geselecteerd als gefixeerd bericht is a post from Dennis in Sudan.

Some days ago, we went to the Pyramids of Meroe, as a goodbye trip for Alexander of the German Red Cross. Off course when going there you can choose to drive there in a straight line North-East to Shendi, or you cannot do that. We didn’t… We first drove towards Dongola, which is North-West from Khartoum. And after some hours, we started to cross the desert in between the road to Dongola and Shendi. Why? Because it should be possible. And it was.

250 kilometers of virgin desert. The first 50 kilometers consisted of a lunar landscape of dead grass roots and thorny trees. After that, some beautiful dunes:

The dunes slowly changed into a plane of bleakness, with rocks and iron ore everywhere – waiting to pierce our tyres:

Not having used the hi-jack to change tyres, two donkeys gave proof that we were getting close again to an area where people at least were able to live and create some kind of minimal subsistence:

The Pyramids of Meroe:

8 hours later, we took the barge at Shendi and moved on towards the Pyramids of Meroe.

Meroe is the old Kushite capital of the 25th Dynasty of Kush. The kingdom of Kush came into existence in around 780 BC when King Alara unified Upper Nubia and Napata was choosen as one of the two centers of worship.

Around the 3rd century BC, the 25th Dynasty (ie. the Nubian Dynasty) moved the royal cemeteries from Napata to Meroe. Seems quite unimportant, but it marked a move away from the heavy dependence on Egyptian practices.

The move can be dated to King Arkamani. The priesthood of that time off course didn’t like this move and with their holy powers they told the king that the Gods had spoken to them and King Arkamani should take his own life to ensure a smooth succession – and don’t go to Meroe. Arkamani, normally not an ill-tempered man, broke with tradition, didn’t listen to the priests, had them all killed instead, packed his bags and moved to Meroe. With that move, it was the first time that a king didn’t listen to the priests and did his own thing. Breaking with tradition entirely, the Egyptian hieroglyphics you’ll find in some other sites were replaced with a cursive Meroitic script of its own. This makes the Pyramids of Meroe a wet dream for archaeologistics… up to now, the script has not yet been deciphered, still holding its secrets…

Fame and glory (no fortune) will be yours if you can decipher this:

The Pyramids of Meroe:

One advantage of the move to Meroe was that it was a more fertile and wetter environment. Agricultural production supported a large population and iron tools made it even easier. The area is rich in iron ore (the black rock that wants to pierce your tyres) and soon Meroe became a major production center for iron tools – giving it now the nickname ‘the Birmingham of Africa’.

Being there, I couldn’t really grasp the concept ‘wetter environment’:

The kingdom of Kush prospered. Even when Rome grabbed Egypt from the control of Anthony and Cleopatra in the 1st century BC, the Kush kept the Romans out of most of their territory. Eventually, the Romans signed a peace agreement and the Kush got rich from the Nile trade. The temples of Naqa (previous trip) are from that period.

From the 3rd century AD, Kush fell into decline. One theory states that the massive hills of iron slag throughout the kingdom may point to some environmental catastrophe, as deforestation for charcoal and iron-smelting may have led to extensive erosion of the topsoil. Declining agricultural capability made the collaps inevitable…

Next to that, the decline of the Roman Empire – a big trading partner – and the opening of new trading routes from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Red Sea gave the final knock-out to Meroe’s economy.   

And so, everyone got on their camels and moved away from Meroe:

Wishing all of you a good week! Let me know how you’re doing.

Dennis

PS: There seems to be a problem with the option below to send a comment to this weblog. I’m working on getting that fixed. In the meanwhile, you can always email me on Dpbours@yahoo.com

The Pyramids of Meroe is a post from Dennis in Sudan.

The whole wrestling takes a good two hours and is worth going to! The crowd is full anticipation and to make sure the fighting stays in the ring, there is quite some police present.

Before a fight, there are some rituals. Sometimes, a flighter has his legs painted or they are throwing sand around like an elephant in a dried up wadi. After the fight, the winner is carried around the ring. There is a guy blowing on a horn behind him and someone screaming around how good it all is. Another guy is hitting the winner with some leaves and money is stuck on his sweaty forehead. A photo impression below:

The crowd, waiting for a good fight:

One of the first fights, boy selling cookies is watching as well:

The last fight:

The winner gets Dinar bills stuck on his forehead:

Some kind of ritual with an old fighter:

The whole group of mean motherf$*@#ckers of the Blue team:

Well, that’s it! Wishing all of you a good week!

Dennis

Nuba wrestling is a post from Dennis in Sudan.

