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Excerpts from postcards sent in December 1986, Dean's World Tour I:

A rather long letter from Dunqulah, Sudan, 3 December 1986:   Sabah el Khir (Good morning)!  The mail service being what it is, this letter will not likely reach you until long after I have contacted you by some other means.  It seems somewhat pointless to write under these circumstances, but like most of the Sudanese people, I have plenty of time to kill.

As contemplated starting several years ago, I caught a boat across Lake Nasser from Aswan, Egypt to Wadi Hafa, Sudan. The boat was filled with about 300 Sudanese, a Californian, a pregnant woman from Denmark with her Sudanese boyfriend, and me.  The ride was hot, crowded and uncomfortable sitting on wooden benches in a stuffy, smoke-filled cabin, but we made the best of the experience telling humorous anecdotes, reading magazines and singing and playing American and Sudanese songs with the Californian's guitar.

In Wadi Hafa, all hotels full, we slept out under the trillions of stars visible in the desert sky with hundreds of Sudanese waiting to take the only train of the week to Khartoum, leaving three days later.  Here, as in most of Sudan, the streets are not paved, there are few if any trees, and the desert dust blows in a persistent wind.

Anyone traveling in Sudan should come loaded with a full supply of patience, because you can go nowhere without it.  Transportation, slow and unpredictable, is only part of the equation.  Add time also for waiting in police offices to get permission to go to the next city on your itinerary, being courteous to accept the offers of tea from many people you pass on the street, and standing in obnoxiously long and slow lines to by tickets for boats or trains.  Actually, in the last case, there are usually some Sudanese people who will direct you around to a back door where you will be given special treatment, and you can receive your tickets more quickly.

Instead of taking the train through the desert to Khartoum as most others do, I believed that a more interesting way would be to follow the Nile more closely.  Between Wadi Hafa and my current location, Dunqulah, perhaps 250 miles southwest of the former, the only means of transport available that is suitable to negotiate the stretch, are large, heavy four-wheel drive trucks.

Riding on top of one such truck with 21 Sudanese people (and four others in the truck's cab) was an experience that was not to be missed, although I might say jokingly, not to be repeated either.  The tree days were extremely rough and dusty ones.   As long as I was shielded from the daytime sun and the cold nights by proper clothing, the weather was not bad.  Three times, we were stuck in the desert sands, but it never took more than about 20 minutes to recover from the situation.  The mixture of desert, oasis and primitive agrarian and village scenery was wonderful to observe, and while riding, I could think of no place on Earth that I would rather be at the moment.  Until a few of the people left, it was very cramped, and there almost always was some kind of metal object jabbing me somewhere, regardless of how I sat.

Two or three of the Sudanese had about a 50-word broken-English vocabulary, while others knew between two and six words of English, and I about ten words of Arabic.

I do not wish to jinx myself, but by all rights, I should have been sick by now, when in fact, I have felt as good as ever.  I have been eating in the same manner as seemingly healthy Sudanese people, when I know some of their practices are questionably safe.  Firstly, we all eat with our right hands only (without utensils) from the same bowl. The right hand is polite since everybody, lacking toilet paper, wipes their rears with their left hand.  Thus, one must hope that everyone eating from the same bowl or drinking from the same glass has washed their hands well.  Secondly, out of necessity at times I have been drinking, along with everyone else, unpurified Nile River water.  The Nile is know to possess, in some stagnant areas, a blood fluke called bilharsia (schistosomiasis) that, if acquired by and left untreated in humans, can ravage the digestive system.

I have read much health literature before and during my trip.  Travel in the so-called developing world, as any health worker, Peace Corp volunteer or adventurer knows, inherently involves substantially increased health risks.  Some things I do against my better judgment, but in general, I am very cautious about the things I eat, where I eat them, how clean I keep myself and how much rest I get.  So far, I've been alright, but the day I begin to think I'm indestructible is the day I will acquire some character-building illness.

Aside from health matters, I feel as welcome and comfortable in Sudan as anywhere.  The people are friendly and curious without being overbearing and imposing.  They are very respectful and considerate.  Everybody calls me "Mister", and everybody with whom I make eye contact says hello.  Even the smallest of small children (2 years old) recognize that I am not Sudanese and get a kick out of saying hello to me.

I have met a number of Sudanese who speak English quite well but hope to improve it by speaking to me.  Frequently, although most Sudanese I have met are poor in comparison to me, I have found it impossible to spend my own money as they insist upon paying.

Like Egypt, ancient and modern ways of doing things exist side by side.  People ride donkeys aside Toyota trucks; people heat metal with flames fanned by manual bellows and pound the metal into shape while listening to Michael Jackson on their company's stereo; and a man uses his two water buffalo to plow his field in the shadow of a satellite antenna.

Aside from transportation costs, which are not especially cheap, it is unnecessary to spend more than $3 a day here on food and hotel.  My shared dormitory room is 50 cents a night.  What this means is no clean sheets, cold showers and a toilet which, as the old overused saying goes, "could gag a maggot".

