Today's plan was to buy a cupboard for our new modest house on the top floor of the office building. One of Frank's Sudanese colleagues came with us to help us on our search and bargaining challenge, which tends to be a necessity here in Sudan. Together with one of the drivers we set off in good spirit this morning and they brought us to various wholesale places and fancy furniture shops. Frank and I kept looking at each other and sensing that it was not really what we were looking for. After 1,5 hour we finally paused our journey. Frank sighed and explained that we just wanted something simple and basic. That had clearly triggered the driver. His face lit up while he said: "
My uncle is a carpenter. Maybe we can go and see him?". This sounded like a really good idea, so with renewed energy we all headed of to the wood workshop on the other side of town. Arriving in the wood work area surely felt differently than our welcome in the big factories and shops we had been visiting that morning. The friendly uncle with his long grey beard gave us a small seat and poured some nice tea for all of us. In the midst of the nice smelling wood and the dusty sand this man really took his time to listen to our ideas and wishes. After our joined sketch had been made, we thanked each other happily for doing business. While driving away I saw 'our' friendly uncle waving us goodbye from his tiny, dusty wood workshop. He was holding up his thumb as he wanted to show us that everything will be okay with our cupboard. That definitely underlined what I felt all along:
Nothing beats a simple and straight forward wood workshop!
