I HAVE NO TRIBE, I'M SUDANESE

Published:Sudan’s security service closes newspaper

2012-01-28T03:46:00.000-08:00

Published @ http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2012/01/sudan-newspapers-censorship/

Sudan’s National Intelligence Security Services (NISS) suspended Alwan, an independent daily newspaper On Friday 13 January. On Thursday and Friday morning, copies of the newspaper were confiscated post-publication, but the editor-in-chief was only informed of the suspension on Friday.

Shadia Ahmad, a journalist with Alwan, said rumours suggest that a political interview published recently has instigated this harsh decision.

“This is what we are hearing, but so far the editor-in-chief has yet to receive the official written decision to suspend the newspaper which should have clear reasons,” said Ahmad.

Ahmad added that there are probably a number of reasons for the suspension, commenting that if it was only the interview which was to blame for the suspension, the journalist who wrote the article would have faced problems, rather than the newspaper.

Alwan faces charges under article 24, the responsibilities of editors, and article 26, the responsibilities of journalists, of the 2009 Press Laws.

The newspapere was closed down for almost two years in 2008 after publishing a report on a military operation. It came back a little over a year ago.

Earlier this month, the NISS suspended Rai Al Shaab, an opposition newspaper affiliated with the Popular Congress Party (PCP). The head of the NISS stated that Rai Al Shaab violated Sudan’s ” “professional and ethical standards,”

In early 2010, Rai Al Shaab’s deputy editor-in-chief was arrested, tortured and detained for over a year and it was shut down for a year and a half.

Since it began publishing again in October 2011, it has faced constant harassment from the NISS. Two weeks ago, officers raided the newspaper’s premises, confiscated equipment and occupied the offices.

Ahmed Haroun, a Rai Al Shaab journalist, said that he was called in for questioning before the suspension.

“I was interrogated about an article I wrote in November and I was released, but I still have to go to court,” said Haroun.

Lawyer Nabil Adib says that the closure of Rai Al Shaab is illegal.

“It does not abide by the constitution since they can not suspend it before the necessary measures are taken — as in having an actual trial,” said Adib who added that the penalty came before the trial.

Commenting on the recent re-launch of Al Jareeda, an independent newspaper that was suspended by the NISS last September, Adib stated that they are unlikely to publish the same daring material they used to publish before they were shut down.

In recent years, two decisions were instrumental in the new wave of crackdowns on press freedoms in Sudan. Firstly, the controversial 2009 press laws which allow the state to intervene in issues of national security; second, in 2010 the NISS was given many immunities and rights under the 2010 National Security Act. Through this act, the NISS is allowed to take action on issues of national security which range from detaining journalists for extended periods of time, suing journalists and subjecting them to hefty fines and even closing down newspapers.

Many high-profile journalists including Amal Habbani, Faisal Mohamed Salih, Dr Nahid Al Hassan and Dr Omer Al Garrai are still facing charges and ongoing trials for writing about the rape of Safia Ishaq, a young activist who was arrested after taking part in protests and raped by three security men while in detention.

“They aim to waste your time and stop your life” Amal Habbani commented on the lengthy trial.

Last month, Dr Nahid Al Hassan, a psychiatrist working with victims of sexual assault and abuse was told in court by the judge that evidence proves that Safia Ishaq was not raped.

“You jeopardised the people’s trust in the security forces by writing about an incident that never happened,” said Mudathir Al Rashid, a judge who is known as the “journalist cases judge” for taking up notorious cases against journalists.

26 January 1885- Khartoum

2012-01-28T03:31:00.000-08:00

On this day, 127 years ago, Sudan became independent for the first
time as Khartoum was freed from the grip of British and Egyptian
forces after a battle known as the battle of Khartoum.

The liberators were the Mahdist Sudanese army led by Muhammad
Ahmad (Al Mahdi), Sudan's first contemporary leader.

Sudan's history shows that many powerful kingdoms and one of the
oldest civilizations in the world were born in Sudan. Egypt's rival in
Africa, Nubia, was powerful for thousands of years, but it had become
a weak kingdom by the end of the 18th century. So did the kingdom of
Sennar which ruled a large part of Central Sudan and spread into Chad
and other countries.The collapse of powerful kingdoms in Sudan
attracted the Ottomans who invaded Sudan and annexed it into the
Ottoman empire in 1820.

In 1881, the Sudanese rebelled against the Ottoman administration and
Sudan became independent, but the British were eyeing the country at
the time.

The British invaded Sudan in 1882, but they didn't govern it until
1899 when they finally defeated the Mahdist forces.

Charles "Chinese" Gordon who was a famous figure in England was
brought over from China to gain control of Sudan. He cited the
founding of an Islamic state at the hands of the Mahdi as a reason for
the need to invest in defeating the Mahdist army.

Gordon believed that he can accomplish this mission, however, the
Mahdi army proved to be strong and sieged the city of Khartoum from
March 1884 to January 1885.

The siege was brutal that it caused the food supply in Khartoum and of
Gordon's garrison to run low. The entire garrison was killed and
Gordon was shot and his head cut-off.

Muhamed Ahmad became the ruler of Sudan , but he died 5 months after
the battle , however, a modern Sudan was born.

In late 1898, in another attack led by Lord Kitchener, the Mahdist
army were defeated in what came to be known as the battle of Omdurman.

The battle of Khartoum became popular as it was chronicled in the 1966
film, Khartoum, and in the novel "Desert and Wilderness" by Polish
Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz.

Published:Sudan shuts third newspaper in media crackdown

2012-01-05T02:03:00.000-08:00

Sudanese security officials on Sunday evening confiscated Monday copies of Rai Al Shab,the third newspaper to be suspended in recent months by the government.

Rai Al Shab (The People's Opinion) is published by the Popular Congress Party (PCP), one of Sudan's largest opposition parties.

Known for its outspoken editorials and uncompromising journalism, the newspaper has been suspended many times in recent years, most recently from May 2010 to October 2011.

The pro-government Sudanese Media Center (SMC) quoted the head of the Media Department at the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) saying that the newspaper violated Sudan's "professional and ethical standards,"

The NISS has arrested many journalists last year including nine working with Radio Darfur. Also arrested was Abu Zar Al Ameen, the deputy editor-in-chief of Rai AlShab, who was released after more than a year in detention. The cases provoked an international outcry.

"The officers came to the our premises after 5 pm and they occupied the place; the editor-in-chief asked us to gather our personal belongings and leave," said Mustafa Ibrahim, one of the journalists working at Rai Al Shab.

Trial

Ibrahim added that at least 15,000 copies of the newspaper were confiscated on Sunday night. In recent months, copies of independent newspapers have been confiscated in an attempt to harm the newspapers that depend on sales since many opposition newspaper struggle to get advertisements.

Last week, a journalist working at the newspaper was called for interrogation at the National Press and Publications Council following two news pieces he published, in November and December respectively.

"I was surprised to find an arrest warrant waiting for me, I was interrogated before my release on bail," said Ahmed Haroun, who spoke to to Africa Review.

His case is ongoing; a trial hearing is yet to be set.

"During his Independence Day speech, the president spoke about freedoms such as press freedoms, then came the decision to suspend our publication," said Ibrahim who added that the decision will affect about 50 journalists, editors and staff members.

In July, six newspapers owned or co-owned by South Sudanese were suspended including the popular opposition newspaper, Ahjras Al Hurriya, and in September, Al Jareeda, a daily independent newspaper was suspended

Published @http://www.africareview.com/News/Sudan+shuts+third+newspaper+in+media+crackdown/-/979180/1299942/-/15qi875z/-/index.html

Why the North is Silent

2011-12-25T11:34:00.001-08:00

-I would like to thank S.O and A.A for contributing to this article and engaging in long discussions with me.

-I tried publishing this article in an attempt to get more feedback...to no avail :)

Definition of the North: in this article the North refers to Central and North Sudan. Usually seen as one entity by the rest of the country, but in fact, it is a divided region where the Nubians feel marginalized by the Ja'alyeen and Shaigiya of River Nile state. However, inter-marriages and Arabization have helped unite the region in recent decades.

The Sudanese people have it much worse than their North African counterparts, but why is the entire population not out in the streets chanting "the people want to overthrow the government"?
Social media activists have jokingly said that the Arab Spring will not reach Sudan simply because we don't have this season in Sudan, but as I'm glued to Al-Jazeera and Twitter trying to stay up to date with the Arab Spring that continues to unfold, I stop thinking of the four seasons and my mind goes back to 2005 in an attempt to understand the silence in Khartoum.
It was a bright day for Sudan when John Garang became Sudan's First Vice President in July 2005. He was going to run for presidency and I was going to vote for him. Even my grandmother who hails from the Ja'aliya strong-hold town of Berber stated that he is her candidate of choice.
He was single-handedly going to change Sudan, we believed. He was a charismatic leader who was going to unite a battered country. Three weeks later, he died in a plane crash and my hopes and Sudan's unity were buried with him. In the week following his death, Sudan's ethnic divisions became even more obvious. We watched as Southern Sudanese youth believing that the plane crash was not an accident engaged in violent riots, looting and vandalizing office windows and businesses. Clashes ensued with security forces and individuals believed to be of Northern Sudanese origin.
The conflict for the first time came to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan and the center of dominance and dominant tribes. For the first time, Northern Sudanese were the ones being attacked and for the first time, we asked the naive American question of post-9/11, Why do they hate us so much?
There was no time to assess the situation. If Sudan was a household, we spent the next week silent at the dinner table until we forgot what happened, or pushed it to the back of our minds.
Fast-forward to May 2008 when the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) forces launched an attack to overthrow the Sudanese government. The attack which culminated in street fights in Omdurman, the national capital and one of Khartoum's twin cities, sent chills through the spine of North Sudan.
Suddenly, people started thinking about the periphery and trying to revisit earlier events to try to understand the rift between Central Sudan and the rest of Sudan. Estimates show us that not less than 400,000 lost their lives in Darfur, but Darfur was not a reality until it came to Khartoum.

The JEM attack helped start a dialogue about Darfur and the marginalization of the regions outside River Nile state in trying to understand why the periphery revolted.
Those two incidents have, in our opinion, inspired more North Sudanese support for the government as they cuddled around the government for protection.
Even months after secession, there is fear in Sudan's heartland. People are aware of the struggles in the periphery and are aware that the government's policies have created downright resentment and have bred grudges from Nyala to Damazin, from Kadugli to Suakin.
When a few weeks ago, 3 Darfur movements and the SPLM-North Faction announced the creation of an alliance (later joined by the Beja Congress) called the Sudan Revolutionary Front. Once again, people in Khartoum started speaking of a bitter periphery that is not only resentful of the government but also of the Northern people. Reactions to the alliance sparked two perspectives within the North.
Firstly, Khartoum needs to revolt as soon as possible to show the periphery that it seriously wants change that is in favor of democracy and equality and is adamant on preserving the rest of Sudan in light of the recent secession. The revolt will also be peaceful as opposed to an armed revolt that it pushed forward by the SRF.
Secondly, as a people we simply need to support the government because any change brought about by the SRF will be against Sudanese hailing from North/Central. They will be disfranchised and persecuted for the policies of successive governments.
- It is a fact that the North is a powerful constituency, it has an abundant amount of wealth and as a result of education opportunities, Northerners were able to immigrate to rich gulf-countries and the west and were able to generate more wealth than others. However, it is also a fact that anyone not in a position of power or related to someone powerful in Sudan is marginalized. You do not have fair access to jobs and other opportunities if you are not NCP. If this struggle is evident for Northerners, people from other regions have even more poignant struggles and this is why the North needs to revolt. It needs to stand up for Sudan as a whole; it needs to stand up against the government with the rest of Sudan. Hundreds of thousands protested in Mahalla Al Kobra in Egypt in 2007 and 2008, but the protests only gained momentum when they reached Tahrir, in downtown Cairo. The revolution needs to start in Khartoum, in the national capital and the heartland of Sudan's power and wealth and it needs to represent Sudan's search not only for democracy, but most importantly for social justice.
If it was just about overthrowing the government, then Egyptians would have left Tahrir in February and moved on with their lives. They could have entrusted the military with their revolution and waited for the elections. But they did not. They are now in Tahrir, losing their eyes and sacrificing their lives for total change and to be freed of a military rule? And why is that?
After overthrowing the Mubarak regime, they realized that the pursuit of social justice and democracy is not limited to removing a military dictatorship. If Egypt is ever going to have a proper democracy, it needs to have a civilian government and the military has controlled Egypt since its 1952 revolution. As we learn from Tahrir, we need to realize that Sudan doesn’t need an armed revolt, it needs a peaceful revolt. It needs a Tahrir moment followed by a civilian government. The military should be respected for its responsibilities, 1-to fight an invading army 2- to help the government during natural disasters.
On the other hand, the SRF wants an armed revolt to overthrow the government and take over power. We tell you, an armed liberation movement like the SRF is exactly like a military dictatorship with a better name. There is vast amount of literature opposing armed struggles as liberation movements capable of bringing about change. They end up growing into repressive dictatorships. This is the last thing needed in Sudan. If the SRF is made up of movements interested in improving the quality of life for their respective citizens and acquiring fair political representation, then they need to support a peaceful revolt in Khartoum and beyond.
Moving on to the second debate, it is important to note that the fears harbored by the Northern-Central Sudanese population are exacerbated by the government, the media and sadly, the periphery. In the opinion pieces published by Sudan Tribune, the opposition and JEM-affiliates seem to harbor anti-Northern sentiments.
In a recently published opinion piece entitled: The Sudanese Revolutionary Front- Right Way to the United and New Sudan. The author started off by discussing some misconceptions about the "Arab North", but ultimately ended up doing the same mistake as all the others he's criticizing. He started off by saying that the often misunderstood problem in Sudan is essentially a problem of racism implanted by a discriminating regime, and that the people of Khartoum themselves (often vilified in media) are victims of such a misconception. Agreed. However, he goes on to make the same mistake by singling out and targeting the “people of River Nile State” and accusing them of amplifying and imposing their 'Arab history and origins' on all of Sudan. We are wary of that approach as it just perpetuates this whole Arab North vs. Rest of Sudan dilemma. Sudan has tribal issues, however, we do not think that the Sudanese population want to disenfranchise any specific tribe economically or politically. It's a matter of social tribalism that has been inflated by this current regime and not the people of River Nile State and could be assuaged by a visionary leader/party who has the interest of the whole country at heart.
Hope and Change
As a conscious group of authors, we seriously doubt that the NCP is capable of reforms. Years of trying to negotiate with the NCP have been a total waste of time. The end result, usually a hefty publication with guidelines on how to end Sudan's disasters, is stored in a drawer or is somewhere gathering dust on a shelf. The NCP is interested in staying in power and if dialogue buys them time, they would engage in it for this reason, not because they are interested in changing their policies.
It is sad that under the NCP's watch, Sudan lost 25% of its population, it is even sadder that so far, it is not learning from its mistakes. This is why Sudan needs change; Sudan needs CPR in the form of a revolution. Only a regime-change will put it on the right track, to solving its internal conflicts and transitioning into a proper state instead of a governmental company where ministries and institutes are businesses.

