 | Wilayat Kassala Off the Beaten Path | Tips 1 - 10 of 12 |  |
Popular Off the Beaten Path | Miscellaneous Off the Beaten Path Tips | All Tips (12)  | |  |  | Halfa Al-Jadeeda | Tip Rating:   |  |  | |  |
When Lake Nasser was built, the Nubian villages around Wadi Halfa in northern Sudan were flooded. Some set up home in Wadi Halfa, while others were resettled in Kassala Province in a town now known as Halfa Al-Jadeeda (New Halfa). The town is also home to Kassala University's Faculty of Agriculture, hence my trip. The vice chancellor of the university turned up at one of our lectures one day and announced that it was cancelled because he was driving us to Halfa to see the Agriculture campus...so off we went in his air-con Landcruiser, and while he was involved in meetings, we were treated to a tour of the agricultural projects in process by the students. We saw an experiment on chicken-feed (one lot fed on scraps of meat, the others on seeds...which laid the better eggs?), another on raising chickens under different conditions, and also learnt how cheese is made. While the guided tour round broken down tractors and ploughs is maybe not everyone's cup of shai, we did enjoy the trip in the afternoon to the sugar plantations where we ate sugar directly from the sugarcanes. We saw absolutely nothing of the town, and from all accounts there isn't much to see there. Buses leave to Halfa all day long, and the trip takes about an hour and a half...be warned that if you don't have a special permit, you won't be allowed back into Kassala again, unless you happen to have a VIP in your car! Leave a Comment
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| | | | Kassala University | Tip Rating: | | | | |
Kassala does not get many tourists, and we are the only two foreigners in town, so there is not much chance for language students to practice their English. I work in the Faculty of Education at the university, and have about 500 students who study English...they all badly need to practice, so if anyone happens to pass through Kassala, please pay us a visit! We have an English Club once a week, and guest speakers are most welcome, or if you'd prefer, come for a chat and a drink in the university cafeteria. Most students are shy at first, but somewhere like the cafeteria, they can be coaxed to try out their English eventually! For the Education Faculty, take a Shamal Al-Halanga bus and ask for "Al-Kuliya". Alternatively, head to the Faculty of Medicine over the gash (take a Banat bus), and meet the medicine students who are taught in English. Leave a Comment
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OK, before I start, I will say that Areba is not a tourist destination by any standards. It isn't even nice to look at. Areba is the tax-collection point for goods bypassing Kassala on their way to or from the Red Sea. So it is a big lorry park, with truckers' caffs and a ramshackle collection of stalls selling all sorts of things you don't want. So why did I go there? Well, one of my students was a tax-collector, so I was invited to spend a day watching him at work. We started the day bumping over the desert on a motorbike to avoid having to explain to security why I was going to Areba, which was followed by breakfast of fried meat and fuul, tea, chicha, coffee, more tea, more coffee, a bit of sleeping, then a bumpy ride back again for lunch in town. Gosh, what hard work! The place is dusty and bleak, but sometimes there are enormous herds of camels to watch, and the people working there are glad to see a khawaja to distract them from the boring daily routine.
If you want to hitch a lift, this is the place to come, and there are shared taxis from Souq ar-Rashaida. Leave a Comment
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| | | | Souq Ar-Rashaida | Tip Rating:  | | | | |
This isn't really off the beaten path, but most tourists don't find it. Souq ar-Rashaida is a tiny market for the Rashaida tribe. Now, as I said in my tips about tribes, the Rashaida mostly live in villages outside Kassala, but every morning their market is thronging with life...Arab-looking men in coloured jellabiyyas dragging goats by their ears, women in brightly-patterned red and black dresses bargaining over the latest Rashaida fashions. The Rashaida are well known for smuggling (shhh!), and as a result, they tend to own very plush vehicles and are always immaculately dressed. They are not too bothered by the sight of a khawaja, although of course they are likely to object if you take photos without asking. The best way to interact with this tribe is to sit at one of the many roadside coffee-stalls around the souq, and let them come to you. The Rashaida women are unusual in that they have no qualms about drinking coffee in the street, unlike other Sudanese women.
Souq ar-Rashaida is opposite the Town Hall and all the bus companies' offices, not far from the main souq. Leave a Comment
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Walking through as-Sawagi, you might come across big clumps of mud and rock which look as if they are just part of the land. On closer inspection, you realise that they are actually termite houses. My Kassalan friends were non-plussed, but having never seen one before, I was quite impressed! They are incredibly solid, and it is hard to believe that a tiny insect could build such a huge palace. For a sense of scale, I asked one of my students, Jezira, to pose beside the termite skyscraper...he was most bemused by the idea! Leave a Comment
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Zoureeba is the chaotic animal market on the road to Khatmiya opposite the large cemetary. But it isn't just goats, cows and camels...it is also a place to buy thatch roofs for your hut, thatch walls in case your mud ones have fallen down, and other thatch products. There are plenty of tea huts too, where flirtatious women in colourful tobes serve spiced tea or gingery coffee in a big clay jebbana, complete with popcorn and the latest Kassala gossip. If you're feeling peckish, there are other huts serving various types of gloopy sauces with kisra, or you could head to the animal section and buy yourself something to eat "off the hoof".
Behind Zoureeba is a UNESCO school for Eritrean and Ethiopian children...they are taught in English every afternoon, and the teachers welcome any khawajas who find their way there.
To get to Zoureebam take a Khatmiya or a Sha'abiya bus, and get out at the big cemetary. Leave a Comment
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on November 30, 2003
