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3.12.06
SFO International

Airplanes in line
Thick grey cloud
Rain a’ window tappin’
I pull out the notebook
To write about
My giant orange
Paper Sunflower

The TSA security staff
Are puzzled examining
the flower.
Could it be
a weapon?
a pure pink panther scene:

A thin woman
Alive wired
An overweight
shoulder hunched
scrunched face
hiding behind
black horn
rimmed glasses

His posture indicates his position
Almost cradling his x-ray screen.
Afrer a minutes’ quizical huddle...

I interject an inquisitive explanation
hoping to speed along progress:
The five foot stem is a cable of wires
That branch into several dozen petals.

It’s the condition of the petals
I ponder.
Why choose the somewhat wrinkled
Rattled crumpled flower?
There were several newer ones,
With their four foot greeen paper stems
Green Gaffer taped for the road.
The vivid orange petals
Flat wide fresh unruffled.

The plane in front of us takes off slowly
Plunging into shadowy grey mist
Flashing flying in side sprays
As we turn into take off position
The sun breaks through bright
Grey evaporates into fluffy white
Teases of rich light sky blue.

Searching remaining grey
For rainbow potential
As we shoot up onto a never ending
Blanket of bulbous whites.

I fade back to my original thought
A reckoning on the state of the flower.
Starting to consider how I might
Be perceived in the refugee camps
Within drought and poverty?
Pervading within horrors of violence?
It might be good that my flower
Looks like is has had a rough life
Rather than pristine protected pure.
Perhaps the flower can embody survival
Perhaps with it I can offer
A peaceful hopeful dance
Transending shabby distraught
Embaced with encompassing laughs.

March 13-15 Paris Rehearsals

Expedition gathering and rehearse in a basement sound studio in Montreuil just outside Paris. It is close to freezing cold where we meet. Fanny. 21 years old musician (piano/flute) French. Julien. 32 year old Mime-clown-pantomimes comic situations using sounds to narrate (with headset mike). Fanny and Julien are a couple. Anestis. German juggler-Acrobat-Clown of Greek Ancestry-has a woman’s outfit cooked up. Kevin-expat American living in Brussels. Master Clown. Has brought this fine five foot elephant trunk that bends and squirts water. Kevin brings the trunk because Khartoum in Arabic means elephant trunk. Olivier. Hard working French photographer. Sebastien. French. Super logistics man from the French CWB office who made the scouting trip in November. Myself-Moshe. Master Clown. American, veteran of 20 CWB expeditions. For this trip, Sebastien tells me (half jokingly) that I am not American, nor Jewish, nor is my name Moshe. So I transform into a Canadian Buddhist with prayer beads on the wrist which generates a lot of questions in a Islamic country where a lot of men carry around their prayer beads. My name alternates between Moshe, YooWho, and Moussa (Moses in Arabic-which also generated questions when I used the name, am I Muslim? No. Why the name? Well in English my name is Moses….

Show script…
Sound of Elephant and flashing of elephant trunk from behind curtain
Arriving in a Bus Image
Children come out (Fanny, Julien, Kevin)
Parents enter (Anestis/Moshe)
Take in Audience
Kids try to go into public, stopped by Anestis’s screech
I go to public with the question-where is the elephant? Al Fil When?>??
Little family conference, eh ehs
They all leave (to get instruments)
I stay do a little mime bit with my suitcase
I go back
All come out singing. O le le. O le le. Moliba Matibu (something like that. )Ivory Coast children’s song)
Music parade, around in circle
Music gets a little crazy, faster, chaos
Regroup soft music
Exit
Kevin number with bouncing ball
Moshe number with 3 cigar boxes followed by balance of 7 with glass of water, ( later confetti, still later in the heavy wind-sand)
Jules with Chewing gum routine that later includes jumping rope routine
Anestis sings sad Greek song about his looks, cries, handkerchief gags, the magic box-Julien turns it on his head, Anestis transforms into beautiful, does little dance that later becomes more of an African dance.
Elephant sounds, trunk appears but each time we look it isn’t to be seen.
Kevin duck routine. They don’t get the duck, later becomes a chicken. Kevin and Fanny do musical trumpet/flute routine
Moshe-hat pops/ magic sponge ball routine
Julien does ball routine which transforms into soccer match with volunteer.
Anestis plays goalie with huge hands, yellow helmet and thick glasses
Kevin plays referee and I swing the mike to introduce, announce.
Winner’s congratulations-volunteer of course
Elephant sounds, trunk seen, elephant trunk pulled revealing Kevin as puppeteer. We all chase Kevin, he stops, accordion effect. Grey cloth thrown over, Anestis’s hands become ears, Fanny takes straw broom as tail. Elephant comes alive. Sprays audience. Exits
We come back. Sing O le le. Call and response with audience. Wave goodbye. Exit.