Kenya and Sudan headed for showdown as deadline looms

2011-12-18T11:28:00.000-08:00

*I contributed to this report

By FRED OLUOCH
Posted Monday, December 12 2011 at 00:00

With the two-week ultimatum given by Khartoum edging closer and the UN tightening sanctions against Asmara over the latter’s support for Al Shabaab, there is a growing feeling that Kenya needs to rethink its foreign policy.

The Kenya government’s reaction to strong protests by Sudan following a court ruling ordering the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir if he sets foot in Kenya, has revealed major flaws in that foreign policy.

Attorney-General Githu Muigai has appealed against the ruling, but an adjudication is unlikely to come before the expiry of the two-week ultimatum, raising the prospect that Sudan could sever relations with Kenya.

Historically, Kenya has operated on the principle of non-interference in its neighbours’ affairs, and its foreign policy depended largely on the whims of the person in power. Now, Kenya seems to have shifted to a policy of “non-indifference” to events in the region and encouraging its representatives abroad to pursue business-oriented diplomacy.

Kenya appears not to have been fully satisfied with the additional sanctions that the United Nations Security Council imposed on Eritrea on Tuesday. The draft resolution received 13 votes in favour, none against and two abstentions from China and Russia.

“We have no problem with Eritrea. It is Eritrea that has a problem with every country in the region. But I have been communicating with their representative in Kenya and Eritrea maintains that it has no intention of severing links with Kenya since the issues can be solved amicably,” he said.

Kenya in November accused Eritrea of flying two planeloads of arms to Al Shabaab-held positions in Somalia, a charge that Asmara vigorously denied. Kenya then hinted it might review diplomatic ties with Eritrea if it turned out the Red sea country was arming the Al Qaeda-linked Shabaab militants who are currently fighting Kenyan forces in the south of Somalia.

On the other hand, Eritrean government officials hinted that Kenya is being influenced by the propaganda of their archenemy Ethiopia, with whom they fought a two-year war over the disputed border region of Badme.

Last week, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, insisted that Eritrea was a prime source of instability for the whole region. Apart from the 1998-200 war, Ethiopia remains uncomfortable with Eritrea over its allegedly close ties with Ethiopian rebel groups like the Oromo Liberation Front and the Ogaden National Liberation Front

Dr Ben Sihanya, a lecturer on international law at the University of Nairobi, argued that Kenya took the right decision by appealing to the UN over Eritrea, but the onus is on Kenya to provide evidence.

He, however, believes that the diplomatic row with Eritrea and Sudan goes to show that Kenya needs a consistent foreign policy regarding it interests in the region.

“This is the time to formulate a new foreign policy based on the new Constitution and international treaties we have signed. We need more detailed and consistent foreign policy because previously our foreign policy has been reactionary,” he said.

President Bashir gave Kenya two weeks to resolve the situation in his favour or face punitive measures, which will include cutting trade and diplomatic ties and banning planes leaving or bound for Kenya from over-flying Sudanese airspace. Other measures include throwing out about 1,500 Kenyans working in Sudan.

Since the issuance of his arrest warrant, Sudan’s president has visited Chad, Kenya, Djibouti and Malawi —all members of the ICC.

Faisal Mohamed Salih, a writer and human-rights activist in Sudan, believes that Kenya’s decision to avoid political confrontation with the Sudanese government is primarily due to the ongoing internal debate on the ICC’s intervention in Kenya following its post-election violence.

“Not all sides in Kenya support the ICC’s court case against Kenyan officials; also, some Kenyan officials fear being indicted and suffering the same fate as Sudan’s president. This explains their attempt to calm down the situation,” said Mr Salih. Dr Al Tayeb Zain Al Abdeen who teaches political science at the University of Khartoum, questioned the court’s ability to conduct the actual arrest

“The court does not arrest, it collaborates with the police, which in all countries is part of the state,” said Dr Al Abdeen who added that in any case, President Bashir should not consider going to Nairobi at this time.

In October 2011, Malawi also came under fire from the international community and rights groups when it hosted President Bashir. In a statement to the ICC, Malawi said that “as a member of the African Union, (it) fully aligns itself with the position adopted by the African Union.”

Additional reporting by Reem Abbas

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Kenya+and+Sudan+headed+for+showdown+as+deadline+looms/-/2558/1287178/-/item/1/-/j30d3oz/-/index.html

ام الناس- محمــد طـه القدال

2011-12-04T04:14:00.000-08:00

The wonderful Mohamed Taha Al Gaddal, one of my favorite Sudanese poets wrote yet another masterpiece, Om Al Nas (the mother of the people). I managed to get the CD last week in an event in commemoration of "the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence"

You can now listen to Om Al Nas performed in the form of 4 different songs by Amal Al Nour and Asrar Babiker and others.

اوبريت ام الناس عمل من انتاج مركز سالمة لمصادر ودراسات المرأة صندوق الامم المتحده لدعم المرأة حركه تمكين المرأه من اجل السلام
اوبريت ام الناس من كلمانت الاستاذ محمد طه القدال
الحان وتوزيع موسيقي الاستاذ سعد الدين

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zZ5YmIOpz4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USsA3k9Gu7Y

Pain for Beauty: the Dilemma of Facial Cutting in Sudan

2011-11-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

This post is part of the series ‘Culture and Human Rights: Challenging Cultural Excuses for Gender-Based Violence’ hosted by Gender Across Borders and Violence Is Not Our Culture.

In a spacious house in Fetihab, a neighborhood in the city of Omdurman in Khartoum state, Soad Al -Tijani, a widow in her 70s recounts her traumatizing experience to her grandchildren and me, a journalist and the daughter of her niece.

She is telling us the story of her facial cuts. Every few minutes she stops her tale to underscore how lucky we are to be born in the contemporary world where practices such as facial cuts have vanished. She was not so lucky. Her round face bares three deep cuts on each cheek.

Facial cuts are common in some Sudanese tribes. In the North, many women were subjected to this practice until it began dying out in the 1950s.

The cuts are different from tribe to tribe. The most common kind is the one-eleven (111) cuts on both cheeks.

Women glorified facial cutting and they believed that it enhanced beauty and that is why the prettier and chubbier women were cut before others.

At the tender age of 9, Soad was taken by her aunt to undergo facial cuts or “sholouk” as they are called in Sudan.

“I was made to lie down while a very large woman was sitting cross-legged on the floor and holding my head on her lap, two were holding my arms so I wouldn’t move and one was sitting on a stool ontop of my chest,” recalls Soad.

She couldn’t turn her face or move any part of her body. She was still as the woman on the stool cut both cheeks with a razor.

“The razor was very large and looked like a nail clipper, they literally dig the skin out of each cut, ” said Soad.

Her grandchildren and I were disgusted by the ordeal and continued bombarding her with questions. The youngest in the room, Mustafa, is still in high school and did not utter a single word. When I asked him what he thought, he said that he agreed with me that women were subjected to a lot of pain.

“No better word describes facial cutting other than the word crime,” said Soad interrupting our loud discussion.

According to Soad, her mother was too scarred to take a strong stance against her powerful aunt. When her young daughter was brought home with a swollen face and neck, the mother couldn’t look at her for weeks.

“They dipped cotton in a black liquid and placed it on my face to stop the bleeding and my mother took me to my aunt’s house for weeks to reapply fresh cotton,” said Soad who said that her father was also against it.

Family and societal pressure is strong in Sudan. In the past it was worse with extended families living in one house. A child was seen as belonging to the whole family. Even though Soad’s father was against facial cutting, he told her to ask for thinner and less deep cuts as a compromise. But when the women came to cut her face, she couldn’t negotiate with them and ended up with the most severe and deep kind of cuts.

Her eldest brother, a journalist and writer was completely against the practice. He didn’t talk to their parents for three days as punishment.

Facial scarring is very rare in contemporary Sudan. Most women who were subjected to it are either deceased or are at least in their 60s and few young women abide by it. Perceptions about beauty have dramatically changed over the last decades, modern Sudanese women would never imagine being facially cut.

“I never thought about doing it to my daughters,” said Soad.

Soad is proof that culture can and does change.

Concern grows about detained Sudanese writer, activist

2011-10-20T01:51:00.000-07:00

KHARTOUM - There’s been no word of Abdelmoniem Rahma, a poet and political activist, since he was arrested a month ago.

Published @ http://www.sudanvotes.com/articles/?id=1060

Rahma was close to the ousted governor of Blue Nile State, Malik Agar, and involved in the arts. According to a statement published by Human Rights Watch, he has reportedly been tortured in detention and is at risk of further torture and other ill treatment.

In an apartment on Tuti, a crescent-shaped island at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile surrounded by greater Khartoum, Rahma’s wife and three children wait by the phone, hoping for news of his whereabouts.

Abdelmoniem Rahma was arrested by Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) on 2 September in Damazin, the capital of Blue Nile State, one day after the resumption of fighting between the Sudanese national army and forces loyal to the northern sector of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM-N).

“I found out about his arrest from the newspapers,” said Rahma’s wife, who does not wish to be named. “I didn’t even know he was in jail.”

A few weeks ago, security personnel broke into a neighbour’s apartment, having mistaken it for Rahma’s residence. They were about to vandalise the place when the neighbour returned home from a mosque and spoke with the officials.

“He was very understanding and told me not to worry if they came back to search my house,” said Rahma’s wife.

Her other neighbours are more wary of any association with Rahma and his family. His wife and children have had no company since that incident, because rumours have circulated that anyone visiting them would be immediately arrested.

“My sister is very disturbed,” said Rahma’s brother-in-law. “She is too scared to leave the house, even to go to the grocery store.”

Rahma formerly headed Sudana, an organisation that promoted the work of marginalised art and literature groups in Sudan. He was a member of the Sudanese Writers’ Union during the 1980s and headed the Arabic section of the Sudan Radio Service network in Nairobi between 2003 and 2005.

Rahma also co-founded the daily Ajras al-Hurriya (“Bells of Freedom”), and served as its administrative director.

Hussein Saad, who worked as an editor at the newspaper, has known Rahma since 2008.

“He was very dedicated,” he said. “We worked very hard for months until the first issue was published.”
Read also: "Uncertain future for Sudanese media" by Osman Shinger
Ajras al-Hurriya was shut down by authorities one day before South Sudan’s independence.

The last time the two met was during Ramadan in Blue Nile State, when Saad went to cover a news conference organised by former governor Malik Agar, along with other politicians. Rahma was working as an advisor to Agar on cultural affairs.

“Rahma invited everyone to break the fast at his house,” Saad recalls. “He helped us during the trip more than anyone else.”

Saad, who spoke with Rahma by phone a few days before his arrest, said he believes his colleague’s political activities, especially his affiliation with the SPLM-N, made him a target when tensions rose between that party and the Sudanese government in Blue Nile State.

“He was connected to Blue Nile and he has a personal relationship with the overthrown governor, Malik Agar,” Saad added.

After years of exile, mostly in Kenya and Ethiopia, where he met his wife, Rahma returned to Sudan after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in 2005.

He was also instrumental in the development of a traveling theatre to promote peaceful dialogue among Sudan’s diverse cultures.

In a formal statement published on 7 September, the executive committee of the Sudanese Writers’ Union called for the immediate release of Rahma or a fair civil trial if there is a case against him.

Hurriyat, an online Sudanese human rights publication, reports that a former detainee imprisoned with Rahma stated that the writer was subjected to constant beatings and forbidden from using the toilet.

“Arbitrary arrests in Sudan are common because this is not a respectful country,” said Ali Haj, former political editor of Ajras al-Hurriya and friend of Rahma. “Officials don't have any charges against you and they don't tell you your rights. People are sometimes arrested in violent ways and subjected to torture.”

For more information: Amnesty International Rahma’s wife, who is of Ethiopian origin, expressed concern about her children’s safety in this time of uncertainty about her husband’s condition.

“I'm scared they could get kidnapped or taken away from me,” she said during a conversation at her apartment, adding that she sought help from the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR. “I was interviewed, but they didn't offer any assistance,” she added.

The Hidden War Against Female Journalists in Sudan

2011-09-30T08:25:00.000-07:00

Amal Habbani, one of Sudan's leading female journalists, has 12 years of experience and a master's degree, but she can't find a job.

"I remember that day very well. I went to work on the 9th of March and I was told that I was suspended for being an activist," said Habbani.

"No newspaper wants to hire a trouble-maker," she told me in a cafeteria near the Northern Khartoum Court, where we were supposed to attend the trial of Fatima Ghazzali, a journalist facing charges of defamation for writing about Safia Ishaq, a young activist who was arrested and subjected to gang-rape by the security forces in February after participating in a protest.

Habbani is a familiar face in every protest for freedom of speech and women's rights. Her writings and activism have caused Sudan's state security to file a number of charges against her.

Although at least 10 journalists were charged for writing about Safia Ishaq, only Habbani and Ghazzali went to jail for it.

Ghazzali was sentenced after refusing to pay a 2,000 SDG ($650) fine for "publishing lies." A few weeks later, Habbani refused to pay the same amount and chose a month-long sentence instead.

Margot Wallström, the special representative of the UN’s Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, commented on the charges against the journalists by saying: “Rapists--not reporters--must face criminal charges in the Sudan.”

Women journalists in Sudan are not only tried under Sudan's controversial 2009 press laws, they are also subjected to the infamous public order laws.

The pubic order laws are carried out by special forces called "the public order police" and their main aim is to fight social corruption and uphold moral values in Sudan.

In the beginning of 2011, I attended a meeting organized by No to Women Oppression, a group that fights against the public order laws. A few minutes into the meeting, we realized that as women, we are more scared of the public order laws than men.

