nuba mountain portraits

heidimarie erickson, lagawa, nuba mountains, 1927


ryan kost, lagawa, nuba mountains, 2010

i do - in sudan

i just got back from a bus-ride-filled, 10-day trip to kordofan, the region that lies at the heart of this massive country. i visited four different towns/ villages and took about 1,000 photos. it's going to take me a while to work through them all, but i'm hopeful i'll have a few good shots to post here soon. until then, here are a couple images to get me started:





in obeid, the capital of north kordofan, deanna brought us along to a wedding celebration. the women -- who celebrate separately from the men -- pass the time cooking, eating, chatting, singing and performing traditional sudanese dance.

the dance itself, pictured above, is hard to describe. basically, though, you throw your head and shoulders back and move your upperbody in this slow, circular rhythym. the way i describe it, the dance doesn't sound very sensual, but if it's anything, it's that. in fact, in a place like sudan, where sexuality and sensuality is sort of kept out of the public sphere, it's especially wild to see.

on top

more photos from karima:


one of two pyramids sites a few hundred meters away from the mountain.


looking down on the pyramids as the sun rises.


sort of a random picture, but these birds were amazing as they road the drafts


karima hugs a bend in the nile. it's a little dark, but on right-most side are the date palms.

overexposed in karima

jebel barkal, a holy mountain right outside karima.

i only spent a few days in karima. i wish it had been a few weeks.

karima is a small town about six hours north of khartoum by air-conditioned coach. it sits at a bend in the nile, whose waters are drawn to the roots of thousands of date palms by shallow canals and noisy pumps.

in the few days i was there, i did backstrokes in the nile, climbed a plateau that overlooks a set of pyramids while the sun rose, read poetry aloud while drinking pimms and fell asleep under a sky so full of stars there wasn't room for any more.


walking the dusty streets of karima.

a rickshaw ride in the middle of the northern desert.


at the base of the mountain.

vanilla ice cream

today, opposite the ethiopian souk, in the big dusty lot cordoned off by iron bars where people sit drinking chai and jebana and karakaday and vitamin d, there was a man selling ice cream. an ice cream man.

his cart was made of wood, which was painted bright, though it wasn't very bright anymore because in sudan, the sun is jealous of things that might try to out-bright it and goes about fading them while making its own over-the-top brightness known day in and day out.

the man had one type of ice cream. i think it was vanilla. that's only a guess. but it's an educated guess because vanilla is the sort of inoffensive ice cream staple that an ice cream man selling only one flavor would likely have on offer. and, also, from what i could see under the sheer blue piece of plastic that was supposed to protect the ice cream from the jealous sun and not-so-good-tasting dirt, the ice cream was off-white. the color of vanilla ice cream.

i didn't have any ice cream, but if i had, it would have come in a colored ice cream cone -- you know, the sort that taste and look vaguely of styrofoam and come in pale blue and green and also pink and beige? i know this to be true because i saw these very cones all jumbled together in the cart's ice-cream-cone alcove.

this ice cream cart didn't have a speaker playing some electronic melody, like the sort you get on the streets of america. this was a low-tech operation. but the ice cream man did have a wooden flute, which he played well. so well, that i had to fight from being pulled into a zombie-like trance, which, we can safely assume, would have lifted only after i'd asked the man for a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a pale-green cone.

i imagine the cone would have been pale green because the ice cream man seemed like the sort of ice cream man that makes it a point to give his customers a choice of the color cone they'd like if not the flavor of ice cream they'd like, and i would have chosen green because that's the color of my eyes, and somehow it would have seemed appropriate.

had all that happened, though, the ice cream probably would have melted before i was i done licking it into nothing, and little, creamy, vanilla drips would have slipped from the tip of the cone onto my shirt or, if i were particularly lucky, the ground. that's what always happens when the sun tries to eat your ice cream before you do.

