My Sudan Year

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER HI DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM fTTBROUGH most of the nights of the year it is warm enough to sleep out of doors. In the hot weather you camp out on the roof, where a breeze may perchance fan you, with an earthen pitcher of water within reach. In the so-called cool weather your angareb is placed in...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER HI DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL KHARTOUM fTTBROUGH most of the nights of the year it is warm enough to sleep out of doors. In the hot weather you camp out on the roof, where a breeze may perchance fan you, with an earthen pitcher of water within reach. In the so-called cool weather your angareb is placed in the verandah or garden, and there you lie watching the great stars flickering in a sky of vast clearness, or fireflies spangling the magic of the tropical moon if she is at the full, until you fall asleep. An extra blanket should be at hand, for the night grows chilly just before dawn. You can be awakened by a variety of causes: by the light? always dazzling, by the bugling in the barracks, by a regimental band braying past, or by thestrident note of the Sudan bulbul in the tacomas or acacias. A native bed made of leather thongs on a wooden frame. No Sudani is without one, and few Europeans, as it is very comfortable. You draw no mosquito curtain about you, for the energy of the medical officers of health has done away with the Khartoum mosquito. More than that?a householder is fined 50 piastres if a mosquito is found on the premises. The mosquito breeds in stagnant water, therefore all stagnant water is treated with paraffin, or removed. In a town like Khartoum, where people used to stand up to their necks in water to be rid of the torment of the stings, this is more than triumph. It is only a part of the work of the sanitary authorities. Khartoum is one of the healthiest cities in the world, thanks to untiring vigilance. The English official makes constant personal inspection himself, however efficient the native subordinate may be. Once there is a case of malaria or enteric, the cause is doggedly hunted down, and usually found. In 1909 there were some cases o...