sudan

in 10 easy steps:

1. alcohol is illegal. beer does not exist. it is just a concept. nothing physical. prepare to be sober.
   


2. ramadan is a bad time to visit sudan. religious tolerance is not big on the sudanese agenda. if they fast. you fast. end of. fuckin bigots.
   


3. donkeys are still a viable means of transport. god i love donkeys. my favourite animal. heeeehawwww.
   


4. homosexuality is punishable by death. apparently. for 3 boys trapping round with tach's and cowboy hats and calling each other "pumpkin" / "sweetpea" / "buttercup" it mean't we were skating on thin ice.
   


5. khartoum (the capital) is not the built-up, ultra-modern, megatropolis with kfc's that people would have you believe. it is, in fact, a shithole.
   


6. people wearing vests and / or shorts are frowned upon. they are assumed to be mad. it is okay if you are a foreigner though. people know you're crazy already - who the fuck would visit sudan?
   


7. you need a permit for taking pictures. otherwise they will hunt you down and destroy your camera. trust me. i know. they mowed my camera down at night. with a lawn-mower. vicious. there were bits of my camera strewn all over the lawn. half a lense. a bit of memory card. a fragment of casing. it sure was nasty. brutal. fuckin savages.
   


8. the blue nile is brown. the white nile is green. the colour where they join is murkyish. definitely worth missing.
   


9. when it starts raining and the taxi driver takes your pack off the roof and tries to shove it through the window but you say that it is okay on top because the taxi is super-sardine-packed already, make sure that he reattaches it to the top with rope. otherwise it will fly off at 100kph, bounce across the road, and land in a deep muddy puddle. the bag will rip and the jippo juice will break and leak over everything in you bag. you will get jippos the very next week. it will not be pleasant.
   


10. the sudanese folks are the friendliest and most generous people in the world ever. nobody wants anything from you other than easy conversation. they will offer you tea at every opportunity. and go out of their way to help you. they obviously haven't been exposed to the highest western truth of the "me, mine, my" philosophy yet.