Every once in a while, perhaps every couple of years or so, somewhere in the world, in a far-off country populated by brown people about whom we in the west care very little, a grossly overloaded passenger vessel sinks, with huge and tragic loss of life. Amid much local wailing and gnashing of teeth, western journalists begin the tut-tutting and condascension, while we voyeuristic viewers revel in the horror. "Surely there couldn't really have been 7,000 people on that decrepit little boat?", we sigh, aghast. "What kind of fool would ever board such a ship?"
Make no mistake, one of these days such a fate will halt the Aswan to Wadi Halfa ferry across Lake Nasser. Thankfully, however, no such tragedy befell the creaking vessel last Monday, when I was aboard for the 20 hour cruise from Egypt to Sudan.
The number of people on board, and the amount of personal cargo they bring with them, is simply staggering. Sleeping on the top deck, under the stars,I had expected to be largely alone. Crucially, I found a spot next to the lifeboats, "just in case". After all, surely everyone else would be in their first class cabins,or in the second class seating area below decks? Wrong. There is not a single square inch of floor space that is not occupied by tired limbs, Sudanese or Egyptian, or a random assortment of cargo. As well as personal effects, a bewildering array of import-export merchandise appears to be making the cross-border journey: televisions, mobile phone accessories, fruit and vegetables, bedding, women's underwear, ballpoint pens; all of it unceremoniously piled high on deck. Even my clever worst-case scenario planning lies in tatters: were the ship to start sinking, even those people currently situated within five feet of the lifeboats would render them fatally overcrowded; god knows what would happen to the cast of thousands marooned below decks.
As night falls and the sky reveals a shimmering blanket of stars, the crowds stretch out and try to find sleep. There is no time for squeamishness or qualms about personal space; everyone bunks down together in extreme proximity. All manner of bodily functions occur all around me, with a noxious array of odours and excretions filling the night air. Pleasant it is not.
Just as I dose off, I am rudely awoken by one of the few other khawajas -Sudanese Arabic for "foreigners"or "white man" - on board, as it seems the powers that be require our passports for immediate processing. As I am the only one of the ten or so khawajas to speak any Arabic whatsoever, I have been nominated to act as interpreter. I reluctantly make my way around the upper deck to each group of travellers, picking my way clumsily through the knots of slumbering bodies on the floor, tripping over some, standing on others, until I have collected all the necessary passports. I am then led back across the ship, this time taking the direct route along a pipe on the outer edge of the top deck. The pipe sways unsteadily under my weight, and as I peer down into the dark waters of Lake Nasser, it occurs to me that should I fall, no-one will hear my screams above the roar of the engines as I drown. Worse still, nine other khawajas will face an even more unpleasant fate, as devoid of passports and visas, they too are swallowed up by the murky depths of Sudanese bureaucracy.
Despite my unease with heights, I try not to look down, focus on the other side, and eventually make it across without a hitch. For the second time in two days I feel that rush of gratitude to God, Allah, Buddha, or Fate - whichever higher power - or more likely blind chance - has kept me alive. For yesterday I was involved in a terrifying bus crash at close to 100mph. Our lunatic driver, doing 160kph while sitting less than 2 metres behind the vehicle in front, actually saved our lives with his sheer idiocy and incompetence: had he seen the small car sized container come cartwheeling off the pickup truck flying past in the opposite direction and swerved, I would undoubtedly have come to a sticky end on the Aswan-Abu Simbel desert highway. As it was, he never flinched and just drove straight through the bouncing pallet, obliterating the container and most of the front end of our minibus in the process.
Sitting just behind the hapless chauffeur, I saw the whole thing unfold in slow motion; for a couple of seconds time seemed to stand still as I struggled to comprehend what was happening. As a couple of girls behind me screamed, I had time to notice the confused look on the driver's face as a huge box cannoned off the windscreen. Amazingly the glass didn't shatter, though I have no idea how, and we were able to slow to a standstill as people around me by turns sobbed, cursed, and laughed nervously. Never one to pass up the opportunity to practise my linguistic skills, I mustered a few choice insults in Arabic for the benefit of the moronic driver who had just nearly killed us all. In the circumstances I wasn't really satisfied with "donkey"; luckily a corpulent Kiwi sitting just behind me spoke for the whole bus with a tirade of agricultural anglo-Saxon, delivered in a peculiarly amusing Auckland accent.
Upon repeating this grim tale to one of my fellow passengers on the ferry, a 73 year old Hungarian-Swiss dentist from Zurich, (who incidentally bore an uncanny resemblance to an aging Robert Redford), I was treated to a similar tale from his first trip to the Dark Continent in 1962, a journey he is now retracing as a sprightly septegenarian grandfather. Studying dentistry by day, he drove a taxi ay night to raise enough money to fund his course, and also to buy a one way flight to Nairobi, from where he intended to hitch-hike all the way back to Europe. His duffel bag stuffed with cheap canned foods and old clothes, he set off across East Africa from Kenya's notorious capital. To his evident horror, still palpable 45 years later, his very first ride caught fire, incinerating all his belongings, and forcing him to hurl himself into the road from the fast-moving inferno. Bruised, battered, penniless and not a little demoralised, he picked himself up, dusted himself down, and continued regardless.
