Dark Continent my Black Arse

by Shile Khumalo

  The second night on the train was even worse than the first. Although it was not as hot, the dust seemed to be getting worse by the minute and the snoring from the guys in the compartment even louder. We must have been two hours from Wadi Halfa when it felt as if we had hit a sand bank. Suddenly the air was thick with sand as fine as dust. The fact that I could hardly breathe and was sitting on a very uncomfortable seat made that night the worst night of the whole Cape to Cairo trip. At one point the cloud of dust did not let up and almost everyone was coughing – we were probably travelling through one of the dreaded desert sandstorms.

  Just after sunrise, 46 hours after leaving Khartoum, we arrived at the inland port (read ‘village’) of Wadi Halfa. According to the train schedule we were supposed to have covered the 1 000-kilometre distance between Khartoum and Wadi Halfa in 30 hours. Wiping the sand from my eyes and looking at those locomotives, wagons, railway lines, I wondered whether the trains of the Sudan Railway Corporation ever ran according to schedule. Whether anything ever went as planned.

  Like Khartoum – and Walvis Bay in Namibia – Wadi Halfa is built on sand. There is sand everywhere and everything looks dusty. I followed the men I shared the compartment with to the ferry check-in office. Afterwards, I had to go to the immigration office, where it took more than an hour to process my documents. In one of the queues I had to pay a certain amount of money, but I could not tell how much because the official spoke Arabic only. The man behind me took my wallet from my hand and gave himself permission to take out the required amount. One thing about Africa, generally speaking: alongside poverty there is both innocence and honesty.

  After passing through immigration, I had to take a ten-minute trip on an open truck to the port of Wadi Halfa. Waiting for the truck, I used the opportunity to reflect on the past two days on the train. Only one word kept coming to mind: dust.

  There were more immigration offices at the port where my passport had to be stamped. Having experienced Sudanese bureaucracy more than a few times, I thought it would be wise to get my passport stamped before most of the passengers on the ferry got to customs. It was not to be.

  As per usual procedure, the immigration offices were opened only one hour before the departure of the ferry. New forms had to be filled in and I had to join a long queue for the actual stamping of the passport. Before my passport was stamped, however, an immigration officer wanted to see my yellow-fever vaccination certificate. Then I had to join another queue to have my bag checked and, once that was done, join another queue to have a blue sticker attached to it. Then I had to join the queue where they checked for the stickers. Only then could I leave the waiting hall, not to go to the ferry but to join another queue for the truck that was going to take us to the ferry one kilometre away.

  It was another very hot day and the truck seemed to take forever to arrive while we waited in the baking-hot sun. Getting on the truck was chaotic as everyone was pushing hard to get a seat.

  Getting off was equally so, as was embarking on the waiting ferry. I could not understand why things could not be done in a proper and systematic way.

  I had been allocated a two-bed cabin on the ferry to share with a Sudanese man of Indian descent. Although small, it was air-conditioned and very comfortable. I gave a sigh of relief.

  As the ferry chugged out of the port I thought to myself that it was a pity there was no academic course, as far as I knew, on bureaucracy. Had there been one, every Sudanese would hold a PhD in the subject because they are all such natural masters of that trade. In addition, the ability of the Sudanese to change what is supposed to be a simple and straightforward process into a highly complex one that ends up confusing everybody but themselves made me conclude that all women must originate from Sudan (not Ethiopia despite its candidacy for ‘Cradle of Mankind’ status).

  Just before sunset, as the ferry moved along Lake Nasser, we had an awesome view of Abu Simbel, the temple built about 4 500 years ago by the greatest pharaoh of them all, Ramses II. After glimpsing these gigantic monuments, I knew that as soon as I got to Aswan I would have to turn back to visit Abu Simbel.

  Most people, especially those with third-class tickets, slept on the deck of the ferry. The smoothness of the lake and my having spent the two previous nights slouched on an uncomfortable seat in a dusty train made me sleep like a baby that night. Nevertheless, I awoke feeling very lethargic. Only then did I remember that I had not had a bath in more than 72 hours. What aggravated the situation was that 46 of those hours were spent in a sand-infiltrated train.