We concluded that the laws target female students and professional women: journalists, activists and even lawyers, and that they specifically affect the full participation of women in the public space.

"I'm constantly harassed when I'm trying to get information for articles I'm writing, but I can't report it," said Amina*, a journalist in her early 20s, who did not want me to use her real name.

Amina is mainly scared of ending up like Lubna Hussein, a journalist who was arrested by the public order police in 2009 for "indecent clothing."

"Lubna Hussein was an active journalist who wrote a controversial column. They just had to create a case against her," said Amina.

The sentence for "indecent clothing" is getting lashed.

Habbani is battling a case against her by the public order police for writing an article in support of Lubna Hussein. She's being sued for 10 million Sudanese pounds ($3.5 million).

Published @

Published @Blogher network

CPR

2011-09-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling really depressed lately. I came across an opinion piece about Sudan a few weeks ago and it talked about how Sudan needs good "PR" and I kept thinking ..Sudan does not need PR, it needs CPR.

I can not live in the Khartoum state bubble and isolate myself from other states, Sudan's endless periphery. The isolation doesn't make sense anymore.
I sometimes write about Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile and it feels so distant to me. I tell my friends, " How long can you contain a conflict? I'm waiting for it to reach us.."

"It is only a matter of years , then we have to say, we are from Khartoum state," joked a friend of mine.

We were only joking when we spent 20 minutes talking about the separation of Khartoum state on the way from Khartoum to Bahri a week ago.

"You might have to work at Ivory (a fast food place) since it is close to you and you need a permit to go to Khartoum," said my friend H to M. They both live in Bahri.

"Imagine if I need a visa to come see you M, you live ten minutes away," I said.

The jokes continue.

I think I have become really angry since the south separated. I'm so frustrated at Sudan, I sometimes find myself looking for jobs in Dubai.

Sudanese people need CPR. My mum said the nation has changed, we are zombies. Why are we silent about the ever-increasing prices?

I don't know.

I had to think twice the other day when I wanted to make salad. The tomatoes are so expensive now, I just couldn't be selfish. I used two tiny tomatoes, leaving the bigger ones for the rest of my family.

Sudan: New Conflict Displaces Thousands

2011-09-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

Published @

KHARTOUM, Sep 17, 2011 (IPS) - The Sudanese government says that a majority of the tens of thousands of people displaced by the fighting in the country’s Blue Nile state have started returning to the area. This is despite reports by local and international aid agencies that say people are still fleeing the region.

On Tuesday the United Nations estimated that over 100,000 people have been displaced by the fighting that began two weeks ago. On Sep. 1, Blue Nile became another conflict area in Sudan when fighting erupted between forces loyal to the north Sudan faction of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) – the ruling political party in South Sudan originally formed to oppose Sudan’s rule – and government’s Sudan Armed Forces.

The Sudanese Red Crescent Society estimated that 35,000 households have been affected since fighting began in Blue Nile at the beginning of September. The U.N.’s Refugee Agency reported that 16,000 refugees fled the area into Ethiopia.

But Magdi Abdulwahab, who is responsible for compiling reports on the Blue Nile for Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP), said that the state is stabilising and internally displaced persons are returning to safe regions in Blue Nile and neighbouring states. Blue Nile is one of Sudan’s 15 states. It borders South Sudan to its west and south, Ethiopia to its east and has a population of just over 800,000.

"Seventy percent of displaced persons in places like Sennar (a state bordering Blue Nile) and Senja, the capital of Sennar, are returning," he told IPS.

He said government had urged the IDPs to return for the harvest. "The government is asking people to return as this is the agricultural season and the livelihoods of most of the state's citizens are tied to agriculture and livestock," said Abdulwahab. He added he receives daily reports confirming that the situation in the state is calm.

Media reports have shown that most of the heavy fighting has occurred in Damazin, the capital of Blue Nile state, and Kurmuk, a SPLM-controlled town near the Ethiopian border.

But political anaylsts say that the conflict has been a long-time coming.

Even the former governor of Blue Nile, Malik Agar, who has since been fired by government, warned of the possible conflict in the area since June. He said it would occur if government and the SPLM failed to complete the remaining proposals of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which was signed between both parties to end the country’s 21-year civil war. A military representative, Commander Yahya Mohamed Kheir, has since replaced Agar as governor and a state of emergency was enforced in the state.

Government and the SPLM were supposed to resolve various issues, including those of oil revenues, border demarcation and military arrangements in the border areas of Abyei, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile before South Sudan's secession in July.

But by late July, the Sudanese government still had a heavy military presence in Blue Nile and Agar had called for a review of the CPA on this matter. (Agar is also the chairman of SPLM-North, a faction of the SPLM that is comprised of people from Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan.) The Sudanese government called for the dissolution of the SPLM-North’s army, but Agar wanted further guarantees about the future of his soldiers.

"Agar did not refuse dissolving the army in principal, he asked for a political arrangement to secure the soldier's future in the Sudanese army, or as civil servants, or as members in their communities," said Dr. Khalil Al-Madani, the Dean of the Faculty of Commerce, Economic and Social Studies at Nileen University in Khartoum. He is also the head of a team of experts working on the council involved in the popular consultations between Blue Nile state and Sudan’s government. This is a CPA-mandated process that allows both Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan to voice their opinions on political and administrative arrangements with the government and to even vote for autonomous rule.

"The war did not happen now, all the factors leading to war were present, but it ignited now," said Al- Madani.

Al-Madani added that matters were tense as far back as April 2010 when Agar had won the governorship of Blue Nile by popular vote and the Sudanese government had been reluctant to acknowledge his victory.

"Agar believed that the government would cheat him out of the governorship, their decision could have unleashed a war at the time. But when they announced his victory, they stopped (a possible) war in Blue Nile," explained Al-Madani.

Blue Nile is an important state in the desert-like Sudan. The area is rich in livestock and agricultural resources and until last year, Blue Nile was the source of most of Sudan's hydroelectric power through the Al Roseires Dam. But it is also very poor. "There are no services, no schools and no access to water even though it has a lot of resources," Al- Madani told IPS.

Before the conflict, Blue Nile state was in the final phase of the popular consultations, which would have led to a decision on whether the state would call for a referendum to cede from Sudan. The popular consultations were delayed and the council responsible for carrying out the popular consultations wanted Agar to extend the period for another six months.

"Agar refused the proposal because he was not consulted before a decision was made to extend the timeframe. The protocol of the popular consultation states that the process should be finished before the secession (of South Sudan)," said Al-Madani.

However, the council that oversees the popular consultation process is made up of NCP and SPLM members and since both parties clashed on the matter, there was no one to meditate.

"The security arrangements, the collapse of the Addis Ababa agreement (an agreement on settling the security and military disputes and engaging in a political partnership) and the popular consultations… they are all reasons for the conflict. But the mistrust and suspicion between Agar and the government is the main ignition for the war. Nobody believes anybody," said Al-Madani.

Mohamed (name has been changed), who has been working on a project to monitor the popular consultations in Blue Nile since August 2010, said that the conflict was partially predicted.

"When there is tension between parties that work together you can expect all kind of problems," he told IPS.

He added that going back to the popular consultations is the only way out of this crisis. However, Al-Madani added that Agar had been democratically elected to his post as governor and his firing on Sep. 2 was against the constitution. "Since Agar was elected by the state through a vote, he could only be disposed of by the state and this is according to the constitution," explained Al-Madani.

Meanwhile, government insists that the state is returning to normal. Abdulwahab stated in a phone interview that the only problematic area was Kurmuk, but that government had issued a call to the SPLM for peace in the state.

"The conflict will be resolved soon, through negotiations or the battlefield," he told IPS.

Al-Madani, who has spent long periods of time in Blue Nile, believes that negotiations are the only way out.

"There is war in Darfur, in Southern Kordofan and now in Blue Nile. There will possibly be a conflict in East Sudan. We have been facing the same problems for the past 22 years. The government needs to come up with a political resolution, 95 percent of internal wars in the 21st century were resolved politically," said Al-Madani.

On Sep. 12, the Sudanese parliament endorsed the extension of the state of emergency in Blue Nile and voted for the continuation of military action by the Sudanese army.

Review: Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela

2011-09-14T02:44:00.000-07:00

Lyrics Alley

I have waited years, literally years, for this book.

I read Lyrics Alley in a single sitting. I was flying to Libya from Dubai in early February 2011. Other than the fact that it is written by one of my favorite authors, Leila Aboulela, and it is set in Sudan, my country let me tell you some background on how I managed to get my hands on the book.

I have waited years, literally years, for this book. I have read and re-read her other books and short stories; when I interviewed her over email for an English-daily newspaper in Khartoum last year, she told me: "to stay in touch so I can be one of the first to read Lyrics Alley".

The book came out in January 2011. My mother got sick and wanted to come see her doctor in Cairo so we arrived in Cairo on 26 January, two days before the first Friday of anger.
In my opinion, the book is centered on two themes. The first is the conflicting Sudanese vs. Egyptian identity which divides many characters.

We spent the next week barricaded inside our compound, glued to the television screen and using our scarce resources to support the young men who were taking shifts guarding the compound during the first days of Egypt revolution. Hoards of men sitting in chairs or standing with guns, knives and random kitchen utensils turned weapons. The United Nations deported us to Dubai a week later, it was a mandatory evacuation for UN families and my father was still working with the UN at the time.

I bought Lyrics Alley on the way to the plane to Libya at Dubai International Airport. It was the last money we had and I spent it on the over-priced hardcover book and Bidoun, an arts and culture magazine.
Father_and_husband

A World on Papers…

In the beginning of the book, we learn that the book is inspired by Hassan Awad Aboulela (1922-1962), a relative of the writer and one of Sudan's most imminent poets. The book tells the story of a well-rooted family in Omdurman, the Abuzeids who live on Al Morada Street where the former residence of the Aboulela family is situated and across the street from my present house.

In my opinion, the book is centered on two themes. The first is the conflicting Sudanese vs. Egyptian identity which divides many characters especially Mahmoud Abuzeid, who is married to Hajjah Waheeba, a traditionally Sudanese wife and Nabilah, the cosmopolitan younger Egyptian wife who disapproves of all things Sudanese.

This theme is reminiscent of the minaret which centers on a Sudanese woman and an Egyptian-Sudanese family, Aboulela's own ancestry feeds into this subject, her mother is Egyptian and her father is Sudanese.

She was born in Cairo but was raised in Khartoum. She is consistently torn between these two identities. In the book, the attitudes are similar to real-life attitudes, the Sudanese are suspicious of the Egyptians and the Egyptians look down upon the Sudanese as their less sophisticated neighbors.

Leila began writing fiction in 1992 and has published three books and a collection of short stories. She currently divides her time between Scotland and Qatar.

The other theme is the marriage of fiction with non-fiction. Fiction is intertwined with non-fiction for a person familiar with Sudanese history.

I kept noting the resemblance of the Abuzeid family to the Aboulela family; their residence in Omdurman, their involvement in business and their admiration for Victoria College in Alexandria, considered the Eton of the Middle East at the time.

Nur Abuzeid , the son of Mahmoud Abuzeid was paralyzed in an accident in the beach in Alexandria. Hassan Awad Aboulela's was also paralyzed in a similar tragic accident in Egypt. Both characters used poetry to escape their painful reality. They were well-educated and had a bright future ahead of them. An education at Victoria College followed by college at Cambridge or Oxford and a good job back home in Sudan.

On his accident, Hassan Aboulela wrote:

"In you Egypt are the causes of my injury. And in Sudan my burden and solace."- These words are from "Travel is the Cause," a song performed by Ahmed Al Mustafa, the pioneer of modern Sudanese music. Aboulela also wrote Rahmak ya Malak "Have Mercy, Angel", which Ahmed Al Mustafa performed with iconic Lebanese singer, Sabah in an Egyptian film.

“Travel is the Cause” was memorized by almost all of the Sudanese population at the time.

As much as Nur's accident shook the Abuzid household, life moved on.

I finished the book as we were landing in Libya. Two weeks later, we would get evacuated one more time as Libya's own revolution was underway.

I recommend Lyrics Alley not only because it is a powerful representation of Sudan's social and cultural history, but because I was reading it under duress and after I turned the last page, I felt an overwhelming peace of mind.

More About the Author:

Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo in 1964. She moved to Khartoum and was educated at the American school and then the University of Khartoum. She moved to Britain with her husband and studied Statistics at the London School of Economics.

Published @

Sudanese youth arm themselves with art to bring change

2011-08-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

Published @ Onislam.net http://www.onislam.net/english/culture-and-entertainment/music/451920-fight-the-cause-sudanese-youth-singing-for-change.html

Sudan Eyez: Fight the Cause , a mix-tape that includes 14 tracks by different Sudanese musicians and poets couldn't have been produced at a more perfect time. While fight the cause was being widely circulated on Facebook and downloaded for free, a wave of political awareness was spreading amongst Sudanese youth.

Young men and women were putting Safia Ishaq, an activist who was gang-rapped by Sudanese security forces as their display picture and many were joining groups calling for changes a la Tunisia and Egypt. In its introduction, the mix-tape emphasizes that the battle for the Sudanese cause has been ongoing for 21 years and the movement towards change started on January the 30th 2011 was "inspired by the Egyptian and Tunisian youth."

By asking the listeners to make this CD the soundtrack of the 2011 Sudanese revolution, the artists are actively trying to mobilize their listeners to become active and involved in the movement. The mix tape begins with a 1958 recording broadcasted from Omdurman Radio which was called "This is Omdurman" at the time.

The recording was two years after Sudan's independence from Great Britain and the year of its first military coup. Music from old Sudanese songs is sampled and integrated into a number of tracks. It covers different genres from hip-hop by US-based Sudanese rapper and poet, Selma-I and Khartoum-based rappers, ReZOULution to Reggae beats by Mao and R n B by Dubai-based Sudanese artist, Mo'awia known as Nile. Featured artists easily alternate between English and Arabic and insert cultural references such as referring to the government as Kozes, a cup made of metal used for drinking water in Sudan.
The artists began working on the CD after the January 30 protests and the whole idea was instigated by the arrest of rapper, blogger, activist and poet Ahmad Mahmoud also known as DZA the Dissenter. 70 protesters were arrested on the 30th of January protest. Two days later, Mahmoud was arrested as he took part in a peaceful protest in Khartoum North.

