El Messelemiya Higher Secondary School for Boys: # 5

Going to market

For anything bigger than a pair of sandals, the mini-bus leaves for the nearby town of Wad Medani about fifteen kilometers to the south. The Japanese mini buses wait to fill up and only leave when every seat is occupied.

In the heat of the afternoon, sitting waiting for would be passengers can be trying, especially when nobody seems in the slightest hurry or to have any inclination whatsoever to step aboard. With my arms and forehead bathed in sweat, I ask my friend, Salah, when the driver will start the engine and drive, and get the answer, “alakeefu”, which means, ‘it’s up to him’.

Eventually the bus fills up and we leave for the town. Fort five minutes and fifteen dusty kilometers later, we reach Wad Medani. We have stopped three times to pick up passengers from hamlets and farms on the way. The young woman sitting next to me has unconcernedly fed her little bundle and its crying has stopped.

Some of the men sleep fitfully, their heads nodding down almost to their knees before being jolted awake by the bumpy road as it twists and turns over and around the irrigation canals that crisscross the Gezira. The main canal is boiling as it churns through the sluices into the subsidiary canals and ditches.

In the hot afternoon the main canal is full of schoolboys from El Messelemiya, swimming and resting, shouting and laughing in the swirling brown water. The road turns one more time before it reaches the main road which runs from Medani to the capital, Khartoum, and is one of the very few metalled roads in the Sudan.
Robert L. Fielding