March 16-17

Travel to Khartoum with Emirates Air,
with 8 hour stopover in Dubai

Dubai
Sand blows across hazed runways
Airport Building Shrouded
I n winded mysteries.
Plane takes off into
A sea of grey
Plane is descending into
A sea of brownish red
There are faint outlines of folded desert ridges
Flat expanse, solitary house
Lonely long roads
Red roads and farms
Impovrished fields
What look like mudhuts
In squared outline grids
All through the lens
Of a dusty heat driven haze.

Saturday the 18th

First show in the only handicap children’s center in Sudan, the Cheshire house, a show in the big rocky lot behind the house for 300 plus
Show a little rough but good….
Little one and a half year old boys picking up my boxes.
Woman gets up and dances with Julien in the middle of his routine.

It is an amazing center where the kids have school, learn skills, medical clinic, physical therapy and a training program for the parents to learn physical therapy, wheelchair manufacuring, and prostetics manufacturing

Big stories about the Sudanese’s government not developing agriculture, leasing land along the Nile to the Emirates to cultivate with the agreement that it’s 100 % exported. WFP brings in food from outside rather than buying locally. Sudan surrounded by Congo, Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, North Uganda, Egypt…LRA ( lord’s resistance army) now in Southern Sudan chased out of Uganda.
Late night dinner on terrace of Enfants du Monde/Droits de l'homme. We talk about the show. Cecile (ERM) talks about the summer being so hot-55° Celsius…Sudan has stopped issuing entrance visas until March 31st. We got lucky getting ours it seems.

Sunday the 19th Show in Ethiopian Refugee School of 2-300

Waiting at the Enfants du Monde/Droits de l'homme house, a colonial palace of a house, three floors with a garden, marble entryway, and potted plants lining the walkway….there is a erasable board with names of cars, destinations and drivers. It is early morning and we are all a little overtired. Our dinner on the terrace turned into a review of the first show trying to iron out all the rough spots-until after 11 pm…
One van is loaded with the show equipment so we all climb into the grey one, both older Toyotas. Sudanese music swaying, singing with a call and response, djumbe beats and violin chorus molds a unique pop sound. Rough dirt neighborhood street leads onto the asphalt main road, piles of red earth on the wide swath ways on either side of the route, piles of bricks waiting in the dust next to large construction sites. Khartoum is building everywhere and growing in all directions. Passing the airport which is smack in the middle of town, complete with anti-aircraft guns guarding the runway.
Mercy Corps Sudan, UNMIS, Action Contre la Faim…signs along the road a reminder of the large number of NGO’s here. United Nations Development program sign on a big modern office building, in complete contrast to where I started this morning: Estelle’s house, where Sebastien and I are staying. A quiet residential neighborhood with donkey driven carts, egg sellers, falafel makers, a tiny little goat pen in front of a house,,,,and more
The morning show is in the courtyard of the little school for Ethiopian refugees in a Khartoum neighborhood where some of them live. There’s a series of 3 classrooms in the courtyard. Dusty open air rooms separated by dusty brick walls. Simple metal benches on dirt floors, and a blackboard against the back wall. The front walls of the classrooms have open spaces where doors and windows would go. As the classrooms face the courtyard, we decide to use the front wall opening as our backdrop and hang our red curtain inside the classroom to cover the window and doorway.
As we get ready, two men put up a huge Bedouin wedding tent to serve as shade for our audience. The kids are excited, waiting for quite a while before we start the show…
200 plus kids. We do small workshops after the show.

