Downtown

From the m.o. of our first few weeks, we would never have known that Khartoum has a downtown. However, today we discovered it in all its dusty glory.

In search of a watch battery, light bulbs, more power strips (can't ever have enough) and a few good Arabic books, we headed off with our driver into the center of the city. He drove us past several noteworthy sites: Ozone (the outdoor bakery cafe), various important residences, beautiful Turkish mosques, and several services khawagas in this town frequent: dry cleaners, home furnishing stores, ice cream shops, etc. When I commented on the beauty of the mosques, our driver pulled over and said the rest of our errands would be better done on foot . . . the better to admire the two MOST BEAUTIFUL mosques in the city. (They really are amazing. Sometime when I have my photo permit with me, I will brave an attempt to document the edifices for our readers . . .)

This was a real change of pace for us. As I have said, we spend a lot of time shuttling from one air conditioned bubble to the next. It would be easy for us to live a comfortable insulated life here and not ever really have to be aware of the larger context in which we're situated. However, such insulation is not the reason we were interested in moving abroad, so when our driver suggested we get out and walk . . . we jumped to it!

The downtown area of Khartoum has seen better days. As we walked around, we were told again and again that "this [run down, vacant lot] was once a really happening club" or "this [abandoned, shuttered, broken down] building was once a bustling coffee shop that all the socialites of Khartoum used to pass by to see and be seen." But that was before sharia' law.

Downtown Khartoum is dominated by the colonial style of cement buildings found across North Africa, from Cairo to Casablanca. But the area has now been overcome by omnipresent dust, oppressive heat, bleaching sun, and disrepair. These three to ten story buildings, ornately decorated with plaster reliefs, and underpinned by shaded porticoes on the ground level which allow pedestrians protection from the sidewalk-less streets, illustrate the ups and (more often) downs of this country's economic development.

Khartoum lacks the towering skyscrapers that are popping up in Moroccan and Egyptian cities, but makes up for it in lateral growth - spreading out concentrically from the city center into the surrounding desert. The Sudanese capital city is jam-packed with traffic on any given day - but Saturdays are the worst. Road signs are rare, and one way streets are common. This combination strikes fear in my heart as I contemplate driving myself around in just a few short weeks when our car arrives (in sha' allah).

The shaded porticoes are also crammed. Men shopping, men selling their wares, men socializing, men haggling over prices and products. Every where I looked were men. Everything we could have needed was for sale.

We did eventually make it to the mosques. We got up close enough to see the peachy-orange carved brick and stepped roof line. Not yet a tourist city, Khartoum's mosques are mainly for practical purposes. It was not an option today to go in.

It was ultimately reassuring to see that it really will be possible to stroll (any pace quicker than an amble would induce heatstroke) in these city streets as we have done in so many other locations. An avid walker, I feel strongly that this is the only way to get familiar with a neighborhood. Until today I had felt such explorations would be impossible. It just isn't usually done here. It seemed to me that white people stayed in their little white homes and their little white 4x4s and they got together only with other white people. Today that assumption has been broken.

We have come down from our ivory vehicles. Let us hope this indicates a new trend . . . that of personal, relational, experiential encounters across cultures built on sharing a community and getting to know one another face to face. Now that would be transformational diplomacy . . .