Shouting from my shed

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Sudan

Sudanese bus

It is hot; my head pounds and my thermometer has a fit, races off the top of the scale (50°C) and
refuses to come back down. As I cycle my face is fixed in a grimace (a combination of pain, heat, misery and genetic ugliness). Exposed to the air my teeth become painfully hot. The ground is too hot to sit on, my handlebars almost too hot to hold, the water in my drinking bottle better suited for brewing tea than quenching thirst. But I must go on: I have a rendezvous with a friend in some dilapidated Ethiopian town.
It is a race against time. I pause for food at sunset at a truckers’ stop. Perhaps it was the heat but the conversation seemed rather surreal: “what tribe are you from?” “ermm… Yorkshire, I guess”, then a complicated discussion about why farmers in England do not use camels.
Oh dear, the tears are back. I am pushing hard to meet my friend Rob on time; on the road an hour
before first light, riding right through the midday inferno (mad dogs etc?) and on well into the night.
There are too many hours available for wandering thoughts… The road is so hard, so long, so quiet and
the sky is too big and empty for just one person. But this latest episode of histrionics and soul searching
runs deeper than last time. I really am in trouble this time. I began this whole ridiculous affair because I
wanted a challenge that I would fail unless I really, really worked hard at it. But now I know that I can
cycle over mountains or across deserts. I know that I can cope alone in strange countries and situations. I
know that I can do it. The problem now is that I no longer know whether I want to keep doing it. I am
bored. I find myself thinking “not another massive mountain to sweat and curse my way over. Not
another 1000 km of road before my next ice-cream.”
So I weep my way through a few hundred kilometres of emptiness. At least it passes the time. And
keeps my eyeballs cool. It is the nearest I have yet come to quitting. Being alone exaggerates all emotions
and I feel desperate to share my struggle with somebody, anybody. But there is nobody: I feel very alone.
Being alone is infinitely harder than riding with a companion. Thankfully a tiny shard of stubbornness
keeps me riding and after a few days my elaborate plans of 1) swerving in front of a truck or 2) heading
for the nearest England-bound aeroplane (slightly preferable to option number 1) fade.

Tough guys tattoo LOVE and HATE across their knuckles. It is too hot for such deep emotions now so
I emblazon my cycling mitts with a dangling carrot to keep me pushing towards Ethiopia: COLD BEER.
I drag my heels in Gallabat: the far side of the village is Ethiopia and I am reluctant to leave Sudan. My
passport is stamped in a thatched mud hut, I don’t have to clear customs (the man is asleep and it would
be a shame to wake him) and the border policeman takes me for a final breakfast. Sudan has amazed me.
Arriving awestruck and nervous my head had been laden with preconceptions. Now I have crossed
Africa’s largest nation and have learned so much.
Sudan has huge problems, amongst them an absurdly bad government, a horrific civil war, hunger,
drought and terrible poverty. However, Sudan has still been my favourite country on this journey. Despite being poor the Sudanese people that I met were genuinely happy and they have dignity and self-respect. They are the kindest, most cheerful, most hospitable and welcoming people that I have ever met. The Sudan needs the West to open its eyes to the horrors of the conflict, to rid itself of unhelpful
preconceptions caused by ignorance. It needs our awareness.

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