28 March 2024

RANDOM RANTS | Why breakfast should be banned in Sudan

Typical Sudanese breakfast (Photo: www.binscorner.com)

Sudan, or the “Severely Under Developed African Nation”, is an accumulation of a lot of annoying things that just gather and cause mental and physical problems to people who live in it, near it and even far from it. In a recent research that I “didnt” do and I named it “the relationship between breakfast with mental damage, heart attacks and underdevelopment in Sudan” I found out that if breakfast was removed from the Sudanese table everyone will do his job and Sudan will be developed within 15 days.

Well, we know breakfast but what is ‘breakslow’? This is what happens in Sudan when you are walking with any papers, documents or any certifications to sign, when you are in a bank or a travel agency, if you want to renew your passport or sometimes even if you want to buy a can of coke. You come from the early morning and you stand in long boring back-breaking queues and after 25 minutes of standing you get sent to another one. You stand another 25 minutes there and when you get there they tell you to get a thing with a new name each and every time tasdeeg, damgha, or kholo taraf; when you go do that and come back you find out that no one is there. Where are they? Well ‘they went for breakfast’.

This is a big fat lie. Yes they went out, yes there is food involved; but this is not breakfast, this is ‘breakslow’, the point is to have a long break from work. I personally don’t mind people having breaks but the question is why? Why would a person want to have a break at 11am while he woke up at 8, reached work at 9:05 and didn’t actually start working until 9:30. Why is breakfast at 11 or 12 anyways? Breakfast should be an early meal in the morning. Why is there no specific time and duration for breakfast? They went for breakfast means they might come back and they might not come at all. Why do they think that the word Fatoor (breakfast) is the red line and the end of discussion, so when you ask an employee where are you going or where have you been they give you the ‘you want to deprive me from my human and civil rights’ face or the ‘are you stupid? I’m hungry, I need to eat’ face.

Sometimes you get this feeling that you need to start a fist fight but usually most people want to finish what they came for so they just settle with a thought of. I hope your stomach hurts, or I hope the food sticks in your throat most commonly accompanied by a ‘damn you’ phrase.

The point is NO it’s not your right to go and eat breakfast and then sit for 15 minutes with the tea lady during working hours, it’s not written in the job description, you are getting paid to do your job. Frankly, it’s not my fault your wife didn’t feed you before you come to the office this morning, so dear Sudanese employee, please don’t punish me for that.

15 Comments on this post.

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  • Ahmed Mirghani
    9 June 2012 at 4:00 am - Reply

    Sadly, very accurate and true article. The point of going to work in Sudan is to somehow just pass time, its no more about doing something and being productive! well done Mr. Yasir.

  • mahir baik
    9 June 2012 at 5:08 pm - Reply

    لم لاترفقون ترجمة بالعربية للمقال هذا؟الشعب السوداني أصبح ضعيفا في اللغتين …العربية والإنجليزية….و العربية أسهل على الكثيرين في القراءة و الفهم…شاكر تفضلكم بقراءة تعليقي

    • Yasir Elkhider
      6 July 2012 at 4:08 pm - Reply

      wallai its an english magazine but.. in general you are right

  • MoElmahi
    9 June 2012 at 5:51 pm - Reply

    So true… Moreover, if we consider the consequential reproccussions of the “Breakslow”… Sadly, the same happens in lunch and dinner… The official time of Lunch in our beloved Sudan is 5 & for some 6…. Dinner is sometime around 12… Our bio-clock is totally messed up… Leading to unproductivity and constant laziness which eventually led to self-centered negative thinking….

    I truly beleive that alot of our problems lay in our eating habits… It might be the one thing stopping us from moving forward…
    So spread the word… Let’s change the way we eat… Let’s change the way we live… Let’s change the way we treat each other…

    • ZafirJ
      9 March 2013 at 10:45 am - Reply

      You see, the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do What we gotta do, to survive…

  • Yasir Merghani
    10 June 2012 at 7:28 pm - Reply

    Sadly you can’t change that Sudanese eating habits…

    Well done Mr.Yasir …

  • Nihal
    10 June 2012 at 9:20 pm - Reply

    DONT FORGET after the breakfast time by an hour the prayer time which takes another hour. Which you always have to sit and waiiiiiiiit.

  • Aya
    24 June 2012 at 11:06 am - Reply

    Its more of a brunch than breakfast, we have tea and biscuits for breakfast. =)

  • Yasir Elkhider
    28 June 2012 at 10:44 am - Reply

    da shno da ya isho and kutkut.. wallai great job in the magazine lakin is it u didnt tell me walla me didnt use the net for a while! i just realized i have a published thing after almost a month!

    and yes.. sadly but true + the praying time which becomes almost a taraweeh, haha. thanx for the comments people 🙂

  • Akim Mugisa
    12 July 2012 at 10:11 pm - Reply

    Employees should always have breakfast in their home before reporting for work and can take a cup of coffee or tea on the desk while working. It is worse in South Sudan where an employee has no time to attend to you because he/she is either watching TV, is on facebook, hopelessly laughing on phone with earpieces hanging from the ears, gossiping with a workmate or a personal visitor, negotiating private deals at work, talks to you arrogantly and thinks everybody speaks arabic. God save South Sudan!

    • Yasir Elkhider
      6 September 2012 at 4:01 am - Reply

      Amen 🙂

  • Iman
    4 May 2013 at 10:06 pm - Reply

    Well said, Yasir Elkhider,
    Lingering breakfast hours seems like a work place tradition that’d never go away. It only grows fringes like the prayer time, the tea lady show..etc. You’re telling this story in 2012; we did so in the 90s, and others have in the 70s and 80s. If u dig deeper, be ready for the bag of worms; poverty, underpayment, unfair working conditions, nothing to have for breakfast at home, poorly defined job description.. Oh, is there something like a JD or ToRs in the public sector in Sudan?
    PS. Just discovered ur magazine. Cool work, folks.

    • Yasir Elkhider
      14 June 2013 at 11:51 am - Reply

      sad true story iman, xie xie ni “thanx in chinese”

  • sikat
    16 April 2014 at 7:05 am - Reply

    Interesting; and a bit funny; great writing.
    Also, It’s NOT a typical Sudanese breakfast (z picture); not any more.
    In my opinion, it’s not the breakfast that make the civil services poor, there are many rational reasons made it so. Inaddition, the Sudanese are not lazy, or at least most of them are not. look!!! this is very important, it’s not Genetic, not from “the fool” by the way, because it’s a protein and they feed HORSES with it. Sudanese are lazy is scam; a BIG SCAM and we have to stop it. There isn’t a nation or even a tribe could be called “lazy”.
    the phenomenon of eating breakfast @ lunch time is wrong; I agree, but the services are bad because:
    () Employee are not responsible
    () becoming unresponsible became habit and as you said ( human right)
    () the solution is to teach our people to be productive ( teach them)
    () if the employee refused to be productive and do the job for the people (has to be ready to serve them)
    () replace him/her (the lazy employee); fire him/her
    () the problem is who could put the law on the table and enforce it?
    () indeed not the BROTHERS.

  • abuammar
    26 February 2016 at 8:12 pm - Reply

    LoooL yasir, GOOD ONE
    I tell what
    to do business with a breakfasters in SUDAN all you need to do is to BREAKICE