When Progress Isn't Progress

Online petition - Stop the Dams in Sudan!

The two seasons I dug in Sudan were as part of the salvage campaign before the new Merowe Dam at the 4th Cataract was completed and the reservoir it formed filled, flooding the area.

We got to see first hand what that meant for the people who lived in the area.  They were resettled in places not of their own choosing, on land unfamiliar to them, and in areas unsuitable to farming as they were accustomed.

It is unlikely any of them will ever see any great benefit from the dam itself.  The hydroelectric power it produces is intended primarily for Egypt and the money earned from that will go to the dictator in power in Khartoum.

In response to attempts to negotiate different terms of resettlement or a different time-line for construction and flooding, people were killed by state police.  Flooding was begun ahead of schedule, narrowly avoiding harm to those who remained in the area.

The new dams proposed will not be different.  They will not be a source of benefit for the people they displace.  They will be a way to enrich a dictatorial, genocidal regime headed by Bashir.  They are a way for foreign interests to endear themselves further to Bashir and his cronies for their own enrichment and access to oil and mineral wealth. They will also provide a convenient opportunity to displace the remainder of the Nubian ethnic group who managed to hang on to their tradition territory and way of life even in the face of the Aswan Dam built in the 1960s and the ongoing campaign and bias against them in Sudan and Egypt. 

Candidly, no one in power is likely to give a damn if you read the petition or sign it.  But I think as fellow human beings, we at least owe the people likely to be displaced a moment of thought and sympathy.  And maybe a small hope that things might change. 

It will be people like this kid.  And places like that run-down goat pen.  And while you might say that being placed in brand new constructed villages will make things better for them, remember that they don't get a choice.  They don't get input into how the villages are arranged or where they're placed.  And if they try to complain or negotiate, they're as likely to be shot or beaten to death as they are given a fair hearing.

Fun with Hammers

Image via Wikipedia

What a hammer may look like

It's random tales from the field time again, children.  Gather round.

The last time I was in Sudan (2008) I got really, really sick.  Flu with complications.  Wound up leaving our excavation site for about a week to go back to the capital in Khartoum to see a doctor and get meds and junk.  Got to feeling slightly better, didn't want to come home to Chicago, so went back out to the site.  Before you yell at me for the stupid, bear in mind it was January.  No one in their right mind would go back to Chicago in January if they could avoid it.

Anyway we got back and I was still weak and woozy as all hell.  The day after I got back, the rest of the team went on a day trip to visit some other sites, some of which I had seen before.  Having just done the 8 or so hour journey from Khartoum the day before I was like "y'all have fun now,  don't fall in any tombs."

So it was me and our cook, Hashem left at the house.  As an aside, Hashem is a genius.  My god that man can cook.  He made fried chicken!  In a dirt kitchen!  With just two propane burners!  And soup!  He spoke almost no English, but so what.  He would wipe the floor with that Colonel dude from Kentucky.  If he ever for some reason wants to move the the US I will be at whatever government office necessary waving my cane around and yelling about how we need his awesome cooking for the good of the nation.

Anyway, I had stayed in bed a little late that day until I felt like getting up.  Then I staggered over to the dining room part of the house to see if there was tea left in any of the carafes and maybe some packaged cookies or something.  Hashem sees me and conveys very clearly that no, skinny foreign woman who looks like she may pass out at any moment, you are eating real food.  Off he goes.

I take a seat in one of the plastic chairs and hang out, sort of idly watching flies get caught on the fly-tapes we have hanging from the ceiling.  (Remember the fly tape, it's important later.)

Hashem all squinty because some genius
thought staring into the sun
for photos was a good idea

Hashem returns with enough food to feed like 8 people.  I express appropriate awe/gratitude and start eating hoping I can at least manage to force down enough not to offend him. It was good, I just still felt like ass.  He wanders off again, probably to mix his 87 herbs and spices for his magical, magical fried chicken.