  In order to have a better view of the lake and the desert I went to the upper deck, where I was joined by a young man named John. Judging by his fluency in English and his very tall stature and pitch-black skin colour, I thought he must be a Dinka from Southern Sudan. What made me even more sure that he came from these cattle-herding people were the linear markings on his forehead. Like Sothos and Xhosas, who go to the mountain for circumcision as part of their initiation rituals, Dinka boys have to endure the pain of being scarified on their foreheads with a sharp object to prove that they are ready for manhood.

  Thanks to King Shaka, the founder of the Zulu nation, we Zulus do not have to go to the mountain.

  Thanks to Shaka, again, I still have my foreskin and sex has never been better. (I do not use a condom because I sleep only with my partner, thank you very much.)

  After some small talk, John and I began to talk politics. He looked very puzzled when I referred to myself as a black person. His response was: ‘If you are black, then what am I?’

  Another first. Nobody had ever before questioned my race. I tried explaining to him that some black people are light in complexion. He did not want to hear anything of the sort. To him being black meant exactly that: being black, like soot.

  John turned out to be a very informative and friendly man. He explained to me that other black Sudanese considered themselves Arabs purely because Arabic is their first language, which further explained their commitment to Islam. (According to statistics I saw later, 52 per cent of Sudanese are black, and 39 per cent are Arab.)

  We were still talking about politics, women, cars and life when we were interrupted by the arrival of Egyptian immigration officials on board. A small boat had brought the five or so smartly uniformed gentlemen to our ferry.

  Sudan is the only country where I did not see even one beautiful woman. I personally do not consider women like Alek Wek – Sudanese supermodel and MTV’s 1997 Model of the Year, sometimes also referred to as the ‘Face of Africa’ – to be beautiful.

  Nasser’s Egypt

  Father of the Nation

  Of the African countries I visited, Egypt has the longest colonial history. The last Egyptian pharaoh was defeated as early as 343 BC by the Persians. Later, the Greeks and Romans invaded, leading to over 2 000 years of foreign rule. In 639 AD the Muslim Arabs invaded Egypt; they stayed for the next six centuries. Then, in 1250 AD, the Mamluk Turks took control and governed even after the Ottoman Turks conquered the country in 1517.

  The history of modern Egypt is generally accepted as beginning in 1882, when Egypt became a de facto British colony. This situation persisted until 28 February 1922 when the country was officially granted independence; British troops, however, remained in Egypt and true self-rule did not occur until 1952 with the rise to power of Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser’s one-party state has seen many changes but has remained in place under his successors.

  Gamal Abdel Nasser was born in Alexandria in 1918, the son of a postal worker. As a schoolboy he attended his first political demonstration. He became so caught up in politics that he spent only 45 days of his last school year in school. When he was admitted to the Egyptian Military Academy at age 19 he abandoned his political activities for a while, but he resumed his active involvement in national affairs after the outbreak of World War II.

  Regarded as the father of modern-day Egypt, Nasser was president for 14 years (1956–1970). He is credited with Pan Arabism:
the creation of strong, aggressive Arab states that are able to challenge the imperialist West and whose resources are used for the benefit of the Arab world and not for the West. When Nasser died in 1970 of a heart attack, while still in office, an estimated five million people attended his funeral – one of the largest funerals in world history.

  Nasser was succeeded by his long-time friend and ally Anwar Sadat who led Egypt for eleven years (1970–1981) before he was assassinated. He was succeeded by the then deputy president and former air chief, Marshal Muhammad Hosni Said Mubarak, the present head of state.

  My first impression of Egyptians was that they are very efficient. We were still about two hours from the port of Aswan when officials came on board the ferry to begin processing our documents. An announcement was made on the loudspeaker, which John interpreted for me – the officials would process foreigners first, followed by the Egyptians and, lastly, the Sudanese. That was good news for me, but not for John.

