Just Close Your Eyes and Drive

I remember when my brother was first learning to drive, he (on more than one occasion) joked that his driving strategy would be to close his eyes and drive...because everyone else would get out of his way. In an American context, that's ridiculous. In a Sudanese context, I'm thinking these people went to the same driving school as my brother. Driving around Khartoum is at times fine, but there are enough crazy--and truly head-scratching--patterns that it makes you question every rule of driving you've ever known. I went to Quiz Night the other night and we were joking that there should be a category of "Sudanese Driving Rules." Here are a few of the possible questions, based on things I've encountered in my first three and a half weeks in-country:

Question: What's Rule #1 of driving in Khartoum?
Answer: Don't cross a bridge.
Explanation: Khartoum is a peninsula in the Nile, right before the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet. Crossing a bridge means that you're leaving Khartoum for Khartoum North (Blue Nile) or Omdurman (White Nile). Therefore, don't cross a bridge, and you're almost guaranteed to remain in Khartoum.

Question: Does Sudan drive on the left side of the road or the right side of the road?
Answer: Both.
Explanation: I've seen drivers go against traffic even when there's a median. Tuk-tuk drivers (little rickshaws) are the worst culprits, but I've seen plenty of cars doing this. It's usually when there's a median and they don't feel like crossing all the way over to have to make a left again at the next intersection. It's almost as if the driver is thinking: "It's a short distance to go against traffic; what's the worst that could happen?"

Question: From which lane can you make a left turn?
Answer: All of them!
Explanation: The Sudanese have no concept that on a four-lane road, the far right lane shouldn't be making a left turn and the far-left lane shouldn't be making a right turn.

Context: Sudanese traffic lights have counters on them (telling you how much longer until your red light turns green, and how much longer your green light will remain green).
Question: How long should one wait before honking one's horn at the driver for not going on green?
Answer: When the red light still has 5 seconds to go.
Explanation: Pretty self-explanatory. The impatience is mind-boggling.

Question: What goes faster: a tuk-tuk, a mini-bus, or a donkey cart?
Answer: They all go the same speed...that of a tired donkey.
Explanation: I've learned to share the road, but these vehicles all drive so erratically that you have to take whatever chance you get to pass them. Or that will be one VERY long trip down the road.

Question: What are Khartoum's main roads named?
Answer: Whatever the person driving feels like calling them, because it's not like most of them are signed.
Explanation: My favorite example of this is in a neighborhood called Amarat 2, which is on the other side of Khartoum from where I live. The east-west streets are helpfully numbered 1 to 61 from north to south. But this does me no good when I don't know if I'm on Street 7 or Street 47. I cannot confirm this, but I may have gotten a little lost in Amarat before finding that Street 15 is one of the few that DOES have a label (on part of it, at least).

Question: Where's an appropriate place to stop your broken-down car?
Answer: Middle of the road with the doors all open and the hood and trunk popped.
Explanation: Surprisingly, I still haven't seen any cars without any of their doors.

So that's the end of the Sudanese Driving Rules trivia round. Anybody get any of the answers correct?

Keeping with the driving spirit, here's a little Carpool Karaoke with James Corden. So many good ones, but I think Gwen Stefani takes it. Explaining the lyrics to that one part of Sweet Escape nobody knows and the epic We Are the Champions with two special guests makes this a must-watch:

Khartoum: A City of Perspectives

Khartoum sits at the intersection of Africa and the Arab World, and one's personal background in either of these two worlds--or neither, in some cases--greatly influences how one views Khartoum and, more generally, Sudan. It is in Khartoum that the White Nile, which starts in the rainforests of Rwanda, meets the Blue Nile, which emerges from the highlands of Ethiopia. It is from Khartoum where the new, mightier Nile, flows past Aswan and the pyramids at Luxor before providing Cairo its sustenance and then fanning out to enter the Mediterranean Sea. Khartoum is literally at the geographic meeting point of Africa and the Arab World, and this has influenced its people, architecture, culture, and society.

I have only been in Khartoum 10 days, so perhaps my view of the city will change, but in talking with others, it has become apparent that perspective is key to how one approaches Sudan. I view Khartoum as an African city with an Arab flair. For instance, the sand-lined roads are reminiscent of Dar es Salaam or Kigali. The massive slabs of concrete rising along the roads seem like they are probably in a perpetual state of construction (like in Maputo or Lusaka). And things seem to fall apart at any given moment, like my experience this morning with a car's rear bumper randomly flying off as we were driving down a major road (like Moroni or Harare).