Hashim , the brain behind the idea said that the aim was to produce a mixtape “ that is going to inspire the Sudanese youth so they can’t let us down when it’s the right time to make some changes,”

Picking the contributors wasn’t a challenge for Hashim, he already had a few musicians in mind. He made sure to pick the tracks that match the concept of the album. He told me in an interview over Facebook that he knew that the musicians wouldn’t mind joining such an album even if it is going to bring them problems.

The tracks were already recorded, Hisham just had to pick the most suitable ones. He started working on the mixtape and was planning to dedicate it to Ahmad Mahmoud, his fellow musician and good friend. Fortunately, he was released twelve long days later.
In the meantime, the youth movements in Sudan decided that 21st of March was a day of mass protests. The mixtape had to be finished and distributed beforehand.

“I really wanted that album to spread awareness so I had to publish it unfinished, after all, it took me about one month to collect the pieces,” he stated.

The mixtape was distributed online. Many put a link to it on their Facebook page. I personally stumbled upon the mixtape after a friend of mine posted a link to it on Facebook. When I asked Hashim if they used the internet only for distributing the mixtape, he quoted the poet and musician, Gil Scott-Heron and told me that “the revolution will not be televised,”
Reminiscent of the role of Facebook and twitter in Tunisia and Egypt, he added that the revolution is not televised, but it is internized,”

G. AbuNafeesa, a medical doctor found herself part of the artistic movement calling for change when she read about what happened to Safia Ishaq, a 25 year old artist affiliated with Girfna, a two-year old youth movement calling for change. Ishaq was arrested on 13 February 2011 by the police for her involvement in the January 30 movement. Not long after she was released, she spoke out about her arrest , beating and subsequent gang-rape by three members of Sudan’s security service in a video testimony broadcasted on youtube.
AbuNafeesa was heartbroken and angry by the oppression of women in Sudan and the ongoing violence against civilians and decided to use her pen to write the story of the Sudanese struggle.
In her piece, the quality of equality, performed at the Women’s Week at Ahfad University for Women in Sudan, she spoke of Ishaq when she said
“You asked for the quality of your equality, And gained nothing but cold depravity…of ones who crowned your head with fear
when they unwrapped your hijab, and bound your hands -
because you chose to make a stand!”

AbuNafeesa has used Ishaq’s picture as her facebook display picture for nearly 2 months now.

Drained

2011-08-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

I have final exams in October. I'm taking two courses in sustainable development at the University of London and I'm hoping to do well and upgrade to the master's program. I've always been interested in journalism, human rights and development. I'm still in Cairo, studying and writing sometimes. I have a review of Leila Aboulela's Lyrics Alley coming up and working on a few surprise pieces. So, it is not exactly a holiday!

For now, I will leave you with important bits and pieces from the international news.

This BBC audio report is about the world's first climate refugees. They are from Torres strait islands in Australia and their are threatened by the rising sea levels. My dear friend, Mohamed Al Garf wrote about climate change refugees for Eco-Options Egypt more than a year ago. Read his informative piece @ http://www.ecooptionsegypt.com/?p=617

Listen to the report-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9566000/9566432.stm

My dear friend, Maha wrote an amazing piece about Ramadan in Sudan.

Read it @

I'm still getting acquainted with twitter. You can follow me @ReemAbbas. For now, I need to go back to reading about climate change and sustainable development.

BlogHer 2011

2011-08-13T15:21:00.000-07:00

It was really difficult to make the decision to go to Blogher. I was scared of going to a faraway place on my own. I have traveled alone before but to neighboring countries and even when I studied abroad in California , I was with 5 other girls from college so I rarely had to be alone.

Then of course, I felt unqualified to be there. The panel I was speaking at was called "International Activist Blogger Scholarship". It was an award that I was nominated for an won:)

I was always an activist. Ever since I was a child, I understood the existence of injustice. I asked questions: why are we fighting a war with the south? why are certain tribes seen as better than other tribes? I just couldn't word it in my head, I couldn't call myself an activist until I was almost failing a class in college.

I was really concerned about my GPA so I went to speak to one of my professors. He basically told me that this course is not for me because I'm an activist and you can't bring activism to the classroom at all times.

I found myself develop into an even stronger activist when I moved to Sudan. I also struggled to keep my blog going with the 2 or 3 jobs I was doing at once. Then I was awarded the Blogher activist scholarship. It was announced on May and since then, I have been so motivated and more confident about my writing. Blogher is the best opportunity I was given since college to really realize my potential and think about all the issues that are close to my heart.

Day 0

My plane was at 8 a.m. I was all over the place. Packing, organizing, printing maps and itineraries. I went to sleep at 4 and woke up at 5:00. I live 10 minutes away from the airport so getting there was no hassle.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I ran into a girl from college. She was a friend of a friend and I remember her for her big smile and pointy shoes. We also met another girl from college and the three of us chit-chated until we boarded the plane.

A little over 4 hours later, we reached London. After over 30 minutes at the security check, we headed to the duty free, bought stuff, tasted a lot of amazing free chocolate and went our separate ways. R was going to Montreal. M was going to Washington and I was going to San Diego.

I'm familiar with "random check" at European and American airports , but I was surprised to see that I was the only one "randomly" checked while boarding the plane to San Diego. This is when you know that having a Sudanese passport labels you a lot of things. So after 10 minutes of really annoying "open your legs" "raise your arms" take off this and that and that, I was a free woman.

Day -1

This day was called pathfinder day. I headed to the convention center which was literally two steps way from my hotel. It was amazing! I attended a session in which Gina M. from Blogging While Brown was speaking. I came across her blog a few times. There was also a health blogger, Katherine from postpartumprogress and another blogger/online media expert.I have to admit, I left the session so keen on using her blog to spread awareness about PPP. I wonder how Sudanese women would react to hearing about PPP.
The session was really lively, I met a lot of great women (journalists/ researchers and women in academia).

Day 1

I was awake at 5 a.m. I turned on my laptop and skyped with friends until breakfast. I replied to tweets (I'm a beginner twitter user, or are we called tweeps?) so it took me a while to send "direct messages" , follow people and figure out how to improve my use of twitter since it is the hot thing right now. I remembered that I have to join Google Plus now because I keep getting invites and I need to be tech-savvy or whatever.

I looked at the conference guide and decided to go to the "Essential Writing and Editing Skills" session. I was torn between wellness for bloggers, cyberbullying and this session, but because I have to admit, I'm desperate to improve my writing skills and editing skills (since I usually have to edit my own work if I'm writing for Sudanese newspapers or writing blog posts). The session was moderated by Polly Pagenhart who works for Blogher and the panelists were Jane Goodwin and K.T. Bradford. Naturally, we discussed the use of slang and correct grammar. Even though Jane Goodwin teaches writing, she was really funny and grammar seemed fun ..for once.

I left the session more concerned about my blog posts, are they really grammatically incorrect and do they have spelling errors? I know I'm not a perfect writer, I still have a lot to learn especially that I'm not writing in my native language, however, well-edited and well-written posts make a huge difference. When you notice a spelling mistake, it stays with you and most of us judge writers for that. I'm not panicking about this post, but I admit that there are a lot of online resources out there for me to improve my writing and eventually, expand my target audience (how will I attract professional writers and scholars interested in Sudanese issues if my writing is not up to standards)

The second session I ended up going to is "Success On Our Own Terms". The room was packed, fresh graduates and older women were there to listen to Lori Leibovish and Christina Norman of the Huffington Post, Janice Min of the Hollywood Reporter , Susan Stiffelman- a well known author and Jane Buckingham, an author and blogger on Generation X and Y.

We were all there to listen to them because they are successful women and for me, as a young woman entering a competitive and sexist workforce, I always ask myself so many questions such as how do you balance having a family and a career? is there a balance in the first place? do you have to show "masculine" characteristics to be successful, i.e. successful women are often thought to be tougher than other females.

I don't even know if they are only portrayed as tough and often "cold" in the media because they have to act in a certain way or because working in top positions in all fields makes you this way. I was hoping to get some answers there or even advice on how to "make it" and stay sane.

The session was really alive, they had such powerful words to say on the work-life balance dilemma , but the best part was the Q and A. By the end of the session, it was clear to us that balancing your life and your work is so difficult, maybe we just need to focus on helping women stop feeling so guilty about not being everywhere and doing everything at the household.

The definition of success is rapidly changing in my opinion. You don't have to go to the office 5 times a week and work long hours to be successful, the Internet has given many men and women the opportunity to work flexible hours or even to work from home and be successful in their "own terms". This makes me optimistic that women in my generation will not face the same pressures faced by the past generations. We can make a choice, to work or not to work. You don't have to be a career woman to be "successful", you also have the choice to be a housewife. Equally important, you don't have to spend 80 hours at the office to climb the professional ladder.

After the session ended, I continued the amazing discussion with Tricia of nouglyduckling.com. She is a sweet, open-minded and passionate blogger focusing on beauty, fashion and life. I came across her blog a while ago and I was impressed by her witty posts and good photography. We spent an amazing time together visiting the EXPO. I ended up leaving with 3 gift bags full of useful stuff. I loved the Greek yogurt and the skinny cow ice cream. I also enjoyed the free sample beauty products from Philosophy, smoothies, greeting cards and travel pillow.
We also ended up going to the Voices of the year community keynote which was marked by inspiring speeches by passionate women. I laughed so hard and almost cried at some of the speeches. A mother losing a child, a woman whose friend lost a husband...

Women all over the world share the same aspirations and struggles , this was made clear during the voices of the year session. I wrote down their names and took notes during their talks, I want to continue reading their work and I aspire to become like them.

At the Blogher Party, I met Ann, an inspiring blogger who showed us a video she made during the keynote session. We had a thoughtful discussion about the video. I applauded her effort to start a new debate through her video on the idea of oppression. We talked about our narrow-minded interpretation of freedom and I was glad to know that a woman in a country so different than my own shares my views.
I also meet the sweet Lilian Chang who blogs @ Chinese Grandma. I looked at her blog and I love her insights on family life and her recipes.
I enjoyed the amazing snacks at the Blogher Party. Why do I not feel guilty when I eat so much finger food? Is it because of its small size. Small food doesn't have calories, right?

I couldn't go to the other parties. I was so exhausted from waking up so early so I retreated to my room.

Day 2:

When I was in college, I used to act in an annual play .That day, I woke up with the same feeling I had on the nights of performance. I had cramps and I felt dizzy. I struggled to put on my toub (the traditional Sudanese dress) and I fixed my hair to look classy and headed to the convention center.
Our session was the first session that day. It was scheduled on the same time as other sessions so the attendance was dispersed. Lilian Chang who I met on the first day of the conference was there so I had a familiar face to focus on every time I felt stressed. Rachel Levental , an acquaintance from Day 0 was also there and a couple of bloggers I met on Path-Finder day.
I think our session went pretty well. It was me and Simona Leid , a blogger from Trindaid and Tobago. The other two scholarship winners, Fungari from Zimbabwe and Yoani Sanchez from Cuba couldn't make it. Fungari had a death in the family and emailed us beforehand and Yoani couldn't leave Cuba because the government made it really difficult for her to get a visa to America. They even confiscated her documents a while ago. A representative from Latinos in Social Media, Elianne Ramos, was there to represent Yoani. Our moderator was Cheryl Contee, a blogger and partner at Fission Strategy. They were inspiring women and I felt so grateful to be there. The session went by really fast! We talked for a bit about our blogs and activism. To be honest, I have felt distanced from my blog in recent times, but I started blogging more actively last year. Over the years, my blog has helped me grow. I think my life would have been different if I had chosen not to start a blog. I would have led a more sheltered life and I wouldn't have made great contacts in the blogosphere and online.

Yes, I admit, blogging did change my life.

I made great contacts after the session. I was approached by many amazing women and I made sure to email each and every one of them after the conference!

We headed to an interview after our session and then I went to the Expo with Simona. We hung out there for a while and talked to other bloggers. I forgot that the immigration session was at 3 p.m. so I totally missed it!

Simona and I decided to explore San Diego. She was leaving the next day at 7 a.m. so we went to the mall and walked around the city. I took her to Heavenly Cupcakes, I had the most delicious Red Velvet Cupcake from there on my first day in the city. We went to the mall and spent most of our time at Bath and Body Works. Why do I always end up there? I was saddened to see that Borders had to close down. I felt that San Diego really lacked book stores!

We went back at 5 to attend the Women in the Media session. It was INCREDIBLE! They were all amazing women and you just couldn't put them in one room without having an explosion. Fatehman Fakharie from Muslimah Media Watch totally rocked the session. I have been following MMW for a few years and I couldn't wait to see her. I tweeted her before I arrived in San Diego and we met the day before.
Ricki Lake of the Ricki Lake show and Carol Jenkins from the Women's Media Center were also very articulate in their hopes to change the lives of women.

I spent the rest of the night partying so the post ends here. Blogher throws amazing parties!

On Amal Habbani

2011-07-31T18:12:00.000-07:00

A fellow journalist, activist and one of my idols is in prison for speaking up against violence against women in general and the rape of Safia Ishaq in specific.

Amal Habbani, a well-known journalist has chosen to go to jail as oppossed to paying 2000 SDG (600 US dollars). Last month, another journalist ( and one of the sweetest most dedicated journalists I know) , Fatima Ghazzali, was imprisoned by the same court, the Publishing Crimes Court.

Both women were charged with article 166 which condemns publishing "false information" since they wrote about the arrest and subsquent gang-rape of 25 year-old activist and artist, Safia Ishaq in February. Ishaq spoke up about her assault in a video shared on youtube and other websites.

"In my article, I was asking the government to hold the men responsible for this crime accountable and investigate this issue," said Amal Habbani to me a few weeks ago.

Habbani was sacked from Al-Jareeda, where she worked until last March. She has years of experience and a master's degree and she can't find a job.

"No one wants to hire an activist," she said.

Police Violence Alert

2011-07-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

The last text message I read before getting on the plane to Cairo was from a young student doing research in Sudan, he told me about protests at the University of Khartoum. I asked him to email me more information.

Just thought I should share the email.