Morning of the 20th. Show in Jebel Aioria for 3-400

We meet outside AZZA, a women’s association that works in the camps….there are rumors of road closures by the police blocking entrances to the camp we are going to: Djebel Aolia. The reasons for the road blocks are not clear, possibly because of forced relocation of the displaced at the camp. AZZA is sending their car and driver with us to take a special route that will hopefully detour around any roadblocks. WE are on our way driving out of Khartoum.
Stories last night about how war affects a countries/’s economy, how humanitarian organizations actually boost the economy. Sebastien tells us that half of the WFP’s budget is dedicated to Sudan. The UN’s January report states that there are 3.6 million internally displaced peoples (IDP’s). 1 million are in and around Khartoum in a country of 40 million….We all surround the map that Seb pulls out onto the table. Ghandi, the tall black Sudanese friend of Cecile (ERM), a musician, tells us about one region of Sudan that is composed of 99 mountains, where each mountain has it’s own tribe and language. He tells us that intertribal violence is a constant.
Men in turbans dressed in white, women in colorful wraps. Cecile mentioned how colorful the women are in the Darfur camps. I ask if they wear cotton, no it’s polyester, the colors are brighter.
We are pulled over to the side of the road by two policemen in white. They are asking for driving licenses at a major intersection. It looks like a routine check as they are pulling over lots of vehicles so probably nothing to do with our heading out to the camp.
The discussion with the policemen is heating up a little with more police who were sitting in a car getting involved. Anestis asks if he can take pictures, Olivier and I both jump on him verbally. The discussion is over and everything seems OK, and we are off again.
Big ditches, construction on the side of the road, probably for new sewage and water to create a whole new neighborhood, or perhaps a new industrial zone. Big piles of long construction steel, men in groups of 3 carrying several strands of the 10 meter reinforcing poles. I spot a man doing a jumping dance as he leads his group down the roadside, the support poles bouncing in rhythm, or are the men bouncing to the rhythm of the poles? The leader of the next trio is hunched over, his face complaining of the heavy weight.
International Red Cross vehicles, Deutches Rose Krutz, Swiss Foundation for Mine Actions….Action Contre La Faim (Action against Hunger) has 75 expatriate employees and employs 10 000 Sudanese. Our main partner Enfants du Monde/Droits de l’Homme (Children of the World/Rights of Man) has 13 centers in one camp in South Darfur, and others in South Sudan, as well as the Khartoum area and has 5 expats doing the job of 15 people. No time for days off.
WE pass an army garrison, huge, surrounded in white fence, a wide paved road bordered in greenery leads in from the main gate. Stories of prostitutes and drugs amongst the army in Chiapas, Mexico surprise me arising in my mind. We are stopped again, this time by two soldiers, no it turns out they are police too, just dressed in blue military fatigues. A quick explanation seems to suffice. Green fields of young corn surprise us on one side of the road, and wide expanse of desert dust on the other.
Policemen in white whistle us off to the side of the road, stop number three-it seems again to be more for the drivers who are called to two policemen sitting in their white pick-up truck where there is a little line formed in front of the passenger door, and our drivers come back smiling-we are off again.
Driving in towards the camp off road through a labyrinth of mud-houses in various phases of construction and inhabitation. Huge billboard of faded paint shows a picture of a skeleton, Large lettered AIDS in yellow, with the slogan ‘Know how to avoid it’. And we are in the Jebel Aioria camp. Mud brick huts, thatched roofs. No trees, no plants, just brown. We play in a center, a gathering place of sorts run by Azza, a structure of reed walls and roof supported by narrow tree columns. It provides shelter from the sun and the wind. We set up the show and play for some 3 or 400 mostly women and children.
We create a different stage setup again, setting up the curtain on the side as our stage entrance (instead of a center backstage). We decorate the reed wall as our main backdrop with bunches of pink and red plastic flowers we brought from France.

I have gotten into the habit now, after the show, of going behind the swarm of kids who wish to meet us, to all the women and the more shy children who are still sitting down after the shows. I go to shake their hands, each of them, holding the hands until there is eye contact, which is most often full of light and smiles. The women are often a little surprised that I would do this, not just because I am a foreigner, but also because I am a man.

I write as we eat under a similar roof on the other side of Azza’s compound. WE can not get permission to play for the whole displaced camp, which is enormous thus we are playing in different NGO’s compounds for smaller groups. It is the best solution in any case in view of the wind dust sand, and the sun and heat. Actually we have been very lucky with the weather so far which has been unusually cool in the 90’s where it could easily be 110° which the internet weather forecasts are predicting for next week.“We are a true democracy here, you have to say yes!” The director of the French department at the University tells us as we are leaving the “Fete de la Francophonie” at the campus along the Nile. We wouldn’t be in Sudan if it were not for the cooperation and support that the French Cultural Center and the French Embassy has provided, creating letters of invitations, and plowing through the burocratic roadblocks that the Sudanese government erects to make it most difficult for Humanitarian agencies to work here.

March 21st First day of spring, you would have no idea….Show for 5-600 in El Fath.