To others I've spoken to, Khartoum is an Arab city with an African flair. The sand and dust are like any of the desert countries in the Arab World. The prevalence of high-end cars sometimes looks like a scene out of Doha or Dubai. Not to mention that the Sudanese speak Arabic, even if it does have a lot of non-Arab root words in it.

The best part is that both of these views of Khartoum are true. An Africanist like myself will find the city comforting in many ways and recognize that an adjustment is needed to deal with the fact that I can't understand the language OR read it. An Arabist finds the city comforting in the use of many traditional Arab customs, but the inconsistency of getting things in Khartoum may be off-putting. So this is what I've discovered in my first 10 days here. I'm looking forward to further exploring the city and hopefully getting to other parts of Sudan during my two years here.

Unfortunately, there's no picture or favorite video today because the internet is being silly and, while generally working, is a bit too finicky for my liking. So next time.

Another Big Move

This blog is about to take another big turn as I leave the comforts of the northern Virginia suburbs for a city of 3.6 million (or more) people. This coming Sunday, I will travel more than 6,500 miles to the lovely Khartoum, Sudan, for the next two years. I am really excited about this opportunity but recognize that it will make it more difficult to interact with family and friends. This move is one of the biggest reasons I haven't been as dedicated to this blog as I probably would otherwise have been. I knew moving was stressful, but I don't think I understood how stressful an international move is, especially one done as a single person while still having to go to work each day. But I'm almost there, and I look forward to sharing new adventures from Khartoum.

As for a happy video, I went to my cousin's Bat Mitvah this weekend and I heard this song. I recognize that it's from 2014, but it really made me happy and feels like a song that can apply to my move. So I hope you enjoy it too.

Read the World: An International Book List

Back in 2014, I posted about the Ten Books That Changed My Life, and there's actually something pretty unique about five of those ten books. Five of them are part of my internationally-minded book list, which I have dubbed "Read the World." This list has 197 entries--one for each country in the world--and contains either a book about that country, of someone traveling through that country, by a famous author from that country, or reflects a parody of that country. Some countries were really easy to fill in with book titles, but others took a lot more work. Do you know a good book about Comoros or by a Comoran author? Yeah, probably not.

I created the first iteration of the list back in 2007 with a friend in college after I read Tom Bissell's Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia, a travelogue of Bissell's adventures in Uzbekistan. Since then, the list has been updated and modified many times as books have been written or I've found other books to satisfy a country. In other cases, friends have recommended books to me that they thought could be used for a specific country. In each instance, I weighed whether I thought that the book met the criteria I laid out, and I tried my best to find books that stayed truest to the country the book was intended to represent. Overall, though, I also wanted to make sure I found a variety of types of books.

I have read 61 of the 197 books thusfar--of varying degrees of quality and recommendedness--and have five others on my bookshelf ready to read when I have some spare time. Here is my completed list, organized by region. If you have a recommendation for a country not listed below, please let me know so I can consider updating my list; I'm always looking for ways to keep the list fresh and interesting! Or, if you want the full list of 197 books, let me know that and I can send it to you!

Completed (Red); On My Bookshelf (Yellow); Still To Be Read/Open to Updating (White)

Americas

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo (Brazil)
• Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Canada)
• Fidel Castro by Clive Foss (Cuba)
• One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta (El Salvador)
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (Peru)
• Rise to Rebellion by Jeffrey Shaara (United States)

East, South, and Central Asia

• Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)
• Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey Into Bhutan by Jaime Zeppa (Bhutan)
• Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost (China)
• Wife by Bharati Mukherjee (India)
• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Indonesia)
• Shutting Out the Sun by Michael Zielenziger (Japan)
• Apples Are From Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared by Christopher Robbins (Kazakhstan)
• The Secret History of the Mongols by Francis Woodman Cleaves (Mongolia)
• The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux (Myanmar)
• Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (North Korea)
• In the Line of Fire by Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan)
• Tea Time With Terrorists by Mark Stephen Meadows (Sri Lanka)
• Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan)

Europe

• Broken April by Ismail Kadare (Albania)
• Andorra by Peter Cameron (Andorra)
• Nibelungenlied (Austria)
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (France)
• Stamping Grounds by Charlie Connelly (Liechtenstein)
• Playing the Moldovans at Tennis by Tony Hawkes (Moldova)
• Anything Considered by Peter Mayle (Monaco)
• The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank (Netherlands)
• A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen (Norway)
• Blindness by Jose Saramago (Portugal)
• Metro Stop Dostoevsky by Ingrid Bengis (Russia)
• Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (United Kingdom)

