Bangideed, ‘Lemon Bara’ and the wedding party with no bride.

 The drawback of visiting and living in Sudan is one’s powerlessness to freely move or spontaneously explore the country. Each newly visited locality requires, at the very least, a new travel permit and, at worst, involves an extended bureaucratic hold-up at the rarely troubled, easily excitable local security office. 

 Lingering for at least an hour in the office of the local Security Commissioner in Bara, this ‘drawback’ was especially plain to see. Our arrival had undoubtedly broken the daily routine of inactivity and idleness that usually awaits the Bara security personnel; the bare, unadorned desk and office corner bed surely more representative of perpetual tedium than organizational minimalism and drawn out working hours.

 After a third or fourth offering of dates we were eventually told that we must return to El Obeid (a 45 minute journey) in order to obtain the prerequisite travel permits. I was assured that that these security procedures were ‘for my own safety’; necessary safeguards against any illness that might befall me, any accident that might encumber me and any ‘tribal land dispute’ that I might inadvertently wonder into during our few hours in Bara. 

 Unsurprisingly I was unconvinced; such constraints appear more symptomatic of a blatant undercurrent of government paranoia that assumes foreigners travelling in Sudan must have an undisclosed ulterior motive, than an act of selfless- be it slightly aggressive- hospitality. Fortunately we were only 15 minutes into our return journey to El Obeid when the self-proclaimed “DG” (Director General) of Secondary Schools in North Kordofan, Ishmael, rang, ordering us to turn around and return to Bara having secured the authorisation of the relevant security apparatus in Khartoum.

  Accompanied by Vanessa, Rami, Ustaz Bakri, Ustaz Klayal and Ustaz Hamid our journey that morning had started in a more optimistic and upbeat fashion. In the back of the jeep Ustaz Hamid was subjecting me to a rather unnerving exhortation about the desirability of dates with milk, ‘simsim’ (sesame) with honey and various other aphrodisiacal Sudanese concoctions. 

 Only two days before we had attended Hamid’s preliminary wedding party, pre-empting the actual ceremony and arrival of his unseen, unexplored fiancé from Seattle USA. Perhaps this sense of mystery and distance explained the restless hankering that persisted despite the obvious discomfort his hushed, chummy whispers induced in the jeep’s crammed backseat.

 Hamid’s character (mannerisms and intonation) resembles that of a primary school teacher. His ungainly, but equally infective, enthusiasm- rather akin to Barney the purple dinosaur ('C'a words not mine)- goes beyond the classroom environment instead permeating every aspect of his interaction. The fact that one second Hamid was discussing Sudanese aphrodisiacs with me and the next patronising 16 year old boys with renditions of ‘if your happy and you know it clap your hands’ was bizarre. I was left completely disoriented by how this archetypal primary school teacher could also be one’s ‘matey’ sex guru.

 Hamid’s pre-wedding wedding party was a typically merry Sudanese celebration. Men donned in traditional white jallabya’s frenetically clicked their fingers in line with the slow but equally upbeat tempo typical of Sudanese dance.  The more competent danced with extra dynamism and audacity; thrusting their hips back and styling their arms/ hands in an almost feminine (or perhaps animalistic) way that appeared expressive of various ubiquitous elements of female living in Sudan. 

 Without the free-flow of alcohol the evening was a sombre reminder that my hips (and for that matter my whole body) are incapable of rolling and thrusting with any sort of rhythmic panache. Instead, despite my best efforts to at least minimally shake and sway in sync with the Sudanese men, I remained- with the exception of my finger clicking (which gave me a blister)-statue like as though rendered immobile by chronic arthritis. The evening could have easily become an exercise in ‘spot the [awkward] Englishman’.

 The wedding celebration was almost exclusively oriented around the men. However in tandem with the older married women, who with their celebratory wailing had quickly become the focal point of the men’s dancing, the Khawajias’ (white women) were apparently exempt from any gender based protocols. While the remainder of the women were either sitting or dancing gingerly on the fringes , both the Khawajias’ as well as a selection of the older wives joined the merriments that enfolded the new, or rather soon to be groom, Hamid. Perhaps the absence of the bride was to blame for the marginalization of the remainder of the women. Where the bride is not merely absent but also unknown, unseen and technically foreign, wedding protocol undoubtedly becomes increasingly hazy. 

 After participating in a short demonstration lesson for 13/14  year old boys on ‘Christmas’ , our visit to Bara Secondary School for Boys had, for all intents and purposes,  morphed into a postlude for Hamid’s wedding celebrations of two days previous. Orchestrated by the headmaster, the school had staged a concert, or rather as they more aptly called it a ‘party’, in our honor  Four or five of the schools more gifted singers joined some local musicians –playing keyboard and some sort of electronic soundboard (the usual components of ‘traditional’ Sudanese music)- to entertain the on looking students, teachers and guests. 