No idea how many people lived in the camp we played in yesterday. We drove off road into the desert for a few minutes at least before the rows of huts appeared, and I spotted the occasional patches of familiar blued UNHCR bashings used to cover roofs and walls. Some of the huts are mud brick, others just assemblages of recovered materials. Some are square structures, others are round looking like little yurts.
WE drive past an enormous shantytown yet right on the other side of a road are rows of new houses being built. We are headed out to a displaced camp with War Child, where they work with the children. I think we are driving past El Bulim, a former IDP camp that has been now declared a neighborhood, thus the new housing which will drive the IDPs’ out to new camps further away from Khartoum, further away from work, water, markets, making everything more expensive and difficult. Part of the government plan according to Sebastien, to discourage their presence, and encourage their return to where they came from.
War Child has a great program, training local artists and teachers to operate as CDO’s (Creative Development Officers), developing programs to play with the children with very specific goals to stimulate their creativity, and thus affect their lives.
The houses stretch for miles. Vast areas of flat brown, no trees, just flat houses, dirt roads, and lots of donkey driven carts of blue water barrels. No cars and occasional battered buses.
South Sudanese displaced to allow for oil exploration.
We arrive at Undulam Salam, where we will play, with the unofficial name of Geberona-we are forced to stay.

Description of a small sign posted near Geberona, (we are not allowed to take photographs today-order of the head of the camp)
‘Food Security for War Displaced Project.
Activities: Therapeutic Feeding Center
Day Supplementary Feeding Center (Children under 5 years)
Community Health Promoters
Traditional Birth Attendants
Care CVHW FAR USAid

Piles of mud brick
Car jolting side to side
Pen Jumping and Jilting
We pass a water filling station
Congregation of donkey cart cisterns
Dull blues shining in the sun
Piles of bricks
Stucco finished house
Ornate Arabic double doors
Their next door neighbor
Yurt shaped hut
Covered in Jutted plastic bags
Dust covered
Sun discolored
Troop of goats
Scavenging garbage pile
Two men sitting in the shade
Of an empty brick wall.
After 45 minutes of dirt road we finally find the paved road heading back in to town. What looked like our best opportunity for a great show, a very large bamboo compound set up with chairs in rows and mats turns into near chaos. A perfect set-up, but no generator. It is late arriving. All kinds of stalling till the tension starts rising as the 400 plus spectators, especially the 100 kids sitting on the mats in front start getting beyond restless. By then the generator has arrived, been set up but absolutely won’t start. There is a little bit of panic backstage. At that point, I make a unilateral decision that we have to start the show, regardless of what we do. Julien, whose whole act depends on mime with sounds made through his wireless mike is reluctant, but I sense that we might have disaster if we don’t go for it. Julien acquiesces saying OK I’ll improvise. The audience immediately settles when they see the five us coming out from behind the curtain, a little contingent of travelers, a few suitcases in hand, Anestis miming driving a big bus, Julien holding up a little bus painted on cardboard that is quite colorful, we have a little collision and laughter is heard, we are off and running. Julien comes up with an inspired routine with an imaginary double Dutch rope jumping routine, and all these kids come and jump the imaginary rope. We all play well, improvising constantly. The generator comes on half way through the show, and we are able to play our soccer match as usual although by now the audience has grown, and our stage area has been considerably reduced.
A group of 16 school kids from the international school came out in their air conditioned bus to have an exchange in the camp, and to watch the show. No doubt these kids, mostly priveleged, got quite an education on their visit. They became part of our stalling as they sang several songs for the African children, who also sang for the English school while everyone waited for generator revival.

Mispelled Illuminated Business Sign on the big 4 lane road alongside the airport
“Tawaf Lemousin” (Limousines)
Funny enough, all the other car businesses along this major stretch, at least 4 or 5, had limousine spelled right…

