Pyramids of Sudan

Cambodia ruins-a temple off the
very beaten Angkor Wat path

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archeologist.  It wasn’t an Indiana Jones thing—I didn’t find out who he was until much later (no TV + living overseas = late knowledge of basic pop-culture). I actually decided on that career path after finding out about the Rosetta Stone, hoping to find a similar stone someday to help me decipher Linear A or something else interesting. The idea of wandering around crumbling ruins  or swimming through an underwater shipwreck was always attractive to me too, though I blame the latter on the Little Mermaid (pop-culture that happened just before we moved to Indonesia).

Even though I’m not an archaeologist, I have managed to visit some pretty cool ruinous places in my life, highlights include the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza, Petra, the Valley of the Kings, Baalbek, Borobudur, the Acropolis, Palmyra, Prambanan, Angkor Wat…I could keep going, but I think I’ve made my point: it’s not fair how much cool stuff I’ve gotten to see in my lifetime and WHY haven’t I been to South America yet to see all the cool stuff there?

So I wrote about the wedding in Atbara and driving by the Meroe Pyramids on my way there.  Since we were already running late then, I knew we would probably not be stopping, but I thought if I mentioned once or twice or five million times that I wanted to stop there on the way back, that maybe someone would realize that it was important to me and make that happen. It was really important to me to make sure that it happened on this trip—not just because I am an impatient person who doesn’t like to wait for fun things, but because the thing about Sudan is that when a foreigner wants to travel outside of Khartoum, he or she must obtain official permission to do so.  This takes paperwork and sitting in a government office waiting for answers that may or may not come within a few days. For example, I’m still waiting for my permission to go to West Darfur, and we applied a month ago. So if I want to do any outside-Khartoum-tourist-fun, I either need to make someone in my office go through all that pain, or I need to make the most of outside excursions whenever I can. Which, clearly, I did. Really it was UN-selfish of me to push extra fun into a weekend when I was trying to get by on 2 hours of sleep, just to save my colleagues some paperwork. I truly care.

Anyway, back to the pyramids--I had known about the pyramids in Sudan for a while now, and I’ve known since I got here that I wanted to see at least some of them (there are a lot more that I haven’t been to visit yet). If I can ever get the necessary travel permission again there are some more cool Sudanese ruins in a place called Jabal Barkal, about 400km north of Khartoum with MORE pyramids and a few palaces too. I’m scheming about how to get there, but I think I’ll need some allies, and frankly, people here aren’t too interested in them, even the Nubians, descendants of those who actually built these places thousands of years ago when most other civilizations still did not know how to be awesome. It’s kind of similar to when my fourth grade teacher asked the 8 kids in our tiny international school, which of us had ever been to Niagara Falls, and the British kid was the only one who raised his hand. Still, we had an excuse for being slacker American tourists—we didn’t live there.  Of course, neither did the British kid… I guess it is human nature to take tourist destinations in one’s own country for granted.

We left Atbara a little bit before 6am. It’s still dark in Sudan (South Sudan too) at 6am, which really bugs me because I like to be an early morning outside runner, but in places that don’t have streetlights and do have large crater-sized potholes, that can be dangerous. It was recently pointed out to me by someone who thinks about those kinds of things that this phenomenon is because we are on the western end of the East Africa Time Zone, aka GMT + 3:00. I don’t think like that because it is hard enough for me to remember what time zone I’m actually in, and to be required to think about my east/west orientation within that time zone is too much for me to worry about. In spite of my displeasure with places that do not share the perfect sun conditions of equatorial Indonesia (sun coming up at 5:30am, down by 6:30pm, always, every day, without fail, don’t need a watch because you can see the position of sun and you have a cell phone anyway), it turned out well for us because at about 7:30 we pulled up at the edge of the road by the pyramids with the sun just peaking up over their pointy tops.

Tourist sign

We debated a bit about driving up to the entrance or walking, knowing that it was farther away than it looked, but worried about our little car getting stuck in the sand. We decided to risk it, since the important government official who had come with us to the wedding thought it would be OK. I also used him as an excuse as to why I jumped the small fence built on the edge of the property in hopes that this would become an income-generating tourist destination without any qualms—there was an abandoned ticket booth and everything. Modern and ancient ruins side by side! The reality is that I would have jumped that fence with or without his permission, but I do think it is good to have these important people on my side. We all jumped the fence and then I ran around like a maniac, trying to see everything as fast as possible before my sleepy companions got fed up with me and left. There was still so much that I missed…I only climbed up to the top of about 2 pyramids and I didn’t get out to some more crumbly ones a bit farther away from the main complex, but I covered a lot of ground.