the day the desert swallowed us whole

i've been trying, for a few days now, to come up with a way to describe what a sudanese sand storm looks like from the seventh floor as it slowly overtakes the capital city.

i'm still not sure i can do it justice, but here goes: from the seventh floor of a friend's apartment complex, the sky looked like it was split in two. there was the upper-most part of the sky, a steely gray-blue and then the lower half, a murky light-brown. it didn't register at first what was happening until the brown began to grow, taking the sky completely. it was as though the desert had decided to open up and swallow khartoum whole.

when the storm finally made its way to us, the air, which had been still just minutes before, was suddenly manic with movement and dust. this damp, earthy smell -- the same smell as comes from the water left over after washing clothes here -- surrounded us. grains of sand found their way into our mouths and between our teeth and stung our eyes. past maybe five feet, nothing could be seen. not lights, not other buildings, nothing.

it stayed this way for a good fifteen minutes, everything a copper haze. and then, just as suddenly as it came, the storm left, leaving behind a thin layer of settled dust, a cool wind and a short -- but so, so sweet -- desert rain.

a mix for a summer spent in hot, hot, beautiful sudan

taken from a boat on the nile as the sun sank lower and lower.

1. make it beautiful - the shondes
2. home - lcd soundsystem
3. rill rill - sleigh bells
4. montanita - ratatat
5. colours - hot chip
6. blue lips - regina spektor
7. cosmic love - florence and the machine
8. map of the world - monsters of folk
9. used to be - beach house
10. we fell off the roof - seabear

from the seventh floor

khartoum just before dusk.


khartoum just after dusk.

ma'salama

mamoun and amelia before she left for the airport.

people keep leaving this place. most recently, my pal amelia.

it seems like, with each departure, for better or worse, sudan takes on a new flavor. when louise was around, sudan had the flavor of lentil soup and too-long walks under the too-hot sun. when amelia was around, it had the flavor of watermelon-rind chutney and trips to the souk.

nowadays, it has the flavor of shiro and bus rides to places farther away.

blurry birthday

i celebrated my 25th birthday on a rooftop in omdurman with beet chocolate cake, homemade ginger ale, la roux, the xx and some dancing. i don't know that i ever gave much thought to where i'd be or what i'd be doing when i turned 25. if i did, i'm sure it never occurred to me that i'd be living in sudan. and yet, there i was and here i am. amazing.


jemma's too fast for the shutter.


the rooftop before people arrived.


me fussing with some candles.


why hold the camera still when you get pictures like these?

full of fuul

pictured below is fuul. i eat it nearly once a day. (i actually had some last night!) it speaks to my failure as a documenter that this is my first entry about fuul in six months.

fuul, at its very basic, is just mushed up beans. but that's just the beginning. you can add falafel (as seen here), eggs, tomatoes, onions, peppers, even peanut butter. you eat it with your (right) hand and bread. you eat it for breakfast and lunch and dinner. really, the possibilities are limitless. the fuul pictured here, it should be said, is fancy fuul. i'm not sure where it came from, but it was pretty damn delicious.


everybody is reaching for the fuul!


right hand and bread work in conjunction as fuul shovel. yum. (max, if you're out there, i'm sorry.)

after the sun went out

a shop on the way to the bus station.


the view from heidi and nel's new flat.


mamoun makes a wish.


heidi in the stairwell.


a man and a doorway in omdurman.


an alley like any other.

light painting

some masterpieces created the evening of my birthday party. and also the evening before.

two moments

two shots i took for 'A Moment in Time.' thoughts on which i should submit?

better (at) looking after

one question from one student's oral exam:

me: are men or women better at looking after children and why?
student: men. yeah ... men. women usually get bigger after they're pregnant.
me: um, huh ... oh! no. 'looking after' means 'taking care of.' who is better at taking care of children?
student: oh. ok. women.

