El Messelemiya Higher Secondary School for Boys: # 7

In town

The roads leading away from the station are hardly less crowded and the traffic winds in and out of the throng as best it can. Red taxis noisily ply their trade, speeding to their fare’s destination. Crowded trucks take those whose journeys are unfinished, to the suq kabir (b big market) where vans that have been adapted to carry people take them to the surrounding villages of Soriba, Hantoub and El Hosh.

The avenues by the wide Blue Nile are cooler than the hot marketplaces, and old men sit and ruminate in the shade of the acacia trees. Some smoke tobacco, others put a brown pellet of snuff in the space between their teeth and their bottom lip. Some speak very quickly and excitedly, pausing only to spit the spent snuff into blackened earth or drink water from aluminium cups. Small boys play football where they can, and mothers wipe the sweat from the little head poking out from the folds in their clothes.

A large, imposing building houses the Ministry of Education and men in Western dress saunter along its corridors. Only howajad rush, and they too learn to go more slowly in the midday heat. The business that is conducted in these rooms, kept free from flies by slowly whirling fans is undertaken at this same pace; slowly, and any attempt to hurry up the proceedings is doomed to failure and can actually be counter productive.

A harassed bureaucrat can be a serious obstacle to progress and the only way to proceed is at his funereal pace or not at all. If tea should be served, even at a crucial stage in your dealings, the best thing to do is to partake of a glass when it is offered, which it always is.

The to-ing and fro-ing will eventually end and you will leave, but things must run their course, which they will do in spite of your impatience which must be stifled under a hot collar.
Robert L. Fielding