Here are some of the better photos, not taken while I was jumping off a pyramid:

Don't know why the green dot is there--probably left-over alien technology

Tomb drawings

Our government official looked really authentic in front of the pyramids

Hey! A Nubian at the pyramids--Patris is the BEST! Even
though he did get a speeding ticket on the way home for
trying to make up for lost time at the Pyramids. Sorry!

Taken from the top! Climbing is fun...

These multi-lingual cave inscriptions prove that ancient Nubians
were also friends with Chinese and Arab graffiti artists. And seriously,
WHY ARE PEOPLE SUCH JERKS ABOUT RESPECTING HISTORY?

I didn't get all the way out to those pyramids
since everyone else was already back in the car

They look cool from every angle--so does the sand

Entrepreneurial camel owners tried to con me into paying for a ride.
I resisted because I'm too cool for tourism cliches. and because I'm cheap.

Proof I was there! Keep in mind--2 hours of sleep.

My souvenir pyramid that Paul bought me, since he is a nice guy
who can't resist giving cute kids money.
Said cute kids madethese out of sand, so they claimed.
I didn't see a "Made in China" sticker anywhere.

Here's the alphabet!

And I would like to mention, that Wikipedia, source of all knowledge, gives some information on Meroe, the town, the people, the pyramids here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meroë. Apparently, it was a pretty big deal at one time. They were famous for their iron-skills and they had their own written language, and they had some fun beating up on (and being beat on by) the Egyptians and the Romans. And it seems like the King of Meroe shared his power only with his mother, which totally makes sense. I bet she was badass...or he was a Mama’s boy…either way, I’m sure Candace and I would have been best friends. We could have had pyramids right next to each other for some after-life fun.  At least she and the rest of the pyramids inspired me to sign up to take “Nubian Art and Archaeology, “ free online class from Emory University. I wonder if anyone else taking that class will be living in Sudan? Actually, I wonder if I will be…I might be back in the south by then, trying to find an internet connection to get online for that class…Well, if I miss any assignments, I’ll just throw in some original photos from Meroe and kill it anyway.

Heading home...

Handadawa Wedding

Camels by the road on the trip

I have a love-hate relationship with weddings…and just know that I’m not talking about ones in the  US, because aside from my sisters’ weddings, I can only remember 2 others that I’ve been to. That is one of the benefits of living overseas—wedding shindigs and showers get to be missed. I really don’t like showers that don’t involve water. My lovely Southern belle college roommate loved them, planned them, and made me go with her. If she reads this, she may suddenly realize that I only went to those things for those big sugar cookies some lazy person (probably me) bought with icing the color of marriage (white?) or the impending child (pink for girl, blue for boy, or yellow for people who think it’s cute to keep it a secret or purple for those who want to buck color-linked gender stereotypes as soon as possible, green if you can’t find/don’t know the appropriate color and really want to eat those dang cookies, etc). Since college I realized that one doesn’t need an excuse to buy a container of those cookies because no one has to know that you’re not going to a party, but staying home and eating all of them while watching dumb TV shows online. And since I no longer have that reason to go to baby showers or wedding showers, I just make sure to be out of the country for all I might be expected to attend or I offer to babysit other progeny. Anyway, there is a SYSTEM. But with weddings overseas, they are important cultural moments, where I learn a lot and have Experiences that I can write about here, and even though, no, I’d rather not kill my whole weekend at one go like I did this time, I’d rather not miss it either.

Another animal shot on the journey

So this last weekend was the wedding of one of the girls in our office. We (7 women, 4 babies, 5 men) piled into 3 cars and caravanned out to Atbara, about 200km north of Khartoum. OK, the truth is, I vaguely remember someone saying 200km so I picked that number but that might have been the distance from Shendi, the half-way point town, to Atbara or something else completely different. Anyway, I was told it would be a 3-5 hours trip. And I was told to meet at the office at 8:30am on Friday (our weekends here are Fri-Sat), and I said, “No way am I getting to the office at the same time on Friday as I do every other day. I need to have the pretense of a little extra sleep for the weekend, and let’s please make it 9:30.” And because I’m loud and annoying until I get my way, I got my way. And naturally, we left 30 minutes late anyway.

The amazing thing is that I let us drive
by these guys without stopping the first time.

