Round the World by Bike - a long distance journey around our planet.
Al Humphreys

Sudan continued: Khartoum to Ethiopia. March.

It is hot; my head pounds and my thermometer has a fit, races off the top of the scale (50°C) and refuses to come back down. As I cycle my face is fixed in a grimace (a combination of pain, heat, misery and genetic ugliness).

Exposed to the air my teeth become painfully hot. The ground is too hot to sit on, my handlebars almost too hot to hold, the water in my drinking bottle better suited for brewing tea than quenching thirst. But I must go on: I have a rendezvous with a friend in some dilapidated Ethiopian town. It is a race against time. I pause for food at sunset at a truckers‚ stop.

Perhaps it was the heat but the conversation seemed rather surreal: "what tribe are you from?","ermm,Yorkshire, I guess", then a complicated discussion about why farmers in England do not use camels.

Oh dear, the tears are back. I am pushing hard to meet Rob on time; on the road an hour before first light, riding right through the midday inferno (mad dogs etc?) and on well into the night. There are too many hours available for wandering thoughts; The road is so hard, so long, so quiet and the sky is too big and empty for just one person. But this latest episode of histrionics and soul searching runs deeper than last time. I really am in trouble this time. I began this whole ridiculous affair because I wanted a challenge that I would fail unless I really, really worked hard at it. But now I know that I can cycle over huge mountains or across deserts. I know that I can cope alone in strange countries and situations. I know that I can do it.

The problem now is that I no longer know whether I want to keep doing it. I am bored. I find myself thinking "not another massive mountain to sweat and curse my way over. Not another 1000 km of road before my next ice-cream."

So I weep my way through a few hundred kilometres of emptiness. At least it passes the time. And keeps my eyeballs cool. It is the nearest I have yet come to quitting. Being alone exaggerates all emotions and I feel desperate to share my pain with somebody, anybody. But there is nobody: I feel very alone. Being alone is infinitely harder than riding with a companion.

Thankfully a tiny shard of stubbornness keeps me riding and after a few days my elaborate plans of 1-swerving in front of a truck or 2-heading for the nearest England-bound aeroplane (slightly preferable to option number 1) fade.

Tough guys tattoo LOVE and HATE across their knuckles. It is too hot for such deep emotions now so I emblazon my cycling mitts with a dangling carrot to keep me pushing towards Ethiopia: COLD BEER.
I drag my heels in Gallabat: the far side of the village is Ethiopia and I am reluctant to leave Sudan. My passport is stamped in a thatched mud hut, I don‚t have to clear customs (the man is asleep and it would be a shame to wake him) and the border policeman takes me for a final breakfast. Sudan has amazed me. Arriving awestruck and nervous my head had been laden with preconceptions. Now I have crossed Africa‚s largest nation and have learned so much.

Sudan has huge problems, amongst them an absurdly bad government, a horrific
civil war, hunger, drought and terrible poverty. However, Sudan has still been my favourite country on this journey. Despite being poor the Sudanese people that I met were genuinely happy. They are happy with what they have and they have dignity and self-respect. They are the kindest, most cheerful, most hospitable and welcoming people that I have ever met. The Sudan needs the West to open its eyes to the horrors of the conflict, to rid itself of unhelpful preconceptions caused by ignorance. It needs our awareness.

Perhaps you may like to read a book called 'The Weekenders'; a collection of
short stories published by the Daily Telegraph to raise funds and awareness for the Sudan. Perhaps you could read of the valuable work that Hope and
Homes for Children are doing in the Sudan (www.hopeandhomes.org). Please don‚t be as uninformed as me; Sudan is a wonderful, wonderful country and it deserves our support.
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The work of Hope and Homes for Children in Sudan
The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don‚t mind some people dying all the time or maybe only starving some of the time which isn‚t half so bad if it isn‚t you. Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Giggling and shielding faces behind freshly scrubbed hands six small boys stand in a group and sing a song. The boys are a family, hence the embarrassment of performance, the clean faces, enforced best behaviour and uncomfortable Sunday clothes. But these irritations are trivial in their lives because they have a family now. Their singing is to welcome me on a visit to their home.

A year ago each of these children was alone. Their lives up until then had been horrifying. They were either surviving as best as they could on the cruel streets or else they had been rounded up and dumped in government camps. The camps are for children orphaned by the endless war in the south of Sudan, their parents just another two of the two million people who have disappeared or been killed in the brutal conflict. Alone in the World the children have received scant education, inadequate food and shelter and little love or personal attention for most of their short lives.

Hope and Homes for Children (www.hopeandhomes.org) works in Sudan to take some children from the government camps and to place them in homes within the ordinary Khartoum community. They can then live in a simple but comfortable home, attend a local school (plus receiving extra assistance to help them catch up with other children of their age) and visit youth groups where they learn useful trades (building, car mechanics etc.) in order that they will be more employable when they are older. The home I visited had six orphans, now happily living together as brothers in the care of a permanent mother and father. Everything possible is done to try and provide the children with as normal an upbringing as possible. It is nothing fancy or extravagant, it is just a childhood.

An important aspect is that the children are relying on each other and on their new parents. They are not just feeling dependent on cash from rich, white England. They are helping themselves. That is an extremely important point.
Children do not need much from life: education, food, shelter, love and laughter. It does not even cost very much which means that we all have the potential to make a difference if we only choose to do so.

The singing brothers shook my hand as I left and as I looked into the eyes of each of them I felt an amazing gratitude to them. The gaze of those small boys showed me so much about courage, hardship, guts, overcoming adversity and deep appreciation for renewed hope and laughter.
May the wind be always at your back, boys. You deserve it.

Problems! Rita, the bike has a crack near the drop out!

Karrimor - Supporters of the Round the World by Bike