It doesn’t fit into any story or have any definite meaning, but I like it.

I’ve been back in the US for about two months and posted edits of the pictures from China and Sudan in the projects section. After bouncing around Georgia and Kentucky I’m settling down in Miami with Edward Linsmier to freelance.

The end Ramadan is the start of a multi-day party of family visits and food. This makes it a good time to also get married, since everyone is in town and in a festive mood.

These pictures are another example of how Sudan isn’t your normal “arab” country. First notice that I spent a lot of time back in the kitchen area with the women, a big no-no in the middle east, and then notice the co-ed dancing. Though the rain tried to put an end to our party it lasted all the way to the 11 o’clock curfew.

When we hear the words “Pyramids” most people think about Egypt and Pharaohs and all that crazy black magic. If you have ever been to the pyramids you know that they are immense tourist traps. But those big piles of rock in Egypt are actually copies of similar piles here in Sudan. The piles here in Sudan are small, interesting things that have been vandalized by teenagers through the ages with bunches of Arabic names carved in each block, in pairs with a + sign between them. Though they are near a major town I was the only person out there for hours and I counted more animal prints than foot prints. They are also in an interesting location so that they are clearly visible from all around, including the police station that I woke up in across the river (they were just nice enough to give me a bed for the night because the lokanda was far away).

It was a moonless as my ferry crossed into Sudan. This coincidence gives me a very easy way to monitor how long I have left on my 1 month visa. I looked up during the break fast and saw a full moon so I know my time here is half done.

The best thing about this country is the food, well, not so much the food as the meals. It’s just one meal a day, as the sun sets and the muezzin starts the call for prayer. Every night, no matter where I am, a group of people beside the road invite me over for their picnic. It’s actually more like one of those big baptist pot-lucks that happen after Sunday service. The food is traditional/predictable but good.

Each meal is a story. One day I just walked as far south as I could and as the sun was setting I was at the end of the city where the country people and city people meet to buy and sell goats. Another day I was at one of the city transportation centers and had all the of terrible things that America does listed off for an hour by a bus mechanic who then invited me to eat and have tea and talk about soccer for another hour. Then the one time that I tried to go to a restaurant to eat I was invited out back to breakfast with the owner and his family. It’s something I can’t get away from

Enough with the anticdotes. The real news is happening to the west of here. Darfur has been relatively quite for the past while. Now that 90% of the villages have been destroyed there just isn’t much left to attack. But starting a week ago the government forces have been making new attacks in the rural areas of Darfur. The reports are mixed but the rebels might actually be holding their own.

More Anticdotes:

The minibuses have as much Korean/Japanese/Chinese on them as Arabic.

It rained once.

People say that it gets cold enough they must wear sweaters in the winter.

I don’t believe them.

I tried to fast for one day, but by 2pm I had to go get a big drink of water.

The break fast meals always contain addis (I have no idea what it is, but its like a thick wheat jello with a meat sauce poured around it).

The break fast meal today included pizza.

I ordered pepperoni pizza one day, but it came out with onions and olives.

No one in the pizza shop knew what peperoni was even though it was pictured on the top of the box.

Its the Eritreans and Egyptian visitors that push for more religion in government than the Sudanese.

This is coming from one of the thousand street side coffee houses that consist of a lady with pots and pans and a fire.

I am sitting in a field beside an empty canal in a neighborhood without electricity.

This is being written over some darned fast cell-phone network.

These last few days have been the hard traveling, but worth the pain. The trip from Cairo to Khartoum consisted of a luxurious train, the roof of a ferry, and a bus across the desert.

The bus can be summarized as 24 hours of bumping over dunes squished between two sweaty men, in a bus without air conditioning, and a bunch of grouchy people. It actually did make a few people crazy and we had to stop at a police station after a fight broke out. But it was bearable because of the embarrassing generosity of all the people on the bus towards me. While most of them where fasting they passed cookies and crackers to me throughout the trip. When we stopped at stations someone would press a coke into my hand before I could walk up and buy my own. Transportation may be expensive here but I’m not going to starve.

The whole Ramadan thing presents its own problems since no restaurants are open and it’s cruel to eat and drink in front of others while they’re fasting. So I’m basically fasting also though today I bought a 24 pack of snickers to hide in my pockets. The coolest part is at sunset, no-matter where I am there are people sitting on a rug in the middle of the street and they will invite me over to break the fast with them.

I should be here for a month working mainly in the North an around Khartoum trying to find Chinese people. I’ll head back north to take a look at the Merowe Dam which is supposedly the largest construction project in Africa and is in large part funded by China and built with Chinese labor.

After this I’m coming home.

After a month of preparations and making connections in Cairo I will be taking the boat to Sudan on Monday. My biggest accomplishment while here was getting back into running every day. Hopefully I won’t need the speed but it boosts the confidence to know that it is there.

I was walking home for a quick supper/lunch at about 5:30 and saw the smoke so I went to check it out.

Fire could be seen from all sides of the building as it worked its way from the south to the north and then out the windows. It appears to be contained to the single main building.

In a small coffee shop in rural Turkey I was waiting for my ferry to Cyprus and on the wall behind the smoke stained memorabilia and calendars was this poster. It was a surprise to see in the middle of all the old men drinking coffee in this semi-rural area.

I can translate the top part of the text and it basically gives the story of how Kevin Carter took the picture of a starving child at a camp in Sudan and later killed himself. I can’t translate the bottom part though so I don’t know the whole context.

It is probably the most famous picture to ever come out of Sudan, especially after it won a Pulitzer. But, I asked two friends from Sudan, currently studying in Cairo, if they knew the story and they had never seen the photo before.

Two casual observations that show how far photographs can go, but where they sometimes can’t reach.