Leaving civilisation

Our first bushcamp on the way to Wadi Halfa was right behind the Meroe pyramids. Whilst the rest of our group walked up the dunes to get a better look, Dom, Karen and I had to prepare dinner for the group as we were on cook group duty. Dinner was corned beef lasagne with cheese sauce from a packet (and vege lasagne with broccoli and eggplant), pumpkin mash with cumin and courgettes and cabbage with vinegar. It ended up taking us 3 ½ hours to prepare and despite being quite tasty, I would’ve much rather made something quickly and have had the time to explore the pyramids too. What’s worse the vege lasagne sheets still weren’t cooked through by the time we’d ‘finished’ so I couldn’t even eat my own dinner. Anyway, whinge over.

The next morning I got up at 6am and grabbed my SLR so I could get some early morning shots of the pyramids before having to prepare everyone’s breakfast. I was particularly fascinated by one of the pyramids which was half covered by sand.

After preparing and eating breakfast, we packed up and went through the proper gate to officially visit the pyramids. Josh was hobbling around with a crutch as a thorn appeared to have been lodged in his foot from when we had to dig the truck out after the huge storm on our way to Khartoum. We thought we’d best stick him on a camel as he couldn’t really walk though he was hesitant as it was his first camel ride. One of the camel owners, possibly to alleviate Josh’s concerns, convinced us we could fit two people on a camel so I thought I would give it a try. Josh got on the saddle and I was told to either squeeze onto the saddle too (there was no way I would fit) or sit directly behind him and hold on which is what I attempted. As soon as the camel stood up in its awkward fashion, I simply slid right off its bum and luckily landed on my feet much to everyone’s amusement. This just served to freak Josh out even more and with a furrowed brow and overall concerned look on his face, he kept repeating “I don’t like this!” All I could do was laugh at the whole situation. I got my own camel and managed to stay on and as it turned out, they didn’t take us very far in any case. We got off at the back of the pyramids and explored them on our own.

The pyramids were fascinating. Many had been sponsored by certain individuals and reconstructed. Some were blocked off but others were open and you could walk inside them and see the glyphs/Egyptian style etchings that were quite well-preserved.

Outside, the sand was whipping around my feet and into my face and I tried to cover my camera as best I could whilst snapping off shots. Some of us stayed at the pyramids until the last possible minute of our allocated time, myself included, and others barely even looked at them at all (one young’un on our trip commented ‘Let’s get this over with!’, making me realise even more that people travel for very different reasons i.e. sleeping and drinking their way around Africa!) Each to his/her own I guess…!

We drove until we reached Atbara, a small town where we stopped for 45 minutes. I took the opportunity to visit the local market and bought some fresh fruit though I couldn’t eat it until we were out of sight. Meat was hanging up including the rear hind quarter of a cow complete with tail and testicles.

We drove on and stopped for lunch by the side of the road near the railway line and also where a donkey had come to the end of its life. The donkey’s skin was like leather and drawn tight against its skeleton.

The heat is unrelenting and it would be a constant struggle to survive out here in the desert. All of us were overheating as well and drinking copious amounts of water. Midhat, our contact in Khartoum, had kindly sent us off with huge blocks of ice so for the moment, our drinks were icy cold in the eskys and we’d dip our headbands into the icy water and cool down our foreheads too. Sonny wasn’t coping with the heat and we think he actually got some kind of food poisoning as he started throwing up. Given we had a long distance to cover and couldn’t stop, he had no choice other than to throw up in front of all of us in a bucket. Every now and then we’d buzz to stop and empty the bucket and later so Sonny could also go to the toilet. It started coming out of both ends. He got so weak he could barely walk down the steps to get off the truck and the boys took turns in helping him. Tom also appeared to have the same food poisoning but was not faring as badly as Sonny. Kristy started to get very concerned and asked both of them if they needed a hospital, to which Sonny replied affirmatively. He was completely dehydrated.

We were meant to stop at a bushcamp before Abu Hamed, but instead drove into the town and headed for the hospital. I volunteered to take Sonny in along with Kristy and Dom. It looked like a deserted hospital and it took Kristy a while to find someone. Sonny was lying on the floor at this stage, unconcerned by the layer of filth and discarded syringes that lay around him. Two local doctors arrived in their white robes and we struggled to keep Sonny sitting upright in the consultation chair. His eyes were bugging out of his head, bloodshot and rolling backwards. His brain had even started to shut down as we were asking him simple questions and he was unable to respond or talk properly. The doctors didn’t speak a word of English and we didn’t speak a word of Arabic yet somehow we managed to communicate what Sonny needed. They must have encountered this before given the harsh environment they live in. One of the doctor’s took his blood pressure and fortunately it wasn’t too low as if it had’ve been, he would’ve needed an overnight drip. As it turns out, he only needed a regular drip which was lucky.

Sonny was then taken onto an old leather covered metal bed behind a thin curtain. The room had one fan and another metal bed (frame only), along with the desk and chairs. The doctor used his teeth to pull off the syringe covers before he jabbed them into Sonny and then threw the lids on the floor to join the rest of the discarded syringes littering the room. After an anti-nausea injection in his butt and an antibiotic injection in his arm, he was given a saline drip which I noticed was from Saudi Arabia. The doctors left us after administering it. It was dripping quite slowly and Sonny, frustrated, tugged at the valve to try and speed it up, which had the reverse effect. He actually slowed it down further and also managed to dislodge the needle slightly. Kristy being a nurse, stepped in and held in the needle, readjusted the valve and then Dom and I took turns in holding up the drip so it would go faster. About halfway through the drip, Sonny started to feel better. We waited until the drip had finished and then profusely thanked the doctor with our limited knowledge of Arabic: ‘Shokran’ (thank you). He seemed happy to have helped and even loaded us up with antibiotics and anti-nausea tablets and didn’t charge us a thing.

We then drove back into the desert to our bush camp for the night. I went and had a “shower” with a 1.5 litre bottle of water and bar of soap. It was hard to see in the dark and annoying I dropped my soap which became covered in sand. Luckily I had a spare bar to use for my “shower” which was very satisfying. It’s amazing how good even 1.5 litres of water can make you feel.

Meanwhile Sonny was going downhill again. He was lying out the back of the truck on a mat on the sand and excreting where he lay. Dom stayed with him most of the night to help. The breeze was hot and not at all cooling which was far from what Sonny needed. I woke up at 1.30am as I was overheating and kept sticking to my Thermarest. Ugh.

After a sleepless night for most, we drove back through Abu Hamed to try and get Sonny another drip but it was 8.05am and from what I could work out, the hospital would only open at 9/10am and we couldn’t wait that long. Sonny needed the toilet in any case and I had to make very embarrassing hand signals to indicate what we were looking for! Awkward! Eventually we got our point across and Sonny could then have a bit of privacy instead of always being out in the open desert near us. We then made him slowly sip water with rehydration salts and got him to lay down in the truck. We then left Abu Hamed and around 9am, we also left the tarred road and hit sand. There are now only railway tracks to follow, and they seem to head off into the distance for thousands of miles. Fingers crossed we don’t have another medical emergency for a while.