Getting Started

The Anglican church

The maize field belonging to the church

We arrived but this was the first part of the process and things move slowly.  Having come from Khartoum, Medani is a pleasant sight.   There are trees!  And we saw some grass!  Our temporary apartment block is a couple of hundred yards from the River Nile which is lined by green parks with swings and slides for children and seating areas for relaxing.  Across the road are rows of tea ladies and juice bars and people sit around chatting and relaxing with friends.  It has a real seaside feel and is very pleasant.

We took a little walk around early evening the day after we arrived and found an Anglican church.  We had a look around and met the Bishop and had a good chat with him about his visits to England and the work they were doing here.  He showed us around the place which consists of a few small buildings one of which houses five computers.  I am quite excited about this as it is an opportunity to teach skills and English at the same time and so my brain starts doing somersaults thinking about what I can do here.  However, what hit me like a bolt was seeing blackboards fixed to various points on the outside of the buildings with seats arranged under nearby trees.  These informal outside classrooms are where young people come for English lessons after they have been at school or university.  They hang around the church because they know that this is where they can learn and practice their English.  They come because they need to and the Church meets that need.

Makeshift Classroom

Jessica was an SVP volunteer in Wad Medani before us and she had given us the names of some people from an English School that she volunteered at and we asked the Bishop if he knew them.  Of course he did and so Rose came over when she finished teaching and took us to the English Institute.  We met Doris, a German woman married to a Sudanese man and had lived all over Africa but came to settle here when her husband retired.   (My description does not do justice to this very interesting woman who has done some amazing stuff)  We met James as well; both he and Rose run the little English Language Institute.  It had a lovely atmosphere, like an oasis of calm.

We then met up with Christine who is doing her 3^rd year of her language degree in Sudan and is due back to the UK next week.  We all went along to Nile street, ate pizza and drank tea.

In fact this is all we seem to do all day.  We go over to the Ministry of Education, sit around and drink tea and chat, hand over a piece of paper.  Then we go somewhere else and do the same.  Patience, patience.

Our home town - Wad Medani

View from a Rakshar in Medani

We have been hanging around for what seems like forever and so we were very excited to be travelling to our final destination (not that final!)  The journey itself was fairly seamless and we arrived in Wad Medani after a 2 ½ hour air-conditioned coach ride and were picked up immediately and taken to our temporary accommodation by people from the Ministry of Education.

The accommodation is quite plush, with ceramic floor tiles, air conditioning in all rooms, double glazing and comfortable furniture.  We were told that we would be here for 2 or 3 days and we also guess that our permanent accommodation will not be as salubrious as this so we are making the most of it.   Take-away lunch is brought for us all and we sit around and chat for a while with the Ministry people for a while.  They leave and tell us that they will ring at 6 to make sure we have everything we need for our evening meal and that is that.

The apartment is on the 3^rd floor and some poor lad had carried our 6 bags up the stairs and so we asked Rami how much we should give as a tip and he said 3 or 4 pounds. We gave Rami 5 and asked him to give it to him on his way out but Rami couldn’t find him and so instead put the money on my phone.

At 6 this same boy turns up and asks us about food and so assuming he had been sent by the Ministry we gave him our order for food.  He spoke only very little English but he explained that his brother has a market stall and would we like some oranges or bananas?  So he went and bought us a kilo of each. We also took the opportunity of giving him the tip for carrying up the bags.  He came back again later, asking us whether we wanted some meat.  There followed a long conversation about meat and we said no we didn’t want any.  Then he came back with a frozen chicken and a couple of packs of meat.  We said no again.   He was hard to get rid of.  We were suspecting that he wasn’t from the Ministry at all but acting under his own initiative and we were feeling really put out by his persistence.  Echoes of Ethiopia.

The next day he was back again.  Banging on the door asking if we wanted food.  We told him no but he kept on.  Martin went down to buy something from the shops but the guy was behind him harassing him and so he came back up without buying anything.  The next day as we were walking out he stops us and tells us that the money we gave him wasn’t enough for carrying so many bags – it was “Little money”.  He asked us the same thing next time.

It got to the point that we stopped answering the door and it was only after persistent banging last night that we opened the door and he had brought us up a visitor who we had met the day before who didn’t have my number but knew where we lived.