"From what I was able to gather from a professor and a student who were on campus, protests erupted at the student hostel and a police crackdown ensued. The protesters, who were primarily Darfuri students, rejected the university's deadline to vacate the premises for the holidays on the grounds that travel to and from Darfur during the holidays is both costly and dangerous. The number of students involved, or possibly detained, in addition to the size of the police force that responded to the protests was unknown by those with whom I spoke. However, the professor, who was administering an exam on the main campus, was able to smell tear gas. The incident began around 10 am and was contained by 11 am,"

I don't understand why the police reacts to any protest no matter how small it is with "tear gas"!

Break Time

2011-07-29T04:42:00.000-07:00

Three months ago, I began working at a research center in Sudan. A week after I started my new job, my direct boss passed away in a tragic car accident. Al though I didn't know him very much , his death really affected me. It was the first time for me to see a person hours before their death. I was also struck by all the grief and sadness that filled my colleagues and his students.

Yesterday was my last day at the center. I decided to take time off to focus on writing and studying for the two courses I'm taking at SOAS.

Published: North or South, the heart has its own compass

2011-07-23T04:10:00.000-07:00

***I forgot to post this, it was published four days before Sudan became two countries. My friend, Ajaa Anyieth wrote a beautiful peace that was published alongside mine , read her piece @ http://www.sudanvotes.com/articles/?id=890

Two friends reflect on their common Sudanese identity.

After a two-month absence from Sudan, I was happy to return to work and my loved ones: first, I’d been stuck in Egypt during the violent days of the revolution in January; later, I was forced to flee Libya just before Muammar Gaddafi closed down the airport in Tripoli. It took two UN evacuations to get me home. Not long afterward, I was invited to participate in a cultural journalism workshop in Khartoum.

During my days abroad, while keeping in touch with my friends on Facebook, I noticed frequent comments posted on their walls by someone named Ajaa. By chance, I met her in person on the second day of the workshop.

In what can best be described as a small world moment, it turned out the owner of a magazine I write for had hired her as a graphic artist. We spent long hours jotting down ideas for the publication and debating critical issues over tea. Although we came from different backgrounds, we realised we had much in common, especially since both of us had lived abroad for many years before settling in Sudan.

We had both come home to a country we hardly knew.

From Mystery to Activism

I first became aware of Southern Sudan when I was 7 years old. We had gone home to Khartoum from Egypt for the summer when my mother told us that her cousin Ahmed was coming to visit. While waiting in our garden for the young man to arrive so he could take us to the ice cream shop in Molazmeen, we overheard the elders talking about Ahmed’s ordeal.

"The unlucky boy was literally kidnapped, put on a bus and sent to a training camp before they took him to the south," my grandmother stated matter-of-factly.
Read also "South or North, the heart has its own compass" by Ajaa Santino Anyieth
When Ahmed walked in, tall and frail, he looked like he was recovering from heat stroke, malaria or both. I suddenly felt an urge to stay home.

The place everyone referred to as “the south” remained a mystery to me. For years, I didn't understand why boys from the north were taken to fight there. Cousins and friends, some as young as 15, were recruited and sent away for "jihad.”

My knowledge deepened when I turned that age. To feed my passion for reading, my father bought me Emma's War, a book I read many times. Written by Deborah Scorggins, it traced the path of her British friend, Emma McCune, who founded schools and rescued children during the height of the war in Southern Sudan before dying in a road accident in Kenya. She’d been married to Riek Machar, who would later become Southern Sudan’s Vice President.

Haunted by the stories of brutality, I eventually contacted some of the individuals mentioned in the book and read reports published by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Sudanese Organisation for Human Rights. A year later, when I started my undergraduate studies in Cairo, I decided to take action.

Living with the “other”

I never had any real encounter with southerners until my freshman year, when I volunteered as a teacher for young Southern Sudanese refugees at a church in Cairo. Most of them had fled Sudan under traumatic circumstances.

On my second day, I discovered that many of the students and co-workers had never met a northerner. They had presumed I was Egyptian, so when I told the staff I was Sudanese, they stopped in their tracks. A few seconds later, we all took a deep breath and realized that perhaps we needn't be wary of one another. After all, we do not represent a tribe or a region, but our own individual views.
North and South Sudanese coexistence - © Perfect Shot Films
For the next three years, I continued my volunteer work with Sudanese refugees, teaching at the Church and organising events. We forged deep friendships and have stayed in contact ever since.

In my junior year, when a professor asked me to contribute to a book on refugees in Egypt, I befriended a young man from the south who shared the story of his long journey from Yirol to Ethiopia, Kenya and finally to Egypt. I followed his love for music, attended concerts with him and documented his endless rejected applications to immigrate to Australia. As our friendship deepened, we became very close.

One day we decided to meet at a refugee church and walk to a café to have a drink and chat. The walk was less than five minutes, but as we made our way along the main street, I was stunned to hear hurtful comments by passersby, who made rude remarks about my friend and our being together.

Suddenly I looked at him and saw a young man who, despite his towering height, seemed scared. Slouching forward, his eyes looked downward as if he wished he were invisible.

From that day on, I became conscious of racial injustice and began to focus my writings on issues close to my heart.

Generation United

Not long ago, I tried to help my mother locate one of her friends from college, a Southerner. We couldn't find her on Google, but we are not giving up. The two had become friends in first grade when my mother lived with her family in Malakal. When they ran into each other in college, they immediately recognised one another.

Achol remembered my mother's voice twelve years later. That is the kind of friendship I wish to have—one in which a person’s ethnic background doesn’t matter.

I feel fortunate to have found that kind of friendship with Ajaa.

The new reality of Sudan’s separation has a painful aspect for many young people who believed in unity. To be honest, I never really expected the referendum to happen. But now that secession is a fact, I don't think this will change my friendship with Ajaa or any of my other cherished friends from the south.

What matters is our friendship that's based on our similarities that outnumber our differences, along with a deep understanding of our culture that is not limited to tribal or regional affiliations.

Reem Abbas Shawkat is a freelance journalist who blogs at: http://www.wholeheartedlysudaniya.blogspot.com/
Editor: Alexa Dvorson

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the positions or opinions of the publishers of www.sudanvotes.com

On the 9th of July

2011-07-15T04:55:00.000-07:00

Less than a week ago, Sudan, my country, split into two following a referendum in which an overwhelming majority of 1/3 of its citizens voted in favor of secession. South Sudan was born on the 9th of July and I wrote this late at night on 9 July after reaching home feeling a roller coaster of emotions.

The young men sitting under the tree in front of my house couldn’t stop staring at me.

I left my house in the scorching sun to go to a friend’s house to celebrate South Sudan. In my mind and heart, I was celebrating the freedom of Southern Sudanese and their right to living in their own country as First-Class Citizens, something that they would never have in the haphazard landmass called Sudan. Armed with a makeshift hand-painted Sudanese flag, I was holding the flag with one hand and trying to wave a taxi with the other. I couldn’t put it down.

I finally reached my friend’s house accompanied by another friend. Ajaa A., a friend who hails from South Sudan, was organizing a small gathering at her house to celebrate South Sudan’s independence. I have been watching South Sudan TV (SSTV) since midnight. My father has recently grown fond of Ebony and SSTV, they are the only channels he watches in addition to Al Jazeera. Sudanese channels are in a world of their own, we don’t even bother wasting electricity on them.

After watching the national anthem for about 60 times, we watched catchy songs recorded by South Sudanese musicians and a mini documentary featuring North Sudanese express their thoughts on secession.

At night, we headed to Nile Street. In recent years, Nile Street has grown to become the most popular hang-out spot for youth in the weekend. You sit on colored plastic chairs sipping ginger or cinnamon flavored tea or Ethiopian coffee made by Sudanese and Ethiopian tea-ladies (Sittat Chai) alike.

On the way to the end of Nile Street where we usually gather with friends, the streets were packed. Hundreds of cars were blocking the way, people were walking on all pavements and the majority was waving Sudanese flags. Cars were decorated with Sudanese flags and even the old Bahri Bridge was painted red, green, and white and black, the colors of the flag.
“What are they celebrating?” I asked my friends.

When the road gets less blocked, we would drive really close to cars waving Sudanese flags and I would roll down my window and blast my South Sudanese flag to their faces. They would, of course, get utterly shocked and ask me “why?” and tell me to raise it again. This led to being harassed by two guys, one of which had blow-dried hair and couldn't stop commenting on my hairband...

I put my flag down when we reached a busy area that was reserved for celebrations by National Congress Party (NCP) supporters. With their huge posters of President Bashir and huge flags, they probably didn’t know that the prices have already increase and many gas stations have no petrol. I wish them luck in finding petrol for their land cruisers.

I also saw a poster of the notorious “Just Peace Forum”, the controversial pro-independence Northern group headed by Al Tayeb Mustafa, the uncle of President Bashir and the owner of Al-Entbha, a newspaper I believe promotes racism and makes up news.
We stopped a guy selling water and asked him about the four flags he is showcasing.

“What are you celebrating”, I asked him, matter-of-factly.

“I’m celebrating today, the secession of the south,” he replied
“Why?” I asked again
“We are not going to have drunk people anymore,” he replied

I asked him if he ever saw a drunken Southern Sudanese in Khartoum creating problems and if this is the only reason and if he is thinking about the future of the North after secession. He was confused.

I sat with my sister and my best friend discussing the misinformation of people in the north. How they don’t grasp the enormity of the situation, Sudan was split into two countries and we are losing cultural diversity and an abundance of resources.

We were joined by more friends. A friend brought a cousin and when I started conversing with him, I was filled with sadness.

He was also celebrating independence because the Southerners were planning to “enslave the Northerners and torture us,”
“This is why John Garang was assassinated, he was evil, and he wanted to enslave us. You would have worked as a maid in his house, “he told, looking as convinced as ever.

“I don’t know where to start. How do you know John Garang was “assassinated” and for this exact purpose. The Southerners do not have an evil plan to enslave us or torture us. We treated them horribly and still do, but they are above that,” I told him.

I felt sick to my stomach, I found myself too angry to engage in a further discussion with him. I pulled my chair away and told my friend the shocking story. He, surely, continued telling me conspiracy theories. In a few seconds, he mentioned the US and Israel.

Of course.

The United States and Israel are the reason why Sudan has been embroiled in Africa’s longest-running civil war; they are also the reason why Northerners feel superior to Southerners. They are the root cause of all our problems.

As much as secession is painful, I feel that the attitudes of young Sudanese people from the north are even more disturbing than Sudan splitting. I think I have a few white hairs from what I heard over the past few weeks. At work, from relatives and at public gatherings, not only do they not feel any responsibility towards the fate of Sudan, they also feel that the over-burdening Southerners have left and now, the north is free to become a developed and peaceful country.

“It is not about the south separating. Now that the Southerners have their own country, we will still abuse other groups, we are free to harass people from west Sudan, whom we refer to as “gharabba”, said my friend.

She is right, stay tuned to the North VS. the rest of Sudan.

Published:SUDAN: Close to War As the South Prepares to Celebrate Independence

2011-07-15T04:53:00.000-07:00

KHARTOUM, Jul 8 (IPS) – Sudan is closest to civil war since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005.
Mariam Al Sadig, a leading figure in the Umma Party, one of Sudan's main opposition parties, said that the conflict in Southern Kordofan shows that the CPA has failed tremendously and the events unfolding in Southern Kordofan are a huge security concern to the future of Sudan.

A report released by a coalition of Sudanese, African, Arab and Western non-governmental organsations warns that Sudan is closest to civil war since the signing of the CPA in 2005.

The report titled "Beyond the Pledge: International Engagement After Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement" views the ongoing conflict between the North and South as a predecessor to a full-blown civil war and urges the international community to adopt more targeted sanctions.

Abdel Moniem Al Gak, an activist and co-founder of the Sudan Democracy First Group was involved in the writing and production of the report. Through his organisation, he lobbies for human rights and democracy in Sudan.

He has been based in Juba since his arrest and subsequent detention after the Sudanese government cracked down on international and Sudanese organisations following an arrest warrant issued for Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court in March 2009.

"Sudan is not on the brink of war, Sudan is at war. It is living a state of displacement, destruction, violation of rights and deterioration of human rights in all parts of the country," said Al Gak in a phone interview with IPS.

He added that citizens in different regions in Sudan, the East, Darfur, Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan could suffer the same fate as South Sudan and call for their right to self-determination. He attributed this to peace agreements that do not affect the average citizen and development that contributes to more suffering and causes loss of heritage and displacement.

In May 2011, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) declared that they seized control of Abyei after three days of bloody clashes with Southern soldiers. The army attributed the reason behind the conflict as the ambush and subsequent killing of 22 soldiers of northern origin. Abyei was the site of aerial bombardment and most of its population fled.

International condemnation and campaigning pushed the United Nations to take action immediately and in June, the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei was formed and it deployed 4,200 Ethiopian soldiers on Jun. 27 for six months.
Abyei, an area barely visible on a map, has witnessed a series of conflicts since the singing of the CPA between the government of Sudan led by the ruling party, the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). In March 2008, at least 25,000 were displaced after soldiers from the SPLM clashed with Sudanese soldiers.

Currently, the coalition’s report estimates that 113,000 are displaced as a result of conflicts in Abyei. Abyei was supposed to hold a referendum simultaneously with the South Sudanese referendum to choose whether it wants to become part of the southern "Northern Bahr El Ghazal" state or the northern "South Kordofan" state. The referendum was postponed indefinitely after the two peace partners disagreed on the terms of eligibility to vote.

The report recommends that Abyei and Southern Kordofan need an immediate ceasefire for the displaced to return home and the volatile north-south border on which they are located needs to be a demilitarised zone.

Al Baqir Mukhtar Afifi, the director of Al-Khatim Adlan Centre for Enlightenment and Human Development, one of the organisations involved in the report, states that the report was inspired by all the pending issues between the two partners in the CPA that remain unresolved even though it expires in two days.

"In addition to the issues that may ignite war – citizenship, borders, oil, international debt and assets, Abyei is a real possibility of becoming the ignition of war between the two parts of the split country and the war in Darfur is still going on, and an additional war has erupted in Southern Kordofan. "Even the president who is beating the drums of war, has stated that he expects a war between the north and the south," he told IPS.

The report concludes that the unresolved issues between the north and south will not end on Jul. 9 and it invites the international community to examine its policies towards Sudan to prevent the birth of two states with more problems than prior to the CPA through continuing its engagement in negotiations between both states to ensure "peace, prosperity and stability in the region."
Meanwhile, South Sudan prepares for independence on Jul. 8. Hafiz Mohammed, Director of Justice Africa (Sudan) said he did not believe there would be security problems on the day of independence.