Wednesday the 22nd Show for 1200 in El Duem

We’re on our way to El Duem, 3 hours south, to a project of Plan International ( managing 11 400 foster children sponsorships in the area). We have not gotten 30 meters beyond Plan’s Khartoum office before we are stopped by a policeman. WE get tickets because supposedly we lack the correct authorizations for our vans to transport foreigners. The policeman gets very angry when Sebastien demands a receipt for the fines. We show the receipt, along with a document typed up at Plan stating that they are sponsoring our trip to El Duem, to a myriad of checkpoints along the highway south.
Our show in El Duem is the best yet, and the largest as we play outside at the youth center on a stage in front of over 1 000 people, most sitting in chairs on the cement basketball court the stage faces. I am writing in the sitting room of our guest house having a discussion with a man who is a trainer in reproductive health and also the director of the Sudanese Sufi council, Sheik Chezan ( if I got his name right). He tells us that Sufi means wisdom, just as Sophia does. We all take what the Sheik has to say with a few grains of salt. He doesn’t seem to hear half of what we say, and then takes off on verbal lectures that are quite repetitive. Somehow we venture onto the topic of his strategy of getting rid of children’s bad habits. He starts to go through his top five. I believe the first was child labor, the one I clearly remember is number two, which was the fondling of young children. I asked if he was talking about pedophilia but I did not get a straight answer. It was difficult to abroach the topic of semantics such as what did he mean by ‘bad habits’?
I leave the conversation to Sebastien and Olivier. Kevin is playing my uke and jamming with Fani on the flute. Encountering the Nile is quite the experience, an amazingly wide river, surely as big as the Mississippi. This is no ordinary ferry as we watch a small troupe of cattle slip and slide in their own dung on the metal deck of the ferry as they try to get off. One cow simply refuses to try to stand up to the consternation of a group of men. It is both comical and sad as we watch them struggle with the animal finally pushing and pulling the obstinate cow sliding it to the edge of the ramp. The cow still refuses to stand up with half it’s body on solid ground. Then one man, probably the owner, takes the cow’s tail and bites it. The cow does stand and leave.
We are invited upstairs to the captain’s deck of the ferry. The captain spots my mala (Buddhist) prayer beads wrapped around my wrist and inquires in a sign language conversation. He pulls out his Muslim prayer beads, a beautiful set of wide wooden beads with a big smile. Several rafts are pointed out to us: Chinese laborers building a bridge. Indeed their pontoons sport a red flag waiving. The Chinese have well understood the value of the primary materials that Africa has to offer. There was a sizable contingent of Chinese on the plane in, and I am told that they are very busy in Sudan. This might have something to do with the Oil reserves. China gets 6% of their oil from the Sudan, and if I understand correctly, they veto all resolutions about the Darfur crisis that come up before the United Nations Security Council. I read an article in one of the Sudanese papers about how China has agreed to sell arms to Sudan. Not too surprising, and not unlike what other major powers do in other poorer counties rich in natural resources.