She told us that he was Ethiopian.  Well that explained everything as this was our experience in Ethiopia and were beginning to think it was going to be a Sudanese approach as well.  What a relief.

Ethiopians are not liked here.  I don’t think it is for any particular reason other than the fact that they are immigrants.  During famine times, many Ethiopians crossed the border to The Sudan and have stayed and many go looking for work here as it certainly appears to be more prosperous that what we saw in Ethiopia.  From what I can see, all countries do this when they have groups of immigrants coming into their country, no different to us or the US in this respect.

In sickness and in health

It took me a week to get an appointment with a Rheumatologist at a hospital.  I went to the hospital last week hoping to see the specialist that day but it was not possible.  Instead I had to wait for the secretary to arrive and she wrote my name down in position 15 in a book for the following Wednesday.   She said 12 o’clock but I had no clue what that meant as there were 15 written down before me.  The waiting room was overflowing so I imagined I would have to be waiting for hours.

Anyhow, Wednesday came and we turned up at the hospital to an empty waiting room and I was seen straight away.  The doctor was very nice and I was given medication for my Rheumatoid arthritis and I have to come back in 6 weeks time.  It is a 3 hour bus ride from our placement city so I guess we will be in Khartoum for the night otherwise it will be a very long day.

The fee for the doctor was 150 SDP which is about £19.  So that was ok.  But the meds were very expensive.  The pharmacy wanted 50 SDP (£5.50) for 10 tablets and when I pulled a face she gave me some cheaper ones for 16 SDP (£2) Why not give me those ones first? I tried in 4 different pharmacies for the main medication and they didn’t have it.  In the last pharmacy, they called a number and a bloke appeared who sold me some directly.  Apparently, he is a pharmacist who goes to Egypt to stock up on drugs that are not available in The Sudan and sells them to pharmacies.  He charged me 150SDP that’s £19 for what would be 2 month’s supply.  I have bought drugs in Egypt and they are very cheap.  Am I being ripped off?  No doubt.  What a pisser.  Not happy.

But the good news is that I have my meds, am off steroids , so my little chubby chops should start to recede and am on the way to being pain free.  Also, my blood pressure is normal for the FIRST TIME IN 8 years without any medication.  Why is this the case?  I have no idea.  In fact it is very good not even just OK.  It was up when I was in the UK in June, maybe Africa suits me after all lol.

As you will gather from my FB statuses, we are working our way through the Sopranos at a steady rate and this has required lying down in bed for endless hours in an awkward position.  This has resulted in a painful muscle spasm at the top of my ribcage.   It was so bad that when it “went” it woke me with a start and I honestly thought I had cracked a rib!  It is like a crick in the neck but in the rib cage so not as bad but I am groaning and moaning like a good’un when I turn over in bed.  To top it all the last batch of our staple food – BBQd chicken – left us with a bug or two and we were up all night with sickness and diarrhoea which has lasted all day today.

BUT this morning we have woken up full of beans and feel great!!

On Covering up 2

Tanya - fellow SVP volunteer - British Muslim with a Jamaican heritage

Following on from my previous entry I wanted to find out more about the religious aspects of the dress code.

Why do Muslim Women wear a Hijab?

This article explains why Muslim women wear a veil.  Known as a Hijab, this is different to the Niqab which is the black, full body plus face veil and is a related but different issue.  The article says that the reason for wearing the veil or headscarf is

“… because they believe God has made it an obligation for believing women.  In the Quran God tells the believing men and women to lower their gaze and to dress modestly.  He (God) specifically addresses women when He asks them not to show off their adornment, except that which is apparent, and draw their veils over their bodies”

“Islam is known as a religion concerned with community cohesion and moral boundaries, and therefore hijab is a way of ensuring that the moral boundaries between unrelated men and women are respected.  In this sense, the term hijab encompasses more than a scarf and more than a dress code.  It is a term that denotes modest dressing and modest behaviour.”

One argument is that wearing the hijab is a symbol of gender-based repression but many women see it as their right to wear a hijab and make independent choices proclaiming their independent thought.  They also feel liberated by the fashion dictates of the society, less vulnerable to sexual harassment in the work place and being valued for their minds and not how they look.

