Ma'aslama

This week I say ma'asalama. I have made many comings and goings in this desert over the past 2 years and 8 months, but this is my final departure.  At times this week my heart has felt a weight of heaviness, something resembling sadness and loss. But then at other times I have felt a great lightness, with a sense of release and freedom on my doorstep. This perpetual roller-coaster of emotion does not surprise me. This is Sudan. She can fill you with joy and break your heart in the very same day.  No other country has left me feeling this way. Departures are always bitter-sweet, saying goodbyes, moving on to new chapters and new friends, but this one is different somehow. I feel like I have witnessed the best and worst in humanity here in this desert, this country lost in a sand-storm of greed and power and innocence and suffering, where occasionally the sands lift and clear enough to briefly glimpse the durability of the human spirit. I have been blessed to have witnessed it, but I have perhaps allowed it to alter my perspective more than I should have. 

A good friend once said to me, in response to some of my characteristic moaning about Darfur and more, " Just lower your expectations". I thought about it a lot after that. Peace can seem like an illustrious, distant concept some times. Peace talks fail, fighting continues, food aid goes missing, soldiers get fat, crops fail, villages still get burnt to the ground, women still get raped when they go to collect firewood, the UN high-ups still talk, and talk, and talk. I have cynical days. But perhaps that is a given, and perhaps that allows me to really celebrate success when I see it, even if it is in small doses. I should never have come here expecting to see a troubled country find peace and democracy and prosperity. I should never have gone to Darfur expecting to feel like I am "making a difference" on a daily basis. I should never have expected to find every single beneficiary in genuine need. I should not have expected people to appear grateful for my presence here. I was naive to have assumed a major UN agency would be driven by humanitarian principles. I should not have expected egg yolks to be yellow! And I should not have expected all my colleagues to have come here with the same ideals as my own. But I have seen a desperate nation gain their independence after a 50 year struggle. And I have watched Darfurian school children eating a breakfast of food-aid in their playground. And I have worked with several amazing people, who are here solely to contribute to poverty alleviation rather than to their bank accounts. And I have met foreigners, who obviously never had the expectations I did, who remain perpetually hopeful and positive, ready to dedicate their whole lives to this country. I applaud them, and wish them luck on their journey. Sudan taught me to finally open my eyes to the small things, and allow myself to be content with that, even if just for today. And wherever my journey takes me next, I will try to carry these valuable lessons.

And so theses notes must now find their rest, in my heart, in my pictures and words. I leave them behind, to begin a new chapter. Thank you for joining me on this journey. It has helped me greatly to be able to release my thoughts and share my pictures with you. Unlike previous transitions in my life the next chapter has not presented itself with well defined clarity, but I am choosing to embrace this and revel in the unknown, the unexpected, the unpredictable. And to rest. My journey moves onward, via a place called home, where I plan to re-collect my soul and focus on the things that bring me happiness and comfort. My alignment has been off, for a while now, and I hope to correct that before moving on. 

Juba, 2010

I'm taking with me the smell of a desert horse and the velvet touch of his muzzle against my cheek. I take with me the call to prayer as the sun rises over the desert at day-break. I retain the smiles and the shout-outs of "okay!" of the Darfurian children living in the camps that define their small lives, as they run along side the huge white Landcruiser, giving me the thumbs-up sign the peace-keepers had taught them. I take with me the adventures of Africa in places where pieces of my heart also remains; from Namibia, Zanzibar, Masai Mara, Lesotho, Bwindi and her Gorilla's, and with a school of Hammerheads in the Red Sea. It is all now with me, locked inside this wandering heart. 

I tend to let countries seep into my soul. I dive in, deep in emersion. Every place I have lived has somehow become part of me. Sudan is no different. Here below are some of my best memories. 

Ma'asalama Sudan, I wish you Peace.

Juba, when two Sudan's were still one, January 2010.

