Kevin Can't Come to Phone Right Now

a late Christmas in Sudan

Summer 1985

I loved Khartoum in the early morning. There was a cool freshness in the golden air and I'd walk down to the Blue Nile and watch the birds. They were all new to me in those days: the herons and hammerkops, the sunbirds and storks.

Eventually I would drag myself away and poke my head in at the Ministry of Education. It was always the same ground floor office, and every morning I would see the desk, untouched and empty. Sometimes a secretary would appear. "He hasn't come in yet." The man was the official who could assign the British expatriate teachers to their posts. I wanted to go to the south, but for that I needed special permission. I was on a programme that accepted British graduates as teachers in Sudanese secondary schools and I had done one stint in the far west, in Darfur, now I wanted something different.

I would go to drink tea and get some breakfast, taking my time, always the same: a plate of beans and a flat white bread, washed down with a glass of sweet red tea. Sometimes the presidential brass band would be practising in the lane beside the palace. They certainly needed that practise, but I would enjoy watching them. At the General Post Office I would enquire about Poste Restante and they would hand over a massive pile of letters in pale blue envelopes. It was a very casual system: people wrote to you 'Care of Poste Restante, GPO Khartoum'. The woman behind the dusty grille simply handed over everything that had arrived and trusted that you would only take what was yours.

Most of the letters were years old, messages to travellers who had long since passed through and would never come back. I'd look at the postmarks, the stamps and the names, wondering who these people were and what news they had missed. For all anyone knew they might be dead. It seemed very easy to disappear in those days.

There was a phone network, but I only tried once. You wrote the number on a slip of paper, then waited while an operator wrestled with a mess of electrical cables, jabbing plugs into sockets and listening in hope for some kind of reaction. Occasionally they succeeded and you were summoned to a booth that contained a receiver. A three-minute call would cost more than I was spending on food in a week.

A familiar voice saying repeatedly, "Kevin, is that you? Kevin?"

I would ask if everyone was alright. They would ask if Khartoum was hot, and what time of day it was. After that there would be a pause during which the vast, fathomless gap between your experience and theirs, would open up. Where to begin? Maybe tell them about the wrestling matches on Friday evenings out in Omdurman? The Nuba tribe would come en masse, carrying their heroes on their shoulders, fighters who had taken on the names of the most modern, most technologically advanced, objects that they could name. Hence 'Electricity Pylon' might tussle with 'Power Turbine'. Then the late sun would cut through the dust and the holy dervishes would begin to chant and everything was magic for a few moments. Or should I start with the moment when a Libyan fighter jet came whooshing overhead and, for no apparent reason, dropped a couple of bombs on the banks of the White Nile? Or the market where you could buy crocodile head ashtrays and elephant's foot umbrella stands? Instead I simply said that I was aiming to go to The South, to a town called Yambio on the Zaire border, but I had no idea if I would make it.

One time I had to go to the passport office, fighting my way to the front where there was an Italian nun shouting in a most ungodly way at the officials. Leaning over the counter I noticed something under a table leg, put there to stop the table wobblng. It was the nun’s passport. She got her stamp.

By late morning any cool freshness in the air was long gone, replaced by heat and dust. At the Ministry of Education, the office was still empty and the secretary would shrug. "He's not coming in today," or "You just missed him."

And then one day he was there. A tall dignified official in robes, rather than the corrupt and dissipated fraud that I had imagined. "You want to be assigned to the South?" he said, gazing at me in amused astonishment. "Why?"

"They need teachers too."

He shuffled papers, sorting some into a smart leather briefcase. Having turned up for work, he was clearly now about to leave.

"I cannot help you."

"But I was told you could."

"The Ministry has decided not to send any teachers to the South this year."

He pressed the brass catches shut with firm clicks. I was only interested in myself, failing to understand that he had given me a clue to a significant geopolitical moment. The South was written off. Khartoum had abandoned it.

Back at the hostel where the teachers were living, the rooms were emptying as individuals went off to their assigned towns. I spent hours reading and sleeping. Why didn't I want to go to places like Wad Medani or El Obeid? Why not go back to El Fasher? I could not explain. There was a desire inside of me to get as far away from everything as possible. Quite what 'everything' was, I could not say. Civilisation? My world? People like me? I wanted to step off the map. I wanted to go where there were no telephones, not even bad ones, and certainly no poste restante. I was 24 years old and I wanted to disappear into an adventure.

And then someone made a suggestion. "Just go. I bet the Southerners do want teachers. Once you're in Juba, they'll welcome you with open arms."

I stopped going to the Ministry of Education and started walking up to the airport. I discovered that I could stroll through the security gate at the back and head for the control tower. I struck up a friendship with one of the controllers. "There are no scheduled flights at all to the south," he told me, "But sometimes a cargo plane goes."

Then one day, he told me there was a flight that night.

I did the long walk in the soft darkness up to the airport, carrying my bag. The weight was mostly books that I would never read.

I asked about the plane and was pointed to a darkened jet standing on the far side of the runway. There were others hoping to get aboard: southerners desperate to get home.

We ran across the runway and made it to the plane. A jeep pulled up with two Russian crew. They ignored the crowd, pushing their way through and climbing a ladder into the plane. We waited, watching them in the cockpit, flicking switches, donning headsets, their faces concentrating in the light of the dials.

Finally the pilot reappeared at the door, looking out over the crowd which must have numbered almost a hundred by then. "I will take six passengers," he said. "There are no seats. You must sit on the cargo." He started pointing to people which set off a crazed hysteria in the crowd. "... and you."

I was selected, by virtue, no doubt, of my white face.

I shoved my way to the ladder and climbed up. Inside the hold was a series of wooden crates held down by nets. "Sit on top and hold on."

I remember the noise, and the cold, nothing else. No conversation was possible.

In Juba's Ministry of Education building they looked at me in astonishment. "We thought that Khartoum would not send any teachers this year."

"Can you use me?"

"Of course. Where do you want to go?"

I asked for Yambio, a three-day journey from Juba. Soon after I arrived the area was cut off by rebel activity. There were no phones and no postal services at all. But even there, far from the outside world and its communications, I could not completely escape.

I had been teaching at the school for about six months when a beige-coloured Landcruiser arrived in town. The occupant was a worker for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. Somehow he had managed to drive up from Uganda. Even more astonishing was that he had a parcel for me, a large brown envelope marked “Kevin Rushby, Teacher, Yambio School, South Sudan”. It contained a clear plastic bag. Inside were various pieces of dried fruit. Attached to the fruit were fragments of a dark brown sticky substance. There was no message, no letter, no explanation. But I knew what it was. My mother had sent a Christmas pudding. A few marks and handwritten notes on the envelope suggested that it had been forwarded from Khartoum to the British Council in Nairobi who had passed it to the United Nations.

Assuming my mother had posted it in November, it had taken at least four months on the road, and during the journey had disassembled itself. I scraped all the pieces into one hand and squeezed them together. It was March, but Christmas had arrived.