The Sudan - 20

Despite not getting to sleep last night till 2am after writing up 3 days worth of facilitator notes, i was determined to get up at 6am to go for a walk with 2 of my colleagues. Other than from through the darkened windows of a car, this was my first sight of the city. I think im in north Khartoum and i dont know what i saw on my walk was representative of the city as a whole, but from what i saw its a scruffy place.
The early morning breeze was wonderful. I couldn't sense a temperature difference from indoors and outdoors so i guessed it was about 23 degrees (thats what the aircon is set to). The wind was up but not many people. We walked along the River Nile. The blue Nile is actually a dirty grey and the bit i saw must have been a good 1/4 mile wide, but I was nevertheless impressed to be walking along the Nile. Paved pavements exist in Khartoum, but they are unwalkable. Everywhere is covered in heaps of dirt and rubble. At first sight you would think that there had been a war here - theres an awful lot of rubble and holes in the ground - after a while you become aware that the heaps of rubble are actually dirty! the dust and the grim that lays on the rubble suggests that those heaps have been there for an awful long. so we walked mostly in the road like everyone else. I commented on how much crap was about - my khartoum-experienced freind reckoned this was "a thousand percent improvement" from a few years ago... Crikey there wasnt much more possible space for any more mess.
Washing cars appears to be a popular early morning activity; in this very dusty city, a clean car is a thing of respect and status. Fleets of police cars were getting special treatment - tyres 'n' all, while the policemen paraded in the police compound.
I was intrigued by the men sitting on small stools on a street corner, each with a little thin briefcase on his lap. They were "writers" and offered their services to anyone who needed something written but weren't capable of doing it themselves. If you had a form to fill in (and believe me in Sudan there are a lot of forms to fill in) you would go to one of these chaps on the street corner and he would do it for you - I wondered how much they would charge for doing my tax return?
A little further along the road was another odd collection of men squatting in the dusty street. There were about 20 of them evenly spaced over the space of a small parking lot. Each had a small stake pegged into the ground to which was clamped a hand tool; a hacksaw, an adjustable spanner, a panel saw. It looked like a dusty dada art collection. Turns out that these were handy men advertising their availability - apparently not necessarily their skill, but certainly thier capacity to have a go. Here, owning a hacksaw is as good as having your City and Guilds certificate.

We were honored to have a presentation this morning by another minister from another ministry. In the UK we joke about presentations boring audiences through "death by powerpoint". Well never again will i mock some poor salesman doing his best to tell me the benefits of his wears. This official turned up with a 53 slide presentation ..... in Arabic! Even the novelty of seeing a bullet point build from the left wore off after the first 10 slides. I wondered if the experience of the nonsensical noise that i was hearing was the same experience for anyone in the audience when i stand up and talk to them in English.
I soon became distracted and looking around this auditorium - equipped with desk mics for each seat like a G8 council meeting, I wondered why they hadnt gone the extra few dollars and bought a new projector stand - just 3 feet right infront the of the minister, a dusty old LCD projector stood on a knackered and wobbly chipboard shelf unit. It wasnt even fit to be condsidered for a carboot sale, you wouldnt have even bothered taking it there. The projector screen wasnt much better. It looked like it was once a portable one with a fold up stand, but now it hung by its screen pullout handle on a piece of string attached to the curtain rail. It is all just "good enough".
The minister eventually finished and Q&A began in Arabic - fortunately my friend Mohamed facilitated this bit. It turns out that the audience liked what he had to say and his message was very relevant to our workshop. I smiled to myself as he offered the presentation to anyone who wanted it, "Just come with your flash drive" he announced - so this is how the computer viruses are spread. Every computer that you can get access to here is riddled with viruses.

So we are one the final leg now of part one of our mission. Tomorrow is our last day, and accounting for official addresses and what not, weve only got another 3 hours left to get about 6 hours work done, which is why, our planning meeting once again dragged on for far too long again