sounds of sudan

most days i spend working at an ngo in amarat, a small khartoum neighborhood that's a fair ways away from where i live. in the morning, mostly out of laziness, i get an amjad (i hope i'm spelling/ transliterating that correctly) straight to work. amjads are a small step down from taxis, sort of compact minivans that look (and feel) like they're made out of aluminum. you have to negotiate your price up front.

my morning conversation usually goes something like this:

me (with terrible arabic accent): asalaam alaikum! (hello!).
amjad driver: wa alaikum assalaam. (right back at you.)
me: ana mashi al amarat. sharia mohammed najeeb wa sharia saba hamseen. tamam? (i'm going to amarat. mohammed najeeb and 57th streets. you dig?)
amjad driver: aywa (yeah. obviously.)
me: kum? (how much?)
amjad driver: khamsatasha. (because you're a foreigner, 15 pounds.)
me: la. katir. ashara? (no way. that's way too much. and i'm not stupid. how about 10 pounds?)
amjad driver: ok (ok. but don't get too excited. this trip should only be 8 pounds.)

after that, i get in, the amjad driver figures out he's heard just about every single word i know of arabic and we drive silently to amarat. (or he actually tries to talk to me and we just keep saying the same words over and over again -- only each time we say them a little bit louder. because, you know, the louder you are, the more the other person understands.)

anyhow. after i get off work, i'm feeling a little less lazy and a little poorer, so i take the bus (only 40 sudanese cents!) back to my flat. (more on the fun adventure that is every bus ride later). but the bus does not offer the door-to-door ease of an amjad, so i'm stuck walking a mile or so.

now to the real point of this post: walking sort of wakes you up. at least it does me. it makes you a bit more aware, more aware of directions and smells and people and ... sounds.

see, khartoum has a soundtrack all its own. i guess that's true of any city, but this one, well, it just seems so right, so perfect for the constant movement of sudan's capital.

i was going to try to describe it in a blog post, but when i tried to sit down and write, words didn't work. so, the other day, i took an audio recorder with me and flipped it on for a few minutes of my walk home.

my advice: close your eyes, press play and imagine streets full of sand and cars and shops and people and random telephone chargers for sale.

close your eyes, press play and listen to khartoum.