I get both arguments.  I see both sides.  The reality is that these issues apply to all women in all society and not just to Muslims.  While I understand that walking around being too ‘alluring’ (in any society) may well send the message that a woman is available for sexual favours that will be freely given there is also something wrong if women need to totally de-sexualise themselves in order to send the message they do not welcome sexual advances and will not freely perform sex acts on request.  In the end doesn’t it just come down to the belief that men cannot be expected to NOT ACT on any sexual feelings they have?

Of course religion always gets mixed up with the culture which is why different Islamic countries insist on different dress codes for women with some insistent on the full Niqab (burka) for women.

Tanya, a volunteer here is a Black British Muslim and wears a veil in the UK.  Interestingly she says that in the UK she has found that there is more emphasis on how she dresses where other Muslims will feel free to comment about her style of dressing than in The Sudan where she has been living for the past 8 months. Here, she told me, comments about her behaviour, such as sitting at the tea stall in the street on her own will raise comments or looks whereas in the UK this would not be an issue. 

The Koran says that wearing the veil indicates to all men that a woman is a woman of piety and therefore not to be molested; so I was surprised to hear that Tanya is regularly touched up when travelling on buses, despite being fully covered, because she is clearly not Sudanese; the assumption is that she is Nigerian and therefore foreign and therefore sexually available.

This article looks at one Leicestershire woman’s view of wearing a Niqab (full veil) and also discusses how this is a problem.

One woman's experience of wearing a Niqab in Leicester, UK.

“It is a strange thing for something so apparently anti-fashion, but the anonymous black silhouette of the burka and niqab has become a status symbol.  A sports star pulls on a pair of expensively-endorsed Nikes, a Tory politician dons an electric blue suit, and the Muslim woman who has to be seen as holier than thou draws a veil over her face.”

The relationship between religious practices and the culture it is practiced within is a complex one and the dividing line between what is pure religion and what is culture can be very blurred.

On Covering Up 1

Wedding guests the day after we arrived in Khartoum

Evidently I didn’t think much about what it would be like to live in a Muslim country regarding the dress code for women.  I think I had naively thought that it wouldn’t really apply to me as a westerner.  Obviously I did ask what the expectations were for dress, I spoke to previous volunteers etc. and the answer was long skirts, ¾ or long sleeves and no cleavage showing.  One said that she wore skirts to work but trousers in her own time and that as a Westerner, people would accept that a less rigorous adherence to the dress code was accepted.  We wouldn’t be expected to wear a head scarf or anything like that. I was fine with all that.  In fact, with the heat and the strong sun, you would not want to be exposing too much of your skin anyway.

I didn’t anticipate the heat of course.  You don’t actually want anything next to your skin in that heat.  You just want to get naked, have a cold shower and then lie on the bed under the ceiling fan – several times a day.  You want only the lightest of fabric over you when you are outside after 8 o’clock in the morning.  My 3 cotton dresses were fine indoors but to go outside, I had to wrap a scarf around my shoulders or wear a t-shirt under the dress.  For comfort and aesthetic reasons I hated doing both.  I walked like a robot when wearing the scarf so that it didn’t fall off and expose any skin so inelegantly had to tuck bits under my bra straps and I felt ugly pairing up t-shirts with a cotton sun-dress which were not designed to go together.  I know it will take time to adjust to the heat and hopefully in the not so far future I will be able function in the open air.

So focussing on the few things in my wardrobe that are suitable and lightweight at this moment I looked at myself in the mirror the other day and wanted to cry.  I was wearing a flouncy skirt a flouncy top.  My hair has a natural curl to it unless it is blow-waved but firstly cannot face the heat of the hairdryer and secondly, with the sweat followed by the constant showers it hardly seems worth it.  Ditto make-up.  The redeeming features are I am still wearing earrings and I have large sunglasses.  I looked and felt like a bundle of S@&% tied up in the middle as my Mum would have said if she could have seen me.  Of course, we all have those moments in England but here in the Sudan I realise that I am going to have to develop a whole new attitude to how I feel about how I look and dress.  You know, so much of our self-esteem is wrapped up in how we look and this set me off thinking. 

Generally speaking, we like to dress in the way that our peers dress - whoever we consider our peers to be - and when we don’t, we stand out and give rise to positive or negative comments from other members of that group.  We dress appropriately according to the occasion, with certain clothes for work, for relaxing with family or going to social events.  Our clothing is more than something to keep us warm it says a lot about our social standing and the messages we are giving other people.  Even relatively small things like wearing a poppy or a pin for cancer awareness or gay rights tells people a lot about us.

