Thu 5 May

I finally track down the ice factory. Well one of them to be accurate. Apparently there are about 12 in Omdurman, all around souq Shabi area.

I wander along to the ice sellers one more time and hang-out, accepting coffee, hoping to get an invite. One driver has just made a delivery and is persuaded to take me back to the factory to look around. He's concerned that I will need to get permission and I assure him that it will be okay. It turns out these drivers are self-employed, a kind of a "man-with-a-van", but they have regular jobs like delivering 20 blocks of ice to Tahir in Omdurman souq every morning. This guy has done ice and is ready to catch his next job, though judging my the baksheesh iceberg slopping around the passenger foot well I suspect he is intending to go home first.

Of course the factory manager is delighted to have a visiting khawaja teacher from University of Khartoum and invites me to go and introduce myself to the foreman. The foreman's at breakfast but no one seems to mind. The driver stays with me anyway and explains to everyone that I just want to see where the ice comes from. We start in a largish room with five brightly painted, Danish built, compressors. These are doing much the same as a domestic fridge; compressing ammonia from gas to liquid. The frosty pipe runs through the wall into a large indoor pool – appropriately enough called the "ice pool". It's not terribly well lit but it appears to be a dark murky green, not unlike the waters of deep Scottish lochs, presumably containing some sort of antifreeze. Most of the pool is covered over with wooden planks and canvas. Where the water's revealed there are giant-sized ice-cube "trays", each with 20 compartments and crossing one width. I imagine there may be 100 of these over the length of the pool. When a customer comes a worker uses an electrically operated overhead hoist to fly down the pool to the latest width. Lifts a whole row at once and carries it through the air back up to the start. The pods are dipped and wiggled in normal temperature water to loosen them and then tipped up, discarding their solid contents onto wooden decking. A couple more workers use a metal claw to slide them off the boards and into the waiting vehicle the pods are refilled (obviously with clean drinking water) and then fly back down to resume their place in the pool.