Lonely Planet Chapter 2

So to continue the Lonely Planet guide to Mlkl...

Drinks

Because Mlkl is actually quite hot and humid both day and night, you will need to consume an amazing amount of liquid on any given day. Any local shop will sell cold water, soda and a rather limited selection of fruit juice. Watch out for the Fruit Coctail juice which has listed as it’s ingredients, “Fruit Cocktail and Sugar”.

However, if you happen to be sitting around and waiting for a workshop to happen and have nothing better to do, there are several places within the market where you can sit and drink and while the day away, whilst keeping an eye on the local activities. On many of the street corners you will find the tea ladies. These women are all set up with their charcoal stoves, their pots happily bubbling away with boiling water, ready to make up a piping hot glass of tea or strong coffee from freshly roasted coffee beans. Y
You can get either with or without milk – if you take the “with milk” version, it makes it a meal in and of itself, as you will get a few tablespoons of liquid with 5 or 6 heaping tablespoons of milk powder.

These are also great places to make friends with the local folks, charming them with a few words of Arabic. Just be careful, though, because the going rate for a wife (even a foreign one) is only 11 cows, as opposed to the 150 – 250 cows that a white wife would bring in other parts of this country.

Transportation

There is a dizzying array of transportation options in Mlkl. Since the town isn’t actually all that big, you can get most places for a just a small fee. You can also use your feet and go “footing” very easily around the main market and back and forth to the River side.

One of the most popular modes of transportation is the Rickshaw.

These little three wheelers go cruising around the town, and are remarkably good at skimming through the mud puddles. A ride to pretty much anywhere in the town will cost between $1.50 and $2.00. You can fit up to 4 people (even those of, um, well, a more “traditional build” into one of these little tuk-tuks, though you might start to sweat together if your ride is too long. This might be your view from the back seat of the rickshaw.

A very popular mode of transportation in this town is the donkey cart. Most are driven by young boys, and sometimes can be seen racing each other down the main street. Some of the donkeys look very well cared for, and seem to enjoy their life, friskily trotting around the town. But for others, well, it’s a bit grim. If you’re an animal right’s activist, or even have a bit of a heart, you might want to avert your eyes when you see the way some of these poor creatures are treated and how poorly their taken care of.

There are also a plethora of small Kia taxis which drive up and down the main streets, and can be hailed. There are set routes, so you can jump in and out of the taxi along that route at whichever point is closest to your final destination. As long as you stay on the main route, you should pay significantly less than a $1.00 for each person. However, you can also contract these taxis to take you directly to where you want to be. Expect to be blasted with music in a local language or Arabic, dazzled by the tinsel and tassels hanging from the dash and the rearview mirror, and romanced by the hot pink fake flowers in the back window. But the driving will be reasonable, and you probably won’t fear for your life as you might in taxis in other cities on this continent!

For the men and boys, riding a bike is a viable option.

Of course, this can only be used during the dry season, as you might not quite make it through the mud after the rain.

If you have friends in the know, they may commandeer one of the few Toyota Hilux pick up trucks in town. While Jb is crawling with fancy new Hiluxes and Landcruisers, there are really only a handful of trucks here. And very few of them belong to the UN or to NGOs. If a Hilux is commandeered for you, be ready to jump in the box and hold on!

Because Mlkl is right on the River, boats are a popular way to go, and there are many options.

Some boats were probably quite posh in their day, and hark back to the days when the British plyed the waters, and whiled away the warm evenings in their riverside clubs.

Other boats are used for transport up and down the river, even transporting a whole load of Coke and Fanta to some of the villages that line the river banks.

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Sorry, haven't had time to finish this chapter... will write more when I get a chance!