It is always a pleasure to watch Sudanese people greeting each other. This special 'ritual' with the gestures and the words seems to be so deeply rooted that it looks like a natural automatism. As I stated before, Kosti is not a very large town and in many ways it feels like a small village where one of the main activities is to greet people on the street. Yesterday, I went to the small market in the centre of town (-where it all happens-) with a friend of mine. We first went to the fruit stall where, after having done the greeting ritual, I received the question where I had been all this time! The man behind the vegetables stall, which is situated right next to the fruit stall, intervened by telling me that they were worried that I had gone back to Holland. While they were expressing their worried and slightly blaming thoughts, I started counting the days I had not been to the market. Sometimes the Sudanese heat can give you a different perception of time, but I was sure that it had only been 5 days since I had last visited the market! A few minutes later I realized that 5 days in the Kosti- context is actually quite long. While my friend and I continued walking on the street, a car stopped in front of us. A man came from behind the wheel and started smiling, handshaking and greeting my friend very warmly. It felt like they hadn't seen each other for ages and accidentally bumped into each other. But, once again, the opposite was true: "
That was my uncle. He lives in the same neighbourhood, but I hadn't seen him for a long time!"- Oh nice that you had the change to finally speak to him again. When was the last time you saw him?"- "Three full days ago!"