There is suddenly this awful, loud buzzing noise.  Enough that I jumped up and away from the fluorescent light we had for use at night even though it wasn't turned on.  Then I look at one of the fly tapes.  A small bird appears to be stuck in it.  On closer inspection, it turns out to be some sort of gargantuan bumble bee.  I'm thinking "Chainsaw Bee" is a good name.  It's stuck to the fly tape, but is so heavy it's pulled the thing down almost to the tabletop.  And it's pissed and sounding even more like a chainsaw.  And skeezing me out, big time.  And shaking and jerking on the fly tape threatening to pull it down and/or release the lifeless but still disgusting bodies of its predecessors. 

Pretty sure
it was about the size of a Space Bee

So, after rescuing my plate of food from possible contamination by the chainsaw bee, I look around for a way to kill it.  I was wearing flipflops.  No way.  All the books available 1) belonged to me and 2) would have been ruined by Chainsaw Bee guts.  Other options included plastic chairs,  plastic tables, or either of 2 laptops.  There was also the option of yelling for Hashem, but I didn't know the Arabic for "the sickly crazy foreigner is a chickenshit and there is a huge fucking Chainsaw Bee up in here."

Then I spotted a hammer.  Score!

At first I tried smacking it with the hammer while it was still on the dangling fly paper.  In retrospect, this is probably the most obvious evidence that I was still pretty unwell, because even I would ordinarily recognize that as a bad idea.

My feeble swipes at it finally knocked Chainsaw Bee to the ground however.  Victory was to be mine!

There I am, crouched on the ground with a good-sized hammer in my hand, raised over my head prepared to strike with a no doubt manic/feverish gleam in my eye when Hashem comes back.  He stopped and blinked.  I waved my free hand feebly and gestured at Chainsaw Bee.  He sort of nodded.  And went away.

I smashed the fuck out of Chainsaw Bee.


I considered finding Hashem and trying to explain but, again, wasn't sure how to express "I'm stupid and there was a bee" in either Arabic or pantomime without making myself look even crazier.

Instead, I finished my brunch.

February 5, Four Years Ago

We were finally, after much to-ing and fro-ing and bureacratic nonsense and confusion ready to leave Kareima (Gebel Barkal) for our excavation site.

Some of us, including me, went in the Land Cruiser.  Tom and one of the field directors and our Sudanese inspector went on the lorry with all our supplies.


And thus began a truly surreal and, in retrospect, hilarious experience.

So, the route from Kareima up to the 4th Cataract is over-desert and along rough tracks.  There is no pavement.  No signs.  No lights.  Nothing.  There are no villages until you get back near the river at the cataract.

We were barely out of the city of Kareima when one of the tires on the lorry went flat.  We hung around for a while and apparently they didn't have a tool they needed to fix the tire, so the driver called someone back in Kareima (hurray for cell phones) to send someone out with one.

It was decided that those of us in the Land Cruiser should go on ahead.  So, we did.

We arrived at the village where, the previous day, the directors had arranged to rent a house for us to live in only to find that we were no longer exactly welcome.  Apparently, the man we were supposed to rent the house from hadn't had permission from the omdeh (a sort of combination mayor/judge/community leader).  He did not want us to rent the house because he and the rest of the Manasir tribe were trying to negotiate a better resettlement deal with the Sudanese government and part of their strategy was refusing to cooperate with the archaeological teams trying to do salvage a survey ahead of the dam flooding the area. 
Fair enough.  Unfortunately the Land Cruiser occupants consisted of:
- the driver who spoke very little English and later turned out to be a sexual predator and speed addict
- One of the co-directors who spoke very little Arabic and that badly and who also has a really nasty colonialist streak.  We'll call him by the nickname the local workers we hired eventually started using for him:  Abu Hamar. 
- me who had never been to Sudan before and knew *maybe* 10 words of Arabic.  Also, I was in Sudan at that point mostly because no way was I going to wait at home while Tom was in freakin' Sudan, plus I hadn't been out to dig in 3 years.
- 3 other team members who had also never been to Sudan before and spoke no Arabic

So, one of the words I did know in Arabic at the time was the imperative for "leave" or "go away."  About 10 minutes into the um, I guess it was a conversation, but no one really knew what was going on, I start hearing the omdeh saying "Go away.  No, really, leave." 

