Home Africa Archive by category "Sudan"

Category: Sudan

The Tea Ladies of Sudan

You won’t get very far on a street in Sudan before you run into a sittet shai, a tea lady providing essential hot refreshments to passersby: tea, sometimes laced with cinnamon or mint; coffee, with flavours like ginger, cloves or cardamom; karkadeyh – hibiscus tea.  Whatever the choice it will come totally saturated with sugar. Crouched on little chairs behind their paraphernalia and a charcoal burner with a steaming kettle, these ladies are an essential part of everyday life. Over…

Continue reading

Hit me with your rhythm stick- Part 3 The deserts of Sudan

Traveling the lyrics of Ian Dury Once again the chance arrived to tick off another destination in my pointless quest to travel the lyrics in Ian Dury’s, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. Even without its link to the opening line of the legendary (ish) song I would have gone to Sudan anyway, precisely because it’s near the bottom of the list of places to go to for sensible people and near the top of the list of places the…

Continue reading

Dreams of the Empire in Sudan

Somewhere in rural England a wizened figure in the landed gentry is bemoaning the loss of the good old days of empire. His echoes reverberate to the ears of a tattooed skinhead, wistfully staring into his can of super strength lager in a grubby, urban apartment, festooned with Union Jacks, waiting for an English football team to live up to the days when we conquered the world.   No doubt, both would be surprised to learn that some measure of…

Continue reading

The tuk tuks of Dongola

The custom, auto-rickshaw scene in Sudan In a short space of time, cheap, Asian imports have transformed many aspects of life for Africans: mobile phones are now within reach of the relatively poor, opening up communication in what has always been an oral culture that values the spoken word over the written one; Chinese motorbikes have created jobs for two-wheeled taxi drivers and increased access for individuals in more remote places that you might have had to wait a week…

Continue reading

Dear God

A Catholic wedding in Sudan Dear God I had expected to be writing to you with your Allah hat on, seeing that Sudan is a Muslim country, but as luck would have it I got invited to a Catholic wedding so thought I had better have a few words with you about it. Whatever religious hat you had on when you created the people of Sudan you must have been in a good mood, as they are a likeable lot…

Continue reading