More Deer Pets

We spent the Friday at my friends place last week. Very nice (HOT) day hanging around the pool with some cool people.

A couple of permanent residents next to the pool are Zeina and Walid. They are Shaker's deer pets. Zeina is cool and confitent. If she likes you she'll eat from your hand. Walid, on the other hand, is a sceptic. He doesn't like to get close to anyone.

However before Walid came along, there was another male in Zeina's life. He was wild (literally) and went a bit crazy, so much so that he commited suicide. He kept banging his head against the wall untill he bled to death. The experts explained the situation as similar to human behaviour. Females drive men wild, to the point of doing stupid things.

Walid was then brought in to keep Zeina company. This time Zeina was a little more forgiving and decided she didn't want to end up alone again. Walid happily living with Zeina now.

And this is what it looked like from Zeina's point of view!

My First Sandstorm

I'm at the gym lifting my metal. Put down the weights and look up only to have hazy vision, literally within seconds. So now I'm thinking, Oh shit, blood is rushing to my head or something and it's affecting my vision! What is happening to me?! Turns out that there was nothing wrong with me or my vision. The windows started bucking, and sand started shooting in from every single tiny opening in existance. Within one minute there was a clearly visible layer of brown sand on everything. I wiped my head with my white towel and it was instant brown. My white t-shirt became my brown t-shirt. I was smelling and breathing nice fresh sand.

So I finished off my workout and ventured out to my car - after some hesitation. It is a very strange situation having such stong winds with so much sand in it! I've never experience anything like this before. It did remind me a bit of the time I was in Miami during huricane Andrew - except that was much higher winds and water instead of sand. That's not to say the winds here were not strong! Getting to the car I could hardly open my eyes, or even breathe, from the amound of sand in the air. Once in the safety of the car, I quickly realized that visibility was about 10 meters at best.

This is what happens in this area of Sudan around this time of year. The winds are called Hubub (or Haboub) and usually preceed the rains. I caught the tail end of the rains when I arrived here 8 months ago - see my earlier post on the rains. Some friends caught some photos of the approaching winds, and I've also included some photos from my car ride home. Mind you, on a normal day at the time I drove home it would be twilight.

This table is blue. This is about 15 minutes after the storm hit.

P.S. I've posted some of these photos on Facebook. If you are on, look me up. If not, I recommend it - it's pretty cool and helps people stay in touch.