The trip ended up taking us about 6 hours, as we stopped for what I call lunch, but they call “breakfast.” What I call breakfast, they call “tea—sometimes with cookies,” and what they call “lunch,” I call “dinner” and what they call “dinner,” I call “bedtime.” After “breakfast” in Shendi (the half-way point city), we got back on the road to continue our straight, flat, dusty, desert journey. From the road, a little ways outside of Shendi, we passed the Meroe pyramids, just hanging out there lonely in the middle of a bunch of sand dunes.  I started right then and there to be loud and annoying about stopping there on the way back. Do you think I was successful in my mission?

Atbara is a cute town with cute donkeys

Eventually we made it to our target destination before driving around in circles trying to find our way to the bride’s house. This reminded me of driving around Damascus with a taxi driver who couldn’t find the way to our friend’s house. His way of asking directions was to roll down the window, stick his head outside and yell, “Ya, Muhammad—weynak?” (Oh Mohammed, where are you?). And since more than 50% of all males in Syria are named Mohamed (this statistic I just made up right now is also true of most other Muslim countries as well), 3 or 4 nearby men or boys would stop and come over to the car to see if the driver was calling them. Then he would ask directions from the comfort of his cab. It was a genius idea, I thought. AND we made it to our destination. If Patris, our Sudanese wedding driver, had known this trick, we might have made it to our wedding destination before “lunch/dinner.” But they brought us food anyway, so it was fine.

"Resting" with Selma

Our Atbara location was right by the White Nile, and really a beautiful place. Now 8 of us ladies (our Port Sudan team met us there with one other lady), plus 4 kids, were put in the bride’s neighbor’s guest room.  The neighbor lady was a Syrian refugee living there with her family. We had some sad talks about Syria in the beautiful Syrian accent, and it was bittersweet reminiscing about old times in Syria and remembering what it is now.  But how hospitable are Arabs?  This lady took us in to help out Zuhur’s (the beautiful bride) family. She had never met any of us before. Say what you like about Arabs (and of course people will always be doing that), but you cannot possibly beat them on hospitality. They will hospitality you into the ground with their generosity and kindness to visitors, and insistence that you eat more and MORE, “Why? Don’t you like our food?!”

White Nile at sunset

After a short rest – 12 of us on 4 beds, so comfy—we went out to watch the dancing. This is a traditional part of Handadawa (Zuhur’s tribe) wedding culture. The men of the village, young and old, gather together to dance with swords. It was impressive and fun to watch. If I ever get married, I definitely want sword dancers. Anyway, it seems like a preferable option to what the Ja3liya tribe does to their grooms on the wedding day. According to my friend, a member in not good standing of the Ja3liya tribe (since she married a guy from a different tribe instead of the cousin her family wanted her to marry), Ja3liya guys are known for being tough. So all the men get together and the groom lets them beat the crap out of him with sticks to prove how tough he is. But if my time in the Middle East has taught me nothing else, I do firmly believe that no wedding is truly complete without swords.

When it got too dark for the sword dancers to continue having fun safely, they called it a night, and we went back to the room for more ‘resting’ until time to get ready for the wedding. I kept asking if it was time, because I kept thinking we should be leaving for the dang wedding, the whole point of which we were in town in the first place. But we really didn’t start getting ready until almost 9pm. At that point, I was ready (with thobe secured properly with safety pins and make-up and hair fixed with a little more effort than usual) in about 15 minutes. Then I had to wait for another hour before everyone else was finally ready. Then we had to wait for the men to come pick us up in the car and take us to the venue, which was not, sadly, by the river, but rather in a nearby athletic club. We sat near the basketball goals.  And it IS nice to go to weddings with several men who are really handy about finding chairs for everyone because, while we got there before the bride and groom, everyone else in town had arrived before us to score the best of the plastic chairs. From somewhere, I still don’t know where, our men conjured up enough places for us to sit down.

Many photos of sword dancing with sun behind them since I couldn't get many "see-able" wedding shots at night:

 I like the little boys with their stick "swords" who are learning their moves now

These guys were some of the best. Poor wives and mothers who will have to wash their dirty white robes later.

The colorful ladies watching the fun - their turn comes later

I like the fat guys.

That guy's about to get sworded in the back!

