Camping at the Pyramids of Meroe

About a four-hour drive north of Khartoum lies the ancient city of Meroe, which for many years was the capital of the Kingdom of Kush. Like their more famous neighbors to the north (the Egyptians), the Kushites buried their royalty in pyramids to see them into the afterlife with their possessions. Unlike the Egyptians, however, the Kushites didn't construct gargantuan pyramids. Like in Egypt, the Kushite pyramids are a tourist site. Unlike in Egypt, they are not overrun by tourists and civilization. So as someone who's never been to the pyramids before, this past weekend I went with a group of people from the Embassy to camp at the Pyramids of Meroe.

There wasn't much remarkable about the drive up--once we got past the built-up area of Khartoum North, it was a straight shot on one road for several hours to Meroe. The road generally followed the flow of the Nile, and occasionally there was a road that went off into the sandy desert to the east. But in general, we just drove straight. About four hours into the trip, the driver off-roaded, and that's when I realized we arrived at the pyramids. There was technically a small sign pointing towards them--and if I was looking for them, I would have noticed them easily--but there is not much tourist infrastructure around the pyramids (if the limited infrastructure there could even be considered).

I say we went camping there, but it's not like there's a campsite in the middle of the desert. No, instead, we drove for a little bit until we found a place we thought would make a good place to pitch a bunch of tents. As you can tell from the picture to the left, we really did choose a somewhat random spot. [Side Note: The orange tent was the one I slept in.] It was quiet--except for the touts that saw us and drive in and came to try to sell us things and make us ride camels and donkeys--and extremely peaceful, especially when it was just the wind blowing through the tent (more on that later). While close to the pyramids--about a 30 minute walk--it was far enough away that we weren't right on top of the pyramids, which was also nice. And finally, this lovely location put us right next to a beautiful mesa with wonderful panoramic views of the desert, which we hiked up to start the journey.

So after that hike, we finally went to the pyramids, which was a really cool experience. We were able to walk right up to the pyramids, and even into many (most) of their antechambers. Sadly, except for a few that have been restored, all of the pyramids are missing their tops. Why, you ask? Well, blame the Italians. At least that's the story that's told. An Italian found treasure in one of the pyramids, and so he and the crew went and blew off the tops of the rest of them to plunder them. In any case, these pyramids were built between 300 BCE and 350 AD, and even missing their tops, they are spectacular. They have beautiful hieroglyphics inside that look like they should be fake, but really are just well-preserved millenia-old ones. These pyramids may not be as large as the ones in Egypt--or as well-preserved--but they are definitely a sight to behold.

By this point, it was starting to get a bit late; the sun sets around 7:15, and because there's really not very much around, it gets DARK. QUICKLY. Happily for us during the day, there was a lot of cloud cover, which kept the temperature down. Unfortunately for us at night, there was a lot of cloud cover which kept us from being able to see in the moonlight. So after getting back, we got a fire going eventually to cook some dinner, and then we all went to bed.

That orange tent I was staying in wasn't doing so well in the wind, which kept collapsing one side of it, rendering a tent that already was small and looked like it was made for a pet or a small child even smaller. Add on to that that it was hot (lows in the mid-80s) and that the tent was facing the wrong direction for the wind--the air blew into the side of the tent rather than through its vent--and it was an interesting night. It also rained for about 30 minutes around 1am, which actually was welcome because it cooled me off, but it was nevertheless still a nuisance. To top it off, during one of my random wake-ups trying not to get too hot, my mind decided to think, "Hey, if someone wanted to kidnap you, it would be pretty easy given that you're in the middle of nowhere and the wind makes it constantly sound like someone is ripping into your tent." Ever try to sleep after thinking you might get kidnapped? Not so easy.

Added all together, it was a relatively restless night, but it was an absolutely splendid trip to visit one of Sudan's two cultural World Heritage Sites, and I really enjoyed camping in the middle of the desert. I look forward to doing it again with a properly-sized tent when it's cooler!

This song has been played many times on the radio over the last week here in Khartoum, and so I thought I should share it with all of you.

Quirks of Living in a Sanctioned Country

I've officially been in Sudan two months!!!