Thursday the 23rd.Show for 3-400 in Soufi

The way to Soufi, we are on our way, late as always. We are waiting for the Plan folks at the guest house. They are waiting for us at their offices. It is a two and a half hour trip across the desert on a sandy rutty back road past mud huts, all reed roofed with a lean to shaded porch on one side. There are also round all reed structures. This is the journey that Mauro, the Senegalese director of Plan, told us in his Khartoum office would take an hour. We pass goat herds, a family of camels. The equipment van gets stuck in the sand. Sometimes the road literally disappears in the sand. WE are still listening to the Machmoud tape, it is engrained in my brain. We’ve been listening to the same days for six days now.
Soufi, a little hamlet it seems, next to the Nile. There is a cement stage alongside the school on which we are to play. There are men yet again erecting a Bedouin marriage tent. We are offered a classroom just on the other side to change in. A man unlocks an ancient padlock opening an ancient green wooden door to reveal a darkened room with two rows of high wide benches, or more likely they are desks judging from all the engraved doodles and graffiti’s on the flat wood. The school was built by Plan, and they have some programs in this pueblo, hence we are playing here. This is our chance to get outside Khartoum, and get a little feel of what the deep Sudan feels like. Of course it is hard to figure if this is the deep Sudan, after all it isn’t Darfur or the Nuba mountains. Supposedly in the south of Sudan, the land is more green. I have no idea beyond that. But in Soufi it is awfully hot, and am enamored with the aging of the beiges and greens of this schoolhouse.
We play for 300-400 people. The heat is incredible, by far the hottest so far and it is midday. There is a Bedouin tent roof over our stage, but it is so low that I cannot balance my seven boxes with the glass of water, strike that, sand on top. The wind has picked up, I am going to try the balance in the four foot gap of bright sandwiched in-between the stage and the audience.
Balanced between two cement steps leading to the ground, sun in my eyes no matter which way I turn, sun cream burning my eyes, a gust of wind and the glass goes tumbling to the ground. Only the fifth glass in twenty years I keep telling my companions afterwards, with a healthy dose of regret in my voice. The rest of the show is fine. The show is extremely well received. Everyone else is thrilled. I have taken on a bit of grumpiness that takes a few hours to subside. Not only did I break the glass, but they didn’t really laugh when I played up getting all mad at myself about it. It is not always clear what will be funny in the culture, and on this one, my instincts are not necessarily in tune.
Interesting how the town of oSufi, like the night before they are catching everything, all the intended humor, and the elephant story, which has not always quite gone over. We have theorized about the reasons why the story doesn’t work, and I think it takes me four shows to realize that although everyone knows what an elephant is, they may not have seen a picture of one, or know what it’s trumpeting sound is like. They totally got it here, obviously they know what an elephant is. People we ask say of course they know, but I continue to wonder. I had good fun today when I came out asking where the elephant was. Two men, probably teachers sitting amongst the kids are laughing and goading me on. In the middle of the show, I run onto stage just after the audience has seen the trunk again and heard the trumpet blast, and I yell to the audience “Al Fil When”? (where’s the elephant) the two men playing right along gleefully respond pointing in the absolute direction. As I look in that direction, the trumpet and elephant appear again, however by the time I turn to the audience to ask where, the elephant trunk has of course disappeared. The men again point in the wrong direction, and some of the kids getting a sense of the game join in pointing in various directions.
In the schoolroom that we change in there is only a blackboard painted onto the front wall. On it, some Arabic script, and the prophet’s name and a few others in English lettering. We are told that they all learn by repetition. It is highly likely that they have never seen a schoolbook. Hence the image of an elephant. Do they know? It is only important if we hope for them to get the little story of our show, searching for an elephant, getting fooled, then making our own elephant.
When we created the show in Paris, there was a question as to how close is that to the image of the white man coming to Africa on a Safari. Somehow that possibility gets dismissed as somewhat irrelevant in the current Sudan. What is clear, both in the displaced camps, as well as the regular town, is that everything that we do is a show, not just the show itself. All the unloading and the setting up. The gabs of sound equipment and drum parts. We are a little heavy (meaning the amount of equipment we use in the show) I comment to Matteis from War Child when we play El Fath. It is certainly one of the lessons of the expedition. Travel lighter, make sure that any sound system works on battery, and that you are autonomous. Also we have learned to be more discreet with our eating and drinking, including water from bottles. I have to recognize how little I know about this place after spending a week in the country.
Re-crossing the Nile is quite the experience on a tiny ferry that Plan has reserved for us. Judging by the large number of locals, and the solitary pick-up truck waiting when we get there, we conclude that Plan paid for the ferry to wait for us whenever we show up which is almost an hour late. The dock is a dirt promontory, and a wide piling of big rocks where the ferry’s metal mouth has settled. There are clear gaps between rocks and metal. Indeed it takes a fair amount of maneuvering, pushing, rocking and cajoling, as well as expert rock placement to get the vans on the boat. There isn’t enough room for the pick-up until a large group of men assemble to push the vans sideways against the sides of the ferry. The river is incredibly wide. Seb, who studied cartography in the university, estimates 3 kilometers. We have a good time on the crossing putting a clown nose on the captain, and some of the passengers, taking digital pictures and sharing the images. One elder puts on the nose and really starts clowning, not just making faces, but playing with the expressions, taking us into a little comical dilemma.
On the other side, we navigate a very narrow labyrinth of village streets before finding our way to the north-south asphalt highway that took us down to El Duem. My back is extremely thankful that the back road jolting is over, at least until tomorrow.