"There are threats but they are not based on real challenges. It is fair to say that it is not in anyone's interest to ruin this day, especially the Southerners who see this as a big day, the day their nation is born," Mohammed said.

He added that South Sudan had the right to secession. "It is also a sad day, we are witnessing the separation of Sudan. We only hope to see a successful nation in the south," Mohammed said. He added that he hoped the north would benefit from lessons learned from the secession of the south.

"It should try to protect Sudan from further separations and unite the country."
Ibrahim Al Grefwi, co-founder of Sudan Unite, a coalition of artists who attempted to raise awareness about the secession and keep Sudan united, said it will be a historical day when South Sudan becomes independent.
"It is a historical day for Sudan and it is also a very sad day. I feel sad and I feel that we have failed to unite the country. We also lost important aspects of Sudan's rich cultural diversity," Al Grefwi said.

"People in the north just realized that they lost a huge and an important part of Sudan. The political process marginalised the citizens and they just woke up to find that separation is a reality."

Simon Monoja from the Centre for Peace and Development at the University of Juba in South Sudan said he believed independence day would go smoothly.

"We have militias of concern s in Unity State and Jonglei but I believe that the event tomorrow ill be smooth because it is a day for all Southern Sudanese, they will all want to celebrate it and have it succeed."

But not everyone is happy. "I came from the north two days ago, I was there for 2 months. Most of the northerners are gloomy, they are so worried about the inability to predict what will happen after separation is declared tomorrow. I don't expect celebrations in the north tomorrow."
(END/2011)

http://www.ips.org/africa/2011/07/sudan-close-to-war-as-the-south-prepares-to-celebrate-independence/

SUDAN: Feeling the Economic Impact Before Secession

2011-06-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

I wrote a piece on the deteriorating economic situation for IPS

http://www.ips.org/africa/2011/06/sudan-feeling-the-economic-impact-before-secession/

SUDAN: Feeling the Economic Impact Before Secession

By Reem Abbas

KHARTOUM, Jun 23 (IPS) – Amira Amer* becomes very picky the minute she reaches the bus station. One by one she lets the new air-conditioned busses pass her by. She is waiting for a cheaper bus. They are limited in the expensive city of Khartoum and are constantly packed to the point of overflowing.

"When the new air-conditioned buses came out, we were happy and felt that the government was finally genuine about our comfort, but sadly, they are not subsidised. They cost two Sudanese pounds (60 cents), I can’t afford to pay four pounds for a round trip," Amer said in an interview with IPS.

Amer’s job requires her to spend a great amount of time and money traveling to meet the needs of her clients. She buys imported goods and sells them to her clients who expect her to deliver the products to them.

"Many of my clients can’t afford to pay on the spot so I have to travel back and forth to collect the weekly or monthly instalments," she told IPS.

Things weren’t always so bad for Amer. She inherited 60,000 dollars in 2006 when the family’s house was sold. The single mother of three was able to buy a nice house for her small family and even save some money for her children.

At the time, one Sudanese pound was equal to 2.30 dollars and life was considerably cheaper. The Sudanese economy was booming due to high oil prices and increasing foreign investment.

In the years following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, new jobs were created, cafes were bustling with customers and young professionals were able to buy cars in instalments and travel to Cairo or Dubai or Kuala Lumpur for holidays.
"No one is traveling now, people are trying to save their money for worse days. Tickets were much cheaper a few months ago, but now the prices are up 25 percent," said Maha Ali*, an employee at a travel agency in downtown Khartoum.

Ali used to make a lot of money from commissions when she brought customers to the agency. Now it is a struggle to convince people to travel, especially when some airlines only accept dollars and reject the constantly fluctuating Sudanese pound.
The economy changed in November 2010. The North Sudan government claimed that Sudan lacked foreign currency and the Sudanese minister of finance and national economy, Mahmoud Hassanein, was quoted saying that the country’s people consumed more than the country produced and this caused the rise in prices.

In early January 2011, southern Sudanese voted in a referendum in favour of secession from the north and this set in motion the beginnings of an economic crisis in Sudan. Currently North and South Sudan equally share the profits of the oil found in the south. But this will change when South Sudan becomes independent.

But North Sudan began to feel the impact of the secession even before the referendum. Prices skyrocketed as a result of inflation and salaries remained the same or even decreased.

"My salary has actually decreased, I used to get a lot of benefits and commissions on projects, but they were taken away or cut in half. Life is getting more expensive and I make less money, " said a staff member at the University of Khartoum.
Prices are going up at an alarming rate. Sesame oil, a regularly consumed product jumped from 110 to 126 Sudanese pounds and the bread price increased by 25 percent. In supermarkets people buy what they consider to be basics, such as sugar, milk, and flour. Luxury products are neatly stacked in rows gathering dust.

"I usually shop for my household on a weekly basis. I used to spend 250 Sudanese pounds on groceries, fruits, veggies and meat. Now I pay 350 Sudanese pounds," a University of Khartoum professor told IPS.
Ahmed*, who sometimes works as a currency dealer on the black market thinks that the problem lies in the value of the Sudanese pound.

"For the longest time in 2010, the government maintained that the dollar equals 2.50 Sudanese pounds. The value of the Sudanese pound kept plummeting and as much as the government heavily invested in trying to stop the black market, people felt ripped off," Ahmed said.

He added that restrictions on the amount of dollars you can take when you are traveling abroad pushed many to the black market. "You were able to exchange the equivalent of 1,000 dollars only at the airport. You can get up to 1,500 Euros now, but it is still not enough," he told IPS.

Najm El Deen Ibrahim, a senior official from the Central Bank of Sudan, the bank responsible for managing the country’s accounting and setting an exchange rate for the Sudanese pound, believes that the national currency is not going to depreciate further.

"We have injected foreign currency into the market to major importers, exchange bureaus and commercial banks. The bank will make sure that the currency is stable and will act immediately to stop any massive fluctuations,"
He added that there is no direct link between prices and exchange rates. The increase in prices is due to an increase in the prices of commodities all over the world.

*Names have been changed

A State of Ghost Towns

2011-06-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

I wrote about Southern Kordofan for IPS.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56285

SUDAN
Southern Kordofan - A State of Ghost Towns

By Reem Abbas

KHARTOUM, Jun 29, 2011 (IPS) - While humanitarian organisations try to bury the corpses scattered across Southern Kordofan, aid to the thousands of people displaced by the fighting is slow as the country’s humanitarian commission has prohibited most aid organisations from working in the area.

On Jun. 5 heavy fighting broke out between forces loyal to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) in Kadugli and other towns in the state. Kadugli is the capital of Southern Kordofan, one of Sudan's 25 states.

Since the start of the fighting, aerial bombardments were carried out by the SAF, which according to the United Nations (U.N.), lead to the displacement of 75,000 civilians from Kadugli, Kaunda and surrounding areas with the numbers going up on a daily basis. In addition, 35,000 are expected to head to El Obeid, a town in north Kordofan.

"We have reports of ethnic Nubas being denied entrance to El Obeid. They divide the displaced based on ethnicity and the Nubas are (left) in the middle of nowhere under the scorching sun, " said Fatima* a human rights activist. The Nubas, who are a minority in Southern Kordofan, are believed to have been targeted in the fighting.

Sudanese organisations and civil society groups are already calling for food donations and sending trucks full of supplies to aid the people of Southern Kordofan.

The Politics of Southern Kordofan
Mohamed, a postgraduate student at the University of Khartoum has fond memories of Kadugli in Southern Kordofan. As a child growing up there in the 1980's and early 1990's before the fighting became very intense, he recalls a green mountainous area where the Arab world and Africa intertwined in the form of tribes peacefully coexisting for decades.

"Kadugli has a mix of northern Arab tribes and Nubas. There was no real ethnic divide until the Nubas joined the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the 1980s. They were recruited in the SPLM's army, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and they felt empowered as this elevated their social status as a marginalised minority in Sudan. They felt that their political struggle could be in the context of the SPLM," he added.

Southern Kordofan along with Abyei and Blue Nile are the three states known as protocol areas because they are geographically part of the north.

Many of their citizens were involved with the SPLA during the civil war and the states are predominantly populated by non-Arab tribes. In Abyei, the majority hail from the largest southern Sudanese tribe, the Dinka.

The protocol to resolve the conflicts in these states was signed in Kenya in 2004 and it entails that the three states hold popular consultations to determine whether they will remain in the north or become part of the south as stipulated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005 by the Sudanese government and the SPLM to end Africa's longest- running civil war.

In December 2009, the president of Sudan signed the Abyei Referendum Act that allowed the Abyei referendum to be held simultaneously with the South referendum as agreed in the CPA. However, the two peace partners disagreed over the terms of eligibility to vote and this led to the postponement of the referendum until further notice.

Blue Nile is currently undergoing popular consultations, which are time-consuming as it is compromised of many phases. However, Southern Kordofan is lagging behind since the state-level elections that should have been held in April 2010 were only held in May 2011.

In an attempt to help out within their limited mandate, some humanitarian organisations are burying corpses scattered in Southern Kordofan. But the Humanitarian Affairs Commission (HAC), the body responsible for coordinating all humanitarian affairs for local and international organisations in Sudan, has prohibited the majority of local and international organisations from working there.

"We held a meeting with the HAC yesterday and we asked them to give us permission to aid the displaced and they said that they are sending an investigative mission to assess the situation. I don't know when this will happen," said Suhaila*, who works for a national development non-governmental organisation in Khartoum.

She said she was concerned about the availability of food in the region. "This is the time right before farming begins, families are nearly running out of stored food and many of the families living in safer towns are hosting displaced families and sharing their food with them," said Suhaila.

Many displaced people are making public schools their homes as the summer season ends and the rainy season begins in July.

"The government does not want to establish IDP (internationally displaced persons) camps, they said they don't want this to turn into another Darfur, but people cannot simply go back to their homes. The situation is deteriorating, " said Fatima.

In January 10 states, which compromise the southern part of Sudan, voted in a referendum on whether they want to remain part of the north or have a separate state. Over 98 percent voted in favour of secession.

But the security situation in the state became tense after Ahmed Haroun won the governorship of Southern Kordofan in a controversial state election in May.

Haroun is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur for his involvement in instigating attacks and arming and recruiting militias to fight the insurgency. Haroun beat Abdel Aziz Al Helow, the SPLM's candidate in the elections.

"It is fair to say that 75 percent of civilians in the state are SPLM supporters but they lean towards the National Congress Party (NCP), the ruling party, because they want to survive," Samira*, an U.N. employee said.

She said prior to the elections the SPLM began distributing flyers through tea ladies, bakers and people in the market area that warned of dire consequences if the NCP's candidate won the governorship.

Samira arrived at work at the United Nations offices on Jun. 5 to find that many of her colleagues known for their pro-SPLM sentiments had already fled the town.

"I started asking questions and wondering if something was going to happen. The fighting started that day and for the first time, there was a power cut in the entire city.

"Our only option was to hide under the bed or next to a wall because it was pitch black and it was hard to locate where the gunshots were coming from," said Samira. She was evacuated and is now safe in Khartoum with her family. "I saw a large number of women and children fleeing the town and I could tell that they have been walking for a long time... I couldn't stop crying," recalls Samira of the day she was evacuated.

But the fighting continues and Suhaila says that based on information received from her colleagues working in Southern Kordofan, there have been a number of political assassinations.

"The SPLM launched attacks that targeted certain leaders loyal to the NCP and this sparked a retaliation from the Khartoum government. Even the citizens of Kadugli and other towns were asked to leave because the situation became characterised by political assassinations," said Suhaila.

Suhaila added that there are snipers located in the mountains and her colleagues informed her that politically active civilians have been shot dead inside their homes.

* Names have been changed to protect our sources.

SIDEBAR:s

The Politics of Southern Kordofan
Mohamed, a postgraduate student at the University of Khartoum has fond memories of Kadugli in Southern Kordofan. As a child growing up there in the 1980's and early 1990's before the fighting became very intense, he recalls a green mountainous area where the Arab world and Africa intertwined in the form of tribes peacefully coexisting for decades.

"Kadugli has a mix of northern Arab tribes and Nubas. There was no real ethnic divide until the Nubas joined the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the 1980s. They were recruited in the SPLM's army, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and they felt empowered as this elevated their social status as a marginalised minority in Sudan. They felt that their political struggle could be in the context of the SPLM," he added.

Southern Kordofan along with Abyei and Blue Nile are the three states known as protocol areas because they are geographically part of the north.

Many of their citizens were involved with the SPLA during the civil war and the states are predominantly populated by non-Arab tribes. In Abyei, the majority hail from the largest southern Sudanese tribe, the Dinka.

The protocol to resolve the conflicts in these states was signed in Kenya in 2004 and it entails that the three states hold popular consultations to determine whether they will remain in the north or become part of the south as stipulated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005 by the Sudanese government and the SPLM to end Africa's longest- running civil war.

In December 2009, the president of Sudan signed the Abyei Referendum Act that allowed the Abyei referendum to be held simultaneously with the South referendum as agreed in the CPA. However, the two peace partners disagreed over the terms of eligibility to vote and this led to the postponement of the referendum until further notice.

Blue Nile is currently undergoing popular consultations, which are time-consuming as it is compromised of many phases. However, Southern Kordofan is lagging behind since the state-level elections that should have been held in April 2010 were only held in May 2011.

My fellow Americans- Muslims

2011-06-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

*http://i577.photobucket.com/albums/ss218/equal-life/th_muslims-against-terrorism.png*

A reader of this blog shared a link to a life-changing video with me. The link takes you to a website called my fellow American. It is a creative online project that "calls upon concerned Americans to pledge and spread a message that Muslims are our fellow Americans".

I had the chance to watch a very short video on the webite and I consider myself fortunate. Just s few weeks ago, my bestfriend was in Greece and she was telling me about anti-Muslim sentiment there and how mosques were burned down. At the same time, anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise in the US. Protests against the ground zero news last year and Koran-burning in Florida a few weeks ago is a constant reminder that Muslims continue to face prejudice in the post-9/11 world.