He laughs about it now, and it certainly makes for a great story, even half a century later. Perhaps in time I'll feel the same way about the Egyptian bus crash and walking the plank on the overloaded Sudanese ferry. Just not yet.
Make no mistake, one of these days such a fate will halt the Aswan to Wadi Halfa ferry across Lake Nasser. Thankfully, however, no such tragedy befell the creaking vessel last Monday, when I was aboard for the 20 hour cruise from Egypt to Sudan.
The number of people on board, and the amount of personal cargo they bring with them, is simply staggering. Sleeping on the top deck, under the stars,I had expected to be largely alone. Crucially, I found a spot next to the lifeboats, "just in case". After all, surely everyone else would be in their first class cabins,or in the second class seating area below decks? Wrong. There is not a single square inch of floor space that is not occupied by tired limbs, Sudanese or Egyptian, or a random assortment of cargo. As well as personal effects, a bewildering array of import-export merchandise appears to be making the cross-border journey: televisions, mobile phone accessories, fruit and vegetables, bedding, women's underwear, ballpoint pens; all of it unceremoniously piled high on deck. Even my clever worst-case scenario planning lies in tatters: were the ship to start sinking, even those people currently situated within five feet of the lifeboats would render them fatally overcrowded; god knows what would happen to the cast of thousands marooned below decks.
As night falls and the sky reveals a shimmering blanket of stars, the crowds stretch out and try to find sleep. There is no time for squeamishness or qualms about personal space; everyone bunks down together in extreme proximity. All manner of bodily functions occur all around me, with a noxious array of odours and excretions filling the night air. Pleasant it is not.
Just as I dose off, I am rudely awoken by one of the few other khawajas -Sudanese Arabic for "foreigners"or "white man" - on board, as it seems the powers that be require our passports for immediate processing. As I am the only one of the ten or so khawajas to speak any Arabic whatsoever, I have been nominated to act as interpreter. I reluctantly make my way around the upper deck to each group of travellers, picking my way clumsily through the knots of slumbering bodies on the floor, tripping over some, standing on others, until I have collected all the necessary passports. I am then led back across the ship, this time taking the direct route along a pipe on the outer edge of the top deck. The pipe sways unsteadily under my weight, and as I peer down into the dark waters of Lake Nasser, it occurs to me that should I fall, no-one will hear my screams above the roar of the engines as I drown. Worse still, nine other khawajas will face an even more unpleasant fate, as devoid of passports and visas, they too are swallowed up by the murky depths of Sudanese bureaucracy.
Despite my unease with heights, I try not to look down, focus on the other side, and eventually make it across without a hitch. For the second time in two days I feel that rush of gratitude to God, Allah, Buddha, or Fate - whichever higher power - or more likely blind chance - has kept me alive. For yesterday I was involved in a terrifying bus crash at close to 100mph. Our lunatic driver, doing 160kph while sitting less than 2 metres behind the vehicle in front, actually saved our lives with his sheer idiocy and incompetence: had he seen the small car sized container come cartwheeling off the pickup truck flying past in the opposite direction and swerved, I would undoubtedly have come to a sticky end on the Aswan-Abu Simbel desert highway. As it was, he never flinched and just drove straight through the bouncing pallet, obliterating the container and most of the front end of our minibus in the process.
Sitting just behind the hapless chauffeur, I saw the whole thing unfold in slow motion; for a couple of seconds time seemed to stand still as I struggled to comprehend what was happening. As a couple of girls behind me screamed, I had time to notice the confused look on the driver's face as a huge box cannoned off the windscreen. Amazingly the glass didn't shatter, though I have no idea how, and we were able to slow to a standstill as people around me by turns sobbed, cursed, and laughed nervously. Never one to pass up the opportunity to practise my linguistic skills, I mustered a few choice insults in Arabic for the benefit of the moronic driver who had just nearly killed us all. In the circumstances I wasn't really satisfied with "donkey"; luckily a corpulent Kiwi sitting just behind me spoke for the whole bus with a tirade of agricultural anglo-Saxon, delivered in a peculiarly amusing Auckland accent.
Upon repeating this grim tale to one of my fellow passengers on the ferry, a 73 year old Hungarian-Swiss dentist from Zurich, (who incidentally bore an uncanny resemblance to an aging Robert Redford), I was treated to a similar tale from his first trip to the Dark Continent in 1962, a journey he is now retracing as a sprightly septegenarian grandfather. Studying dentistry by day, he drove a taxi ay night to raise enough money to fund his course, and also to buy a one way flight to Nairobi, from where he intended to hitch-hike all the way back to Europe. His duffel bag stuffed with cheap canned foods and old clothes, he set off across East Africa from Kenya's notorious capital. To his evident horror, still palpable 45 years later, his very first ride caught fire, incinerating all his belongings, and forcing him to hurl himself into the road from the fast-moving inferno. Bruised, battered, penniless and not a little demoralised, he picked himself up, dusted himself down, and continued regardless.
He laughs about it now, and it certainly makes for a great story, even half a century later. Perhaps in time I'll feel the same way about the Egyptian bus crash and walking the plank on the overloaded Sudanese ferry. Just not yet.
