Lazy paddle

This early morning, the friendly fishermen on the banks of the Nile welcomed us with a big smile and a helping hand with removing our kayaks from the car's roof rack. The weekend had started, so high time for a relaxing early morning paddle! Watching the beautiful sunrise made me realize that I miss out on such great spectacular panorama's during the week. Every time we visit this special place, we somehow envy the local fishermen on these banks. They actually lead a very healthy life: sleeping and working in the fresh air, eating lots of healthy fish, enjoying the beautiful Nile surroundings, good company, and enough exercise on their hand-driven wooden boats. Compared to these wooden boats, our kayaks look extremely colourful and the fishermen are always very curious and interested to know more about them. This morning our paddles were the topic of discussion; one of the fisherman was observing them with great interest. One of the peddles actually is made of local wood and was made by a local carpenter here in Kosti. It somehow reminds us of the tool that pizza bakers use to get the pizza in and out of the oven, but somehow it works as a paddle. The other paddle was brought from Holland and is definitely more 'fancy' and light (-you can even take it apart in two pieces!). While the fisherman took a paddle in each hand he seemed to compare the two thoroughly. Eventually he lifted the wooden ('pizza') paddle and drew his conclusion: "This is a lazy paddle!".

Familiar faces

There seems to be nothing more social than attending a Sudanese wedding. So, naturally we took the invitation to attend the wedding of the brother of a friend of a friend in a village close-by. I had been to that specific village before when we were invited for a Ramadan meal, but by then it was quite dark and without electricity it had been quite difficult to distinguish the different faces. The moment we arrived in the village for the wedding attendance, I realized that all the women in the village seemed to have remembered my face very well! "Hello Mrs. Frank!", "We have missed you, have you missed us?", " How are your parents?" were questions that came my direction before I even had the chance to sit down. Somehow all the beautiful faces of the women looked slightly familiar, but to be quite honest, it also felt like I just met some of them for the first time (-you probably all know the feeling that someone on the street greets you very enthusiastically and you have no idea who he or she is ;). It anyway didn't seem to matter, because all the women greeted me so warmly and introduced themselves again elaborately while nibbling on some sweets and hugging me every few minutes. I simply love this friendly, distinctively Sudanese custom where people will always greet others like good old friends; whether your face looks familiar or not! An inspiring example for all, I would say..

Cats as pets

Keeping cats as pets is not very common here in Kosti. The same counts for dogs, birds and actually many more other animals. Most of them live freely in the fields or on the sandy streets. So, you can imagine  the giggles and curious faces of people when we 'adopted' a cat a few months ago, and welcomed it into our house. The top of amazement came when we had left special small 'parcels' with cat food in the fridge when we left for our holiday to Zambia. When I asked the guard if he could feed the cat while we were away, he started laughing and he simply couldn't hide his uncomfortable feeling. I eventually had to ask someone else ;) Over the last few months most people have started to get used to this special pet in the house and office, except for one particular person; one of the cleaning ladies (-who has featured in a few other previous blog messages as well ;) . She clearly shows that this cat should NOT be in the house according to her vast opinion. Some days she seems to do her best and tries to make friendship: "Where is the lovely cat?" she would ask with a smile and her arms wide open. But as soon as she sees the cat lying on the sofa or chair, her face gets an interesting different expression as if she has just eaten a very sour apple. "This cat is crazy!! Sitting on the sofa!?" With a clearing movement she then would chase it away before cleaning the place where it had just sat. Luckily, the cat knows better now and I have noticed that, as soon as her foot steps are heard on the stairs, the cat jumps up and hides under the bed. Only to come out when the coast is clear...

Smooth arms

Here in Sudan I have become conscious of things I never used to pay attention to. My arms, for example. I always used to see them as normal, useful parts of my body and I never considered them to be the major point of interest when it comes to beauty treatments. This is totally the opposite situation here; most women can't imagine themselves neglecting their arms or should I say the hair on their arms. I found out that here are various methods to remove the excessive arm hair. The wax methods, with the use of self-made, natural wax is the most common one here. But last night we saw an advertisement on the TV where a special 'arm razor' was also highly commented on by the several happy looking women with extremely smooth arms. Looking at my own light blond hair on my arms I consider myself fortunate, but based on the many arm-hair removal invitations I have received since I came to Sudan, I start to realize that there is no compromise here: all arm hair needs to go! I have decided to think about it, since it is not nice to keep rejecting all the invitations. But, maybe I might just go for the option of wearing long sleeves after all!

Self service shops

The concept of modern western supermarkets where you can scan and pay for the products you want to buy, without the help of a shop assistant, might come from Sudan. Or specifically, from one of our favourite small shops here in Kosti. When the shop owner doesn't feel like calculating the total price of your shopping (-most of the shops here don't have tills-), you are free to do the calculations yourself and tell the shop owner. He doesn't seem to doubt the integrity of his customers and trusts that they will calculate the right price or at least something close to that. Sometimes, when he is at the back of his small shop, standing on a ladder, he simply asks you to leave the money on the chair or table and says he hopes to see you again soon, Inshallah. Like this is not enough, he also has a 'self service policy' when it comes to tasting the products. A few weeks ago when I was there with one of Frank's colleagues, we were invited to dip our fingers in the bottle of home-made honey to see if we liked the taste, while we didn't even wanted to buy the honey. That was really no problem he assured us, while putting that same bottle back on the shelf. Truly, where do you find such customer friendly approaches these days? ;)

Bushy toilet

open-air toilet

Our neighbours of the compound right next door live according an open-air life-style. That means everything is being done outside: cooking, watching satellite TV, sleeping, fighting, eating etc... And, when I write everything, I mean everything! That indeed includes the visits to the 'toilet' in between two bushes. This used to be quite a private activity, since there were lots of other bushes and trees around. Really unfortunately, this refreshing idea of a private bush toilet came to a sudden end. Yesterday afternoon, one of the project owners (-who probably had an inspiring moment to build new houses on the premises) arrived with a big bulldozer and with a lot of noise he removed all the surrounding trees and bushes. You can imagine the expression on the faces of the family members when the only thing they saw left on their former green compound, was their bushy toilet. It is still a  mystery to us why these beautiful surrounding trees had to be removed. I am afraid it will take some time for new trees to grow back; sadly enough too long for our neighbours to hold their 'needs', that's for sure!

Army of ants

Where they come from and where they go to, I never understood; ants, and especially the Sudanese ones, are mysterious little animals. They look harmless, but today I discovered that they are indeed capable to achieve a lot in their big trained armies. While I had just poured my cup of green tea, I felt like eating a ginger biscuit and opened the new packet I had bought especially in Khartoum last week. We normally always put our 'sweets' in the fridge, but somehow I forgot about these interesting black, little creatures. I walked down the stairs while nibbling on my ginger biscuit and I was already looking forward to take the next one. But, as soon as I had greeted the guard downstairs and went up again, I saw there was something wrong: a strong army of energetic, determined ants were trying to confiscate my cupboard! And when I opened the small door, I couldn't believe my eyes. Within a few minutes hundreds of ants had come from 'somewhere' and were happily eating from, climbing on, and taking away my lovely ginger biscuits from Khartoum! It took quite a few exciting minutes before I conquered this special hard-working army, but eventually I managed to 'rescue' my biscuits. I do admire these forces of ants, but next time I'd rather keep them away from my kitchen!