  The ferry’s dining room served as the immigration office. I was the third person in the queue. Two guys from Brazil in front of me were stamped in without a problem. I thought that I would follow suit, but when my passport was given to an official he pointed me to another official, an elderly man seated on a chair behind a table in the corner. After asking me a few basic questions, this official requested that I wait at another table.

  It was a long wait. After about two hours, there were ten of us who had been put aside like this. All the others were from Sudan. It so happened that two of the five men with whom I had shared a compartment on the Khartoum–Wadi Halfa train were also on the waiting list with me. Although happy to see each other again, circumstances were different now and we did not even talk to one another. The old man who had questioned me earlier left with all ten passports. I am not sure where he went.

  The good news was that, although the ferry had docked, nobody was allowed to disembark until everyone had been processed. An hour later, the first batch of passports came back, but mine was not among them. I started to panic and that is when I remembered the big sign I had seen at the Egyptian embassy in Addis Ababa: Having a visa does not guarantee entry into Egypt. Officials at the point of entry have a final say.

  I began to think of what I would do if I were refused entry into Egypt. Going back to Sudan was out of the question because I had a single-entry visa only. While I was still weighing the few options open to me, my passport was returned – after almost four hours of sitting in the ferry’s dining room. It had been stamped. From a bureaucratic point of view at least, Cairo was now a certainty.

  Getting off the ferry was far worse than getting on because of the rule that all passengers had to be cleared before any could leave the boat. It didn’t take me all that long though – after some pushing and shoving. But, once we were outside and on the quay, we had to wait again, now in blistering heat, for the Egyptian military to accompany us to the customs and immigration offices. The same procedure ensued: foreigners, excluding Sudanese, had to go to the front of the queue. Security was very tight; all bags were scanned and then searched by hand. Passengers, too, had to go through the scanner and were then searched, just like the luggage.

  As I exited, still considering whether or not to wait for John, who was behind me somewhere, I was suddenly overwhelmed by taxi and bus touts, just when I least expected it. If I had thought that harassment was bad in Moyale in southern Ethiopia and at the Songwe border in Tanzania, I was totally mistaken. The Egyptian touts literally pulled me in different directions. Eventually, it came down to two guys, each pulling on an arm. After a lot of shouting at each other, and a bit of pushing and shoving, one finally gave up. I allowed nature to take its course and I took the winner’s cab.

  That youngster drove like a maniac and, in no time at all, we were in the very attractive town of Aswan. He dropped me off at a budget hotel on Corniche el-Nil Road, which had a beautiful view of the Nile.

  Given my dislike of big cities (the rush, the concrete jungle, everyone trying to make a quick buck and looking at life mainly through materialistic eyes), I instantly fell in love with the relaxed atmosphere of Aswan. That afternoon I had a good meal of fish and chips at a picturesque riverside restaurant while watching feluccas, the traditional wooden sailing boats, sailing up and down the Nile. It was another of those life-is-good moments. The Sudanese train was a distant memory; I did not envy the people who were now on their way from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum.

  The following day I decided, in order to better understand Nubian history, to visit the Nubian Museum. At Aswan the desert closes in on the river and it is very hot in summer (average temperature 40 degrees). Still, I thought I would attempt the ten-minute walk down the road to the museum. The city itself runs in a strip along the Nile.

  I have always wondered why there is a separate branch of study called Egyptology. My first few minutes in the Nubian Museum answered that question: it showed me how very long and complex Egypt’s history is. I was amazed by the intelligence and achievements of the Egyptians in the BC era, revealed in facts that I had not encountered as yet in history books. To understand the role played by the different rulers in Egypt over the centuries, however, you needed a lot of time and mine was too limited.

  The most disturbing events for me in Egypt’s history were the building of the Aswan Dam and the High Dam by the British in 1898–1912 and by Nasser’s government in 1960–1971, respectively. With more than 95 per cent of Egypt a desert, the authorities had to try and capture as much water as possible during the annual flooding of the Nile by building a dam and big reservoir. It came at a price.