I'm glad to know that some Americans think of Muslim-Americans as "fellow Americans".
As a Muslim , I pledge to respect all religions and contribute to mutually-beneficial cross-cultural understanding

WATCH THE VIDEO

http://myfellowamerican.us/

Documenting Earlier Abuses

2011-05-30T04:56:00.000-07:00

This month, three journalists are facing trial for writing about Safia Ishaq's gang-rape by security agents in Khartoum last February.

Amal Habbani's trial is on the 9th of June.
Omer Al-Garrai is on the 21st of June, and Faisal Mohammed is the 28th of June.

Support them by campaigning for them and attending their trials!

To give you some background, I wrote this in Feburary.

Sudanese people have never before witnessed the extent of these abuses. In the last two decades, thousands have been subjected to disabling torture at the hands of intelligence officers and security men in what have came to be known as ghost houses. These are two of the many stories:

Marwa Al Tijani, an Arts student at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, begins, “I was arrested at 4 p.m., my friends and I started walking away from the protest after security officials cracked down on the protesters and started arresting people. Out of nowhere, a normal car pulls up in front of us and two men wearing civilian attire came out of the car and one of them pointed a gun to my face and asked us to get in the car.”

This is the story of Marwa Al Tijani, an Arts student at the University of Khartoum in Sudan.

Al-Tijani was arrested on 3 February in a protest in Bahri in north of the Sudanese capital. When she arrived at the police station, insults were hurdled at her and she was savagely whipped while she was interrogated about her tribe, her family, and living conditions.

Al-Tijani remembers hearing the loud screams of men in nearby cells as they were beaten with whips and canes: “I saw a young man named Ahmed. They shaved his hair off and they were making fun of him as they beat him mercilessly.” Although she did not know Ahmed, she could not stop crying as she heard him scream out of pain in the next room. "They beat him for over an hour and kept telling me that he deserves it," she remembers.

Then they brought a badly-beaten Ahmed into her interrogation room,and one of the men said, “This is the man you are romantically and sexually involved with.”

Marwa continues, “They used such explicit sexual terms. I couldn’t even look at him, his body was covered in wounds. They kept saying, 'Look at him , he is weak and scared, do you still want him?'"

Marwa had never met Ahmed, but they were arrested at the same protest. This was enough for a connection between them in the eyes of the security men. “They proceeded to ask me about our relationship and they kept focusing on our sexual relationship. They kept insulting me and Ahmed, you can’t even imagine what they said. I didn’t say a word, but Ahmed fought back after each and every word they said to us,” Marwa recalls.

The ordeal continued until very late: "At 2 a.m., I was released after they made sign a document stating that I would not take part in any protests."

Although the government denies "ghost houses" exist, the Sudanese President of Sudan, in a slip of tongue in May 2009 during talks with journalists, confirmed they exist. Activists have been died there, including Ali Fadol, Mohammed Abdel Salam, and Abd Al Moniem Salman.

I knew Ali Fadol. He was arrested an hour after he returned home from a party my parents threw for me. His hair, strand by strand, was plucked out of his scalp. His body was so badly deformed that the state would not hand over his corpse to his family.

Ali Mohamed Osman, a politically active student of Economics at the University of Khartoum, was arrested on 14 February in Omdurman along with two members of the Umma National Party. He was tortured by six men for an entire day before his release.

A Facebook group by the name of “The Popular Uprising” has tried to organise mass protests, but police forces so far have surrounded marchers and arrested dozens. Amongst the detained were the two sons of Mubarak Al-Fadil, a well-known Sudanese opposition leader, and many students not affiliated with any party.

The security forces are now on a binge. The National Intelligence Security Service (NISS), the notorious force known for its human rights violations, has the authority to arbitrarily detain any Sudanese citizen indefinitely without trial. All members of the NISS have immunity from getting prosecution.

One more story: Safia Ishag, a graduate of Fine Art and an activist was kidnapped this in front of her house in Khartoum. At the headquarters of the NISS, she was gang-rapped by three officers before she was dumped on a road in Northern Khartoum. When the hospital's rape report was presented to a police station, it was rejected with the demand that she be examined by the doctor at the police hospital.

Where is Safia now?

2011-05-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

Do you know anything about her?

Console me

2011-05-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

I have lost relatives and friends before, but I wasn't in touch with them right before their death.
This time it is different.

My boss passed away last Friday and I can't seem to get any work done.

I just email people the news about his death and reply to their sad emails, consoling them. I listen to his students, colleagues and friends burst into tears and lock themselves in his office. I hear their loud cries through the walls.

There are only six of us in the office and three were gone this week so its only me and two other men. My desk is currently in the hallway between the director and the late deputy director's offices. If you want to enter the late deputy director's office, you basically have to run into me.

They come everyday to offer their condolences. Men and women...mostly young women. They break down in my office, some weep in my arms as I try to console them. I get them water and encourage them to drink to calm down. Then they unlock the door to his office and close the door behind them. I always thought that Hollywood movies over-dramatize scenes of grief, but maybe they don't. On Sunday, one of his former students came to the office. She weeped hysterically, her body was shaking uncontrollably. After a few minutes, she got up and went into his office. I really didn't know what to do.

"He was my only friend, I have noone left," she told me. She repeated this sentence for a few minutes.

Silence.

I heard her say " why did you leave me, why did you have to die?"

Silence

I left her alone in his office, worried for her sanity.

..........................

I don't spin on my chair anymore. I just sit there staring at the screen. When I get up to get a glass of water, a cup of sweet tea or use the toilet, I look at the floor. His office is right behind me and I don't want to look inside.

I'm wary at first, but I feel the need to step inside his office one last time. The first thing I see is a note I put on his desk. It reads "PLEASE SIGN THIS".

A pink sticky note caught my attention. Seven names are written on it, they are divided into two groups. The first group died in the accident, the second group survived except him.

I am not...

2011-05-16T12:25:00.000-07:00

Jamal Mahjoub.

I guess some readers look at the quote I have under the blog name and think I'm Jamal Mahjoub. Not that Jamal Mahjoub is known for quoting himself ( although he should).
So read the "about me" part :)

I have to admit that I have the biggest crush on Jamal Mahjoub. He is a great writer and one of my ultimate inspirations.

Read his recent interview with Ahdaf Souief.

http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/2475/soueif_3_15_11/

Death ...always takes us by surprise

2011-05-14T00:28:00.000-07:00

Last night, I received a strange message from a friend

"Hey reem, this is sara, Q asked me to check up on u he is really worried plz reply asap"

I replied telling her "I'm fine and tell Q , I'm gonna call him on skype later". Two minutes later, a guy called Amro calls me asking me the same thing. Q gave him my number to check up on me. I said I was fine and asked him to send me Q's number.

Q is a friend not living in Sudan. I texted Q telling him I was fine and why is he worried? was a common friend hurt?"

My sister and I assumed that he heard about the accident on the bridge next to my house. We basically had to reverse the car halfway through the bridge and take the other lane. But the accident on the bridge wasn't even fatal.

Half an hour ago, I get a phone call from the finance officer at work. I pick up and he tells me the bad news. My boss has passed away in a car crash on the way back to Khartoum. Another colleague is in the hospital.

I tell him, I get it now, my friend thought I was with them in the car.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. I just started this job a week ago and my boss gave me the secretary's office (she is on leave) so I'm right next to him if I need any help with work. I basically spend the whole day emailing him, calling him or in his office asking questions. He has been very helpful, introducing me to people and telling me to meet writers on my own to get used to work.

On Thursday, I asked my other colleague ( the one currently in the hospital) for a favor. So he drove me to the science building and helped me sign up for the bus so I don't have to drive or ask my sister to drive me to work everyday.

When I went back to my office. I was basically done with work, but spent a few minutes skyping a friend and sending my boss one final email. My boss came out of his office and asked me to close the door when I decide to leave. He said he is going out for a bit. I was probably the last person from work to see him.

It is true what they say, all events before a person's death are very normal. Thursday was a normal day. He told me to send all my emails to his gmail account because I'm bombarding his work email. It was normal. He told me to have a nice weekend and we will meet on Sunday.....

البقاء لله
May he rest in peace

The job

2011-05-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to write about, but I've recently started working at the University of Khartoum and I'm currently overwhelmed with having a full-time job for the first time in a while.

I will be back this weekend :)

The story of Awadia

2011-05-02T16:33:00.001-07:00

Previously published (http://www.mideastyouth.com/2010/07/28/the-story-of-awadia)

Sometimes when I describe my house to my friends, I tell them to get off the Omdurman bridge and go straight after they see “Awadia Fishes” to their right. Awadia has become a landmark in Omdurman, hundreds of people commute from Khartoum and Bahri to eat Awadia’s fish. When you go there, you probably wouldn’t see her sitting at the reception desk, if you look outside the new, fairly-modern restaurant, you will see a woman of significant size dressed in black sitting on a tiny metal chair under the boiling sun.

After years of observing “Awadia Fishes” expand in size and grow in popularity, I decided to find Awadia, the woman no-one knows much about.

Someone told me she galavants around on one leg.

Does she even exist?

She exists.

Her chocolate-brown skin glistens under the skin and her larger-than-life personality strikes you every-time she utters a word or gives you a smile. She said she feels self-concious when she smiles because half of her teeth are missing. She remains beautiful despite years of living in grinding poverty, sitting under the sun and walking for miles because she couldn’t afford spending money on transportation.

When I asked her to speak about herself, she told me she was born in the mountains, the Nuba Mountains. She later confessed that she was born and raised in Omdurman, but she still feels loyal to her place of origin. She asked me to write that she is from the Nuba Mountains.

She embodies the repercussions of war. Many were forced to flee the south and move to the safety of the north. Even if they’ve never seen the south, they still feel a connection to it. When you are displaced, you start idolizing your home.

Awadia’s journey with the sea started seventeen years ago.

She was working as a tea-lady in different parts of Omdurman , but she couldn’t make enough money to support her family. One day, she asked her daughter to read the Qu’ran. Her daughter read “Surat Al Baqqara” aloud and Awadia repeated after her since she was illiterate. After she finished reading the sura, Awadia went to sleep. She slept for a long time and in her dreams, she had a life-changing vision.

” If I told you about my vision, you wouldn’t believe me. I saw the sea, people working there, a lot of fishermen and fish. I saw fish everywhere. I woke up and I felt very happy,” she said.

Shortly after that, her neighbor suggested they work as sittat -chai in the area close to the sea.

“I started out as a “sit chai” , I used to make tea, coffee and leigemat,” said Awadia.

Struggling to support her many children, Awadia did the unthinkable and worked after 10 am.

“When I first started working as a sit-chai, all the women left the market area before 10 am because it was unacceptable for them to stay after that, but I had no choice but to stay. I stayed and since I was the only tea-lady there ,I made a lot of extra money.”

To cater to the needs of her growing costumers, she started making traditional Sudanese dishes like Kamoneya and Faseekh. Shortly afterwards, her friend suggested they start making fish. They started buying fish, frying it and selling it.

The building of a restaurant called Golden Gate commenced and the workers building it were helping Awadia’s business grow. She was working day and night to cater to their needs and her income steadily increased. The honeymoon lasted for two to three years until the Council of Omdurman decided to kick out the tea ladies based in that area.

With only a donkey cart, Awadia used to bring fish from the market and sell it at Al Moatamar School in Al-Morada for a little less than a year.

After the Council of Omdurman came under a lot of criticism for its inhumane actions towards the tea ladies, they allowed Awadia to return.

Awadia returned to her old location and continued making fish. As the number of women making fish and tea increased, they started facing problems.

Once again, Awadia had to collect her belongings and find a new place to start from scratch.

Awadia walked for miles under the boiling sun, too poor to afford a tok-tok, she had to find a place as soon as possible.

She finally found a small store in Kenouz, a neighborhood in Omdurman ,but a few weeks later, someone from the neighborhood filed a complaint and she was kicked out.

She rented another store ,yet again she was kicked out because people in that neighborhood filed a complaint.

“They said I attracted too many costumers and women didn’t feel comfortable walking around,” said Awadia.

Being the person she is, she didn’t hold grudges or complain. She gathered her belongings and began looking for another place.

For two weeks, Awadia walked around Omdurman looking for her next venue. She finally found a makeshift tiny store on Al Morada-street. She sat there for hours looking for the owner and when he finally arrived, he refused to rent it to her.

“He left me sitting there, contemplating, attempting to plan my next move. I prayed Duhr and stayed there for hours. When he came back and found me still sitting there, he said yes. Maybe it was God answering my prayers, but he just agreed,” said Awadia.

“3 months later, I had to leave my store. The council said I was blocking the road with my costumers,”added Awadia.

She was looking for a new location. Her many responsibilities encouraged her to persevere against all odds.

Her final stop was her current restaurant. Located only a few minutes away from the Omdurman-Khartoum bridge . It’s next to “Coach Fresh Juices”, a tiny store managed by the former coach of the Hilal Club.

“First Awadia used to tell people that she is situated right next to Coach Fresh , now I tell people I’m next to Awadia Fishes”, said the Coach.

He helped her get the first venue and he also helped her expand into her new restaurant. Her old store is currently where everything is prepared, the new one is modern and caters to families.

Even on a Sunday afternoon, I struggled to find an empty table. It was packed, cars were blocking the road, more people kept arriving. As I entered the restaurant, I saw a group of young women at a table talking and enjoying the fish. The tables are not very close together, giving each group much-needed privacy.

Decades ago, when Awadia, a young girl disabled by polio embarked on a difficult journey called life, she didn’t know what to expect. Through her work as a tea-lady, she served sweet cups of tea to thousands of workers and fishermen. She also inspired poets who came everyday to work on the banks of the nile.

Despite her non-existent educational background, disability and bad luck, she continued to make the best out of each and every opportunity.

Outside her restaurant, a BMW, two land-cruisers and many fancy cars are parked. All her costumers know her by name. They greet her as they walk from their cars to “Awadia Fishes” to eat her signature fish in the comfort of a modern restaurant.

She sits outside in the boiling sun observing her business as if she is a mother watching her baby growing up. Strikingly tall with strong features, she obviously spends a fair amount of time as the observed as well.

Published: Fight the Cause

2011-04-21T02:04:00.000-07:00

Sudan Eyez: Fight the Cause, a mix-CD that includes fourteen tracks by different Sudanese musicians and poets couldn't have been produced at a more perfect time. While Fight the Cause was being widely circulated on Facebook and downloaded for free, a wave of rage was spreading amongst Sudanese youth which one of its reasons is Safia Ishaq.