The two sites are both about 150 kilometers North of Khartoum. On the road down there, you pass some strange piles of pebbles. Like a little kid has been playing with stones and made a nice pile of it. Nicely curved, rounded pebbles, but then > 2 metres in diameter… The car is looking like a little toy, next to the pebbles:

Some fierce posing going on here, or not?:

Naqa

After that, we went on to Naqa. A very nice experience, for everyone who likes offroading through the desert… And I do… Very nice tracks and very nice parts without tracks. Dry river beds, open sand plains, bushy areas with thornbushes. A true Paris – Dakar experience. From the paved road, it will take you less than an hour to find your way through incredibly hot desert to the site of Naqa. The Lonely Planet is talking about Meriotic temples and one of the best preserved Kushite sites of Sudan.

Looking at the temples, I had the feeling that all of it was built by Egyptian kings who explored the Sudan. But as it turns out, it’s the other way around! The 25th dynasty of the Kingdom of Kush in the 8th Century BC – coming from Upper Nubia in the North of Sudan – saw themselves as the true guardians of Egyptian religion and tradition. They felt that the rules of Thebes had allowed their kingdom and Egyptian tradition to decay. To prevent that from continuing, the Kush invaded Egypt and took over Thebes. At some point, the Nubian controls went up to the edges of Libya and Palestine. Unfortunately for this Nubian king, his rise of power coincided with the Assyrian expansion from Babylon. The Assyrians swept into Egypt and kicked the Nubians back to Sudan. After that, the history becomes a bit hazy. In that sense, the purpose of the temples of Naqa is still unclear. And why build it in the middle of the desert and not on the banks of the Nile, as most temples and pyramids? But the influence of Egyptian art and culture is clearly visible.

Some pictures of the Temple of Amun at Naqa, built in the 1st Century AD:

Musawwarat es Sufra

The temple complex of Musawwarat es Sufra is impressive in its size of 55,000 square metres. The purpose of this complex also remains unclear. It’s funny to find ancient grafitti on the rocks, left there by French, English and German adventurers and colonist rulers of the past centuries.

The Great Enclosure, main part of the complex:

Nearby the Great enclosure is the Lion Temple, built in 230 BC. The Lion Temple was reconstructed and beautifully restored by Humbold University in Berlin in the 1960s.

In that sense, the Lion Temple is the finest standing Kushite temple:

Well, that’s it for this time. Have a good week!

The Kushite temples of Naqa and Musawwarat es Sufra is a post from Dennis in Sudan.

By 1879, Britain was fully in charge of Egypt. Gordon was made governor-general of Sudan a few years before, but the Brits had little interest in Sudan. At that time, a new movement started on a small island in the White Nile where the charismatic holy man Mohammed Ahmed, started to proclaim himself the Mahdi, "the Guided One". The Mahdi is the prophesied redeemer of Islam, who will change the world into a perfect Islamic society before Yaum al-Qiyamah (literally "Day of the Resurrection").

The Brits in Khartoum didn’t really like the idea of a rebellion and sent soldiers to arrest the Mahdi, but he escaped and fled to the province of Kordofan. It didn’t take long before Kordofan had fallen to the rebellion, including El Obeid – Sudan’s second largest town. The Brits got slightly agitated in Cairo and London and sent an army to ‘restore peace’… The whole army of 10,000 men was slaughtered in the Battle of Sheikan. The regions Darfur, Bhar-al-Ghazal and the Beja tribes of Eastern Sudan rose in support of the Mahdi and by September 1884, the Mahdi arrived at the gates of Khartoum, making his camp in Omdurman.

The gate does not look that impressive, now that a roundabout is built around it:

The arms of the two Niles made Khartoum easy to defend, but the Mahdi wasn’t stupid and began to slowly starve the city into submission. As the waters of the Nile dropped, the city became more and more exposed and on January 26 1885 the city had fallen and Gordon got stabbed to death on the steps of the Governor’s palace. In London, Gordon was canonised as a Victorian warrior-saint.

The Mahdy’s Tomb

Mohammed Ahmed never had time to fully enjoy the spoils of victory. 5 Months after capturing Khartoum, enjoying his harem of slave-girls and good food, he was dead – probably typhoid. A tomb with glittering silver dome was raised in his honour and pilgrimage to the tomb was made incumbent on all Sudanese, replacing the Haj to Mecca as one of the pillars of Islam.

The Mahdy’s Tomb, as seen from Khalifa’s house:

Khalifa’s House

The Mahdi’s successor was the Khalifa Abdullah, from Darfur. Khalifa is Arabic for "stewardship" of nature and family, and is a key obligation of a Muslim. In the case of Abdullah, "The Khalifa" was the Sudanese Ansar (Patron of the late-Mahdi) General and ruler.