Food is interesting here.  I couldn't begin to tell you the English names or contents of what I've been eating.  There is a tasty dish with some tiny squishy fish from the Nile, another dish that has the appearance and consistency of a mixture of green seaweed and snot, and the local staple that most people eat 80 percent of the time called foul (pronounced fool).  Foul is similar to pinto beans and, when served with oil and spices, is an almost adequate substitute for supporting my Mexican food addiction.  Some of the Sudanese joked with me that they like to refer to the beans as "Reagan" because it often comes in bags marked "Foul from the U.S.A."

The fruits and vegetables are often things I've never seen or tasted before.  Some of them are quite good.  One man I know makes his entire business on a juice machine that squeezes this one kind of fruit that looks something like a pear but produces a juice that tastes more like a banana.  Whatever it is, I stop in to have a glass at least a couple times each day.

Some people here have interesting notions of Western culture based on things they've seen in cheap "B" movies.  For example, one guy who had seen a pornographic video of a couple making love in the street truly came to believe that such things were common activities in Europe and America.

Through a combination of tradition and Islamic law, romance is a rather difficult thing here.  Men and women, until they are married, do many things separately that are taken for granted to be done together in the West.  They go to separate schools; they sit in different parts of a movie theater; they even eat their meals isolated from each other.  A man generally does not even know a woman when he goes to ask her father to marry her.  He maybe has only seen her walking down the street.  To make things worse, I have been told a marriage can cost $2000 here, which is much more than the average person earns in a year.

In spite of Islamic law, reinstituted a few years ago by the now exiled President Nemeri, social taboos such as public drunkenness and prostitution still flourish in some areas of this otherwise inhibited society. A couple years ago, an Italian was publicly given 40 lashes for possession of a bottle of alcohol.  Such a thing is still possible here, although the trend is toward more tolerance, especially when the police themselves sometimes like to take a sip of some homemade concoction.

When people do get married here, they have a lot of children.  Everybody is surprised to learn that I have only one sibling when they have nine, twelve or even twenty.

Strong winds are swirling high the desert sands through the streets of Dunqulah today making it at times difficult to open one's eyes.  There is not much to see or do in this town other than relax and observe the lifestyles of the people.  Every day this week I have gone to the outdoor market to drink tea, watch people, and if possible partake in broken English conversation with whoever pauses to speak with me.

I am not the only white person in this town of perhaps 15,000 people.  There are a couple of British teachers of English, a Danish engineer and a few French archeologists.  So far, I've only met the French.  I am also told that there are usually a few tourists that pass through in an average week to take the same boat cruise up the Nile I will be taking in a few days between Dunqulah and Kerima; but by and large, I uniquely stand out in a crowd here.

It's interesting to note the products and culture from outside Sudan that have made an impact here.  Pepsi Cola has a monopoly on the soft drink market.  It is the only one that exists, and some businesses sell it as their sole source of income.  Likewise, Toyota has an incredible near-monopoly on all normal passenger vehicles sold here.  There must be several hundred look-alike Toyota pickups in this town and almost nothing else.  Each Toyota pickup truck is fitted in the back with seating for twelve tightly squeezed passengers, useful for hauling around one's own very large family.  Finally, Michael Jackson and Bob Marley are the only musical performers anybody here seems to know or care about from Western culture.

Aside from these few things (and Kodak film), most other products and cultural influences seem to be home grown.  Some might argue that this is perhaps as it should be.

Out of necessity, I have become tolerant of the flies which infest wherever it is I happen to be.  They are unavoidable, but the end of my nose is one place they land that irritates me the most.  Worse yet is the mosquitoes buzzing by my ears at night.  They psychologically make me feel itchy all over, whether or not I've been bitten at all.  On the ears seems to be the most useful place to apply the repellent.  Soon, I will be entering the malarial region where the concern becomes more than just a matter of simple irritation.

After a few days on the boat to Kerima passing by many villages along the Nile, and after a day or two by train to Khartoum, I will then spend several days there before flying to Nairobi; but I'll have hopefully spoken to you by then.

Merry Christmas, happy New Year and happy birthday to both of you and everyone else who reads this.

Besalemeh (Goodbye),
Ahmed Abdul Sharif

Khartoum, Sudan, 16 December 1986:  Sabah el Khir (Good morning)!  Making an international phone call from a country like Sudan can be quite frustrating.  I talked to Lynn, having attempted to contact you three times, each of which required a one-and-a-half-hour wait for an open line.  When I talked with her, she could hardly hear me, and before I could say a couple other things that I thought important to say we were interrupted by the operator at two minutes and twenty seconds of what was supposed to be a three minute call.  The call cost $25, enough to live comfortably in Sudan for a week.  There were only small periods of the day when I could get a call through to the U.S.  I called around 5:30 AM (after waiting an hour).  Had I called two hours later I probably wouldn't be able to call through the rest of the day.  A guy I know from Britain has been waiting several days to get an important call through to his family, but t line from Sudan to Britain has not been functioning.

Collect phone calls were not permitted anywhere in Egypt.  I'm not sure, but the same may be true in the other African countries I will visit.  In conclusion -- DON'T WORRY if you don't get a phone call when you think you should.

I have been convalescing several days in Khartoum from what may have been malaria (fever, chills, sweating, joint aches, headaches, and general lethargy).  I still am lethargic but the other symptoms are gone after taking the malaria medicine.  According to others who have had it, I should be 100% back to normal in a few days.

I'm sorry I couldn't reach you on the phone to say happy birthday.

Love,
Dean

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