A very bumpy morning drive - Hans was thrown into the overhead storage nets eight times on one section! - brought us to a lush valley of rye or barley irrigated by an extensive system of channels watered by simple wells and lever pumps. Bowls were fitted at the ends of long weighted wooden branches that men and women rocked backwards and forwards on a central point, pouring water into the channels. Closer inspection revealed that the wells were holes bound with woven grasses opening into a water source about 40cm below the valley floor. Photographing this unexpected green oasis and the people working the levers were a welcome break from the dry barren stretches.
This desert is very different from the Sahara in some aspects, Previous desert has comprised thorn trees and tufted bushes and occasional depressions where water sometimes collects, and tiny collections of greener trees and even palms. Never vast expanses of just sand like this. Now we've got camels, donkeys, brightly colourful birds, flashes of green and vivid aqua blue against the browns, yellows and dull greens. We saw a young vulture, its head fluffy with early feathers.
Finally arrived at the town of Bol for customs and other paperwork where we met a southbound Encounter Overland truck just finishing their formalities, having arrived yesterday when everything just shut. We lunched with them and swapped stories.
Got our first look at Lake Chad, reported to be a dangerous source of bilharzia (or schistosomiasis), a parasitic disease caused by blood flukes that live in freshwater snails, which Dad warned me about often leading up to my departure. The lake appeared small and shallow here and we watched a herd of cattle being swum over, only their horns and noses above the surface.
We expected the worst of formalities here and weren’t sure we’d even get through the four different points before everything shut down for the day but paying a tired officer to work later than his normal shift and gifting a packet of cigarettes to another to let us keep our “interdit” (forbidden) mascot long-horn skull got us through. I should be used to it by now but having to pay bribes still makes me angry at our defenceless position against this corruption and power games. Toy soldiers and cushy officials will be a lasting bad impression of a continent that has already given me so many wonderful experiences
While we waited for the official processes - and then our cook team going to the market - the rest of us washed our bodies and clothes at a town well, turning the surrounds into a soggy mess. Youths laughed at me washing my fanny (obviously not surreptitiously, then made obscene gestures and taunted Ann who could understand them but refused to translate. Nausea and another headache made me less able to cope. Bob, Nikki and Ben reduced each other and the rest of us to hysterical laughter with their "pump me" antics under the water.
Lost the track through the sandy desert when we finally escaped Bol and had to pick up a villager to guide us. Linda won the sweepstake on how many times we would have to sand mat - 10! - and is allowed extra toast for breakfast tomorrow.
Having rejoined the track, we camped, lines of washing appearing like magic.
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