Omdurman grew as the new capital, the slave markets were reopened and the taxes went to crippling levels to fill the Khalifa’s private treasury. The Khalifa shared the Mahdi’s expansionist dreams, fighting the Ethiopians (a victory, but more like penalties than in the standard 90 minutes) and even trying to invade Egypt (and fail, again massive loss of life). After a devastating 3-year drought, Sudan began to stagnate again in 1895. On September 2 1898, Kitchener’s army (Yes, another Brit) met the Khalifa’s army and in a clash between the industrial and medieval worlds, called the Battle of Omdurman, 10,000 Sudanese died and the Khalifa fled Khartoum. Kitchener called it ‘A good dusting’

Across the street of the Mahdy’s Tomb is the house of his successor, Khalifa Abdullah. The house with a series of courtyards has been turned into a museum of the Mahdiya period.

The Brits left behind some good stuff when fleeing the first time:

The Mahdi’s favourite Enfield machine gun, captured when Gordon left the building:

The same machine gun made the difference in the Battle of Omdurman. The Mahdi managed to capture some modern fire arms in 1885, but 18 years later the Brits came back with more gunpower. A famous writer of that time wrote the lines "Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim Gun and they have not", and this difference would characterise imperial attitudes ever since.

Soon after their reconquest of Sudan, the British blew up the tomb and threw the Mahdi’s ashes in the river to prevent it from becoming a rallying point for unhappy Sudanese. The present tomb – a straight copy of the original – was rebuilt in 1947, once the Brits got over their fears of its symbolic power.

And here a picture of the two explorers:

Have a good week! Dennis

Mahdy’s tomb and Khalifa’s house is a post from Dennis in Sudan.

Yesterday, it was goodbye to our country director Alan Glasgow. Below some pictures of the party at the office:

And about a week ago, it was goodbye for the Netherlands in the Worldcup football. Even my ridiculous hat could not change the outcome of the death match. 16 or so yellow cards… For the love of God! Where is the time of Gullit, Cruyf, van Basten (As a player), Rijkaard, etc etc. Well, four years to go and then this team will hopefully have matured a bit. Like a good red wine… It needs to get some body.

Have a good weekend!

Alan and Holland goodbye!! is a post from Dennis in Sudan.

As you can see, I look totally refreshed! (Left, before the rain – Right, after the rain & haircut) What a difference!!

Totally refreshed!! is a post from Dennis in Sudan.

I have been thinking about a number of questions people always ask me. Here is a top 5:

1. What kind of camera do you have? You all seem to really like the pictures on the weblog. I’ve got a Sony R1, 10.4 megapixels and a beautiful Carl Zeiss 24 – 120 mm optical zoom lense. Next to that 2x digital zoom and a superfast Kingston memory compact flash memory.

2. Isn’t it very lonely? I guess it is…. It’s something I do not try to think of too much. But there are a lot of very lonely people in the field… Everyone is somehow lonely. The question is whether they do this work because they felt lonely at home and were looking for a solution, or did the work make them lonely? The same question accounts for the fact that most people doing this work are not really ‘normal’. Did the work make them a bit abnormal, or did they choose to do this line of work because they already were a bit strange and did not fit into society at home?

3. How do you cope with the heat? For a big part, not thinking about it does help… But when it’s 51 degrees in the shade and there is not a breeze of air, that can be a bit difficult…

4. There is a lot of Darfur news on TV. What do you see of it in Khartoum? We get the UN DSS, UN OCHA, Reliefweb updates. In a sense it is the same information as you will get on CNN or BBC World, but we get it a bit more extensive and a bit earlier. In Khartoum you will not see so much about it. Sometimes the center of town is closed for big meetings or some kind of demonstration. We then obviously don’t go there to have a look…

5. When will you come back? Well, next Thursday, the 18th of May! I’ll be having a non-GOAL training in the Netherlands. This was already initiated before I went to Sudan and I’m really looking forward to it! It will just be a 12-day break and after that I’ll be going back to the simmering heat.

Well, that’s it for the top 5 of most asked questions!! I’ll end this therapeutic Q&A-session with another nice haboob picture. This haboob was by broad daylight:

Miracles Sudan horsefarm

Miracles of Sudan horsefarm is an initiative of an English lady who has been living in Sudan for 17 years now! She obviously liked horses, but also cares for children. She has 7 children, of herself and adopted, but still was looking for ways to do more for children. The good thing of her horsefarm is that she gets an income from the rich and spoiled Sudanese and expat children who want to learn how to ride a horse – or who have to do it because of their parents (Duidelijk gevalletje van ‘Over het paard gegooid’). The money she makes she uses for hippo-therapy; Disabled children and children with emotional problems get a chance to forget about their problems and have a good time with the horses.

Yesterday, Miracles Sudan horsefarm had a fundraising event! The weather looked a bit gloomy:

But the horses were ready for it:

The people were eagerly awaiting the horse display:

Volunteers who help on the farm did the horse display:

The kids it was all actually organized for:

Some good money was raised and everyone had a good day!! Well, I hope that you all will have a good weekend.

All the best, Dennis

Top 5 Q&As and Miracles Sudan horsefarm is a post from Dennis in Sudan.