Awesome.

That distracted me from my occupation at the time, which was trying to figure out if size and elaboration of sunglasses indicated social status among the men gathered there, especially as the omdeh was rocking some knock-off Chanel sunglasses with the interlocked "C's" where the ear pieces joined the frames.

There was much dithering from Abu Hamar.  There was an attempted strategy session with Sexual Predator Driver that went no where because of the language barrier combined with the general lack of having a clue.  Meanwhile, a larger crowd is growing and while no one looks super pissed, they also don't look terribly thrilled either.  It's getting dark.  We had hoped the lorry which had people who both spoke Arabic and had a clue in it would catch us up, but no.

So, finally I piped up and suggested we go back the way we came to the village where a team of Polish archaeologists is based.  There is no way the lorry can not pass that location (so we'll be able to stop them before they go to the house we are no longer renting) and maybe the Poles can help us out or at least give us a place to crash.  This wasn't an especially well-thought out plan on my part but mostly based on my goals of a) not pissing off people who outnumber us, some of whom might have guns or even pointed sticks; b) kind of wanting a cigarette but figuring then was not the time; c) seriously wondering if we would wind up all trying to sleep in the Land Cruiser with it parked exactly where it was while pretending we couldn't see the people outside if I didn't say anything.

Fortunately, Abu Hamar was sufficiently desperate at the time to accept even one of my lowly female ideas and not pick a fight and/or deliver a long, incomprehensible lecture barely tangentially related to the topic at hand that would manage to be offensive to everyone within hearing and provide absolutely no solution to the issue.   The fact that the Poles probably had alcohol undoubtedly helped my case.   We managed to establish that it was okay for us to leave some delicate equipment in the (not)rented house for the time being and headed back to hang with the Poles.

We fully expected to meet the lorry on the way back or find it already at the village where the Polish team is based. 

They weren't there.  It was dark.  Attempts to call mobiles failed.  I was super cheery after that.

The Polish team welcomed us very warmly, fed us dinner, and offered to let us sleep in an empty house they had rented for expansion of their team.  Great, except all our gear was on the lorry and it gets *cold* in the desert at night.  Abu Hamar said something about waiting up for the lorry to arrive.  I said I would too and was told that wouldn't be appropriate for some reason that was never articulated.  I pointed out that my husband was lost in the dark in the desert in the middle of nowhere and there was no way in hell I was going to sleep until I knew where he was so suck it.  Wisely, the subject was dropped.

Then the Polish team brought out the alcohol.  Alcohol is illegal in Sudan.  Punishment involves caning.  Nonetheless, the Polish team brought and purchased alcohol in Sudan.  Being generous hosts, they begin passing bottles.  I sipped politely and finally gave it a pass when the Eritrean cognac came out.

By this time it was about 10 or 11pm.  Abu Hamar showed no signs of flagging and the rest of us figured the Polish team would want some sleep before work the next day, so we headed off to the house we'd been offered hoping our departure would let our hosts go to bed if they wanted.  The others tried sleeping.  I sat up on a woven bed-frame in the courtyard and chain smoked while imagining all sorts of horrible things that might be happening to Tom and how on earth I was going to explain to his parents what had happened and how very much I wanted to punch someone, anyone really.  Also, it was freezing!

