About 30 minutes North of Shendi, the bus pulled over at a very indistinct patch of sand, and we realised that we really were in the middle of nowhere, at least it very much felt like that in the dark. The only feature of note was a sad looking petrol station, which one of our fellow passengers pointed at and indicated we should sleep there for the night, and with that the bus drive off into the starry night, leaving us to our own devices in the middle of the Sudanese desert…
If the scenario was frenzied before, then at this request it became absolute pandemonium! The crowd clearly hadn’t thought about this possible development, and the excitement about what I was trying to achieve was palpable! Shouts went out to find a bicycle, and within seconds one of the older guys from the workshop had produced a sturdy two-wheeled beast, not unlike the one which my Great Grandfather was leaning on in the photograph…
Without really having time to process what was happening, the angry man marched me around the corner, and into the yard of a police station where eight other very serious looking men in police uniforms were sat around a boiling kettle making tea. The atmosphere wasn’t welcoming in the slightest, and I began to feel very, very uncomfortable.
As I started to learn more about this man, I discovered a stash of photographs and postcards depicting his life in Khartoum in the 1930s. With this window into the past, an idea began to form in my head, an idea which, as well as matching up the past with the present, would also see me receive a wedding proposal from an old woman, and a brief period of detention at the hands of the Sudanese authorities.
explore v. (ɛkˈsplɔː) 1. The action of travelling through an unfamiliar area in order to learn more about it