I am not a Muslim and my culture has a different dress code so what do I want to do?  How do I want to dress?  In the UK some would argue that other cultures should adapt to UK culture (particularly when it comes to wearing a full Burqa for example) but why shouldn’t they wear what they like?  So, the same here.  Why shouldn’t I wear a sleeveless top or even a short sleeved t-shirt?  What is wrong with wearing a below the knee skirt?  As I am white and therefore clearly not of this land why would anyone bat an eyelid at me not being dressed the same?  In England I am still taken aback when I see someone in a burqa, curious and wondering at the same time.  Is that how Sudanese people feel if they saw me in a short-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of trousers?  I just don’t get it really.  But what I know is that I feel uncomfortable and very aware of the fact that I would normally dress differently to those around me and could not be relaxed if I was exposing my arms, legs, or chest (I don’t mean cleavage) in public.  I don’t want to be different if the truth be told.

Susanna Chooses to wear a head scarf in public even though she is not Muslim

Susanna, a 20 year old SVP volunteer, chooses to not only cover up her body but also her hair with a scarf even though she is a devout Christian.  She said that it was out of respect for the Sudanese culture and the only time Muslims have asked her to take it off was in a class of female students who wanted to have more of an ‘American’ English lesson.  Another ex-volunteer I saw but did not speak to also chooses to cover her head even though she is not a Muslim.  I find this interesting and maybe this is partly due to wanting to fit in and not stand out.

But one confusing thing is that given that there is a dress code, why are there not more appropriately designed clothes available in the Sudan?  We went to a plush wedding a couple of days after we arrived and the women wore obviously very expensive western style strappy evening dresses.  But under this they wore the equivalent of a nylon roll neck jumper in either a matching or contrasting colour.  Why?  Why not wear a dress that has sleeves and covers your chest?  Also the dresses of the bride and bridesmaids were strapless and showed their chest. 

The bride surprisingly wears an off the shoulder dress

Why do women not wear evening dresses with sleeves?

I am puzzled!

The Camera and the Hamaan

Happy times with my camera

One mini-disaster. I went to the open-air hammaam (loo to you) and pulled up my billowing shirt only to also pull up the handle of my camera that was hanging out of my pocket.  Up my camera flew into the air and landed on the pan.  I watched it in slow motion as it landed recalling all the near misses I’d had in Georgia with my phone and my pocket and watched as it landed and then slowly slid down the hole.  I stared at it not quite believing my eyes.  Did that actually happen?  Sadly it did. 

Rami’s two cousins offered to dig it out for me if I really wanted the camera.  Heroes.  We are guests and that is enough motivation for them to try. 

My Heroes

Not only did they use hands, hooks, string and pole under the heat of the sun digging in you know what, but they carried on again later that night in darkness by the torchlight.

Alas, they found it but couldn’t dig it up before it sunk.

On being Tee-total

The issue with alcohol is a funny thing.  Neither of us are big drinkers and the thought of not being able to drink in the Sudan didn’t seem like a problem.  In Ethiopia after school had finished we would go to the hotel and have a couple of beers maximum three while we used the internet.  I think I had a vodka and tonic on one occasion.  But here, knowing that there is no alcohol is very strange. 

There are lots of café / bars where you can get delicious fruit juices and milk shakes, coffees, teas and other soft drinks but no alcohol.  A glass of rose wine would be nice or a large vodka with lots of ice and tonic but I can’t and I feel cross that I can’t.  I keep saying let’s have a beer or shall I open up a bottle of red? Or get those beers out of the fridge.  I think I am sharing my crossness.  I can’t explain it but I feel like showing off about it.  I resent being unable to have even one cold beer. 

There is of course alcohol here – the home-made kind and when we had this delicious date juice drink, our SVP friend said “Ohhhh if you leave this 3 days …..” so drinking does happen among the locals.  I miss the effects of being a bit tipsy and giggly.  I didn’t think I’d miss the social aspects of drinking either but I do. It's not quite the same getting together with people and then remaining completely sober without a glass of wine in my hand.  To add to this but I don’t like fizzy drinks or sweet juices and a tea or coffee doesn’t really hit the spot. It all adds to the excitement as Rebecca (SVP volunteer) likes to say!

However, it’s like always being the designated driver and it is quite irritating.