A Journey to the Red Sea # 4

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Into Kassala

The next leg of our journey – Gedaref to Kassala is made easier by our sitting in the front with the driver of the lorry we have hitched. The three hour journey turns out to be nearer five – the lorry is heavily loaded and its progress is slow.

Again, before we reach the town of Kassala and in sight of the famous jebels (mountains) that separate it from Ethiopia, the driver cuts off the road and crosses the desert to beat the Police who are waiting on the edge of town. Our travel papers are entirely in order, having taken the opportunity the day before to have them stamped by the Police in Gedaref.

The driver still insists on the detour through a Rashaida village, rubbing his thumb across his outstretched fingers, and saying ‘Qurush kateer’, his way of telling us that the Police will want a lot of money to let them pass through without delay.

Kassala, well inside the Eastern region and now only eight or nine hours from the Red Sea, is brutally hot and dry. The River Gash which flows from the highlands of Ethiopia in more pluvial times of the year is now a dried up wadi that stretches out into the desert like a dead and sun-bleached snake lying across the eastern portion of Sudan.

Luckily for us, the teachers in Kassala are still at home and our sleep is assured, as is our company. Chris and Sue come from the south of England, only to fall in love with the Yorkshire town of Huddersfield whilst studying there several years earlier. As they are old sweats, so to speak, in the town of Kassala, we are taken out and treated to the best food money can buy.

Laham (meat), ful (beans), salata (green salad) is the order, all washed down with chi bi lebel (tea with milk) until the day’s journey becomes only a distant, dim memory band an aid to a good night’s sleep.

The town of Kassala is so picturesque that we have decided to spend the whole of tomorrow looking round the place, taking more photos (my last ones were lost somewhere between Khartoum and the processing laboratory in Wiltshire), and attempting to climb the jebel at the back of the town.

This last decision – to climb the mountain- is a bad one that is ultimately doomed to failure in the scorching heat. Only goats and hard bitten shepherds stray that way in the heat of the day. On our wretched return from our attempted climb, Ustaz Jeremy, who had been languishing in Kassala while we strove upwards, laughs at our foolishness and our appearance, but in a kinder moment fetches us much needed cold water and lays out two mattresses for us to take our rest on. Woken up later with cups of tea and the radio tuned in to BBC’s Play of the Week – Rattigan’s ‘The Browning Version’, it is a joy after a morning scampering about huge rocks under a scalding sun while being watched by the baboons that are said to frequent these hills but are only rarely seen.

Listening to Nigel Stock in the part of Crocker Harris is as nice and perhaps as unusual a way of spending an afternoon as I can think of, made all the more pleasant in the knowledge that we needn’t do it again tomorrow.

Robert L. Fielding