regularly we try to obtain a good Sudanese roadmap. The scarce bookshops only sell a very crude map with little information. We try the Survey Department of the ministry, where we have a long but useless conversation with the Deputy General Director. In England this would be the Parliamentary under-secretary. In his new room, where he moved to because his secretaries disturbed him too often, he reads the paper whilst eating his breakfast. Having taken another fifteen minutes to digest his abundant meal, he finds it in his heart to take us to the map-department. Being a foreigner, you have to fill in a form and get his signature, otherwise you're not allowed to buy a map. The map-department only has junk in his assortment. A very nice and big geological map of Sudan, printed on newspaper-paper, turns out not to cost 700 but 7.000 Sudanese dinars which equals 90 euro. Good roadmaps do not exist, even though they think otherwise. We thank the man and wish him luck in his job. Finally we buy the crude map (1:4.000.000) we saw before in a bookshop. At least we have something now.

People in Sudan are not as loud as their northern neighbours. Not a lot of yelling, people speak in a normal tone of voice in the streets, except for the salesmen that try to attract customers.
Khartoum is a strange town that doesn't resemble other big towns we have visited. The infra-structure is very bad, most roads consist entirely or mainly of sand. Only the biggest roads are tarmac, with around it old, open sewers (a kind of trenches), sometimes covered with concrete slabs. Whilst walking through the streets you really have to be careful not to break a leg, back or neck. Most buildings aren't finished, and it seems it will stay that way. Buildings that are finished look old and dusty. Everywhere is garbage. Doors and windows are mostly made of steel, which is painted mint-green.

From our hotel we look out over a sandy path that harbours a lot of tailors who are sitting behind their foot-driven sewing-machine the whole day, waiting for customers. Behind them is a four-floor flat that's only half finished, where we discover a lot of activities, to our astonishment. In the morning one room on the second floor serves as primary school, men on the first floor iron and sew, on the third floor a large family lives between the heaps of sand and cement. At night the building serves as storage for the sewing-machines.
On the streets there are a lot of beggars, boys that sell cigarettes a piece, salesmen of (cups of) water, shirts, textile, watches, plastic bags, perfume and what not. Mostly they're illegal salesmen, who offer us a great show. With one or two pieces of clothing in their hands they form a lane, hoping for a customer. When in the distance a police-patrol arrives, an informer signals them and they disappear in all directions stuffing their merchandise in plastic bags. A comical sight that repeats itself dozens of times a day.
Because of the civil war in the south and west of the country that lasts for 51 years already there is a curfew. At ten p.m. the shops close, at eleven p.m. everything is dead quiet. When heavily-armed police-trucks patrol the streets the last passers-by shoot into the narrow alleys.

By now it's one week ago that we wired the money from the Netherlands. Our daily visits to the Bank of Abu Dhabi have no result. The only thing they can tell us is that the money hasn't arrived yet. We're getting desperate. Another two weeks and we will have to become beggars.