Letter from Sudan # 9

-9-

Enjoying one’s stay here, or at least making the most of it, is entirely in your own hands. Perception is reality – good, bad or indifferent, it is all in the head of the person experiencing the sensation. The same event, the same non-event, is coloured by prior expectations.

Expect too much and you are setting yourself up for disappointment, lower your expectations to fall more into line with the Sudanese way of life and you may well be in for a pleasant surprise; a resignation and acceptance of the dead switch or the empty water pipe will help you to keep your cool, a vital attribute in scorching temperatures. Rather than getting hot under the collar about the foibles of the Sudanese water supply, the foresight to fill the zia (water barrel) beforehand would remove a great deal of the source of your annoyance.

When the electricity goes off, there is very little that can be done but wait, relax, read if you can, or sit and count the stars if you can’t, until the lights come back on and the slow whirl of a fan tells you that normal service has been resumed. If you were clever enough to remember to bring some batteries for the radio, the temporary halt in the supply of electricity can actually be beneficial.

Next door’s television will be silent, and you will be able to listen to the BBC World Service in peace for a change. Every cloud has a silver lining if you look hard enough for it, and in Sudan, looking for silver linings is the best way I know of putting up with the differences in living standards. I just hope I can always remain the same calm, accepting person that I seem to have become in Africa.

The inconveniences that can frequently disrupt the even tenor of life in Britain might pale into insignificance if I adopt the same view that has been the basis of my thinking about life out here. It struck me that if we were a little bit more tolerant in our dealings with one another, if we stopped being bloody-minded and cooperated more with each other then life in modern Britain might yet become comparable with life in poor, underdeveloped Sudan.
Robert L. Fielding