(note: for the past week or so, my life has been consumed by exam writing, grant writing, cover-letter writing and jonathan safran foer's writing. hopefully i'll be back and blogging with a vengeance soon.)

the early hours

not far from my house, a tea lady has set up shop under the bougainvillea blooms.


on the way to souk al arabi.


a bicyclist carries bags of bread on his handle bars.


a nearby alley filled with air conditioners.

obsessive consumption (sudan style)*

for the past five months, i've been wandering around sudan with a camo-green backpack. i look like an idiot. but a week ago, my life changed. see, i finally picked up a handmade leather satchel that i'd ordered a month or so earlier from a khartoum artist/ leather worker.

these days, i probably still look like an idiot, but it's not because of the bag.

*i was gonna post a real picture of the bag, but that seemed boring somehow. so i decided to draw it instead. the style, you might notice, was inspired by a portland-based blog, obsessive consumption, that i'm pretty , um, obsessed(?) with. if you want to see the actual satchel, click here.

fadal

there's this shop right around the corner from where i live. i stop by most every day. i stop by for little mini cakes wrapped in plastic, strawberry yogurt and diet coke. i stop by for chocolate bars, ketchup-flavored chips and sometimes tea. i stop by often enough that the man behind the counter knows me pretty well.

tonight, on my way home from omdurman, i passed by the shop. six men were sitting in a tight circle under the store's fluorescent glow. i've been in sudan long enough to know what that sort of circle means. it means food. meals here are almost always eaten in a group. always shared.

anyhow, as i passed by, six heads shot up and looked my way. the shopkeeper smiled. "fadal," he said. welcome. sit down. eat with us. and he really meant it.

"shukrun," i said as i shook my head and rubbed my stomach. i'm hoping that translated, somehow, to "thanks. really. but i just ate."

this happens all the time here. fadal. welcome. sit down. eat with us. it happens so often that i'm starting to treat it as a matter of course. but i shouldn't. so, i'm writing about it here.

fadal. welcome. sit down. eat with us.

my walking shoes

the insoles from my trusty converse.

i've been in sudan for 151 days. give or take. on at least 149 of those 151 days, i've worn a pair of white chucks i brought with me (at the last minute) from home. as it turns out, sudan's dusty -- and, more often that not, unpaved -- roads haven't been very kind to them (see above banner.)

the rubber toe bits are cracking. the canvass is stained and tearing, and i'm pretty sure i'll never be able to get rid of the sand that's constantly rattling around inside them. what's more, i realized a few days ago that i've actually managed to wear holes through the insoles.

i'm hoping i can still get a good 76-some days out of these guys. by then, i'll be on my way to ethiopia, and hopefully kate can bring me a new pair.

so, while i can't do much to solve those first few problems, the insoles, i figured, could be replaced. a few days ago, on my way home from work, i stopped by a shoe repairman who regularly sets up shop along al-hurriya street, a stretch known mostly for electronics.

i showed him my problem, and he offered me a solution: a pair of replacement insoles made out of carpet. they set me back 1 sudanese pound, or about 40 u.s. cents.

my new, stylin' carpet insoles installed. don't be jealous.

election day(s)

poster of omar al-bashir not far from neelain university. it's been up ever since i arrived in november.

so, it's election day in sudan.

the streets were nearly empty this morning. shops were closed, their metal doors firmly pulled shut. jackson station, the sweaty, frenetic knot of people i squeeze through must every day was clam.

it's the first time in more than 20 years that sudan has held elections. balloting will last three days -- today, tomorrow and the day after. and three days after that, the results should be ready.

the elections have always felt like sort of a landmark for my time here. even before i came, election day seemed like it would be some sort of a turning point. one of those events that split an experience into everything that came before and everything that came after.

now it seems so much less momentous. the opposition parties have all withdrawn from the presidential election. that means the current president omar al-bashir is the only choice. there's no doubt he'll win.

so that leaves one question. what happens after the votes are cast and counted?

i guess we're about to get an answer.