The heat - my God, the heat!

"Welcome to Khartoum," the stewardess said as our plane touched down last night in the dark of Sudan's international airport. "The local time is 8:45 p.m. The temperature is 41 degrees."

That's 41 degrees Celsius - as in, 106 degrees Fahrenheit. At nearly 9 p.m.

It's summertime in Sudan, which is like Palm Springs without the golf courses. Or the celebrities. Or the vaguely hip nightlife (although there is a new coffee shop, Ozone, that has apparently become THE late-night spot for young, upwardly mobile Khartoumians.)

I stepped out of my hotel this morning and into the street, and felt as if I walked into a hairdryer set to high. You feel like your hair might catch fire. And everything in Khartoum is painted beige, which reflects the Saharan sun quite well, so my eyes have been on permanent squint - that is, when I've been outdoors, which I've been trying to avoid as much as possible. Fortunately, a journalist's trip to Sudan usually begins with making the rounds of various government offices and nongovernmental agencies, most of which are pleasantly air-conditioned.

Everyone told me this was a bad time to go to Sudan, even the lovely press attache at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi. "This is not smart," she said. But I had waited four months for the visa, and I wasn't going to let them change their mind, so I left as soon as possible. Expecting the heat, I packed appropriately - buckets of sunblock, light clothing, water purification tablets, the works.

I got a glimpse of myself in a mirror today and realized I've become what I always wanted to avoid - I look like Joe Correspondent. Foreign correspondents, especially those working in underdeveloped areas, have a certain uniform, much of which we tend to acquire at EMS or other outdoorsy stores. The clothing is mostly beige and mostly synthetic, and tends to have strategically placed flaps that you can button or unbutton (or zip or unzip, or velco or un-velcro) for ventilation. Our watches are plastic - nothing you'd wear to a nice restaurant, or even to work, unless you were a professional cyclist. Some of us rock the vest with all the pockets or the wide-brimmed hat (modeled here by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who often manages to make the hat look even more incongruous by pairing it with a dark suit).

I'm not sure why we collect all this disaster gear - I'm not convinced it is actually any cooler or lighter than the soft cotton t-shirt or well-worn pair of jeans. Plus, it makes us look like we're tourists on safari, not people come to do a job. And when making a trip like this one, which is likely to include extended periods in the remote desert AND an interview in an ambassador's office, it makes packing lightly a bigger challenge.

I don't think I look all that bad. But I am wearing khakis with running shoes, which Bhargavi and others would probably have a fit over. And I'm wearing a shirt whose best feature is that it has two chest pockets - the better for holding cell phones, money, business cards, press credentials, driving directions, handkerchiefs, the occasional granola bar. Not a look I'm proud of. But I can't help it. How do the Sudanese men, in their flowing white outfits covering every inch of themselves, manage to look so comfortable in the scorching heat? And they don't even seem to sweat - they just dab at their forehead every so often, as if showing a slight bit of impatience - achieving the ideal of "sweating elegantly" that Yasmine, for one, told me before I left for Africa that I ought to strive for. Still working on it.

The most dangerous city on earth?

The Nairobi press corps is a little stunned by the murder yesterday in Mogadishu, Somalia, of a veteran Swedish journalist. Martin Adler was shot at point-blank range while covering a rally that was organized to celebrate a truce between Somalia's interim government and the Islamist militias that recently seized control of Mogadishu. A BBC report on the murder says "a lone gunman (shot) Martin Adler in the chest, in the middle of a crowd of thousands."

A broken city of weapons, warlords and checkpoints since a coup in 1991, "The Mog" was a no-go zone for most reporters until two weeks ago, when the Islamists toppled U.S.-backed warlords - a big news story for the region because of fears by the United States and others that the new rulers would establish a fundamentalist state and offer safe haven to the terrorists known to be hiding in Somalia. The militias launched a charm offensive and have been inviting western journalists to come and see for themselves that the city - often called the most dangerous on the planet - was more secure than its reputation.

Last night I was at dinner with a few reporters, two of whom had recently returned from Mogadishu and one who was on his way in as a freelancer. One who'd been there said she'd walked unarmed and unprotected through the same kind of rally that Adler did, and marveled that her stupidity didn't get her killed.

But the reporter who'd gone in with her said, "Mogadishu is no less safe for journalists today than it was yesterday." The veneer of security that the militias have tried to promote is, frankly, just that - the city is still dangerous, full of men with guns who hate western countries, chiefly the United States. With one journalist now tragically dead, he said, it's probably safer for reporters because they've been chastened, and won't take the same chances.

I never met Adler. But some of my friends know him, and by all accounts he was no novice, having covered conflicts around the world, including in Iraq, Rwanda and Sierra Leone - perhaps the most brutal African war of the past decades. He'd won awards for his work. I don't imagine he took chances yesterday that were unreasonable, or chances that the rest of us wouldn't take if we were in his position. And yet he still was killed. It was, as the cliche goes, a sobering reminder of what can happen in places where violence is so pervasive, no matter how safe they might seem at a given moment.

You might be wondering: Will I be going to the Mog anytime soon? Well, when the militias took power and the world press was flocking to Somalia, I was on a beach in Jamaica, at Dean and Yasmine's beautiful wedding. A colleague of mine from Egypt went in my place. But, yes, I fully expect to see the Mog for myself at some point in the near future, and I can only hope for good luck.

