A journey ‘home’

The children drinking out of the school zir(water cooler). You would not believe how cold these clay 'jars' keep the water


My dad giving his speech in Arabic - I have to say I was impressed (other than mixing up the genders!)


The boys giving their presentation about female circumcision

Being a citizen of the world, as I have resolved to being, means that Sudan holds a special place in my heart as it is where I have spent the majority of my 29 years or so on this planet. This includes my entire primary education. The last time I was here was in 1993, when my mum, Dara and I paid a short visit from Qatar, where we were living at the time; otherwise I left Sudan in 1991.
Getting here was via Maastricht, where I attended a really interesting conference with lots of logistic regression models...; and Dubai where I chilled with Shazia, heard her great news and had breakfast with my mum before hopping back on a plane to Khartoum.
The airport was exactly as I expected – no urgency and organised chaos, but a chaos which is so very different to that in South-East Asia; sorry to those of you have not been to Africa, I just can’t explain it you will just have to experience it for yourself! I got myself engaged to an immigration officer in exchange for a Sudanese passport, and this all before I even had a visa in my passport. We waited a bit for my bag which seemed to be the last off the plane, before heading out into the dry head of the night – I love it.
Back in my dad’s house and I had Sudanese foul and taamia (falafel) for the first time in what seemed like an eternity and it still tasted divine; it tasted of so many childhood memories. The next morning I was up and out the door at 7 because my dad had to go to a workshop in el dueim, which is on the White Nile south of Khartoum. We stopped alone the way for tea and leggemat (basically fried dough with lots of sugar – yum!!!). Upon arrival in el dueim, I had my first real trial to see how much of my Arabic was really still there, and it just kept flowing, words kept coming and suddenly I was thinking in Arabic again – I guess one never really forgets. We had the most amazing breakfast with all the usual food – my mouth is still watering thinking about it. After breakfast we headed out to one of the villages near el duaim where Plan works, to hear the children in the local primary school give a presentation on the workshop they had been doing. They talked about their rights, what they wanted from the future and the boys did a presentation on the dangers of female circumcision! The head of Plan in el duaim was a really lovely Sudanese lady called Nazik, and we chatted all the way back about this and that – all in Arabic of course!
I slept most of the way back to Khartoum, content and exhausted. The last couple of days I have been working, the continuing joy of student-hood and PhDs. One point to mention though is that I am in possession of a Sudanese sim card and have been texting around the globe! When we lived here, making a phone call from the local post-office required booking at least a day in advance and hopping for a line. Messages from overseas arrived by post 6 months later, if at all! Things have really changed, but then I guess they were not going to stand still just for me!