The Physical & Mental Road Trip

Indeed the road trip was both physical and mental.

On Thursday night at 11.30pm, we left to LA from Chicago in our rented Ford Explorer. We were all hyped up. After 3 hours, I wasn’t anymore really. We had just left Illinois and made it across into Iowa. Nebraska, Colorado, Utah and Nevada were still ahead of us. It seemed like a never-ending journey. My mind wondered so far away as we crossed the flat plains of Iowa. You can’t help but not contemplate many things especially when both sides of the highway are all farms as far as the eyes see. In a way it felt as if I was the highway and the farms on both my sides were strangers that brought me insecurity. As far as I went they still followed me and not only on one side but on both. I felt sandwiched between two worlds. I felt sandwiched between two farms. I felt claustrophobic. Both sides could seem very similar or different depending on how a person views things. I guess I saw a bit of both. Those farms on both sides were me in a way and I was the highway sandwiched in between. Those farms were strangers but familiar in a way. Here I am, a Sudanese, a Nubian Arab, a Shaige and a Muslim traveling across the United States of America. There I was contemplating and struggling within myself. It’s a struggle I wake up to face everyday. It’s the struggle of the Westernized me VS the Sudanese Muslim deeply engrained within me. It’s the fight and the search for answers. It’s about finding a place where I belong. This place is not a physical one but a mental one. It’s a mental state, which I and only I can achieve for myself. How can I not contemplate and simply turn my back away? Sudan has been raped over and over again by a corrupt and bloody dictatorship. It still continues to be. Naturally I want to fight for it and I want to free it but I feel too weak and despaired. I need the Sudanese people to join me. I want the righteous ones to wake up and help me overthrow this disease that is sinking my country deeper into misery as everyday passes by. “Oh well” I say to myself. “I’m scared and I’m not brave enough to do it”. “Running away is the answer,” I say to myself. Running away mentally and physically to another place is the way I will find peace within but where do I run though? To America, Canada, London, or do I stay in Malaysia… Where?? I love and admire the West dearly for so many reasons but in a way I don’t think I could ever be Western mentally. There are just way too many contradictions that bring me a feeling of anxiety. On one side I see a torn and oppressive Sudan and on the other I see a prosperous West that is free and yet contradicting to many of my beliefs. On one side I see a brutal and bloody Sudan and on the other a US with a foreign policy filled with many double standards and which corporate interests heavily distort. When looking beneath the politics, most of the frustration and confusion evaporate away. I start to see kind, lovely and such wonderful people on both sides of the divide, the divide being me the highway cutting across the farmlands of Nebraska. The divide being me sandwiched between two worlds, and two farms that reap a harvest equivalent to their peoples’ efforts and their amount of fair or unfair access to water and other vital resources. Bump! Our Ford SUV shook a little and I snapped back to reality.

The scenery was just beautiful. America’s skies are exceptional. I’ve never seen such pretty skies in my life. The clouds and the sunshine edging through little holes in them are truly breath taking. The journey continued and the green flat plains started getting yellowish and hilly. I was mesmerized by the views. I couldn’t help it and so my mind started drifting away again but before it took off too far, I snapped back to reality and no it wasn’t a road bump this time. It was something else, something ugly, something way different and much more disastrous than a bump. Someone in the SUV took the pleasure in starting the vicious “road trip” game of anonymous and sound proof “emergency gas releases”. I don’t know how bad it was when Saddam gassed the Kurds and I don’t care because this was by far worse. Man, I could have died from chocking. Shouts accompanied by laughter then followed after the disgustingly powerful and smelly gases assaulted our nostrils. Game on! Drima was about to turn into a fart machine. I was done cooking “it” and just as I was about to blast it into the air in a sound proof manner, sirens blasted into our ears instead. Cops! We pulled over. “Here comes the racism test,” I said to myself. Five colored men in an SUV, speeding across Nebraska must seem bad. She came and uttered the words that I’ve memorized from Hollywood movies. “License and registration please.” My brother was driving and so he provided the required documents. She looked at them, then at us, then at them and finally back at us one more time. I guess she could easily tell we weren’t high on weed or drunk on vodka. She was very nice and polite. I got no racist vibe from her whatsoever. My brother got down, went into her car and they talked for a while. He came back with a smile and a disappointed look. He just got a speeding ticket for $169! It was the first he ever received in his whole life. We agreed to split it 5 ways. I would pay $9 while the others $40 each. It’s so nice being a student. The engine roared again and the windows were closed. 5 minutes later I finally blasted it. Yes, I did it. It was perfectly sound proof and anonymous. Success! Shouts erupted again and everyone used Shaggy’s famous line “it wasn’t me”. I did too and hey it truly, honestly and most certainly wasn’t me okay! We calmed and the air freshened up again. We continued on our long journey across America. I slept and woke up only to find myself in the high and beautiful mountains of Colorado. No more yellowish hills. I was in awe. It was amazingly beautiful. However my brother and his friends who took turns driving as we made regular stops every 4 or 5 hours, didn’t enjoy it much. I was resting and chilling. Thank the Lord my driving license isn’t international. My brother and his friends found it difficult and annoying driving in Colorado as the highway wasn’t straight anymore. It was curved and had many steep uphill climbs and scary downhill descends. It was like a plate of Spaghetti. Good thing they had their GPS system. I didn’t care. I was just enjoying the scenery and day dreaming as usual. From love and relationships, to politics, religion, music and my ambitious entrepreneurial dreams. I think too much.

