Day 117-164, March 1st – April 17th
And so that’s Northern Sudan
At the market place there are no more naked warriors and women. However nearby, by the Nile, or the municipal lavatory – baths – laundry, the locals without any embarrassment show their charms.
The cruise is extending endlessly. Among the Sudanese swamps the sweat is streaming down.
– Our mothers, wives and mistresses care like always to excess and worry for the future. And what are you guys going to eat there? – laugh the 5th stage travelers.
– Well there is nothing to be worried about – the food makes one of the nicest and interesting aspects of traveling. In Sudan, a country deprived of cutlery, the soup can be eaten simply with a hand. Almost all the dishes are impressive.
At least one is better than the previous one. Looking into the cook’s pot in Shendi , cause that’s the best way to check the menu In exotic countries, the Poles notice some delicious liver. After a while the dish was on the table.
– My compliments! – said the cook after the dinner. – The tourists never taste the raw camel liver! Did you like it?
*
The morning on a boat. A man in a military uniform surprised to see a white face looked around the tent. He had a red band on his arm with an inscription SPLA (Sudan Peoples Liberation Army) Port Police.
So that’s the Southern Sudan! That’s the border!
The boats are crossing the land of the Dinka tribe, for which the most precious treasure is the everywhere pasturing cattle.
– The view of Malakalu in a market day is really particular. The majority of the warriors come totally naked, wearing only a band made of small beads. (…) The women from the Nuer tribe don’t wear any clothes and even when they visit the village they look as God made them – wrote Kazimierz Nowak some time ago.
Today at the market there are no more naked warriors and women. However nearby, by the Nile, or the municipal lavatory – baths – laundry, the locals without any embarrassment show their charms.
– It’s more shocking considering the fact, only two days ago we were in the conservative world of Islam! – notices Kuba Pająk.
„Say no to gun in the election 2010 and referendum” – announce the roadside posters. The April elections are close. Here all the generations don’t know what the elections neither the democracy are, and some formations don’t care about peaceful campaign and elections. Among others the present president Omara al-Bashira and the government in Chartum are accused of exciting ethnic conflicts in the South, they care the most about the elections defeat in this region.
The route goes through Sudd, one of the most marshy areas in the world. That’s how Nowak remembered them:
- There are nothing interesting waiting for civilized newcomers, except the black fever, malaria and leprosy.
Sometimes we don’t meet anyone during the whole day. Nowak writes:
– Imagine, men and women, except of the married ones, are totally naked, at best the not-married women wear a string of beads and the married ones instead of a fig leaf a dirty rag or wild cat skin.
Today the sailing surrounding is not so empty, but if you enter the swamp wilderness, you will surely see the scenery like from before 80 years ago.
The underhand dealings between the boat and the land are very interesting. Passing near a people’s habitat we hear from the bank: onion, onion! The passengers shout: corn, corn! Throw! The exchange is of what is growing at the moment.
The dry season is going to end soon, so the Dinka have just arrived by the river. The straw huts are not yet coated with the mud mixed with cow turd. Between them the dung is getting dry. As Nowak described it, the cow turd and the urine are the best “cosmetics”. For example the Africans paint their hair with cow urine to give them red-yellow color.
*
If they only could get by bicycles to any road….. But still the Southern Sudan is a wild country, deprived of roads, trade and industry. Around us cane forests, or a steppe til the horizon, and who knows where hided after war mines – to stay fit the Poles are pedaling all around on the boat on an empty deck not occupied by the passengers.
They cover their last 100 kilometers to Bor in three days.
*
The stamp of the next registration, this time to the Southern Sudan, takes already the fifth page in the passport since the moment they arrived to Sudan.
Nowak wrote: In the afternoon we were staying in the Bor settlement inhabited by the Dinka tribe, but although I was wandering a lot I didn’t take any picture. Or the motives were not interesting enough or the locals spoilt by the tourists demanded a tip, so I resigned.
Yes. In 1932 Kazik met a phenomenon we also came across in several places visited massively by the tourists! In that time Bor was one of the stops of the river-rail line between Cairo-Cape Town. Today, nobody remembers those tourists, who nowadays avoid this destination touched by long term wars.
*
In the night the dried ground for the first time from a month received abundant rainfalls starting the rain season. The road dry as tinder changed into a mud gunge.
We diversify our stop in Bor by making escapades around the neighborhood. But it’s better not to leave the main trail. It’s not because of the venomous creatures but the thousands of after war mines waiting for a wrong step.
- Nevertheless we visit a leprouses village. We leave the main trail leading into the bush, hoping that the one who left the tire tracks knew what was doing in this mine field – says Kuba. – When we arrived to the village, strange deformed creatures started to come out of the huts, I started to ask myself what to the hell are we doing here? Leaving, I had an impression that our visit, even if couldn’t help these people, delighted the village inhabitants.
*
The route from Bor to Juba – the capital of the Southern Sudan, the Nowak’s imitators surmount like him, on a boat up to the White Nile.
The day of the Palm Sunday on the doors of the St Joseph Church in Juba, we hanged another commemorative plaque (N 04 50.980′ E 031 36.599′). That’s the place where Nowak stopped in 1932.
The best example showing the difficulties of the route is the night adventure with a lion, that Nowak beat with his two spears.
Unfortunately the years of war frightened away or wiped out all the biggest animals. We don’t have to fear the lions, to pay attention to the elephants paths, to watch the grazing giraffes. A big animal appeared on our plate, when one of the roadside diner served us antelopes.
– For us the most unknown part from all the Sudan is the route through the Imatong mountains, from Torit to Nimule by the Uganda border. The tourists have possibly never been here because of the decades of wars – say the travelers.
The temple, in which Kazik was praying, actually do not exist, there are only three brick walls left. Today, the worshippers pray in provisional chapels nearby the destroyed churches, at the open air.
The two month Sudanese adventure is coming into the end, but because of a small delay of the next team we will continue the route till the Ruwenzori mountains in Uganda, as the stage no 5 and a half called „Bananarama”.
*
The Victoria Nile crossing – the most interesting is the life of the river.
– In the first 5 minutes we have seen so many hippos and crocodiles, as during the whole three weeks by the White Nile in the Southern Sudan – claim the participants of the relay. Elephants, antelopes, buffaloes, warthogs come to the watering-place, the monkeys jump on the cliffs and different birds fly all around. The animals visit also our camping: the baboons, a nice warthogs family, and apparently sometimes the hippos.
A beautiful view on the green African hills spreads in front of us.
April the 17th, 2010 on the equator in Uganda, on the south of the Kasese city
the stick is delivered to the team of Janusz Adamski, who leads the sixth stage “Bicycles in the mist” – Uganda, Rwanda, Congo.
si, jadą z nimi:)
A relacja wypas!
Kuba
Co się z Agą i Filipem dzieje? Czy oni jadą z Wami czy bez Was?