Last day in Khartoum. Have decided sleeping is pointless as we need to leave for the airport at 4 AM. Such a lovely season. So many memories, not all of them recorded. Finished check-in at the National Museum yesterday. I swear we did 2 days worth of work in 4 hours. I was a trifle irritable by the time we were done, but got over that quickly. Just stress.
Lovely dinner last night at M’s house. Much laughing and chatting. All us girls tried on traditional Sudanese thobs with much hilarity. I joined the guys outside for shisha. M made a crack about T’s “zip” and I laughed. It seems that during our time in Karima at Murtada’s house the guys were hanging out in the kitchen exchanging euphemisms for various body parts. This would explain why, when I stuck my head in to ask T for something, I was greeted with sheepish, guilty stares and utter silence until I left them to it. “Zip” apparently is a term for penis. Anyway, when I laughed, M looked shocked and said, “you told her????!!!!!” Pretty funny.
M’s elder sister (Henneh?) came outside at one point and demanded we tell her that her tea was good – part of an earlier joke about M never complimenting her cooking. Anyway, I didn’t reply fast enough so she yells “Hey, Umm Shisha, say ‘good tea’.” Funny moment anyway, made funnier by the fact that “shisha” is a euphemism for ass. (And the first person to call me “Mother of Ass” is going to get his handed to him…) Then Henneh started asking M if any of the team was paired up. M said, “Well, T and J are married.” She thought that was awesome and them promptly started badgering us about having kids while M laughed.
One of M’s nieces decided that T looks like Chuck Norris. That’s going to be a long running gag.
Both Khartoum’s football teams won games last night, so getting back to the Acropole was a bit challenging. Got stuck in a traffic jam comprised of regular traffic and jubilant fans complicated by a fender bender. Eventually some guys decided to help the khawaji get home to bed and directed traffic so we could move.
Shopping at Omdurman Suq today – incense burners, scarves, a dress, and shisha pipe. Dinner tonight at an Indian restaurant. I just realized that I’ve only ever had Indian food in Africa.
Along the lines of the “zip” conversation, when T was telling me about the various new vocabulary he had acquired, he came up with a new euphemism himself. Jerry cans for boobs. After I stopped laughing, I told him he was probably out of luck on that front.
Guess I’ll throw in a few other random events here. Mostly ongoing stuff or things I can’t quite place in the calendar or things that have stuck particularly in my mind, probably some repetitions from journal entries:
- G trying and never being able to really smoke a cigar.
- Pandemonium at Khartoum luggage claim.
- Various people’s zippers breaking at various times. By the end of the season, apparently some people had a 10 minute long ordeal just to get their flies to stay up. Dust sucks
- G telling me in Karima, as we walked past a line of men at prayers: “Hey, look, they’re all bowing down to you.” Which nearly got me run over by a car as I stared at him in shock and tried not to laugh.
- Worries about the Manasir and others who don’t want to leave the 4th Cataract, or at least don’t want to move to the crappy land the government wants to give them. Ahmed Babakir saying that they’ll fight.
- Realizing that we’ll probably never see the village or most of the people we met there again.
- The workmen saluting me. No idea what that was about.
- The “gerush girl.” Little girl who hung around our house, usually demanding money (“gerush”) from people and being generally annoying. She liked me, though, and would stand in the gateway blowing kisses and share popcorn with me.
- Random guy passing through the site at HG who tried to sell me a freshly caught fish. I sent him to G.
- Walking through the courtyard at the dokhan one afternoon with T and seeing a guy who, I swear to God, looked just like Shaft. And then having to listen to T sing the song the rest of the day.
- Trying to explain sexual innuendo jokes to M.
- Sadomastic Paint
- Taking my kerchief off one day at the site to re-adjust it and the looks of awe from the workmen, quickly followed by them encouraging me to put the kerchief back on. Quickly. Apparently girls aren’t supposed to have afros around here.
- Abdullah and Ramalli borrowing my sunglasses.
- Yassir decorating every stationary or slow-moving target in reach with the Sharpie T gave him.
- G humming all the damn time.
- Riding on a mattress crammed in the back of the Land Cruiser.
- Squat toilets
- Swimming in the Nile
- G getting frustrated with the workmen refusing to call him by name and shouting across the site “What the hell am I? A monkey?”
- M confiding that he couldn’t figure out what the hell a certain member of our team was talking about most of the time, which worried him until he figured out that we didn’t know either.
- Elbow fights
- Yassir responding to nearly everything with “oooooooh, woooooow.”
- Ramalli and Abdullah
- Asir, Babakir, Gamar, and Idris helping me learn Arabic and hiding out behind the rocks ditching work.
- The yellow tea pitcher that refused to die. (Which is now enshrined in the office…)
- Random fish-mongers
And again, here's a link to a Picasa photo album of select photos. Some of the best are actually not ones we took, so friends, do let me know if you want to be subjected to a slide-show via IM or something.
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| Sudan 2007 |
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