Tea on the Nile

When you’re living in the middle of the Sahara desert and the government is a military dictatorship it can be a challenge to find fun things to do

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The work could be quite interesting. As the sole Canadian diplomat resident in Khartoum (Sudan) I had in 2000 a vicious civil war to report on that had cost two million lives and had been running for 17 years. And after 9/11 it fell to me to look after journalists who had come to see where Osama bin-Laden had got started. I would show them the chemists’ shop where he’d once had an office and we’d go out and meet his ex-cook, who’d tell us how Osama had a taste for Basmati rice and loved small children. For good measure we would throw in a visit to the site of the al-Shifa pharmaceuticals factory that had been destroyed by American cruise missiles in 1998; the custodian would show us a piece of rocket motor on which you could make out the word “Boeing.” And, although it was not strictly relevant, we’d sometimes finish the tour by having tea with a Canadian friend in the flat that used to belong to Carlos the Jackal.

But the terror-tourism became tedious with repetition. For relaxation there was nothing better than getting out on the river, for Khartoum is located at the junction of the Blue with the White Nile.