We made it into Utah. The mountains were still to be seen but the green and tall trees were gone. The land started becoming desert like. We continued and drove on. We were now in Nevada and were excited again. Las Vegas was right ahead. We drove on but still there was nothing but a never-ending expanse of tar and a few weak lights overwhelmed by the total darkness that surrounded us. Suddenly it appeared. It was beautiful. There it was right in front of us. Las Vegas baby! The darkness was no more. Millions of tiny twinkling lights sat there in the middle of the Nevada desert. It was an oasis in a dry valley of death. “Sin City here we come,” we all cheered. 45 minutes later we were driving right by the Luxor. The day was already Saturday and it was 3am in the morning. We’ve so far been on the road for more than 24 hours. We decided we would stop at Vegas on the way back and so we continued to LA. We made it into California after about 4 more hours of driving from Las Vegas. I was at the west coast of the US now. It was great. We arrived and checked in into our hotel, which was near Hermosa Beach. I was already in love with LA! The beach was sweet. I jumped into the Pacific Ocean after 10 minutes of hesitation since the water was really cold. The waves, the girls, the sand, the wind, the girls, the skies, the sun and everything else were absolutely great. It was crazy too because not more than 11 days ago, I was all the way on the east coast of the US at Portland, Maine and I was literally in the Atlantic Ocean. This truly is such a wonderful and amazing vacation. It’s a great experience indeed. After the beach we went back, showered and slept like pigs. We then woke up and got ready to go to a Sudanese wedding that we were invited to.

The wedding was nice but not as big as the ones back home. There were a good number of cuties there too. You see it’s a Sudanese thing. In the West men go to bars to pick up women but in Sudan we go to big wedding parties and observe. If you see something you like and you exchange “sparky” glances, then you find out who the mother is and you politely inform her of your good intention to get to know her daughter. That doesn’t happen in all weddings though but when it comes to my family, our close friends and their families that’s how it works. It’s important to inform the parents and introduce yourself before going up to the daughter, exchanging phone numbers and later going out with her. It’s just more polite that way. This approach is already considered to be kind of liberal. The vast majority of Sudanese only marry within the same family or at least same tribe. I don’t like that idea and I personally think it’s primitive and kind of racist. I don’t mind unforced arranged marriages but I don’t like the idea of them being constrained only within the same family or same tribe. Another wedding is about to take place in Virginia between a Sudanese girl and a White American guy. They fell in love while in university. The parents don’t mind at all. There is a catch however. He is Muslim. He converted way before he even met her. Thank the Lord they said yes and not rejected him simply because he’s a “white infidel”. I’m glad the mentality is changing. The wedding in LA was between a Sudanese man and a half Sudanese half Ethiopian girl. The man’s family in Sudan is not very happy because the girl is not pure Sudanese but he doesn’t care much. I guess his family is still sticking to the backward things in Sudanese culture, which I’m against. Anyways we ate, chilled and danced to the beats of Ethiopian and Sudanese music. The wedding wasn’t bad even though small by Sudanese standards. Before we left, my brother and I conversed with an old lady who turned out to be our relative. This is the amazing thing about us Sudanese people. Wherever we go, we find out we’ve got relatives there. Sweet! It makes approaching the cuties much easier since there is already an “established trust”. We left back to the hotel.

