Letter from Sudan # 10

-10-

“Tea up,” my colleague wakes me with an early morning cuppa, although I have only been dozing since the kenoon (clay stove) began to crackle, the lumps of charcoal finally staying alight after much wafting and just a few colourful adjectives.

Today is nothing special, is it? The schools have been closed for three weeks, we’ve been here eight weeks now and…..I almost forgot, today is the 25th of September, my birthday. I’m, oh never mind how old I am. The fact is that it is my birthday and somebody has made me a card that reads, ‘Happy Birthday, Ernest!’ which is a not so oblique reference to my newly grown beard that has more white in it than I remember the last time I grew one., and resembles the whiskers of Papa Hemingway – Ernest, to you!

When the ribbing and the wisecracks have died down; “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” “Did you ever see the dear old Queen….and what about Albert?” sort of stuff, we set out for the Freindship Restaurant (their spelling) in the middle of town.

Today’s special; it’s the 25th. Kibda (liver) and baird (omelet) followed by zabadi (yoghurt), washed down with moya (water) is my treat to myself. On other, less auspicious days, I might plump for one of these dishes – today it’s all three.

It doesn’t take me long. The man sitting at the back of the room is paid and the daily ritual begins; a hot trudge down to the suq to buy some vegetables, a visit to our favourite drink stand for a freshly made, tall and cold glass of grapefruit juice, iced water and sugar from our friendly Ethiopian drink seller who has spotted us buying batatis (potatoes) at a nearby stall. He stands behind his little counter, his arms outstretched towards us holding the drinks he knows we have come for.

A short walk to the Post Office to pick up any mail completes the daily round of errands and we turn to head for home, to our cooling fans and a short nap until we have regained our cool and our normal pulse rate. Just this short journey around the dry streets that are warming up rapidly is enough. Rome wasn’t built in a day; there is no rush, and even if there was, we have learned that rushing for anything other than to avoid being crushed by a passing lorry is unwise. The Sudanese don’t rush around, and they have been round these parts a bit longer than we have, so we amble, and the pace entirely suits my new age.

Arriving home, we find the electricity and the water are both off. If this wasn’t enough, the shop next door has run out of Pepsi Cola. They wouldn’t be cold anyway, the fridges are as quiet as the fans in our rooms.
“Maalesh!” It doesn’t matter – it won’t have to, will it! The fan would have kept the flies away, they buzz around merrily to irritate us.

“Al hamdulilah!” It’s all the same to me now. My Sudanese friends repeatedly warn me; “Sudan huwa Sudan.” Sudan is Sudan – it will never change, and the flies, the heat and the whims of the water and electricity supply echo these sentiments everyday – the best thing to do is to do like the locals do; say ‘maalesh’ or any one of several other utterances that they save for just such occasions.

Enjoying one’s stay here, or at least making the most of it and perception is reality. On the walls of my bedroom back home in England, in the Pennines is covered with a wallpaper that is fairly uninteresting. It is so uninteresting, in fact, that I stare at it whenever I find sleeping difficult. It has a plain background, and on this are little flowers spaced at regular intervals, about three eighths of an inch apart, horizontal and vertical. It is regular, plain and uninteresting, yet I have found out through long hours of staring that it has a peculiar quality, despite its plain an uninteresting design.

If I stare at it for long enough, I begin to imagine that the little clumps of flowers that are spaced so regularly on its surface, are in fact grouped into clusters of three, four or whatever number I choose to count, up to about seven. If I count out four clumps of flowers, the whole wall appears to be arranged in groups of four by four squares, if I count out six, it appears to be arranged in sixes by six squares. In fact the wallpaper will always conveniently oblige me by arranging itself into whatever number I choose, up to this maximum of seven. Any more than seven my gaze starts to wander and the flowers appear to be randomly and equally spaced again.

Now the point of this little diversion is this; the spacing is dead even, horizontally and vertically; the flowers are arranged in no such clusters as two, four or six or whatever; it is entirely due to my counting that the flowers appear to line up for inspection in groups of two, four or six. It is my own perception that defines the reality before my tired eyes.

As it is in my little bedroom back home in England, so it is in Sudan; I stare at the same phenomenon, upon which my presence or my staring has no bearing whatsoever, and I see good or bad, convenience or inconvenience, or a nuisance, or a pleasant surprise. It is up to me and though my dotty wallpaper and the Sudan are strange bedfellows, the analogy is a useful one, to me at any rate.
Robert L. Fielding