Waiting for the Worms

Wadi Halfa 17.12.2011

I’ve been long enough in Africa; one should think- that I know about African time. If someone or something is supposed to arrive at a certain time, you can normally add some hours, and then it will come.

Still, this barge and the Sudanese officials have managed to exceed my expectations of African time. The barge arrived Thursday evening, and yesterday was Friday – no one working. Today is Saturday, so they don’t work today either, so hopefully things will happen tomorrow. When they came with bad news the first days, I got a little bit angry, and tried to push things to happen, but now I just smile. I feel powerless.

The time is not that bad though. Even the ferry trip was better than expected, much thanks to the great people I have around me. We are in total ten people who wait for our vehicles- five bikers, Wombosi and two other Land-Rovers. Jeremy, one of the bikers, is also traveling alone, and we have camped in the desert these days. During the day we sit in town and read our books, or walk the few kilometres to the harbour to see if something happens. If we would have known that nothing would happen before tomorrow, we would have done some trips, but every day they say something might happen, and then nothing does…

I don’t want to give a bad impression on the Sudanese people. They are very friendly, and we feel better here than in Egypt, but it is just that we’d like to see something else than just Wadi Halfa in Sudan.

This time I won’t try to make any prophecy on when I’ll be in Addis, but I’ll let you know.