Paper short abstract:

The present paper is intended to provide an ethnographic account of corporeal practices, meanings and constrains on a desert road in Sudan.

Paper long abstract:

Lorry drivers together with their assistants and passengers spend several days on the Forty Days Road traversing networks of unsurfaced desert tracks linking western and central Sudan. Unlike the asphalt paved roads in other parts of the country, desert roads create a distinct way of corporeal experience that is marked by vulnerability against forces of nature and political circumstances.

Analytically, the lorry on the move provides a social milieu, a community, a moving space that is distinct. A window that is open to a world that is moving around the vehicle as well as within the body of the vehicle itself. The lorry on such a journey would arguably take a form of a vessel that is bringing individuals together - sharing the common aspiration of safe arrival, applying learnt skills to survive the journey without trouble, injury or serious dispute; often while having a limited (sometimes uncomfortable) spot being exposed to the sun, dust and wind. The spatial arrangements displayed at the beginning and during the journey provide a set of norms that contributes to the ordering of the travel community. A specific code of conduct is adopted during the trip that is constantly under creation, modification and transgression. The aim of this paper is to provide an ethnographic account on moving, to capture the dynamics of being on the move and the experience of traveling on a desert road.