In the meantime, on a happier note, here's a picture from Jamaica. It's from the Pelican Bar, perhaps the best located bar in the world - a wooden shack that sits on a sandbar, in the middle of the water, giving you the illusion that you're drinking your cold Red Stripe while floating on the ocean.

Back in the USA

The blog has been stagnant for the past couple of weeks because I've been back home in the States for some work and then some vacation. It's my first time back since moving to Kenya in September, and I've been enjoying almost every minute of it. The fun started right when I landed in Washington two Sundays ago. While disembarking the plane, I inadvertently stepped into the aisle in front of a rather heavyset woman, who abruptly put her hand out to stop me. "Sorry," I said, but she grumbled and got out ahead of me.

 

A few minutes later I found myself in the immigration line ahead of her and her traveling companions, who couldn't stop talking about how pleased they were to be back in "the greatest country in the world." The people they'd met while traveling in Europe had apparently been rude and "annoying." Then, unbelievably, the woman started talking about me, not realizing that I was standing five feet from her. "Some young foreign guy tried to get in front of me on the plane," she clucked. Her friends clucked back. An elderly woman in a wheelchair - her mother, I think - said something to the effect of, "Just because they're foreign, doesn't mean they don't have to have manners." I briefly thought of throwing my U.S. passport at them, but I was dumbfounded by shock (or maybe it was jetlag), and then it was my turn to get my passport stamped, so there went my chance.

 

But not even that semi-encounter with Red America could dampen my mood. It was good to be back. Within hours of landing, I was at the home of the Sandhus in Cleveland Park, where my friends Dean and Yasmine were in last-minute preparations for their wedding, which is this Saturday in Jamaica. Typically, they (and a few bourbons) kept me awake until past midnight, helping to stave off first-day jetlag. But the next day, the seven-hour time difference got to me. On Monday evening, after a talk on international reporting that I and another reporter gave for the local chapter of the South Asian Journalists Association, a girl came up to me and asked if I'd been crying a lot because my eyes were so red.

 

After a week in Washington (including a two-day detour in North Carolina to visit two newspapers, and my friend Michelle in Durham) I came home to L.A. The first day was great - a family dinner to celebrate my brother's 24th birthday, then a night out in honor of Atur, who became the first of my childhood friends to get engaged. You could tell AT's friends that night - we were the ones looking nervous because that night our marriage clocks began ticking ever louder. But we put that aside for a good night in Long Beach, which culminated at some cavernous club the size of a Vegas casino.

 

The next morning, at home in the kitchen, I went to pour myself a glass of water and saw that the club's entrance stamp was still dark and clear on my right wrist. It said, "Nasty," and rather than have to explain to my 85-year-old grandfather what that meant, I went and scrubbed that off right away.

 

Other highlights from my two weeks here:

 

Landing in Charlotte, N.C., the week of a big NASCAR race. Charlotte is vying to become the racing capital of America. I'd say it's off to a good start. After a day of meetings at the newspaper in town, I drove into thick late-afternoon traffic outside of town on my way to Durham. A big crowd was headed for the racetrack, but the race wasn't for three more days. Folks were just going to the track to hang out.

 

Inane ramblings of Bud Light drinkers. It takes only a little overseas travel to realize how poor the average American beer is in comparison to the average beers of the other countries of the world. (This includes African countries; I'll take a cold Tusker or a Nile Special over a Bud any day.) Two Fridays ago, I was at a great D.C. bar called Bourbon with Dean, Yasmine and Yasmine's sister Chandani. No bonus points for guessing what drink the bar specializes in. Yet at one point, we heard a 20-something girl ask the bartender for a bottle of Bud Light. He replied that they didn't serve Bud Light. She asked, "O.K., do you have anything that tastes like Bud Light?" The four of us rolled our eyes way back into our nasal cavities at each other, but it was only outside, like an hour later, that I realized what the bartender should have said: "Well, I could urinate into a pint glass if you'd like."

 

I still hate shopping. Besides seeing my family, I came to L.A. hoping to compress a year's worth of shopping into a week. I had a list of things to buy - clothes, books, electronics - and only a small amount of patience for the logistics of shopping in this city. I spent a couple of days (and several weeks' worth of salary on gasoline) zigzagging from one megamall to another before giving up and cutting my list in half.

 

What happens in Vegas depends on who you're with in Vegas. My parents, grandfather and I just did two days in everyone's favorite capital of sin and marketing. This was unlike the past few Las Vegas trips, which I've made with friends. The family played a little, walked around a lot, griped about the heat, saw a show, played some more, and that was it. Good family time. I broke even at the blackjack tables, and that was good. At no point did Mom or Dad order a round of tequila shots, double-down on a seven with the dealer showing a face card, or strike up a conversation with a stripper. And while I love the Guys Gone Wild trips and hope to make a few more, I have to say that waking up to the smell of incense from my Mom's morning prayers is nicer than waking up to the smell of stale beer - and perhaps vomit.

So THIS is what the Strip looks like in the daytime... 

Me, Mom and grandfather in the lobby of the Wynn hotel in Vegas