Friday the 24th Dar El Salaam show grows from 300 to 600 during the show

The first quiet morning since arriving here. Sounds of a neighbors radio coming over the back yard brick wall. Their sunrise reddish color has fasded into a sun bleached beige. Yesterday at this time, I was in the Toyota van bouncing through the desert on the way to Al Sufi. The intense curiosity of the Sufi audience has dissipated. I sip tea and write sitting on my bed. Ahhh…
It is clear that everything we do and bring to the remoter Sudan is a show. From the way we dress to the shiny chrome of the drum set to the digital camera images that we share with our photographic subjects. Sebastien was telling me how he finds Sudan a hard country. It’s harder than Syria, and Burma, Seb says, both countries he has lived in. The constant checkpoints as we head south, around 10 in two hours, the policeman sitting in their shaded spot, or in their white police car, whistling or just hand signaling the drivers to pull over, who jump out of the vans and come to them running to present their driver’s licenses.
In Sudan you buy your driver’s license I am told, there is no test. There is also no postal service. A couple of the police checks, especially as we were just leaving Khartoum on the way to El Duem, were difficult. We were all a little concerned that they might just turn us around. Several stops involve major conferences with Abdul Rachman, our translator, and Sebastien armed with photocopies of our passports joining in. The passports themselves are with the French embassy who are registering us with the Foreign Ministry, something all foreign visitors have to do. The procedures are quite strict. Not only do you have to hump over high hurdles, and for American’s the hurdles are quite a bit higher, to get a Sudanese visa but once in the country, they want the re-registration, including another $25 and a passport photo. The visa itself costs 50 euros for Europeans, and 150 euros for Americans.
All this is relatively easy compared to being able to obtain a travel permit for the more troubled areas of Sudan, the South or the Darfur area. For that you need to have your organization establish a local office, and hire at least one local staff person, plus there is an extensive approval process at every step of the way. Expatriates face similar issues to get exit and re-entry visas when they want to take a break from their work in the country.
Basically the Sudanese’s make it extremely difficult, and expensive for humanitarian organizations wishing to come into the country and help out. When you examine the politics, repression and conflicts taking place in the East, West and South of Sudan, it is really no surprise.
I pick up a lot of information about the situation here through conversations that various members of our group are having with the staff of our partner NGO’s, who are bringing us to perform in the various centers, schools, IDP camps and communities where they are active. It is hard to imagine what it might be like in the camps in South and in Darfur. If one is to believe the reports, it is not a pretty sight.
In Geberona, some of the kids were asking for our empty water bottles-supposedly they can sell them. Julien said that he saw 4 kids scavenging our empty banana peels to see if there was any banana forgotten. Hopefully this is not the general condition. The further out from Khartoum the displaced live, and they are sometimes forcibly relocated, the more difficult and expensive it gets for them. The Geberona women are dressed in beautiful, clean and colorful wraps. I ask Seb about this. His insight is that even if you are poor and displaced, you keep one nice traditional set of clothes and since we came to perform on a holiday, and it was a special event, they came wearing their finest. He jokes about how the Sudanese are somehow able to keep their clothes clean and relatively dust free during the day whereas we all get filthy in no time. He also mentions that if they did have any money, they would not be living in the camp, which has now transmutated into something more akin to a neighborhood. As more displaced peoples migrate to Khartoum, camps are eventually declared neighborhoods and those still arriving are settled in new camps in yet further outlying areas which are essentially desert.
Certain official camps have been shut down overnight and their residents forcibly relocated. Seb conjectures that the government might be making it as difficult as possible for the displaced to encourage them to return to where they came from.
I check the weather today on the internet before we leave the Enfants du Monde house on our way to Dar el Salaam, it is to be 109° and it certainly feels hot out there.

Saturday the 25th Show in El Fath 3, Enfants du Monde Clinic, for 2-300

Sitting in the middle of nothing in the desert. We have stopped after a 45 minute drive off the blacktop through El Fath 1 and El Fath 2, a maze that takes us past the complete gamut of housing, from stucco walled houses, to a partially built wall with piles of bricks nearby, to shantytown constructions of recycled everything. We have stopped next to a big shipping container where two women sit on the shady side, alongside two 50 gallon blue drums of water. I think that perhaps we are lost, but no, this is where we are going to perform. The nearest dwelling looks to be a quarter mile away. El Fath 3 is supposed to be slated to be closed down. The government urban planners made a mistake and sold plots of land to the people here despite a plan to build a major highway right through here. The people are supposed to be moved back to El Fath 2, but they don’t want to until the government reimburses them. I am told that living this far out, the transportation costs for a man to take the bus round trip to Khartoum (where he might find work on a construction site) is the same as he will be paid for a day’s work. So he sleeps there during the week and comes back for the Friday day off. There is no souk (market) here, so they must travel to the souk in El Fath 2. The government won’t allow a souk here as they are trying to get the people to move out. Water is extremely expensive too.
We are there for 10 minutes when an ancient truck shows up with the Bedouin tent and the generator. There is a really fierce wind blowing, and the men are having an extremely difficult time getting the tent up. They struggle with the flapping colorful cloth as they attempt to tie to the metal frame. The truck gets stuck in the sand as we try to maneuver it into a spot to serve as our backdrop. Anestis spends ten minutes shoveling it out, and directing the men to get the truck unstuck. He is amazed that the driver, who lives in this desert would once he started to get stuck continue to gun the engine, which as anyone would know, just gets the wheels even more buried in sand. It is way too windy for our curtain. It is hotter than yesterday. We are told this is a mild sandstorm. Our team is operating in full cooperative crisis mode as we improvise with all our set-up to get ready. Kids and their mothers start showing up, from just where I have no time to see. The sound system doesn’t work. The amp lights are on but no sound coming out of the speaker. Seb goes and boosts the generator power, we get sound. The piano is working intermittently, I pull the plug out, wiggle it a bit, stick it back in hard, it works, but if you touch the plug, there is an immediate buzzing sound. Tricky as we try to cover the piano with a cloth to protect it a bit from the sun. The desert is taking it’s toll. The tent is only half up but it is enough to create shade for our audience. None for us. We get the show under way. As the show progresses, more people show up. We are able to connect with our audience despite the gusts of wind. The wind plays havoc on my cigar boxes but luckily it is coming in from the side so I am able to do most of the routine. However just as I have the glass and boxes balanced on my nose, a strong gust kicks in and the whole assembly falls. I break glass number six in twenty five years.

