Well, it has certainly been a whirlwind trip of the world. I'm about five hours away from landing in Dulles, and I wanted to describe Khartoum in a few paragraphs.
Sudan is a fascinating country. It is, for the most part, closed to western influence. For instance, you must take a LOT of cash with you to pay for everything. I'm not kidding – a credit card is not accepted anywhere. This made it very painful for Chris and me. We had just enough cash to pay for our hotel accommodations in Khartoum, leaving us with about $50 per person to cover food for two and a half days. The upshot is that we didn't eat much. Food, drinks and just about everything was extremely expensive. Let's just say I lost some weight while I was there.
Being that we were visiting not only during a weekend, but also during Ramadhan, our adventures in the city were limited – so we took a tour of Khartoum with our colleague Ali. It turned out to be a tour of some very interesting sites in the capital. We went by the hotels, diplomatic missions and UN missions, then we headed to the bridge that the rebels nearly overtook a few months ago when they attempted an invasion of Khartoum – bullet holes everywhere and the military school was looking pretty rough.
The training itself went well and I feel like the staff appreciated what we were able to bring to them. On the other hand, Chris, Frank, and I were so worn out from unnatural sleeping patterns and lack of nutrition that we were running on empty almost the entire time.
One of the nicest parts of the trip was our brief, six-hour stop-over in Frankfurt. We visited with Chris's mother and aunt and were treated to a traditional German breakfast – very filling in the aftermath of our "fast" in Sudan! Again, no pictures at all of Khartoum -- I was in the mood to make it home instead of staying in Sudan for an unknown period of time:-)
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