The US (and other partners, like the EU, Canada, etc.) have a web of sanctions and embargoes on Sudan that make doing business in Sudan the equivalent of threading a needle. I'm not going to go into the details of these sanctions (if you want to waste a few hours and have your eyes glaze over, feel free to peruse the US Department of the Treasury's website here), but because of all these sanctions, I need to conduct all financial transactions over a VPN which, to be fair, is a best practice living in any foreign country. As such, I have a VPN downloaded on my computer and to make sure I never forget, I ALWAYS activate it before going online. I'd hate to have my brain freeze lead to a frozen bank account or credit card.

A beautiful Sudanese sunset over the Nile.

Now that I have all my stuff, including my printer, I decided to plug in my electronics to make sure they all work. And my printer does work...mostly. It's a wireless printer and the plug-in cord doesn't actually fit on my computer, so I happily send things to it wirelessly. But remember the previous paragraph and VPNs and all? Yeah, my computer has a VPN, but my printer doesn't, so my printer has a Sudanese IP address and my computer has a US one. Therefore, sending a document to the printer wirelessly doesn't work, and it took me about 20 minutes of troubleshooting this morning before I realized that I will forever have to disconnect from my VPN in order to print. At least the printer works and I didn't have an ink disaster when unpacking?

In another quirk of a sanctioned country, I have an iPhone here but the Apple Store doesn't let Sudanese data plans/IP addresses download apps. And if you have an iPhone and have experienced the PAINFULNESS that is AppleMaps, you know downloading GoogleMaps is an absolute necessity. Thankfully some people here have VPN routers so I was able to connect to them to download apps I need/want. But now the apps won't update because, oh wait, I'm not on the VPN router all the time so it thinks a Sudanese data plan/IP address is trying to update. And I'm back to the big no-no part. So as a quirk of living in a sanctioned country, anytime I want a new app, or want to update an app to get rid of that super annoying number on my phone telling me that I have apps that need updating, I will need to go to a friend's house with a VPN router set up. The perfectionist in me--the same one that must have 0 unread emails in my inbox--is dying because of this.

I'm sure that in two years here I'll find other quirks. I'm already adjusting to the all-cash economy, although not being able to get cash at any time is a bit of frustration. At least things are relatively cheap, so I don't go through the cash all that quickly!

And while this song has nothing to do with this post, I really like it. So enjoy Lauren Aquilina's Sinners.

Censoring Music in a Conservative Country

Khartoum has two radio stations that sometimes play Western pop music, although neither does so exclusively. One of them usually plays acoustic covers in the mornings on my drive to work, and on the way home I listen to the other station and hear one Western song followed by two songs in Arabic. A few weeks ago I was shocked when I turned on the radio and heard Drake speak-singing "You used to call me on my cell phone." I was intrigued to find out how a song like Hotline Bling would be received in Sudan's conservative culture, especially since the lyrics are suggestive but never explicit.

I can't tell if the government requires music to be censored or if the radio stations do it because they know their listeners. Even in the US, Alessia Cara's Here is often censored surrounding the line "I'll be here/Somewhere in the corner/Under clouds of [marijuana]" not because people can't say marijuana on the radio but because a lot of radio stations apparently decided that their listeners didn't want to hear that word, at least not in the song's context. So in the US, when a word or phrase is censored, the music continues in the background but no word is sung or spoken. However, that's not how music censorship is done in Sudan. Instead, it sounds like the record is skipping, which makes Hotline Bling such an interesting song. It barely goes for more than a few seconds before jumping over the next "questionable" lyric.

For example, take this censored lyric:

'Cause ever since I left the city

You started wearing [less] and going out more

Glasses [of champagne] out on the dance floor

Hangin' with some girls I've never seen before

Or this one, which was painful to listen to because of the intense skipping:

These days all I do is

Wonder if you're [bendin' over backwards] for someone else

Wonder if you're [rollin' up] a backwoods for someone else

Doing things I taught you, [getting nasty for someone else]

You don't need no one else

It took me aback the first time I heard it, and then I realized what was happening, and it became entertaining to try to figure out why some of the lines were considered questionable and whether other lines coming up would be just as problematic (answer: in Hotline Bling, the station clearly went overboard...on other songs, they were a little less intense). I haven't heard any profanity-laced songs yet in Sudan, and I'd like to think that Sudanese radio knows to stay away from those lest a 3-minute song be reduced to 1-minute of hearing every other word!

While on the subject of music popular in Sudan, it feels like Dami Im's Sound of Silence is played on repeat sometimes. I recently discovered that it was Australia's entry into the Eurovision 2016 contest, which makes me enjoy it even more.

