waking up in malakia

hamoodi.

while making our way through central sudan, heidi and i stopped in a smallish town called dilling that had a reputation for being a dirt-filled pit stop on the way to beautiful kadoogli and the even more beautiful nuba mountains. as it turned out, we sort of found things reversed.

as great and as lovely as kadoogli and the nuba mountains were (i'll post pictures soon), dilling won us over. this was in no small part due to the family we stayed with in a section of town called malakia, where straw huts proliferated and only our family had electricity (and just two light bulbs at that). not only were the adults endlessly welcoming (opening their homes to us for more than a few days, roasting and grinding coffee for us when we first arrived), but there was also the adorable hamoodi who would spend the days teasing us and showing off on his (training-wheel-equipped) bike.

falling asleep and waking up in malakia is an amazing thing. as with most of sudan, you sleep oustide. but in malakia, with lights few and far between, at night the sky looks impossibly full of stars, and when you wake up to the rooster crowing - at least during the rainny season - the air is cool and the sun has painted the sky some beautiful combination of orange and purple and blue.




hamoodi and his (much taller and older) cousin.




hamoodi has just started taking his morning tea and bread solo -- just like the adults.