Sudan... and time goes by

I am on a blitz visit to Sudan that has been decided last minute and it is my first Muslim country and US embargoe'd. My feeling is that after just this short period that country lives under different principles. The end of the winter is pretty dry and not that warm. I mean you're pretty much surrounded by desert so don't expert a lot of humidity. A lot of what we have in the West is just not here at all. Leaving in a religious country sure takes what we can call priviledges out. Internet is limited, you do not find most of the US trade marks, yet you drink Coca Cola and I saw a Levi's store. I found small similarities to what I saw in West Africa: a lot of chinese, sand , dust and Toyotas everywhere. Apart from that it seems you are in a totally different place here. The country is big, so what happens in the southern border of the newly created South Soudan or Darfour doesn't come in Khartoum. Now the first time I step foot outside the airport I was strucked by the amount of nice looking cars, not that expensive but well maintained. Probably the fact that Muslim culture doesn't have what we can call the "money-is-bad" complex from the Christians. Yet according to my collegue, even for a chinese it is complicated as you do not have much of a life here and believe me chinese can live on far less than us to be happy. In a certain way we are too assisted and leisure orientated but that's our culture, it comes as far as the roman empire.  The feeling I had when I was cruising the street was more of peace and calm, like the sound of the wind blowing around carrying the wind. It is probably an impression of mine, like preconception or else, but it seems things were more spiritual, philosophical or religious, I could not really tell exactly but there was something I like whistling around these streets. Just like these picture of desert nomads feeling the sandy wind blowing. My impression is of course not the best one around, I mean it's my second day and I stay absolutely idle for 1 entire day as my suitcase was forgotten in Frankfurt thanks to zee german efficiency!! So no clothes for the past 2 days, I did buy my toothpaste on the only supermarket that seems more like a convenient store (obviously sudanese people go to open market, not supermarket). Couldn't get a book (well that's part of my faults, and also zee germans that did not announce they were about to close the flight) cos the embarking was closing so I'm left with TV and listening to the muezzins calling the devots to pray. Talking about Muezzins I heard the one next to the staff house nearly at all calls he made at night, that really doesn't help you out to sleep. 

So that's my first stop to the easternest part of the world I have ever been to...