Reasons NOT to move to Blue Nile State

I have been traveling a lot for work recently. Which makes me very happy. Unfortunately, it has taken me a long time to update this blog on my travels.

Now, if I were going to do this chronologically, my first stop would have to be Nyala, South Darfur. I visited Nyala between April 29 and May 5, 2008. However, because I have less to say about Damazin, Blue Nile State, which I visited from May 20 to 22, I think I'll start there.

Blue Nile State is one of the Three Protocol Areas, along with South Kordofan State and Abyei, which I visited in September 2007. Blue Nile is located on the border with Ethiopia in Eastern Sudan. As the name suggests, the Blue Nile begins in Ethiopia and runs through Blue Nile State on it's way to Khartoum, where it joins the White Nile. The Rosereis Dam, located in Blue Nile State, produces the vast majority of Sudan's electricity and happens to be a popular honeymoon destination for Sudanese.

Like the other Protocol Areas, Blue Nile State was on the front lines during Sudan's North-South Civil War. Despite severe devastation, Blue Nile State has generally been more successful in implementing the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement than have the other two Protocol Areas.

My recent trip to Damazin, the capital of Blue Nile State, was shorter than intended. I was originally scheduled to arrive on Monday May 19 and depart on Thursday May 22. Unfortunately, as often happens when someone from a UN agency tries to fly with one of the mission flights (UNMIS or UNAMID), I didn't make it on. Thus, I was forced to delay my departure until the next day. This meant that the days that I was in Damazin were quite busy, but in the end I got most of what I wanted to done.

But I'm not going to talk about work. Rather, I'm going to talk about snakes, because you all know how much I love snakes. So, on my first day in Damazin, we drove out of town to the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) compound in order to meet with someone in their human rights unit. While the meeting was productive, by far the most memorable part of that meeting was the drive back to UNDP.

We were about half of the way back when Abbas, the National Rule of Law Officer in Damazin, yelled to the driver to stop. Off to our left, a village woman was carrying a dead snake on the end of a machete. The driver stopped, and we (Jennifer, the Project Manager in Damazin; Abbas; and I) jumped out the vehicle and approached the woman, asking if we could photograph the snake. The result was the following photos.



Now, hopefully I'm not alone in thinking that this is a big snake. Moreover, apparently it's very poisonous. But at least it was dead. On the other hand, when we got back in the car, Jennifer proceeded to tell me how she was nearly bitten by a highly-deadly black snake of similar size...wait for it...in the UNDP office/guesthouse compound (pictured below)! She followed that up by saying that, yes, there are a fair number of snakes in Damazin, if I want to see a lot of snakes, I should go to Kurmuk, another town in Blue Nile State. Yeah, I don't think I'm going to go work in Blue Nile any time soon!


And finally, I would like to leave you with this photo of the "Damazin Cinema." I was blown away when I saw this. I realize for many of you out there in the world, a cinema is not worth a photograph. But that just means you haven't been to Sudan. You have to understand the context. I am only aware of one cinema in Khartoum, a city of at least 5 million people. There are probably more, but they certainly aren't ubiquitous. So I certainly didn't expect to find one in Damazin, a state capital that's little more than a village.

Horribly Haboobed!

Ok, so I've never seen anything quite like this. Or at least not from this angle. (If I had, I would have taken several dozen pictures of my own.) This photo, however, was taken in my current neighborhood in Khartoum, and the haboobs I've experienced have been quite an interesting experience. The season seems to be more of less over. April was definitely the most active month. But there may still be a few to come.

I find that the haboobs tend to sneak up on you. Sure, they're preceded by a fair amount of wind, but when you see that large cloud of dust approaching, you don't have that much time to take cover (assuming you choose to take cover. It seems that the locals react only to the largest of haboobs.) At the same time, it's quite different from what you see in the movies. This isn't The Mummy. When I say not much time, I mean maybe 10 minutes, not 10 seconds.

Unfortunately, the most impressive haboobs I've experienced in Khartoum all occured at night. Thus, rather than seeing them, I just heard them; heard the gusting wind, the rattling windows, the sand hitting the metal roof on my building. And then of course I saw the aftermath the next morning, particularly the thin layer of red sand covering everything in my apartment despite the fact that all the doors and windows were closed during the haboob.

One of these nighttime haboobs, however, was more impressive than the rest. I was successfully awaken around 5 in the morning by the sound not only of wind but also, rain (commonly accompanies haboobs), thunder, and lightning. And it was an awful good thing that I was was. Because not long after I woke up, I began to feel large gusts of wind blowing in my direction. And as I was certain that I had not left any of the windows open, that did not seem normal. For a while I ignored it and stayed in bed. But then I happened to notice that the curtain on one of the windows on the other side of room was blowing out of control. Something was clearly wrong.

So, I got out of bed and made my way across the room in the dark. And it's a good thing I did. I discovered that the glass, which had simply been glued into the window frame, had become detached on three of four sides and was blowing back and forth in the frame. So, before it could blow out entirely and shatter into a million pieces, I grabbed the glass, pulled it out of the frame, set it aside, and went back to bed.

This, however, meant that I now had an open window. And, I can tell you, an open window in a haboob is not a good thing. Thus, unsurprisingly, by the time the haboob stopped, that corner of the apartment was covered in a layer of wet sand. And, I had to wait an entire week for the glass to be replaced, which meant needing to mop up sand every day during that week!

Although far less dramatic, it is also worth noting that that one night of rain succeeded in completely flooding one of the streets near my apartment building. In fact, it was largely impassable by foot for the better part of a week.