 Soon enough Hamid had risen from his chair and, with his charismatic cheeriness and gangly, flaying limbs, headed a caravan of clicking well-wishers around all four corners of the school courtyard. After accosting the majority of the assembled audience it was my turn to receive Hamid’s incessant jolliness. Somewhat inevitably I was obliged to accept the invitation to join the languid cohort of dancers/ clickers strolling among the audience in time with the music.

 The music and ‘dancing’ lasted well over an hour; interrupted only by the speeches of gratitude and encouragement from the headmaster and assembled guests. At one point the headmaster ordered me to join him in front of the audience. Thrusting the microphone upon me he proceeded to pronounce- unbeknown to me- that I would like to perform ‘lemon Bara’ to the few hundred teenage boys, teachers and local guests amassed to mark our visit. 

 The whole exercise taught me that one should neither brag sarcastically about singing proficiency, nor invoke admiration of local songs, and more generally traditions, simply to seem supportive of cultural diversity: it will inevitably come back to haunt you. Fortunately I was only asked to sing the chorus of ‘lemon Bara’- which conveniently consists of the lyrics ‘lemon Bara’. Soon enough 'C' was obliged to join me, and before long we had a sizeable chorus to share out the ‘lemon Baras’.

 ‘Lemon Bara’ does not merely depict Bara’s renowned history of growing lemons, but rather is a metaphor for the equally renowned beauty allegedly bequeathed from one generation of Bara’s women to another. My highlight of the school visit came when 'C', in reference to Bara’s figurative lemons exclaimed (in a no doubt unintended nod to Delia Smith): ‘I don’t see any lemons here…so Bara WHERE ARE YOUR LEMONS?’... Unfortunately 'C's inadvertent attempts to draw attention to Bara’s female lemons, or rather the lack of them, fell upon deaf ears among the students, staff and guests at Bara Secondary School for Boys.

Visiting Bara was, first and foremost, a liberating experience. While Bara is indeed (more aptly described as a village) a quaint and charming place to while away some time, it is also respite (once we had addressed the security issues) from the sometimes suffocating confinement of El Obeid. The village is lined with tall, green and luscious trees, whose wide canopies form a refreshing sanctuary from the unrelenting heat of Sudan’s sun. Bara’s assortment of trees, ranging from the ‘Sunnet’s’ that delineate the path of the road, to the lemon and date trees that fill  its famous ‘gardens’, are a legacy of British colonialism; their antiquated, or rather, orderly arrangement is clear testament to this. 

 After visiting one particularly famous tree, legendary not only for its confusing jumble of overlapping and intertwined roots but also the contradictory stories of General Hick’s (killed at the Battle of Sheikan- just South of El Obeid) and/ or Governor McMichael’s association with its history, we ventured in to one of the many gardens that can be found in Bara. The garden was full of lemon and, to a lesser extent jawafa, date and mango tree. 

 The peace and tranquillity of the garden was punctured only by the quiet hum of the water pump; a constant reminder of the precarious ecological balance that the areas current fruitfulness depends upon. Unlike El Obeid only 40 minutes’ drive to the South, Bara has underground aquifers that ensure both a plentiful supply of water and fertile soil. Given the extensive desertification of the last three decade that has rendered El Obeid and its surrounding areas barren, Bara has become increasingly important for the sustenance of multiple regional localities.

 Like Bara, the village of Bangideed- 30 minutes to the South West of El Obeid- supplies water to El Obeid and many of North Kordofan’s more arid localities. Surrounded by an extensive environment of desolate and parched scrubland, Bangideed exists as a kind of green refuge amidst the wider ‘nothingness’ of Kordofan. The purpose of our journey to Bangideed was principally to visit the local secondary school for girls, where we met teachers and students, before subsequently attending and evaluating an English lesson. 

 While the school was clearly under resourced and underfunded -the absence of electricity being the most obvious example- its simplicity was at the same time rather charming, if not even a little intriguing. Although substantial work is still required to advance female education in rural areas (one teacher suggested that less than 50% of girls in Bangideed attend secondary schools), the existence of a girls secondary school in the village constitutes a significant step towards combating the regressive customs that have traditionally thwarted the education of teenage girls.

  I am told that even now it is not uncommon to find a girl married off, often bearing the child of an older man before she has even reached her teenage years. Equally the outdated idea that, destined for a life of housewifery, girls in rural areas do not require a secondary school education remains widespread. In such an environment it is perhaps not surprising that teaching a class of young teenage girls proved far more challenging than in El Obeid. The level of English was so limited that merely stipulating instructions often seemed hopeless.