Middle East

• The Stranger by Albert Camus (Algeria)
• On the State of Egypt by Alaa Al Aswany (Egypt)
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (Iran)
• I'Jaam by Sinan Antoon (Iraq)
• In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta Ahmed (Saudi Arabia)
• I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali (Yemen)

Oceania

• In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (Australia)
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost (Kiribati)
• Movin' On: From the Mean Streets of Los Angeles to the Sandy Beaches of Micronesia by Joe Race (Micronesia)
• Getting Stoned With Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu by J. Maarten Troost (Vanuatu)

Sub-Saharan Africa

• No One Can Stop the Rain by Karin Moorhouse (Angola)
• Whatever You Do, Don't Run; True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide by Peter Allison (Botswana)
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• The Train to Djibouti by Laura Kassa (Ethiopia)
• Onions Are My Husband by Gracia Clark (Ghana)
• The Anti-Politics Machine by James Ferguson (Lesotho)
• Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor by Harri Englund (Malawi)
• Little India: Diaspora, Time, and Ethnolinguistic Belonging in Hindu Mauritius by Patrick Eisenlohr (Mauritius)
• A Different Kind of War Story by Carolyn Nordstrom (Mozambique)
• Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
• We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Phillip Gourevitch (Rwanda)
• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ismael Beah (Sierra Leone)
• The Pirates of Somalia by Jay Bahadur (Somalia)
• Emma's War by Deborah Scroggins (South Sudan)
• The Translator by Daoud Hari (Sudan)
• Highland Sanctuary: Environmental History in Tanzania's Usambara Mountains by Christopher Conte (Tanzania)
• An African in Greenland by Tete-Michel Kpomassie (Togo)
• The Price of Stones by Twesigye Jackson Kaguri (Uganda)
• The Lunda-Ndembu by James Pritchett (Zambia)
• The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe)

The Books I Have on My Bookshelf

• 33 Men by Jonathan Franklin (Chile)
• The Shadow of Kilimanjaro: On Foot Across East Africa by Rick Ridgeway (Kenya)
• Spirit of the Phoenix by Tim Llewellyn (Lebanon)
• Unfinished Revolution: Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua's Struggle for Liberation by Kenneth Morris (Nicaragua)
• Crescent and Star by Stephen Kinzer (Turkey)

And nearly forgot my happy video. So here it is, a beautiful piano cover of a pop song all over the radio these days:

Bishkek Or Bust: My Sporcle Addiction

If you haven't experienced the brilliance of Sporcle you're missing out. It's a forum for online trivia quizzes and just plain, simple fun. Their motto, Mentally Stimulating Diversions, is exactly what Sporcle is all about. Some quizzes are silly (Can you press the spacebar 225 times in 30 seconds? I can't...my record right now is 193), but others are fun to test your knowledge (Can you name every country in the world? Yes, obviously. See: this.). You can even make your own quizzes for your own edification or to challenge your friends and the world. So why am I making a post all about Sporcle? Well, Sporcle might be my addiction.

I know what you're thinking...this sounds like an exaggeration! I promise you it is not. I finally looked at my stats on the website, and below is what I found. (Note: I joined the site on 30 January 2009, so this only includes data since that point.)

This is my Sporcle avatar, because who doesn't love looking
at a baby elephant? :)

I have played 16,869 quizzes and tried my luck at 13,617 unique quizzes, including 26.65% of all quizzes Sporcle has verified as good. The Geography category is my most-played category (that's a no-duh statement). My most-played quiz is Countries of the World, which I've played 25 times, although not in the past two years. And I can type them all in 5 minutes 15 seconds. Sporcle has badges for achieving certain things, and I've earned 256 of 351 badges across a wide variety of categories, and am pretty far along in a few others. For instance, I've played 25 different Art quizzes and 100 different NBA quizzes.

Sporcle isn't just about diverting my attention; I've also learned a lot in the process. I can spell Kyrgyzstan without pausing (Sporcle has a fascination with Kyrgyzstan because it is so hard to spell, which led to the creation of the phrase Bishkek or Bust). Krzyzewski and Schwarzenegger are easier than before, but still a bit difficult for me. I now know that Ngerulmud has replaced Koror as the capital of Palau. I can name 10 body parts that are only three letters long. And I still know all original 151 Pokémon.

So I encourage you to check out Sporcle. Have some fun. Test your knowledge. And learn to spell Kyrgyzstan!

For this post's video, Jimmy Fallon made a ridiculously funny game: Box of Lies. Jennifer Lawrence totally nails it.