A Journey to the Red Sea #3

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Gedaref

In another part of Gedaref market, the smell betrays its business – piles of dried fish from somewhere – the sea is still 350 miles away (perhaps these fish come from the Nile) are haggled over by men kneeling in the dirt.

In yet another part of this seemingly endless market, the market traders sell what I can best only describe under the generic label, artifacts, ranging from leather whips for the camels, horses and donkeys, to earthenware coffee pots and milk jugs made from old tin cans that contained powdered milk, before they were emptied, opened, cut and soldered so that they are able to pour milk as well as hold its dried equivalent.

We had often noted that not very much of anything is wasted in Sudan – perhaps the best illustration of this is the way worn out tyres are made into all sorts of things – cheap flip-flops, or vessels for carrying water – car springs from Oxford, Dagenham or Hailwood end their lives as knives, swords, or all sorts of kitchen utensils and are wholly unrecognizable from the original.

Having left the teeming market behind in a flurry of dust, noise and banter, we have to search out the home of one of our colleagues, Ustaz Jeremy of Rugby, Oxford and now, Gedaref. We find his house, but it seems from the people living across the dusty, wheel rutted street that he has had exactly the same idea as us and is using the time off to go exploring. This is a problem for us until another ‘howaja’ hails us to ask us if we are lost. He comes down from his rooftop to talk to us. It seems we have inadvertently stumbled on the headquarters of the Save the Children Fund in Gedaref.

The rooftop from which we were hailed is that of the rest house for the many aid workers in the area working under the noble auspices of the Fund. After a shower, a change of clothes and a cold drink, the aches from the lorry journey and the dust of the ‘haboob’ are easily forgotten – until the next time.

Derek, our host, is a pleasant man in his early forties, comes from Llanberis in North Wales and is the Field Director of the organization here in Gedaref. His job is to coordinate and direct the work that goes on all the time, year in, year out – the work that is largely unsung but so necessary in a country prone to endemic dysentery, malaria, and gardia, which is an unpleasant ailment that prohibits movement very far away from a toilet.

Most serious ailments and malnutrition associated diseases are not infrequent and at the moment Derek and his co-workers in the town are undertaking a project to enable the market traders to dispose of their rubbish – piles of rotting vegetables and all manner of organic waste. To this end, Derek has secured the help of Gedaref’s equivalent of the Town Council in providing rough iron skips with which to dispose of the potentially harmful waste of the market.

Other projects include the provision of culverts to drain rainwater from the wadis of the deluge when it arrives with the rainy season later in the year. This last project should hopefully remove or at any rate reduce the breeding grounds of the mosquitoes that so efficiently spread malaria to the people of Sudan – everybody, including the howajad have occasional bouts of the disease.

Robert L. Fielding