Europe, according to Eurovision

Sadly it placed second, although for the health of Eurovision that is probably a good thing. It'd be weird to host the 2017 edition in that lovely European country known as Australia....?

A Tradition Borne Out of Necessity

In 2008, I spent my first American Independence Day on the African continent. I was studying abroad in Tanzania at the time, and my classmates and I were searching for some good old fashioned American food to eat. But we weren't in Dar es Salaam, the largest city in the country, or Arusha, a cosmopolitan city in the country's northeast. No, on July 4, 2008, we were in Mwanza, a large city on the shores of Lake Victoria that exudes a small town feel. Restaurant options were limited, so we went to the most American restaurant we could find: a pizza place. Kuleana, the pizzeria, didn't have spectacular pizza, but it hit the spot and was about as close as we were going to get to our goal. I vowed to spend more American Independence Days in Africa and promised myself that if I did, pizza would become my holiday tradition.

Fast forward to 2016, and I find myself back in Africa and once again in a city where American food options are limited. What's a guy to do? Yep, you guessed it. Pizza it is. Debonair's, a South African chain, in fact. Is it good pizza? No, not particularly, but it isn't terrible and the memories it brings of 2008 makes it absolutely delicious. I've always wondered how people's random traditions are borne. Some are clearly passed down from generation to generation, some are clearly cultural, and some are definitely a result of necessity and happenstance. It's why, stereotypically, Jews eat Chinese food and go to the movies on Christmas. And now why I will have pizza on American Independence Day. It's all because I was in a far-off city and pizza was the closest thing to American food I could get.

Happy Fourth of July! To celebrate, enjoy some Bruce. There's little that's more patriotic than listening to Bruce.

BREXIT Scares Me For November, But Not For the Reasons You Probably Think

Like many in the world, I was shocked when I woke up Friday morning to see that the UK voted in a referendum to leave the EU. It's not my country, but I thought British citizens would find they gained more from being in the organization than they gained from being apart from it. My shock at the vote, however, turned into sadness as I watched people online (mostly Americans) clamber over one another to paint the "Leave" voters as terrible human beings, as racist and xenophobic bigots who are clearly uneducated. In the world of the internet, "Leave" voters only cast their vote because they were duped, while "Remain" voters used thinking and logic.

And that scares me for November and the US presidential election. So many people seem to think that if you vote against what they perceive as the right way, you're an awful person who 1) shouldn't be allowed to vote and 2) is not worthy of discussion. The thing is, smart people can disagree, and politics is disagreeing and finding ways to come together. As a truly undecided voter (I really DON'T know who I'm voting for in November), I already find the articles and comments on my Facebook and Twitter feed calling all Trump voters dumb and un-American disturbing, because I may ultimately vote for Trump in November. I'm not uneducated; rather, I am looking at my options and weighing the different choices against what's in my best interest and, in my view, in the best interest of the US in the long-term. And here's a shocker to all my liberal friends: I'm not convinced Clinton is the best option.

Do I disagree with many of the things Trump says? Yes, but then again, I disagree with many of the things Clinton says. The only person who truly represents all my views is me. Since I'm not running, however, I have to weigh whether the things I like about Clinton outweigh the things I dislike about Clinton, and whether the positives of Trump are stronger than the positives of Clinton. I'm doing my research, and just because my research and feelings disagree with yours doesn't make me a bad person. Or a bigot. Or a xenophobe. Or a racist. Instead, it means that I have different priorities than you do and I believe in a different way of getting to what we all (usually) agree is an ultimate goal: a prosperous, safe country.

So internet, please do me a favor. Stop portraying "Leave" voters as ridiculous people who don't care about the future of the UK, because most of those people do care about the country's future and voted in a way they thought was best to achieve their vision of the UK's future. And I know this won't happen, but in the US, let's try to not vilify Trump voters as simple, backwoods folk who, if only they learned more, would change their mind. Reasonable people can disagree. Just because someone doesn't vote the way you vote (or would have voted) doesn't make that person evil. The BREXIT referendum scared me most because of how many in the "Remain" camp responded: with an elitist attitude and intolerable of dissent. And sadly, this does not bode well for a close election in November.

So on a lighter note, John Oliver had a BREXIT song that was very funny (he was firmly in the "Remain" camp). WARNING: CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE