A hot massage...

Since I had a terrible experience in a massage place in East Timor, I was hesitating to go to such places here in Khartoum. I am not a big fun of paying to be tortured. But I really felt like a massage this week so I asked my best friend to take me to this place that she had been going for a while for a Thai massage. I took a chance and didn’t get lucky :)

As soon as I get in the place, they ask for money (advance payment always, here!) and then I am told to go to room #4 and wait. The tone in the receptionist’s voice wasn’t so pleasant, but Sudanese in general are not very client oriented. I didn’t mind that so much and did as told. I get in the room, change into some extremely large pants and sit on the mattress on the floor -(the only thing in the room). A nice lady comes in a little bit later and as soon as she begins the massage, the lights go off. I immediately ask if they have a generator in that “spa” and shaking her head she says: “it’s broken Madame.” I thought to myself: “just my luck!”

What could have been a quite good experience (because the girl was actually from Thailand and a professional) turned out to be 30mins of a sweaty and “mosquitoey” session. I don’t think I have to repeat myself about the heat in Khartoum so I leave up to your imagination to picture the scene! I had paid for 1h, but I could only tolerate 30mins of it. I left a little annoyed, not surprised though. I came to a mission area, a place where hardship allowance is paid to us, so “pampering” is a luxury I shouldn’t have expected. :)

The Nubian region of Sudan...

This weekend, I went on my first excursion out of Khartoum. I joined a colleague who works at the Brazilian embassy and we took the “Bin Laden road” (BL fund the contruction of this road during the time he lived here in the 90s) to an area called “Mussawarat es-sufra”. It’s an area with ruins, temples and some pyramids. It was a 2 ½ hour drive north of Khartoum.

The pyramids here in Sudan are the “poor cousins” of the ones in Gyza, but I enjoyed seeing them. The heat was extreme in that area. The temperature must have been around 55C. The sand was getting inside my sandals and burning my feet, but I refused to ride the camel. It just isn't my kind of thing :) . My friend jokingly said that here in Sudan, there isn’t “one sun”, but “one sun for each person”. It’s really indescribable!

Anyway, the road was good for most of the time, but at some point we had to make a turn into the sandy area. It was like going on a safari, only with very limited types of animals to see. We just saw camels, donkeys and goats. It was a bumpy ride and the car got stuck in the sand, but it was just a scary minute. We managed to get it out.

We met a few people who lived in the communities around the temples and it amazed me that they were there. It’s hard to imagine that one can survive in such dry conditions…

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

My Birthday

It’s really true, time flies! Yesterday I turned 31. And I never thought I’d celebrate it in Africa! Wow! I am looking forward to the rest of my life! :)

Yesterday was a quite usual day for me. Not many people in the office knew it was my birthday and I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Only a few colleagues wished me well. But I received plenty of messages and phone calls from my friends abroad to make up for it!

The sun was shining really strongly in Khartoum as usual. At 7:45am the temperature was about 105F and by noon it was already 115F, so I spent most of my day inside the office (with a/c). I had lunch with one of my Brazilian colleagues and at the end of the day, I went to the gym.

Afterwards, I had a very nice dinner at the Rotana with two other friends. I had the “Om Ali” dessert that I like so much, plus many many others! :)