A little after midnight, we finally heard the sound of a diesel engine approaching.  I ran full pelt toward the sound only to be met at the door to the Polish house by Abu Hamar who told me, in what I imagine was intended as a conspiratorial tone, that he was "a little drunk."  I may or may not have managed a really sarcastic "no, really?" before running past him to jump on Tom.  Between the time I left to go be panicky and the time the lorry arrived, they'd managed to kill 2/3rd of a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, half the Eritrean cognac, and at least 2 liters of Sudanese moonshine that smelled and tasted like perfume.

We all piled back into the house.  People kept pouring tea glasses full of cognac and moonshine for Tom, which he shotgunned in the hope that would let him get to bed (he slept really well that night).  They apparently had their own comedy of errors out in the desert.

The guy sent with the tool they needed got his car either lost or stuck.  Then one of the helpers on the lorry thought he could find them and set out only to get lost.  So then everyone fanned out trying to find the lost kid as it was getting dark.  They eventually found him and he was fine.  Then they got the tire fixed and got under way and were shocked to see our Land Cruiser parked by the road.  Apparently it was a long, dusty trip in the back of the lorry and Tom and the other director spent most of it huddled together under a sleeping bag, eating some of our "emergency" supply of Pringles and some melons the driver gave them.

Fun times.
Eventually we had all exhcanged stories and consumed enough alcohol to satisfy everyone and headed off to try to get some sleep.  All our stuff was on the bottom layer of packing in the lorry, so we grabbed what we could to try to bundle up to sleep.  I didn't sleep at all because Tom kept stealing the sleeping bag we were sharing as a blanket, plus I couldn't stop the freezing cold air coming up through the woven bed frame. 

Four Years Ago Today

I was in Khartoum for the very first time.  Specifically at the museum, drooling over cool things.

Mmm, pottery

Was-sceptres and ankhs with arms so they can hold up flags

C-Group pottery

Probably a beer strainer.  Ancient beer was some funky, chunky junk.

Beautiful Kerma beaker.  We still aren't sure how they managed to achieve that silvery "ash band"

Weights for quantities of gold.  The semi-circle with the tails at either end is the hieroglyph nbw for "gold"

Bronze mirrors, probably imported from Egypt during the New Kingdom

Two colossal statues of Kushite kings

Antique graffiti

Tom's ass in a temple

Enemies of Egypt personified as bound prisoners (heads missing)

And the lesson of the day:  I should really have gone through these back in the day and captioned them more fully because I honestly can't remember for sure what some of them are or why I thought it important to take those particular shots.  Or even if I had the camera for some of them or if Tom had it. 

Anyway, the museum is awesome.  They've reconstructed several Egyptian temples that would have been flooded by the formation of Lake Nasser had they not been chopped up into manageable blocks and then moved.  Mmmm, temples.  Temples without other tourists.  Mmmmmm.

Really delayed gifts involving scorpions

Late one night in Sudan I was getting ready to go to bed. I headed off to the latrine with my trusty headlamp turned on, pulled the plastic tarp nailed to some boards that we euphemistically referred to as a "door" open and had my heart stop for a few seconds. Camped out right next to the toilet paper (on the ground) was a scorpion. A big one. Probably of the deathstalker variety.  It was late and I had been and continued to be sick and weak, so I went in search of someone with sufficient upper body strength and testicular fortitude to kill the nasty thing with a shovel.

Eventually most of the team wound up hanging around the latrine to peek at the scorpion.  Finally Tom wanders by along with another male member of the team - Scott.  A debate ensues regarding whether we should kill the scorpion, chase it off, or catch it and release it somewhere else.  Mostly, I really need to pee and I was almost asleep on my feet so I finally snarled something to the effect of "get it the hell out of there so I can pee, dammit."

Scott went off to fetch a tin can and somehow got the scorpion into it.  I got Tom to stand guard outside the latrine while I used it as though that would somehow protect me from scorpions.  Then I went to bed. 
Meanwhile, Scott was showing off his new friend, "Pinchy."

