Settling in Sudan

When my flight arrived in Khartoum on Tuesday at 6:30 PM, the temperature on the ground was 104 degrees. There is some truth to what folks say about dry heat being more bearable, however, 104 degrees is still damn hot.

“We’re glad you arrived this week when it’s cooler” said Sharaf from Salmmah who greeted me at the airport. “It was 45 degrees (115 degrees Fahrenheit) last week.” Thank god I arrived this week, too, I thought. If this is 104, I couldn’t have done 115 degrees right from the start.

Other than the heat, the sand and dust take some getting used to. There is a thin layer of dirt on everything here – both indoors and out - and your pants, shoes, and feet are covered in it constantly.

My first night was quite eventful – I locked myself out of my apartment and we had a sand storm! Both stories require a little background about the layout of my apartment. I’ll post photos when I get to a faster internet connection. In the meantime… you enter from the street through a carport (deadbolt #1) into an open patio area. On the right of the patio are two doors – one to a shower and toilet and the other to a make-shift kitchen with a sink and a three-burner portable stove. At the back of the patio is the door to my living room (deadbolt #2), through which you enter the air-conditioned bedroom which also houses my refrigerator. It’s quite a fabulous set-up by Sudanese standards, however, not quite so fabulous by American standards.

Fahima, the Director of Salmmah, and Zaynab, the Director of SuWEP, and Zaynab’s husband came over around 9 PM to take me out for coffee. As we were leaving, I grabbed the keys off the coffee table, put the deadbolt through the living room door, then realized that the keys in my hand were not for the deadbolts! I didn’t know that someone left a set of office keys on the coffee table as well. We left for coffee and decided to figure something out when we returned.

The production that ensued when we returned couldn’t have been a more perfect teambuilding exercise: Figure out how to get a set of keys off a coffee table, approximately 12 feet away from an open window. Luckily, I had left my living room window open, but decorative bars cover all the windows to prevent anyone from entering. Sharaf grabbed a long stick and a piece of tubing he found on the street outside my apartment, tied the two together with a napkin from the kitchen, then stuck a fork on the end using leaves and twigs. Zainab’s husband pulled his car into the patio area for light, and we took turns sticking our contraption through the barred window with our arms outstretched, trying to reach the keys on the coffee table. Quite the sight! After half an hour, we were successful! I could not have been more embarrassed or more thankful for all of their help. I’ll definitely never leave those keys behind again.

Very early the next morning, a sand storm came through. At first I was incredibly excited about the prospect of seeing a sand storm… now I understand why people dislike them so much. Unfortunately, I slept through the storm and it pushed open my bathroom door and coated the entire shower and toilet in sand, not to mention the quarter-inch layering of sand and dust all over the patio. UGH! Welcome to Sudan!