  After the Aswan Dam (sometimes referred to as the Old Dam) was built, it was found to hold insufficient water. Twice the wall was raised, making the dam the biggest in the world for a while. But, 50 years later, it became clear that the Aswan Dam could no longer satisfy Egypt’s need for water. Work started on the High Dam, in the construction of which 451 people died and more than 40 000 Nubians, a people who are seemingly unrelated to the other desert tribes in the region, had to relocate.

  Faced with the choice of either preventing the flooding of the Nile delta up north in years when it rained a lot (and famine when it didn’t) or destroying an ancient culture, the Nasser government chose the latter. It built a wall that is a kilometre thick at the base, 3,6 kilometres long and 100 metres high, creating a 510-kilometre-long reservoir – Lake Nasser, the world’s largest artificial lake. In the process, the Nubians were displaced and a way of life shattered that had existed unchanged for five millennia. Many ancient monuments had to be moved from the Nile Valley and reassembled on higher ground.

  As I had promised myself on the ferry from Wadi Halfa, I did not leave Egypt without visiting Abu Simbel. The day after my arrival I joined an organised tour, supposedly the best way to visit the temple complex from Aswan.

  It was another early start. On the outskirts of the town our group had to wait for other tour groups because tourists are obliged by law to travel in convoy. This is to ensure that they do not fall victim to some fundamentalist who would like nothing better than to blow up a few Westerners. In the end, we were about five vehicles travelling in line.

  The golden sunrise over the desert as we drove to Abu Simbel was the best I had seen on the trip. It must have had something to do with the very straight and flat road and the sense of infinity created by the unending desert on both sides of the road. With a couple seated next to me, however, who kept touching each other in very sensitive places, I could not concentrate on the magnificent rising sun, yellow like egg yolk, as much as I would have liked.

  It took us just over three and a half hours to cover the approximately 300 kilometres to Abu Simbel. Judging from the number of visitors, it appeared to be a major tourist attraction.

  Just a short walk from the security gates at the entrance to the complex, I came face to face with four gigantic and majestic statues. Ybsambul, as Abu Simbel was called in ancient times, had long been forgotten when, on 2
2 May 1813, a Swiss explorer named Johann Ludwig Burckhardt noticed, by chance, the upper parts of four stone giants protruding from the sand. The temple, re-buried in sand after the initial clearing of its entrance, emerged only in the 20th century when the sand was finally cleared.

  I could not believe that such a huge monument had to be moved from its original site in the Beka Valley in the 1960s in order to escape the rising waters of Lake Nasser – at a cool cost of US$40 million, a debt that, apparently, is still being repaid. The entire monument was hand-sawn into 1 050 blocks that weighed up to 30 tons apiece – after the sandstone, which was very brittle and starting to fall apart, was injected with synthetic resin.

  The four 22-metre-high statues of the seated figure of Ramses II (1304–1237 BC) in the Sun Temple, each measuring over four metres from ear to ear, were carved from a single rock. The detail of the paintings on the walls of the temple, all depicting scenes of Ramses’ victories over the Nubians, was mind-boggling. Right at the end of the temple is the most secret place, the sanctuary, again with four statues. One is of Ramses himself, the pharaoh-god who clearly liked his own image; the other three represent patron deities – Ptah, Amun-Re and Re-Herakhte.

  What really blew my mind, however, was the miraculous penetration of the entire length of the temple twice a year – on 22 February and 22 October – by the rays of the sun, which then, and only then, illuminate three of the four statues in the sanctuary. After about five minutes, the light disappears. True to his name, Ptah, the god of darkness, is never touched by sunlight. How the ancient Egyptians worked that one out beats me.

  A little further north of the Sun Temple stands the Temple of Hathor, which is decorated with six colossal, ten-metre-high statues – four of Ramses II and two of Nefertari, his wife (not to be confused with Nefertiti, the famous wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten c.1339–1362 BC). Each statue is accompanied by two smaller figures, standing knee-high in the shadows – their children.