Five Things I Miss About Sudan

Sudan is going through tough times. The price of bread, the staple food, has risen beyond many households’ means as subsidies have been cut and annual inflation has passed 200%. The transition to democracy is fragile as the military elements of the transitional government who have spent the past 30 years looting the country and fuelling its regional conflicts have the upper hand over their civilian colleagues. And COVID-19 is taxing a health system that had suffered three decades of neglect under deposed dictator Omar Al Bashir’s kleptocratic rule. 

After two years living in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, I left the country in March 2020, evacuated because of the coronavirus on the penultimate flight out before the airport closed for four months. I had expected to go back last summer, then last autumn, but developments with my wife’s job (which was the reason I was in Khartoum in the first place) mean that I’m going to have to wait a while longer, and will likely return only as a visitor. 

This has been difficult to assimilate. For despite its problems, Sudan was a revelation to me. My prejudices had first been challenged by a young Englishwoman who assured me a few years ago that if I ever went there I would love it, as she did. I had assumed that, languishing under the burden of sharia law enforced by a vicious “public order” police, the country would be no place for an irreligious Westerner, let alone a liberal Western woman. When I arrived for the first time at Khartoum airport and saw a white man ahead of me in the passport queue being led off to the toilets by a policeman with a bottle of whisky in his hand, my fears were reinforced (the pair emerged a few seconds later, the bottle now empty).

“However, there was a lot more to Sudan than its government, and after a few days I was a convert.”

However, there was a lot more to Sudan than its government, and after a few days I was a convert. For those whose minds may be open to a visit, here are five things I miss:

Space: Africa’s third-largest country and one of its least densely populated, much of Sudan is desert. In Khartoum, too, with its wide streets, low-rise buildings, tracts of unused land, and bright dust-flecked light, there is a sense of space that you seldom find in Europe or in African cities further south. The broad, slow-flowing White Nile which bisects the city accentuates this feeling of openness, and in central Khartoum even the flats are vast, as if their builders still yearned for the open desert and were reluctant to be confined within walls. Until recently houses were open-sided to welcome visitors and the breeze from the river. Many Sudanese still take their beds outdoors to sleep. 

“Only when they get behind a steering wheel do Sudanese evince any signs of impatience…”

Time: Before moving into one of these flats, we stayed for a couple of weeks in a mid-range hotel. Among the reading materials on the coffee table in the lobby were a year-old Sunday Times and a 2010 copy of the Economist. A birthday card sent to me from Britain before we left arrived three months later, long after its sender had given it up for lost. Greetings can go on for several minutes. The young South Sudanese woman from whom I would buy a glass of spiced black coffee every morning in the early days would frequently disappear for an hour or more, trusting the customers she left sitting under a tree by the roadside not to grow impatient while waiting to order or settle the bill, nor to vanish without paying. Living beside the languid Nile discourages haste, while the often-suffocating temperatures can render it impossible. Only when they get behind a steering wheel do Sudanese evince any signs of impatience…

“Sudan is by far the least materialistic country of those I’ve spent time in. Pleasure is gleaned from small things…”

Small pleasures: Sudan is by far the least materialistic country of those I’ve spent time in. Pleasure is gleaned from small things – a glass of coffee in the shade of a tree, a handful of dusty dates, an evening shisha by the Blue Nile, an afternoon snooze on the forecourt of the mosque, a chat with a neighbour or shopkeeper, a whisper of less hot air. The iftar meal at the end of a long day of Ramadan fasting isn’t just a time for giving thanks for having food to eat but a communal celebration with family, friends and sometimes passing strangers. A bowl of ful, a fava beans and oil dish that can be had for less than a dollar, occasions immense joy.

“Although Sudan is one of the world’s poorest countries, complete strangers would often pay for our coffees without our knowledge and leave without ever introducing themselves to us.”

Big welcomes: During our first visit to Omdurman’s magnificent souq – one of few places in the capital that couldn’t be described as airy – we took refuge from the crowds at a tea stall. The stallholder next to us gave us each a handful of dates, and when we left, the tea lady refused to take our money. This would become a regular occurrence – although Sudan is one of the world’s poorest countries, complete strangers would often pay for our coffees without our knowledge and leave without ever introducing themselves to us. Strangers in cars would stop to offer a lift. Taxi drivers would refuse to accept payment, even when the fare amounted to half their daily income. Market stallholders would give you an extra handful of dates, nuts or okra on top of what you’d ordered. 

This generosity is not only extended to foreigners. In the streets of Khartoum there are clay amphorae on stands, filled with water by the charitable to help passers-by who are suffering in the heat. Plastic jugs for washing before prayers are also dotted around, while tea ladies offer free water not just to customers but to anyone who needs a drink. Volunteers have distributed food and hand sanitiser in marginalised neighbourhoods during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the day-long waits to fill up with petrol, drivers write their mobile numbers in the dust of their windscreens so that others in the queue can call them if there is any action while they’re away having breakfast or coffee. 

Feeling young: I always feel younger and more alive in Africa than in Europe, and Sudan was no exception. It’s partly that the more challenging environment keeps you on your toes, partly the excitement of being somewhere so different than what you’ve been brought up on, and partly the feeling that Sudan, unlike Europe, is still being made, still open to change. 

But it’s mainly the fact that the country is so young and its young people so brimful of hope. The revolution which began in 2018, and which without resorting to violence, managed to unseat Al Bashir’s brutal regime was a stunning display of boldness, courage, solidarity and creativity. Young people got together to form neighbourhood resistance committees, braving Al Bashir’s bullets to organise sustained mass protests and a gigantic sit-in outside military headquarters in Khartoum that showed the dictator his rule was no longer tenable and paved the way for his ouster. The sit-in site was a magnet for the country’s young artists, musicians, singers and dancers as well as for hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens who’d had enough of repression. Street kids were given free food and enlisted to help keep the streets clean. 

There was humour in the air too, at the expense of Al Bashir and his Islamist regime, popularly known as Kezan. “He’s gone, he’s gone,” thousands of protesters at the sit-in would chant in Arabic whenever a plane took off from the nearby airport, “and he’s used the back door.” Another protest song proclaimed with a combination of optimism and irony that, “Sudan without Kezan will be better than Japan.”

Today, the success of the revolution is in the balance as politicians, army generals and various genocidaires compete to wrest control of it. However, Sudan’s youth are still on guard, ready to rise up again if their great hopes are thwarted. As George Orwell wrote in Catalonia while fighting against fascists during Spain’s civil war, “One had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy and cynicism.” Sudan’s revolutionaries deserve a better outcome. 

Mark Weston is the author of the West Africa travelogue The Ringtone and the Drum and the satirical novel African Beauty. His Twitter username is @markweston19. markweston.net