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.