The groom (with the red sash) is hoisted on the shoulders of the swordsmen

We sat around and waited for the bride and groom to come (عادي for Arab weddings) and ate boxes of food handed out to everyone, while little kids snuck under our chairs and tried to steal anything we left there for later (they got half of my apple soda, but I ate most of the food before I put that container down, so better luck next time, kids). While we were eating, camera men slowly panned the crowd, examining people carefully with their bright head-lights, stopping and swooping certain individuals from head to toe if they were considered extra-interesting. Guess who was considered extra-interesting? Yup, the khawaja in a thobe. Guess who is really awkward and disturbing to watch on video camera? Yeah, that same person whose thobe kept sliding off inappropriately. And the best thing about our set-up is that everyone in the whole complex could watch what the cameramen were watching on the big screen. And the other best thing was that it was a really cold desert night, the thobe I was wearing was not that warm, but the camera lights were nice and toasty on their victims. Silver lining.

With my beautiful friend Noor who helped me pin up my thobe

Finally the Bride and Groom graced us with their presence. With great fanfare and smoke machines, they exchanged rings and danced their first dance.  Then they went to sit on their thrones for 5 minutes while crowds pressed in to shake their hands in congratulations. I was also pushed into that crowd, but I wasn’t really committed, so I never made it to the platform. Instead, I was carried along in the current of dancing people, and I ended up in a ring around the bride snapping along with everyone else, as that is Sudanese group-dance-style: bounce and snap.  I will confess that I do this badly, especially when cameras are trained on me and my thobe is falling off because it’s still too long and I’m tripping on it.

The beautiful bride

We danced for a little while, but it was already after 11pm, and our group was pretty tired, so we rushed everyone over to the microphones to give a speech and hand out the presents on behalf of IAS.  There loud cheers and claps (mostly from us) and then we high-tailed it out of there. I thought that was the end. I was preparing to share a twin bed with another woman and/or a child, sleeping until 5am, our estimated departure time.  But I was wrong. About sleeping with people and about being done.

Instead, we went back to our room, where we had to wait about 30 minutes until the owner came back to unlock the doors for us, moved our stuff to another house with more beds and a small couch (where I slept because I prefer to sleep alone), and then headed out AGAIN, this time to the courtyard of the bride’s house.

The bride is in red-photos after this moment were inappropriate

The yard was packed with ladies—no men allowed except the groom. This is the part where the bride dances for about an hour to traditional songs sung by the women and accompanied with a drum or two.  No men are allowed because these dances are…well…wow…yes they were. One of the main dances is when the girl takes off her thobe (while dancing) to reveal a much less clothing underneath—think, Aladdin, specifically Disney version, but any movie about harems and the exotic Middle East will do. At the end of each very impressive dance, she would stop with her hands up in front of her mouth, fingers and thumbs touching, facing her new husband. Meanwhile, all the women were cheering and singing along and critiquing her dancing skills (she had all good comments that I heard). A couple other friends of mine told me that they didn’t do this part at their wedding because they didn’t like the idea of all the people talking about them, and while I was glad this bride didn’t feel the same way so I got to be a part of this tradition, I get where they are coming from. One of my friends said she waited to do the dances just for her husband when they were in the hotel. Another as-yet unmarried girl had danced through the main traditional dances for us while we were waiting for the party to start in our rooms, so it seems that these are really important cultural aspects of the wedding. There are even institutes around Khartoum and elsewhere where you can learn these dances (I wonder how my future taxi-driver husband would feel about me learning the moves?). While American girls are choosing their dresses, the Sudanese girls are practicing their moves. If I were to have to dance in front of a bunch of women, I would for sure start practicing from a very young age. I would need a lot of extra work. But also, I should note, that the Sudanese girls have to spend significant time choosing their dresses too. This Bride had her white poofy sparkly wedding dress, a sparkly red expertly-removed thobe  and a shiny green one too, and two dancing costumes—halfway through the dance, she went inside to change into the other outfit. Apparently, you can change up to 3 times. Still, I’m pretty sure that the wedding dress at least is rented. I think that is genius, because currently both my sisters and my mom are wondering how to get rid of theirs, which they will never wear again, and they know I am not likely to wear. For one-time use: rent. It’s just the logical thing to do.

Hamudi and I took selflies while waiting for the other ladies to finish getting ready.
How cute is he?

We got back from the sexy dance performance after 2am. I made a small effort to get some of the make-up off my face before going to sleep. I wasn’t very successful, but then I didn’t have to put on make-up again for another three days, so I call it a win. We then got up at 4am, thinking we were going to leave by 5am, but we finally made it out at 6am. On our trip back, we didn’t stay together, and can you guess whose car was the last one home? But I take most of the blame because Pyramids. I know how to get my way when it’s really important…and sometimes even when it is not important.