Saturday, January 29, 2011

Boarder Crossing: Round One

One boarder crossing down, eight to go.  They say this one takes the longest.  Let's hope.

A few days ago we made our first boarder crossing, across lake Nasser from Aswan Egypt to Wada Halfa, Sudan.  Easy.  You load the boat, you wait on the boat, you get off the boat.  This boat runs every week, has for years, and as such should be as simple as that.  Should.

Our boat was not a large boat, in fact as we reached the port, looked as the size and quality of the various vessels leaving that day, ours was in fact the least likely boat you would have guessed as being the 'official-boarder-crossing-boat'.   Or maybe you would have, knowing how 'official things' get over here.
At around 10am, the crowds start.  1000 Egyptians with 5,000 packages and us.  We're no help to the plan.  Close to 100 foreigners with 300 packages and 100 bicycles?  Thankfully the system here was simple enough.   You grab your belongings, head down the ramp and board the boat.  In order to achieve this, you simply start yelling, screeming, shoving, elbowing, ramming, pushing, more yelling, leaning, bracing some ducking, and then some squeezing, and you're in!  You see, all of these 1000 people, and 5,000  packages all have to fit through the same door, this one 2 meter wide door, so how else would it be done?   That 2 meter wide opening was not just the one 'In" door for both the passenger and cargo sections of the ship, but also the exit door to the hundreds coming back off the boat for round two.

I'm not sure which was harder, getting into the boat with giant bags or gettting out of the boat, salmoning up the stream of pushing, yelling, screeming, shovng packages coming your way.   The only thing I know, is that if someone were to ask me what a hell hole was, based on my personal experience, it would be the port-hole to that boat.  Did I mention that it was also 30 degrees that day?
Riders made two or three trips in and out of that hole, staff made about double that, loading all of our gear into closets with bunkbeds, and baced ourselves for the following 36 hours bellow deck. 

Thankfully I shared my 'cabin' with 3 other staff with high spirits and great humour, managing to pass the time with great hillarity.  There was enough room for one person to stand up at a time.  If you weren't standing you were in your bunk lying down, or out the door.  Good humour was a great asset as you can imagine.  I won't even go into what the 'toilets' looked like...
One or two hours of paper work on the other side and by 3pm the next day we were off!

Sudan is beautiful.  I absolutely love it here.  The people are peaceful, quite and friendly. 
Nothing like the news would have you believe.

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