Buying propane in Khartoum

This week is the holiday of Eid-Ul-Adha, where Muslims the world over remember and celebrate the sacrifice by Abraham of the ram in place of his son, Ishmael. The local staff at FAR has had the whole week off, while the expat just came off of three days' break (which is not a bad deal for a holiday that we don't celebrate). As a result of the holiday, almost everything has been closed in Khartoum.

Yesterday, as Emily was busy preparing to host a Christmas get-together and Carol-sing with a few people, we ran out of propane. When I pulled the tank out from under the counter, I realized that it is not a hand-tightened fastener (as with BBQs in Canada), but required a wrench to loosen the bolt. I didn't have a wrench, of course, so I started looking around for one in the borrowed FAR vehicle parked outside our house. Being unsuccessful, we starting knocking on neighbours' doors to ask to borrow the tool. After several attempts, we finally found a willing helper, a man named Ysar, who was not able to lend us a wrench , but came to our place to have a look at the mushkila (problem) (equipped with a tire iron to fix the problem).

He said he didn't have a wrench and his tire iron wasn't quite the right tool to loosen the bolt on our propane tank, so mallesh (sorry), but he did manage to pull apart the hose mechanism and gestured that the propane place would fix it for me (there was a significant language barrier -- he had very little English, and my basic Arabic, which at this point includes numbers, greetings and other very basic expressions, didn't carry us very far). I said shukran (thank you) picked up the tank, loaded it into the truck and go in. He followed me into the truck communicating that he'd show me where the propane place is. I tried to tell him that I already knew where it was, but he insisted on coming along anyways. It's a good thing he came along as the place I knew, and the five other places we checked subsequently, were all closed.

He than said something which I understood to mean that we would go to his house. I thought: "oh no - he'll probably try to give me the propane tank from his stove, which on top of taking well over an hour (Emily was in a hurry to get on with her cooking), by the time we've had tea and I've asked how his wife, children, and chickens are, and he has asked the same to me (to which I will respond that my wife is fine, but needing propane, and I have no children or chickens), will also mean that his poor wife will be without fuel..."

What he actually meant was that he knew where the propane guy lives, much to my relief. After banging on this guy's gate for a while, an old man emerges and after some lively discussion in Arabic, Yasr and I drive off, still with the empty tank. What I can gather is that the old man was the propane guy's father, and the propane guy was out somewhere, and unable to help us. Mallesh (this time it means tough luck. The definition to this word can be quite fluid).

All this while, he is leading me through very bumpy, rough roads in a neighbourhood I don't know. He only knew how to give directions with the word "Right", so everytime he wanted me to turn, he would say "right" meaning, of course "turn right or left". I would then have to ask which direction he really meant, and he would point. On top of this, if I drove slowly because of the bumps, he would say "go go go". When we were approaching a place where he wanted me to stop, he would say "easy, easy". So here I was barreling down a rough road, unsure of where he was leading me, and unclear of which direction to turn in. He probably thought "This dumb khawaja (white person) doesn't know how to drive".

Somehow, he managed to find out where another propane guy lives, who climbed into the truck and gave directions to his shop (right, go go go, easy easy). I bought one propane bottle (USD7), we droveback to propane guy's house, and then returned to our place, where Ysar helped hook up the full propane tank.

I was very impressed with these two men's willingness to help a perfect stranger on a holiday which would be the equivalent to our Christmas Day. Ysar took probably an hour out of his celebration with his family to help us! I also got a laugh from driving around these terrible roads taking directions to turn righ or to "go go go"....

Much love,
Tim.