IBM in Sudan

I think that Mike might have mentioned in class that Sudan runs on IBM.
I = Insh'allah (God-willing)
B = Bukrah (tomorrow)
M = Mallesh (sorry, but a better translation is "tough luck")

Today we got our first taste of IBM. We went to get our Sudanese drivers licences today, but we didn't even get in the door. The guy at the door said, they apparently need our Ontario drivers licences translated into arabic before we can take the test. So we went to the University of Khartoum to get them translated. The guy who took us said he has never had to have them translated before, but they change the requirements every time. That's the way it goes -- Mallesh. Insh'allah, we will be able to get them Bukrah.

A very funny scenario in this whole thing is that we were studying the crazy/ridiculous signs from a book that is entirely in Arabic (for the driving test). We had some good laughs at some of the signs last night. For example, there is one sign in the book of someone walking down a flight of stairs. So I asked Gelani (one of our logisticians) what this means, and he said “Oh, those are stairs”, to which I responded “Gelani, how are there stairs on the road?”, so he then read the Arabic explanation of the sign and said “It says ‘Stairs’”. So I guess we should expect stairs on some roads.....

There were other ridiculous signs. There was one that was just some random lines and blobs, and apparently it means "snow" to which Emily said "They have obviously never seen snow". The sign that looks exactly like a snowflake means swirling winds. There was another one that was a red circle with a white middle -- I asked what it meant, Gelani read the Arabic and then said (word for word), "Cannot move during all directions". We're still not sure what this sign means.

The strange thing is I have not seen one road sign here and stop lights are suggestions.
Cheers.
Tim.