Walk to Bethlehem 10/12/2020 to 10/18/2020 Week 4 Report This week we traveled 818 miles and had 29 participants. We had ended the previous week in Khartoum but had used up over 1000 miles in Week Three to get there and so we waited to explore the city until the beginning of week 4. Khartoum is the place where the White Nile which we have been following and the Blue Nile converge into the Nile. Divided by these two parts of the Nile, Khartoum is a tripartite metropolis with an estimated overall population of over five million people, consisting of Khartoum proper, and linked by bridges to Khartoum North and Omdurman to the west. This picture below shows the distinctly lighter White Nile and the darker Blue Nile. Satellite view of Khartoum with White and Blue Niles Khartoum was founded in 1821 as part of Ottoman Egypt, north of the ancient city of Soba. The Siege of Khartoum in 1884 led to the capture of the city by Mahdist forces and a massacre of the defending Anglo-Egyptian garrison. It was re-occupied by British forces in 1898 and served as the seat of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan government until 1956, when the city became the capital of an independent Sudan. The city has continued to experience unrest in modern times. Khartoum is an economic and trade center in Northern Africa, with rail lines from Port Sudan and El-Obeid. It is served by Khartoum International Airport, with a new airport under construction. Several national and cultural institutions are located in Khartoum and its metropolitan area, including the National Museum of Sudan, the Khalifa House Museum, the University of Khartoum, and the Sudan University of Science and Technology. Khartoum has had its share of violence in recent history. In 1973, the city was the site of an anomalous hostage crisis in which members of Black September held 10 hostages at the Saudi Arabian embassy, five of them diplomats. The US ambassador, the US deputy ambassador, and the Belgian chargé d'affaires were murdered. The remaining hostages were released. A 1973 United States Department of State document, declassified in 2006, concluded: "The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasser Arafat." In 1977, the first oil pipeline between Khartoum and the Port of Sudan was completed. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Khartoum was the destination for hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing conflicts in neighboring nations such as Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda. Many Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees assimilated into society, while others settled in large slums at the outskirts of the city. Since the mid-1980s, large numbers of refugees from South Sudan and Darfur fleeing the violence of the Second Sudanese Civil War and Darfur conflict have settled around Khartoum. In 1991, Osama bin Laden purchased a house in the affluent al-Riyadh neighborhood of the city and another in Soba. He lived there until 1996, when he was banished from the country. Following the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, the United States accused bin Laden's al- Qaeda group and, on 20 August, launched cruise missile attacks on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum North. The destruction of the factory produced diplomatic tension between the U.S. and Sudan. The factory ruins are now a tourist attraction. In November 1991, the government of President Omar al-Bashir, whom we first encountered last week due to his problems with South Sudan, sought to remove half the population from the city. The residents, deemed "squatters", were mostly southern Sudanese who the government feared could be potential rebel sympathizers. Around 425,000 people were placed in five "Peace Camps" in the desert an hour's drive from Khartoum. The camps were watched over by heavily armed security guards, many relief agencies were banned from assisting, and "the nearest food was at a market four miles away, a vast journey in the desert heat." Many residents were reduced to having only burlap sacks as housing. The intentional displacement was part of a large urban renewal plan backed by the housing minister, Sharaf Bannaga. The sudden death of SPLA head and vice-president of Sudan, John Garang, at the end of July 2005, was followed by three days of violent riots in the capital. The riots finally died down after Southern Sudanese politicians and tribal leaders sent strong messages to the rioters. The situation could have been much more dire; even so, the death toll was at least 24, as youths from southern Sudan attacked northern Sudanese and clashed with security forces. The Organization of African Unity summit of 18–22 July 1978 was held in Khartoum, during which Sudan was awarded the OAU presidency. The African Union summit of 16–24 January 2006 was held in Khartoum. On 10 May 2008, the Darfur rebel group, Justice and Equality Movement, moved into the city, where they engaged in heavy fighting with Sudanese government forces. Their soldiers included minors, and their goal was to topple Omar al-Bashir's government, though the Sudanese government succeeded in beating back the assault. On 23 October 2012, an explosion at the Yarmouk munitions factory killed two people and injured another person. The Sudanese government has claimed that the explosion was the result of an Israeli airstrike. On 3 June 2019, Khartoum was the site of the Khartoum massacre, where over 100 dissidents were murdered (the government said 61 were killed), hundreds more injured and 70 women raped by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in order to forcefully disperse the peaceful protests calling for civilian government. Currently the USA has Sudan on its lists of Terrorists nations but with the new government in place in Khartoum, the USA has promised to remove them from the if certain measures are met including payments to the victims of the terrorists. Khartoum features a hot desert climate with a dry season occurring during winter. The climate is extremely dry for most of the year, with about eight months when average rainfall is lower than 0.20 inches. The long dry season is itself divided into a hot, very dry season between November and February, as well as an extremely hot, dry season between March and May. During this part of the year, hot, dry continental trade winds from deserts sweep over the region such as the harmattan (a northerly or northeasterly wind); the weather is stable and very dry. The very irregular, very brief, rainy season lasts about 1 month as the maximum rainfall is recorded in August, with about 3.0 inches. Average annual rainfall is exceptionally low, with only 4.78 inches of precipitation. As a comparison we have had about 66” of rain this year in the Columbia area. The highest temperatures occur during two periods in the year: the first at the late dry season, when average high temperatures consistently exceed 104°F from April to June, and the second at the early dry season, when average high temperatures exceed 102 F in September and October months. Khartoum is one of the hottest major cities on Earth, with annual mean temperatures hovering around 86 F. The city also has hot winters. In no month does the average monthly high temperature fall below 86°F. This is something not seen in other major cities with hot desert climates such as Riyadh, Baghdad and Phoenix. Temperatures cool off enough during the night, with Khartoum's lowest average low temperature of the year just above 59 °F. Even though Khartoum is very much an African-Arabian city with a predominately Islamic population, the Roman Catholic Church has a presence in the city. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Khartoum is the Latin Metropolitan archbishopric which covers Sudan and South Sudan. Pope Gregory XVI established the Apostolic Vicariate of Central Africa on April 3, 1846 of Sudan and South Sudan, splitting off the Apostolic Vicariate of Egypt and Arabia in Egypt. Various Catholic missionary groups had served in Africa for many years. We attended mass at St. Mathews Cathedral while we were in Khartoum. The cathedral is located on the bank of the Blue Nile, next to the MacNimir Bridge. It is the seat of the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Khartoum, under the patronage of Saint Matthew the Apostle. This building almost resembles a fairy-tale castle with its various turrets, slender spires, and a large rose window. The Apostolic Vicariate of Sudan and Central- Africa was erected here in 1846 under the primacy of Msgr. Annetto Casolani. A small church was built in 1847 to serve as the cathedral church. The Apostolic Vicariate was entrusted in 1872 to the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, under Saint Daniel Comboni, who was apostolic vicar from 1872 until his death in 1881. When the city was taken by the Mahdistas in 1885, the church was destroyed and all missions in the country closed. The war ended in 1898 with the Battle of Omdurman, and missionary work recommenced the following year. When the British built the modern city of Khartoum as capital of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, a new cathedral was constructed. It was completed in 1908 in the neo-Romanesque style, featuring three naves and a high tower. Above is the exterior and interior of the Cathedral. Sukari Salone, one of our Walk participants and a choir member of St. John Neumann Church spent some time in Khartoum and shared some of her memories of her visit: Sukari shared the following report. “I attended mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral when I was in The Sudan for one year as a Fulbright Scholar (1987-88).