Image by shovelingtom via Flickr

After a while, Scott took Pinchy off into the desert and let him go.  The villagers were less than pleased by Pinchy's reprieve - scorpions are serious business.  While a scorpion sting usually kills only the very young, old, or sick, the pain is supposed to be horrific and nearly maddening and often there isn't much that can be done but wait it out.  Thus, they kill the little bastards on sight. 



Anyway, several months later after we'd all come home and Tom and I wound up moving to a different apartment, Scott sent us a lovely housewarming gift and I decided he needed to have a memento to remind him of Pinchy and his 2 months in the Sudanese desert with a bunch of crazy people.
So, I crocheted a scorpion.  I think I borrowed the claw pattern from a free lobster pattern and made up the rest as I went along.  And found a can to put it in.  And then let it sit on my desk for a year because procrastination is cool or something.

So, after staring at it and thinking "hrm, I should put together the package of stuff for Scott and mail it" for the thousandth time today, I decided to actually, you know, do it.  Yay!
I made sure to document Pinchy too.

Re-enactment of discovering Pinchy in the latrine

Recreation of Pinchy's temporary home.

Pinchy, hanging out where he blends in like the sneaky little bastard he is.

Close-up.  He can smell your fear.

Sudan gold miners vie with archaeologists for desert riches

Sudan gold miners vie with archaeologists for desert riches

We actually had a Sudani guy pan for gold with some soil samples from one of our sites.
Interesting that the gold rush is going on. I understand the concern for archaeological sites, but most of the guys who served as archaeological workmen probably realize that there usually isn't much left in the way of gold in most of the cemeteries - they were typically robbed in antiquity.
Competent excavators were finding the different colored in-fill after removing the tomb superstructures that showed exactly where ancient people were tunneling to grab valuables - usually they went right for the head/neck, sometimes near the pelvis for belts or girdles.

Hand-made Pots

I was racking my brain for a blog post today and remembered that 3 years ago I was happily exploring the town of Kareima, Sudan just before we set off for our dig sites further north in the 4th cataract.

A few of us went off for a walk near the house we were staying in and literally stumbled upon this pottery production area. I was super excited.

You can see the pots all formed and at the leather-hard stage prior to firing, including the nice little holes in the ground to hold them as they dry.

There's a also a shot of one of the firing pits with wasters and random sherds in it.

There was no one around the whole time we poked around, which was disappointing.

These are all the same type of pot, called a zir. They're made of Nile silt, usually with lots of coarse temper, especially organic stuff like straw, animal dung, palm straw, etc. After firing they're fairly coarse. They're used for water storage - there are stands all over the place for these pots and a cup nearby to sip out of - the answer to water fountains when plumbing isn't that common. The coarse nature of the pottery helps keep the water cool.

In a lot of ways, this mode of production has been the same for thousands of years, which is pretty cool.

The very last photo is from the zir stand/alcove in the house we stayed in.  The zir there was virtually identical to the ones we saw off in the palm groves by the Nile.  Very nifty.

Shades of Sudan

[Edit]: As per usual with Cyanide and Happiness, I cannot get it to load within the post column without cutting off the final frame(s).   Clicking on the comic will take you to a readable version.  Not sure how to solve this problem, but I'll see what I can do. If anyone has suggestions for my mostly-html-illiterate self, they'll be appreciated if I can understand them. ;)  

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

I have this hypothesis that social pecking order among the men in the area where I was digging is partially indicated by sunglasses.  The more blinged-out the glasses, the more significant the person.  I wish I'd been able to get some good illustrative pictures.  One guy had these fabulous Chanel (or meant to be) sunglasses with the gold interlocking C's.  The thing is, he managed not to look ridiculous at all.

The thrill my crew that season for part of the dig - Abdullah and Ramalli, two local teenagers - got from borrowing my sunglasses when I took their pictures fits in nicely with my hypothesis.  If only I'd had more pairs and hadn't desperately needed them, I'd have gifted them happily - those guys were awesome.

Ramalli

Abdullah