Sat the 25th Evening

I am leaving two days and two shows earlier than the rest of our crew. Previous obligations and last minute plans have it that way.
Finally on the airplane, a complete contrast to the chaotic airport labyrinth. There are no TV screens in the waiting rooms to tell you which of the six gates we will board from. The flight is announced over the loudspeaker for gate 6. A line forms immediately. Suddenly everyone is moving, they have changed the gate to number 3. I am barely settled in line again when they announce another gate change, to #1. I have been conversing with an Australian woman who is traveling with her 16th month old baby. Her husband is a Ugandan who works for the UN. I have also run into Ann, a French woman who came to see our second show at the Ethiopian refugee school. We are just in line when I see a police officer and the Emirates ground staff arguing. We are moved back to gate #3, another mass movement and shifting of the line, and more than a little frustration amongst the passengers. This is all after a completely chaotic insane check in procedure which has my bags x-rayed four times.
To get into the airport departure area, you have to go through a passport check, and your bags are sent through an x-ray machine. Once inside, one recuperates ones bags and gets in the appropriate check in line. I am shepherded by a very friendly Emirates employee out of the main check-in line to another counter on the opposite side of the room. A counter to the side without any luggage scales, for which I am quite grateful as I am carrying back some of our expedition’s overweight equipment, a good portion of the drum set. The counter woman is very nice, barely glances at my bags and starts issuing the tags. A Sudanese man butts his way in-between me and the counter and starts demanding attention from the woman helping me.
I am unsure what is going on and I just stand by as he pummels her with questions. When there is a break, I interject and try to pick up where we left off. The man steps back in and starts questioning me as to how many bags I am checking in glancing in direction of my big pile. There is an implied hint that he is going to make trouble for me somehow if I don’t back off and let him finish ahead of me. I have no idea who he is, perhaps he has some secret position in the government. I don’t argue, and just let it all pass by. Later in the lounge, the Australian woman tells me how 8 Sudanese men cut in front of her and her baby in line. She said that this is normal behavior telling me about how in the butcher shop she goes to in Khartoum (the only one she knows where they have refrigeration) it often takes her over an hour to get served. First all the Sudanese men are served, then the women, and finally her. She is resigned to it, that is just the way of life here. She marvels about how her and her husband have started a home brew so that they can have some beers at home. Sudan is a sharia (Islamic law) country and there is no alcohol to be found legally in Northern Sudan.
What a contrast: from performing in 110 ° and a mild sandstorm in the desert to the relative comfort of a hard molded plastic seat in a somewhat air-conditioned airport is beyond amazing.
I think back to today’s show. Towards the end, chaos starts to develop as more people arrive and kids jockey on the mats for a better sightline. People start standing up, Julien has a new matt and starts laying it down in front of the audience. Immediately all the kids are jumping over each other trying to sit on it. I stop the show and hand the microphone to the organizer so that he can resettle the audience. None of us like doing this, however there is no choice. We all think it terrible to stop the show in midswing, but perhaps our audience does not know any better thinking that this is all part of the show. Who knows. At the end of the show, just as we are all singing with the audience, there is a disturbance to the side. Two women are having an argument and it is escalating. I am told, as I could not see that they got into it hitting each other with plastic chairs, one with a baby in her arms. People step in to stop it, but still. It is a hard country.
I am beyond exhaustion at that point, the heat has gotten me and I cannot think too straight. So I start to repack the microphones and unplug the sound system when Julien and Fani come racing in asking for the microphone. “We cannot end the show this way” they tell me, and of course they are right. I reconnect the mike and cable and within a minute, they have recovered the joy of the show. Most of the audience has reassembled in a big circle around them, clapping and singing the call and response that Fani is sending out on a heart string.
My writing is interrupted by meal service, “would you like the lamb or the chicken”.