A Journey to the Red Sea # 6

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Sinkat

Breakfasting in the marketplace in Sinkat soon brought those plans to an end. This day of all days had been earmarked by the Hadendowa as their annual or extraordinary general meeting to discuss a dispute with their neighbours in the east of Sudan – the Rasheida, with whom they had a quarrel.

I know no more of the affair than that, and this much I managed to glean from one of the Sudanese onlookers who spoke fluent English but who was apparently as bemused by the proceedings as we were. The Hadendowa are a conspicuous people whose menfolk carry huge swords which are some four feet in length, although, I am led to believe, not in anger.

Their other mark of distinction is their hair – worn long in the style teenagers in England call ‘Afro’. Whether these tribesmen whose ancestors fought the British and had the sobriquet ‘fuzzy-wuzzy’ coined. Kipling wrote that they were the only warriors to break the British ‘square’.

The meeting gets underway and is chaired by a man sitting in a Japanese car fitted with a public address system – a microphone. The crowd gather around this car or else stand on rooftops to get a better view. At what must be a significant point in the meeting, the Hadendowa throw their swords up in the air and whoop and haloo with glee, until I begin to fear for the safety of the Rasheida.

Like the journey of the day before, this meeting doesn’t look like coming to an end in the foreseeable future and as transport depends upon the meeting ending first, we decide to leave the allure of Urkowit for another day. We head for the lorry park and a lift into Port Sudan.

Robert L. Fielding