 With the exception of the  security authorities, seemingly fixated on smothering even the most trivial of our journeys, the past few weeks have been invigorating. Gradually we have been granted more and more opportunities to travel beyond El Obeid’s narrow confinements, somewhat shaking off the perpetual cabin fever that plagued our first month or so. Inshallah this will remain  the case in 2013.

The Petronas/ Ministry of Education National Debate Competition.

After a period of prolonged inactiveness in the blogosphere and with the dust from the ‘Petronas Debate Competition’ so well and truly settled that I feel its memory may soon be plunged into  permanent antiquity, the time is nigh to ridicule the competitions absolute absurdity.

The competition consisted of 16/17 of Sudan’s states ( with the exception of Red Sea State which had declined to attend for some unrevealed reason) , each divided into round-robin style groups of 4. The groups were decided by some undisclosed seeding system that meant , for example, Jazeera and Khartoum state – traditionally the two strongest teams- could not be drawn together. We, North Kordofan state, found ourselves drawn with South Kordofan, North Darfur and Central Darfur.  Owing to a lack of organization and coordination, as well as no doubt a Sudanese insensibility towards time, the competition was dragged out over 8 days. It was made clear by the senile head judge Ibrahim that it would be too much to ask the students to do more than one debate a day (despite the fact that the debates were limited to 16minutes). Consequently the  proceedings would start at around 8am and end at 1pm. At 10am the day’s events would briefly be interrupted by breakfast; or rather a Styrofoam box filled with cold and soggy junk food that would surely leave Jamie Oliver chronically disillusioned. It therefore caused much amusement for our Sudanese friends , when each day at break 'C' and I would walk across the road to the resident  ‘Sita Chai’ to indulge in a bowl of ‘bosch’ (bread and beans  -‘fuul’- mixed together).

Our debate team

 The competition was held at the Sudan headquarters of Petronas, the Sino-Malaysia oil company. The Petronas HQ, with its modernistic yet unassuming corporate architecture (minimalistic marble floors and outdoor landscaping), stood in sharp contrast to the numerous, rather more decrepit, state ministries lined along the prestigious Nile river bank. A large hall, customarily used for badminton, was loaned out by Petronas to the Ministry of Education for the duration of the competition. It was this material help that constituted the bulk of the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) assistance dished out. Nonetheless the expertise of Ibrahim, the competition coordinator, was certainly intended to complement this considerable, although apparently diminishing (in comparison to previous years), investment of material and financial resources.

 In reality Ibrahim turned out to be a self-congratulatory leech;  busy convincing himself, as well as anyone else who would listen, that his experience in establishing and developing the competition over the course of its derisory nine year existence, made his judgement unimpeachable. Unsurprisingly our relationship with him began to deteriorate as soon as we queried, and gradually came to criticize the competitions format and organization. In fact our relationship deteriorated to such an extent that I am quite sure the majority of participating students and teachers would rank our confrontation with Ibrahim as one of the five most memorable moments of the 8 days.  

 After probing Ibrahim for much of the day on issues such as scheduling and evaluation criteria, the head judge eventually reached the end of his tether as we informed him of circling rumours about favouritism towards Khartoum state (passed onto us by the students). As we stood in the centre of the debate hall surrounded by numerous students, teachers and guests Ibrahim castigated us for ‘infiltrating the minds’ of students in an attempt to turn them against him and thus undermine his- and the rest of the judging committee’s –authority. His scolding did not end at branding us spies.  Instead his voice, wavering uncontrollably as his fury became yet more maniacal, grew louder and louder; his insults increasingly defamatory.

 'C' and I should not be permitted to visit the students camp, should obtain a letter of permission from the Ministry of Education if we wished to attend the subsequent days competition and finally, did not ‘have a clue’ about Sudanese culture. This last insult reminded me of the chapter on cultural differences in SPINE 4/5 that I taught on my first day in El Obeid. This chapter stated that it was a matter of ‘cultural difference’ that the British were punctual and the Sudanese unpunctual. Putting systemic problems- whether it be punctuality or accountability- down to ‘cultural difference’ seems like an evasion tactic, enabling people to live in a blissful ignorance that brushes over Sudan’s inadequacies.  As Ive spent the last 660 word slamming the debate competition without any precise details, I think it would be appropriate to quickly list some of the my main qualms with the weeks activities:

1.       Please…Lets call the competition what it is:

 Any astute observer would realise that what took place in the Petronas hall was more an English Speech than a debate competition. The format was as follows: Each member of the proposing team would present a two minute , pre-prepared speech, to be followed by three two minute speeches by the opposing team. Thereafter each team would have one two minute block of time to conclude and rebut the other teams argument. This brings me on to point 2….