Port Sudan after a dive trip on the Red Sea

Sufi's of Omdurman

Shade never felt so valuable 

Riding to the Pyramids of Meroe

Kassala, Eastern Sudan

Desert breakfast

Desert Coffee

Desert Rush-hour 

Desert Oasis

Walking home down a Khartoum street

Treasures of Souq Omdurman

Climbing Pyramids

Camel nomads in Darfur

'Protection' in Darfur

Distribution day, Kalma Camp

Food Aid for sale in the camp market, Darfur

                       

Women dividing food rations
distribution day, Kalma Camp

Nomads watering their stock,
near the South/North Darfur border

Curious camp kids, Darfur

At the races, Khartoum

'Nullarbor'

Ancient ruins of Meroe

Riding home from the Nile, Khartoum

View from my bedroom window, Nyala

We are lonesome animals.

We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. 

One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say, and to feel, 

"Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.

You’re not as alone as you thought".

 — John Steinbeck

To the desert we go...

"The desert is the environment of revelation, genetically and physiologically alien, sensorily austere, asthetically abstract, historically inimical. ... Its forms are bold and suggestive. The mind is beset by light and space, the kinesthetic novelty of the aridity, high temperature, and wind. The desert sky is encircling, majestic, terrible. In other habitats, the rim of sky above the horizontal is broken or obscured; here, together with the overhead portion, it is infinitely vaster than that of rolling countryside and forest lands. ... In an unobstructed sky the clouds seem more massive, sometimes grandly reflecting the earth’s curvature on their concave undersides. The angularity of desert landforms imparts a monumental architecture to the clouds as well as to the land. ...

To the desert go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality".

- Paul Shepard, Man in the Landscape

Eritrean girl in Refugee Camp, Eastern Sudan.

The Tomb of Khatmiya Al Hassan Al Mirghani

There is a Sufi sect in a town at the base of an unusual mountain range that sits on the border of two fragile lands. A Sufi holy man is buried there, inside this tomb with an open domed roof, the locals say the rain does not ever fall inside. There is an old mosque next to it, again with no roof. The mosque was built 150 years ago by Italian colonials in a peace-building gesture, attempting to win the support of the Sufis. Peace was left broken and they left before the dome roof could be constructed. The locals are awaiting a man named Osman to arrive and rebuild it. Next to the mosque is another tomb, of a whole family, the family of the Sufi. His daughter Fatima has her own tomb with a green door. An old lady caretaker who lived there saw me and said I must place my whole hand on the door to Fatima's tomb. She said this would protect me and bring me luck. My local friends informed me this was rare for her to tell a foreigner to do this and that the old woman had seemingly taken to me. The setting sun warmed the brick work orange and at dusk it was almost difficult to separate mosque from mountains. They were as one.. offering a space of peace, solitude and eternal rest. But a sense of waiting still permeates.

Maasai

In Kenya we were lucky enough to get to know some great guys of the Maasai tribe of western Kenya. We really enjoyed their stories and explanations behind nature.  The way they read the landscape and tracked game was quite amazing. Indeed, many aspects of their rich culture reminded us of the Dinka tribe of southern Sudan, particularly their cattle beliefs and value system, their nomadic lifestyle, the removal of the front teeth and their facial scarring coming-of-age traditions. But I am left with a touch of sadness in my heart because they were not truly living out the life that it is in their blood. Imagine being a nomad in this modern world of property ownership and international borders. Where is home when 'home' used to be wherever your feet would take you? There was an international law passed last year that now allows nomadic tribes of East Africa to roam freely across borders.  But what is the point of that if you cannot move your cattle with you? Without them you are a poor man with nothing. We have come across other Maasai in our travels, on the Kenyan coast, and previously on Lamu and Pemba Islands. They go there to sell their jewellery and trinkets to the tourists at the beach or they work as security guards around  resorts. That is their new way of life now. The young men wander to lands their ancestors never would have taken their cattle to. They find a way to earn some money to send home to families who live a stationary life they never asked for. This has happened to so many peoples of the world. Once again, I am reminded of the cost of development and how so many rich and ancient forms of humanity get lost in the progress, never to be reborn. 

Tyre-tread shoes. Recycling at its finest.