Road Trip.

We recently had our first Nuba road trip. We are closing up shop in one area and the closing celebration was enough of an excuse to hit the road!

The crew.

You don’t really travel in Sudan without full realization that at some point you’ll get stuck. At some point you’ll need a wench or a tractor. Sure enough, we hit a soft spot, but thankfully Matt found a tractor just one field over and he volunteered to come give us a pull.

Travel in Nuba is slow-going…we drove for 4.5 hours until we reached the first city, about 40 miles from home. We only just received permission to travel in this area, so needless to say we were pretty psyched about going to the formerly off limits place. It is an actual city, with asphalt, grocery stores, buildings, and most importantly ice cream. We loaded ourselves down with coveted groceries such as green beans and happy cow cheese then realized we needed a place to stay. Not to worry though, this is Sudan and they know how to do hospitality. We stopped by a shop where our Sudanese logisticians frequently get supplies for our operations. This was the first time the owner of the shop had met any of us, but he didn’t hesitate to invite us (all 7 of us) to share a meal and spend the night. We showed up at his beautiful compound and were shocked by the spread his wife Mona had laid out for us. Sometimes you gamble big when you are eating in another culture…this time we came out on top! Mona, who is Egyptian, made a delicious supper, complete with an herbed cheese dip, cucumber-tomato salad, and perfectly roasted pigeon.

Yes, pigeon—don’t knock it ‘til you try it.

We woke up early the next morning to drive another 40 miles (which took another 4 hours).

The views were beautiful.

A Market

Village Tukuls

We also drove by quite a few de-mining operations, a sobering reminder of the bitter fighting during the war that is still felt today.

We finally made it to our desitnation and had a lot of fun with the community as they celebrated the completion of 29 church buildings—29 churches that were destroyed by the Government during the war and are now restored and vibrant—these people know how to rejoice!

The lynchpin of the trip was when the church leaders asked Matt to sing a solo impromptu.

This is what he came up with:

Oh, there you are...

There are no addresses or western style direction-giving devices, ie signs, road markers, etc. here. When you want to go somewhere you'll get verbal instructions, such as "Go to the big manga tree by the river, turn towards the mountains, keep going for 10 minutes (which might actually be anywhere from 10 minutes to one hour), stop at the tukul with the brown goat and the red tree." We are doing our best to adapt to this style of navigation.

We have struggled to find a map that shows where we live, that happens when the place where you make your home is characterized as the middle-of-no-where. However, The Washington Post has brought all this to an end--now you can see where we are, and have no excuse not to visit. All you have to do is make your way to Kauda, turn towards the mountains, go for 10 minutes (really an hour), turn left after the fourth riverbed, and stop in for some tea.

Nuba Wrestling.

Wrestling is huge in Nuba…think high-school-football-in-Texas huge. Our friend, Ayoup, took us for our first experience. We met up with a large crowd at the football pitch.

***click on the images to see them bigger.

The match-up was Heiban vs. Lucholo.

The two villages face off from opposing sides of a field. The challengers sort of dance across the field until they are right in front of the opposition. They give a loud yell and hit a big stick on the ground. If some of the guys want to accept the challenge they’ll cross over to the middle of the field.

The teams always wrestle two pairs at a time. They start off in a standing position, then proceed with a lot of leg sweeps and grabs and flips until one man hits the ground.

As soon as one man touches the ground it’s over.

(this is a cool picture--click on it to see)

Matt now thinks the College needs a team. He’s in discussions with his crew to see who is up for the challenge…you’ll have to stay tuned in for more updates from the HBC wrestling team.

Home-sweet-Sudani-home.

Here are some pictures of our little tukul, and the process of transforming it from storage room to home.

Before shots:

Uncle Saint helped me with the painting when he was here. Many, many thanks!!!

After shots:

Sudan International Airport...

It’s good to be back in Sudan!!

We thought you might like some shots of the “international” airport.

The airline check-in desk.

Immigration: a sign and a log-in book ☺.

R&R

Our break was upon us before we knew it!

Matt took me to one of his favorite places in East Africa.

Zanzibar is an island off the East coast of Tanzania.

We had some beach time.

Met some great people and caught some delicious fish.

Played with some dolphins.

And spotted some whales.

Uncle Saint comes to town.

Matt’s Uncle Saint is here to visit for a few weeks.

We’ve kept him pretty busy running all over Nuba and had a great time doing it!

Uncle Saint, Matt, and Dools

Uncle Saint with Jill, his daughter’s namesake.

Uncle Saint teaches Jesse to play handslap.

Uncle Saint speaking in the church at Cambara.

Ok, this is cool.

In Nuba, instead of money the people bring food to church as their offering.

Everyone walks in with a handful of corn ears or cucumbers, maybe some sorghum.

The pastor and his family live off of this food.

When Uncle Saint spoke at the church in Heiban they gave him corn in appreciation!