2.       The competition rewarded  English accuracy over English fluency

Presentation and memorization eg. English accuracy, was prioritised over the ability to respond spontaneously and critically to the other teams arguments eg. English fluency. Students spent their evenings attempting to memorize prewritten speeches rather than brainstorming,  discussing and critically engaging with the topic theme (too often in Sudan students are spoon fed- there is little appetite for problem-solving). Ibrahim and the judging committee believed that the participants level of English was inadequate for such spontaneous interaction. Yet, since when did accuracy come before fluency? The priority at this stage of language learning should be to develop fluency, that is the ability to utilize language and transfer meaning so to meet any situational requirements. A properly arranged and organized debate competition is the perfect forum for this. After all I do not care ‘how’ I asked the’ sita chai ‘(tea lady) for coffee as long as I get the ‘jabana bedoun sukker’ that I requested. This point brings me quickly on to the results of the competition…

3.       Success constituted speaking and presentation rather than content and thought.

 Perhaps one of my biggest groans came when Ibrahim unveiled the candidates for the competitions best debater. Clearly Ibrahim, and the rest of the judges had not listened carefully to the arguments put forward, but rather proffered praise and success for the superficial factors such as accent and pronunciation. It was no surprise therefore that the three candidates put forward for best debater all had American accents (and family in America). Even more shockingly one of these candidates had debated an entirely different topic than the one announced, inadvertently  discussing the question ‘back to front’. I honestly would have nominated any of the other debaters on this individuals team above them.

4.       “Judging a debate competition is wholly subjective”….Sorry Ibrahim…wrong again.

 Over the duration of the competition I became worn down by Ibrahim’s constant pronouncements to students and teachers that judging a debate competition is an entirely subjective (people like different things) exercise. It sounded like a ploy to rid him, and the rest of the judging committee, of any accountability. At one stage 'C' asked Ibrahim a question ‘Do you prefer emotional or factual arguments?’. Ibrahim replied: ‘Personally I prefer emotional but perhaps other judges prefer factual arguments’. Of course the correct answer should have been neither.  A debate competition is not, as Ibrahim seems to believe the subjective interpretation of subjective criteria but rather the subjective interpretation of objective criteria. The lack of criteria is to the detriment of the competition; both enfeebling  the learning potential for students and damaging the judges reputation for impartiality and fairness. How can teachers teach their students, how can students improve without a criterion that sets out the formula for success? Perhaps more worryingly is that the lack of evaluation criteria exonerates authority (in this case the judging panel) of responsibility to explain and justify their decisions. Consequently the lack of criteria at the very least nurtures rumours of corruption and favouritism, if not in actual fact empowering the authorities to use their power frivolously.

5.       Fostering accusations of unfair play and favouritism.

Throughout the week long debate competition we heard recurrent protestations of favouritism by the judging committee towards Khartoum state- this is not surprising given that in its 10 year history Khartoum have won every year. At first I thought that such assertions were simply the groans and moans of slightly sore, and definitively disillusioned losers. Yet, the failure of Ibrahim and the judging committee to address these festering rumours made me question the integrity of the competition. Although through no fault of their own, Khartoum state did not stay in the camp with all the other students, attended only their own debates (rather than the remainder of the competition like other teams) and were afforded additional speaking time by Ibrahim. Furthermore, amid circling reports that the winning team were awarded a trip to the Petronas University in Kuala Lumpa, Khartoum’s victory prize was not revealed. This further fuelled the claims that the results and rewards for success were prearranged.

 The week long debate competition was a microcosm of Sudan. At its worst Sudan is a place where a corrupt mentality reigns. This corruption has two guises: an explicit corruption, embodied by malpractices such as the embezzlement of public money, and an implicit corruption, frequently misinterpreted as ‘part of Sudan’s culture’. While explicit corruption is condemned far and wide (even by those who engage in its practices), implicit corruption is seen as commonplace, characteristic of a natural way of things. Far from criticizing or questioning the existence of the latter, people accept, even cherish it. Above all implicit corruption is manifested by the dearth of a standard through which authority can be held to account. It was the absence of any standard, checks or balances through which, at the very least, the judging and organizing committee could be held to justify their decisions that blighted the duration of the competition. In the grand-scale of things a few misgivings about a school level debate competition may seem insignificant. Nonetheless such nonchalant attitudes, manifested through the blind, unquestioned acceptance of those in authority (which often means the old or charismatic) is part of a wider inability to check and challenge the conduct of the powerful.