Next day we woke up, checked out and sped off to LA’s Downtown Disney’s ESPN Zone to watch the World Cup finals. The majority of people there were supporting Italy. It made sense since 90% of the place was filled with Italian Americans. However there were a few cool white non-Italian Americans there supporting Italy too. We, the road trip gang were all supporting France. I asked those surprisingly “soccer loving” non-Italian white Americans why they were supporting Italy and they gave me 2 interesting answers. Some of them bet a lot of money on Italy and others didn’t support France for political reasons. I guess the latter were the “red necks” we saw protesting and pouring French wine in the streets just before the start of the Iraq war. The match starts. Penalty! Zidane scores. Wonderful! We clapped and cheered together with the few Franch people next to us. Stares immediately followed. Italy scores. Crowd cheers and our smiles fade away. The suspense almost killed us until the worst happened. Henry took the seat but hey we were wrong. That wasn’t the worst that happened. Zidane was. One hit from his bold stone head and the rude Italian player fell down in pain. Good for that rude Italian but too bad for Zidane. He should have controlled his anger and ended his career properly. I still love the man anyways. Long live Zidane! World Cup ended in a depressing way indeed. Also something, which pissed me off, happened after that. When we all walked out of ESPN Zone some of the French people holding French flags were literally crying and wiping their tears. Out of nowhere comes this rude Italian guy and starts cheering at the top of his voice and laughing at them “Italia, Italia, Italia, wohooo, France lost, yaaay, Italia”. That was so disgustingly rude especially the fact that this rude Italian guy was in his 20’s and he had the guts to come up to this weeping French man in his 60’s and laugh at him. Where is that monkey’s sportsmanship and respect for older people? I’m glad the weeping French guys kept their cool. Anyways half an hour later I received news back from Malaysia that my mom was very happy while my sister was literally crying her eyes out. Yes I know. My family is weird when it comes to sports and my little sister is a football fanatic.

After the match we went to eat pizza in downtown LA. It was the most annoying pizza I’ve ever eaten in my life and that’s exactly the reason why it was the best and tastiest ever. You take a bite and the cheese stretches from LA all the way to London and back. Following the elastic cheesy pizza, we went to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and took pictures there. After that we left off to Las Vegas. We reached and stopped there for about 2 hours. The weather reminded me of Qatar’s and Dubai’s. Believe me people, the fact the word “palace” is part of the name “Caesar’s Palace” is not an overstatement. Downtown Las Vegas is huge and exciting. It reminded me of Times Square in New York City. On the way back to the car, we passed by a fence, which was polluted with pictures of nude women. They were promoting their “services” and the cards had phone numbers if you wanted to call and get a good “massage”. Hmmm. After Vegas I woke up only to find myself in Colorado’s Copper Mountain Resort. It was lovely. It reminded me of Genting Highlands back in Malaysia but the weather was better though. We spent an hour there and took many pictures.

During the road trip to LA and back to Chicago our diet mostly consisted of, Pringles, Subway and chocolate bars. I always asked for extra onions in my Subways to recharge my “gas leaking” abilities. On the way back here to Chicago, we agreed on a truce and the farting battle was over. Don’t ever mess with Drima when it comes to emergency “biohazardous” gas leaks. Come to think about it, why not donate all your farts to this blog so I can collect them and try releasing them on corrupt dictatorships all over the world to try and get rid of them. That would be great wouldn’t it? The road trip ruled. I’ve got 10 days left in the US and I’ll spend them all in Chicago. I’ve had so much fun traveling all over the country and I’m glad to have met many wonderful American people. Indeed you “infidels” ain’t bad at all you know. I wish others who come from where I do can start judging you guys without the political factor being involved. That will make it much easier to absorb the truth in. Every race, followers of a religion and nationality have the good and the bad in them. Never stereotype the majority based on the actions of an evil few whomever those people maybe. Always keep an open mind. Down with the corporate media!

In America each city was beautiful in its own way. In terms of fun I loved New York the best and I really enjoyed Broadway’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Walking around the city with Pinktoes was too sweet and I guess that’s why New York is now so dear to me. It’s because of her and New Yorkers. If I judge the cities without the “people” factor then LA is definitely my number one choice. I loved California and its beaches. Sometimes this vacation doesn’t seem real to me that I feel the need to pinch myself. I’ve done way too much in the last 3 weeks alone. 10 days left here in Chicago and I look forward to a whole day’s stay at Tokyo’s Ginza during my transit on the way back to Malaysia. It’s going to be depressing when I go back to my boarding 2 days after I arrive. I’ve got 2 more years to graduate from university. I’ll be 21 that time. I’ll work for a while to get some experience and after that I truly hope to do my postgraduate studies in either Canada or America. I aim to get accepted in Syracuse, Princeton, Harvard or maybe Ottawa’s Carlton. Big dreams for a small man huh? I always like to tell people something. Either I’m too small for my dreams and they’re not really that big or I really am very big but my dreams are just way bigger. Time will tell. Until then, I’ll always keep dreaming and thinking. That’s why I am Drima, The Sudanese Thinker. Blogging about Sudan to resume soon. Peace out friends!