Keys or plastic bags?

Confusion is likely to come in, when you are in a country where you don't speak the local language fluently. I often try to practise my Arabic language skills with the local staff here, who again want to practise their English with me. This sometimes results in sentences with an uncommon combination of Arabic and English words mixed together. I can assure you, that in moments of 'emergencies', this can be slightly confusing. A few days ago, one of the guards came running upstairs and said: "Keys, keys, I need keys!" I could tell that he was quite desperate, so I immediately started to help him with his search for these apparent much needed keys. "I need many!" he continued while searching in the kitchen. I thought it was a bit odd that he searched for keys in the cupboards of the kitchen, but well, you never know where they might turn up. I looked around in the other rooms and asked which colours and shape the keys had. "Doesn't matter!" he answered. A bit surprised by his reply, I inquired where he actually needed the keys for. "Water tank is broken and I need keys to put in the pipe to stop water from coming out!". I started smiling when I realized that all this time he had meant 'kis' (-which is a plastic bag in the local language) while I had been looking everywhere for a bunch of keys! I straight away got him a couple of these bags and he rushed back to the leaking water pipe. I was left behind with a smile of astonishment: keys or plastic bags, what's in a name?

Child Friendly Spaces

Yesterday was a day of celebrations: the new Child Friendly Space (CFS) in one of the communities was to be opened! This CFS is a community centre where children and youth are welcome to play and join in with child-friendly recreational activities. In the communities where these centers have been built, there used to be no place for children to safely play, do sports and engage with other children in the community. With this new CFS there will be more opportunities for the children and young people to do so, and it will be run by local community workers from the same area. This CFS also provides a base for awareness raising campaigns for the communities, on for example child rights and protection issues. Looking at the amount of children and young people who showed up for the ‘grand opening’, there is surely an interest! The community workers had a hard time trying to keep the plentiful children and youth in place; they were so eager to see the special puppet show, the dance and singing performance and the several speeches of children and adults! When the especially invited singer (-with keyboard-) started his first tunes, everyone jumped up and danced so enthusiastically that the sandy dance area was soon covered in dust. But dust or no dust, it didn’t stand in the way of celebrating this special milestone and the start off of the first Child Friendly Space in their community!

Flexible ages

Does age matter? While in many parts of the world one would answer this question positively, here in Sudan someone's age is not something that's considered really important. And I have noticed that many people therefore don't seem to be that accurate when it comes to age calculation or estimations. One of our friends, who herself is in her late thirties, claimed that her mother was approximately forty five. And one of the drivers changes his age every other day; on Monday he is proud to be 32 while on Wednesday he says he feels so old because he is already 29! The other day, one of the male staff members told me he is getting married. I said I was really happy for him and asked about his future wife's name. That question was easy to answer, but when we started to talk about his and her age, he realized that he actually didn't know how old she was exactly. "Between 18 and 22", he eventually stated. Quite refreshing, these flexible ages! ;)

Sugar surprise

There are a couple of sugar factories here in the White Nile State of Sudan, where the sugar canes are being processed into lovely sweet sugar. And, seeing how many teaspoons of sugar end up in each cup of tea or coffee here in Sudan, I can say that there is definitely a need for sugar here! Besides the sugar, we found out that these factories also produce something else. Yesterday morning, I opened the door to the balcony to take a look at the lush, green garden with beautiful flowers. The moment I wanted to step on the balcony I saw something had changed; the floor was covered with black ashes and small burned pieces that I couldn't determine. I assumed it was the result of the grass burning activities of one of the neighbours. As soon as I realized I wasn't dreaming I took the broom and tried to sweep all the ashes to one side of the balcony. The wind made this an aimless activity though and I just left it for what it was. When I went downstairs to say good morning to the rest of the staff, I heard that they were also talking about it and the people who live close to the office said that their gardens were also covered with small black burned pieces. I had become really curious where this was coming from, because this couldn't possibly just be the grass burning activities of the neighbour. Everyone was resolute and answered the same: the sugar factory! From the way they said it I could conclude that this has occurred before and that everyone somehow accepts to have these small black ashes in their gardens and houses once in a while. I have to say, that instead of these black ashes I would prefer to find some sugar on my balcony! That would be an even more pleasant surprise!

Lunch conversations

Lunch in Sudan means a hot meal at around 5 pm. It is quite an intimate social event; all members of the family and all other people who were lucky to pop it at the right time, share their conversations and food from one plate. Yesterday afternoon we were invited for such a Sudanese lunch by one of Frank's colleagues who lives in the outskirts of Kosti.  Soon after we had arrived we were gathered together on the beds and chairs around the big plate of food. Whenever one of the bowls was almost empty and about to show its bottom, one of the women jumped up and quickly got a refill, while we continued our lunch conversations. Somehow, the conversation topics here often seem to be about 'marriage', 'family' and 'children'. Before we knew it, Frank's colleague had claimed loudly that it was high time that Frank and I should produce children, preferably starting tonight! Our explanations that our current work and living context in Kosti is not really suitable for us to have children yet, didn't seem to reach him. He just smiled and kept pointing at the happily playing children on the compound. After we had finished the food, we were offered some fresh guava juice and a hot cup of tea, while the conversations continued. While we were eventually accompanied on our walk back to the car, our friend's mother was the one to conclude with a highlighting wish. She took both my hands and looked at me with a sincere expression on her face: "I wish you lots of twins!"- "Inshallah!"