Ishaq is an activist who was gang-rapped by Sudanese security forces; angered because of what happened to Ishaq young Sudanese put her photo as their display picture in the Facebook, while many were joining groups calling for changes following Tunisia and Egypt.

In its introduction, the mix-CD emphasizes that the battle for the Sudanese cause has been ongoing for 21 years and the movement towards change started on January 30, 2011, was "inspired by the Egyptian and Tunisian youth."

By asking the listeners to make this CD the soundtrack of the 2011 Sudanese protests, the artists are actively trying to mobilize their listeners to become active and involved in the movement.

The mix-CD begins with a 1958 recording broadcasted from Omdurman Radio which was called This is Omdurman; the recording was two years after Sudan's independence from Great Britain and the year of its first military coup. Music from old Sudanese songs is sampled and integrated into a number of tracks. It covers different genres from hip-hop by US-based Sudanese rapper and poet Selma-I and Khartoum-based rappers ReZOULution, to Reggae beats by Mao and R n B by Dubai-based Sudanese artist Mo'awia known as Nile.

Featured artists easily alternate between English and Arabic and insert cultural references such as referring to the government as Kozes, a cup made of metal used for drinking water in Sudan.
Fight_the_Cause_One

Supporting an Activist

The artists began working on Fight the Cause CD after the January 30 protests and the whole idea was instigated by the arrest of rapper, blogger, activist and poet Ahmad Mahmoud, also known as DZA the Dissenter. 70 protesters were arrested on the 30th of January protest. Two days later, Mahmoud was arrested as he took part in a peaceful protest in Khartoum North.

Hashim , the brain behind the idea, said that the aim was to produce a music “ that is going to inspire the Sudanese youth so they can’t let us down when it’s the right time to make some changes,”

Picking the contributors wasn’t a challenge for Hashim, he already had a few musicians in mind. He made sure to pick the tracks that match the concept of the album. He told me in an interview that he knew that the musicians wouldn’t mind joining such an album even if it is going to bring them problems.

The tracks were already recorded; Hisham just had to pick the most suitable ones. He started working on the mix-CD and was planning to dedicate it to Ahmad Mahmoud, his fellow musician and good friend. Fortunately, Mahmoud was released twelve long days later.

In the meantime, the youth movements in Sudan decided that 21st of March was a day of mass protests. The mix-CD had to be finished and distributed beforehand.

“I really wanted that album to spread awareness so I had to publish it unfinished, after all, it took me about one month to collect the pieces,” he stated.
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Distribution

The mix-CD was distributed online. Many put a link to it on their Facebook pages. I personally stumbled upon the mix-CD after a friend of mine posted a link to it on Facebook. When I asked Hashim if they used the internet only for distributing the CD, he quoted the poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron and told me that “the revolution will not be televised,”

Gihad AbuNafeesa, a medical doctor found herself part of this artistic movement calling for change when she read about what happened to Safia Ishaq, a 25 year old artist affiliated with Girfna, a two-year old youth movement calling for change.

Ishaq was arrested on February 13, 2011, by the police for her involvement in the January 30 movement. Not long after she was released, she spoke out about her arrest, beating and subsequent gang-rape by three members of Sudan’s security service in a video testimony broadcasted on Youtube.

AbuNafeesa was heartbroken and angry by the oppression of women in Sudan and the ongoing violence against civilians and decided to use her pen to write the story of the Sudanese struggle.

In her piece, the quality of equality, performed at the Women’s Week at Ahfad University for Women in Sudan, she spoke of Ishaq when she said:

“You asked for the quality of your equality,

And gained nothing but cold depravity…

of ones who crowned your head with fear

When they unwrapped your hijab, and bound your hands -

because you chose to make a stand!”

AbuNafeesa has used Ishaq’s picture as her Facebook display picture for nearly two months now.

Published Piece:- http://www.onislam.net/english/culture-and-entertainment/music/451920-fight-the-cause-sudanese-youth-singing-for-change.html

History lesson: The Funj Sultanate

2011-04-15T05:23:00.000-07:00

One of Sudan’s greatest kingdoms was born when the Funj, an ethnic group from South Sudan was forced to flee a rivaling ethnic group, the Shilluk.

Their destination was Sennarwhere they established the Funj Sultanate of Sennar , also known as the Blue Sultanate. They single-handedly ruled this area of Sudan for a number of centuries until their fateful collapse in 1821.
In the 15th century, the arrival of Amara Dunqas and his subjects put the Funj on the map. Dunqas defeated Abdallah, the ruler of the empire previously situated in Sennar.

At the time of its establishment, the sultanate practiced Animism and Christianity. In 1523, Islam became the religion of the monarchy, however, some aspects of previous religions and beliefs were incorporated into the newly-adopted religion.
As the kingdom grew stronger and expanded its control to Gezira, Southern Kordofan and other regions, it became a direct threat to the growing Ottoman influence in the region and the neighboring state of Ethiopia. Until the 1810s, the kingdom was home to the largest army in East Africa, stationed at garrisons and ready to fight the surrounding enemies. Clashes with the Shilluks continued until an unlikely agreement was forged as an attempt to unite against the Dinka, the largest Southern Sudanese tribe.

The kingdom started declining in the 17th century as sultans fought over power. In 1821, Sennar was incorporated into Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and this was the final end of the Funj Sultanate.

Badi V11 was the last ruler of the kingdom. He couldn’t resist the Ottomans, as the kingdom was already too weak to fight off foreign invaders.....

Taraweeh

2011-04-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

I picked up the phone after the third ring. I didn't want my parents or my brother, my tall angry brother to get to it before I did. I knew it was Ahmed calling. He calls everyday at the same time and we agree on where to meet. He calls me after iftar in Ramadan, the holy month. This time, I was holding a glass of red hibiscus. My mother prepares hibiscus juice every day. It was the traditional Ramadan drink along with abri, or what I call paper juice. When you soak its leaves in water, they look like little pieces of shredded paper.
" It feels great to be stuffed with good food! " he said before I could even say a word.

I laughed and I remembered listening to him complain the whole time on the phone. He swears he is going to break his fast every single day, but for some odd reason, he never does.
He thinks it is pointless to fast since he doesn't pray .

I told him to fast for the poor and hungry.

Sigh

" Let's meet next to the green mosque in 45 minutes" he said. I imagined him smiling in his room.

" What should I tell my parents? what should I tell my brother? He still lives in the 11th century! " I argued defensively.

" Tell them you are going to pray tarweeh....tell them you need some alone time with god. It's next to your house, they wouldn't be too worried" he said. I hated him for always having the best excuses.

I felt like a child, he always tells me what to say and what to do.

" Ok, I will call you back in 10 minutes. Two rings means yes and one ring means no , ok? I have to go now, bye" .

I looked down at my hibiscus juice. For a second, I imagined it to be red wine. I've only seen women drinking wine in American movies. They looked so classy with their crystal glasses full of this dark red drink. Lips painted red , they took long slow sips , followed by flirty giggles. The men sitting next to them (usually very close), were usually unattractive. Now, I had to stop myself from thinking about wine and pretty American women with red lips . I scolded myself very quickly. I wagged my finger at myself , slightly attempting to imitate my bossy grandmother. I quickly reminded myself that it's Ramadan. It's Ramadan and I'm thinking about wine!

I said" I'm not going to be late. Tarweeh prayer only takes an hour, I think". I slipped into my black abaya and covered my hair with a black scarf. It was a chilly night , unusual in Omdurman. It was the blessings of the holy month, claimed my father .

I walked to the mosque next to my house, after three blocks of fancy houses built by Sudanese living abroad, I stopped for a second in front of the blue house, I didn't find it special because of its bizzare color. I've heard of purple houses, but blue? The house was shaped like a boat. Rumor has it, the owner was so obsessed with Titanic, he wanted to build his own Titanic. This was Sudan in 1998, there was absolutely nothing to do. Actually, I should avoid jumping to conclusions, we did have Titanic to watch, over and over again. I remember watching it. The endless sobbing when Leonardo Di Caprio died. I remember running upstairs , standing on the edge of my roof and screaming "I'm the queen of the world"

I took a quick turn after three blocks, I could see a big plot of empty land, where the boys play football on fridays.

I saw him. One hand in his pocket, the other hand was holding a cigarette. I remembered him telling me how much he craved a cigarette the whole day, he didn't mind not eating or drinking.
I imagined him placing a cigarette between his lips just a few seconds after the azan at sunset.

My Ahmed looked older. He exuded this energy you get from bus drivers in places like Sudan, exhausted and frustrated at the corrupt system that takes away 30% of their profit and the bad roads that cause their cars to break down in a matter of weeks.

He was back from the South, after high school, every dutiful Northern boy is sent to fight there. They were told it was their duty, after they take their final exams, they are huddled together like sheep on their way to the slaughterhouses a day before Eid starts.

Most of them, at the age of 15 and 16, don't know what they are going to face there and what they are fighting for or who they are fighting. Mothers stand far from the big trucks with bags full of sandwiches ,sweets and fresh juice, only to be turned away from the legendary Martyrs Square. The lucky few smuggle delicious tuna , falafel and braided cheese sandwiches, only to be caught later and forced to eat all the sandwiches in less than 10 minutes. When the poor kids throw up, the officer's hearts don't soften one bit, I tell you that. They don't budge, they don't give up tormenting young boys...... they stand there and yell "more, more,eat more" like Americans you see on tv cheering their friends at hot-dog eating contests.

" How was your hibiscus juice?", he asked.
I couldn't utter a single word.
" I think we should go pray, I thought about it and I don't want to cause you any problems. Your parents think you are there, if they asked your neighbors, you are going to be in trouble young lady"

I protested in silence.

I let him hold my hand as we walked in silence. I smiled to myself, my Ahmed was back and he was alive.

Why the sudden bombardment?

2011-04-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

Hey blog,

I miss you <3

I was an active blogger when I first started blogging. Then university became hectic. I graduated in 2009 and vowed to become active again. Then work happened and the move back to Sudan.
A few days ago, I was reading blogs ( I'm back to reading blogs a lot) and I promised myself to get back on track. I've been writing a lot lately and I just shared a few published (and paid for, I have to buy pretty things) and unpublished pieces.

I have to be fair, I can't blog on a daily basis, but I promise to update this blog a few times a week.

Have you found the book?

2011-04-07T11:40:00.001-07:00

I’ve been searching for the book for the past six years. I’ve been buying every book I stumble upon in an attempt to find “it”.

The book I’m looking for will be the book I memorize and quote by heart. I know what the characters are thinking and they become part of my life. What would Martha do? I asked myself after finishing Martha Quest by Doris Lessing.

It was a touching book, I loved it, scribbled notes and placed bookmarks inside it. I thought I found “it” after reading the last page of Martha Quest, but I was proven wrong.
I even changed my email password to Tehmina Durrani’s book " my feudal lord" after finishing it. I loved Durrani’s masterpiece. I re-read some passages and was heartbroken by the main character’s dilemma. She was abused and degraded by her husband. It was the first time I read about domestic violence and the book stayed with me just like her bruises stayed with her and marked her arms and beautiful face.

I loved Jamal Mahgoub’s traveling with djinns. I even dropped everything to go see him at Cairo’s international book fair. I attended his lecture, paid an obscene amount of money for his new book in hardcover and asked him to sign a tattered copy of traveling with djinns. I proudly presented to him a worn out copy of his book. Some pages were folded and some were almost pink due to excessive use of pink highlighter.

Was it the book?

It was a special book to me, but I wouldn’t call it “the book”. I remember how much I struggled to get this book. I actually placed a special order at a bookstore and paid a significant amount of money. I think I spent most of my money on books when I used to live abroad. Sudan doesn’t have many bookstores and I spend my money on food instead of books, but in another life, I didn’t mind spending half of my allowance on books.

I found “the book” at a book fair for less than 2 dollars. It was a dusty second-hand copy and I almost didn’t get it. It was called Leaving Beirut and written by Mai Ghassoub.
“Who is she again?”, I asked myself.

The title wasn’t very interesting and the cover was green (my least favorite color). The owner of the booth told me that I would get a discount if I buy 10 books. I ended up buying it just to get the discount.
I started reading the book on a cold winter night at about 2 p.m. I was in a good mood and I wanted to read something different. I ended up reading it simply because it was obviously about Lebanon, a country I know little about. I devoured the book in a few days and ended up reading and re-reading different passages. I read it like a loved book. I wrote notes in the margins, dog eared a number of pages and underlined names of people to Google (do not judge me) and read some passages aloud to my sister.

It was the kind of book I have been meaning to write. It would be called leaving Sudan, but I would convey the same emotions…. idolizing Sudan, ranting about injustice, making sense of war and ethnicity and recalling certain encounters.
Once you find your book, there is no harm in continuing to search for another special book.

I continue searching for other books to love and get absorbed in.

No to Oppressing Women- unpublished article

2011-04-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

Source:- http://www.givesomethingbig.com/images/SudanWomenProtest.jpg

****This article was written last December. It was never officially published

Samira Mahdi, a member of Inclusive Security, one of the founders of the initiative for Sudanese Women in Politics and a member of UNDP's initiative for female politicians arrived at the Ministry of Justice at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday the 14th of December with two other activists to submit a memorandum calling for the abolition of the public order laws in protest of a leaked video showing a girl being brutally lashed while onlookers laughed and did nothing. The three activists were entrusted to hand in this document before the protest starts at 11 p.m.

Upon arrival, they were shocked to find the protest police at the site carrying their shields and fully equipped because the organizers were given permission from the police to hold a silent protest and the streets they would use during the march were also agreed upon beforehand.

“ They didn’t let us inside the building so we sat down and waited for other protesters. We sat on the floor wearing our white headbands and carrying banners that read “no for women’s oppression” and we were silent,” said Mahdi.

After the protest started growing, 6 trucks full of police officers dressed as civilians, the trademark of the public order police, arrived at the scene and demanded from the protesters to get up.

“When we refused and remained silent, they forced us to get up. They were literally carrying us off the floor, some women were seniors citizens like me and some were young, but it was very aggressive and some women fought back to no avail,” recalled Mahdi.

Mahdi took a strong stance and refused to get into the car. The police officer told her to go home, but she did not. She walked to the Northern police station where she figured they would be taken and made quick calls to lawyers and political leaders from all parties.

“ The first thing they did was take their phones away from them, but two smart women hid their phones in their bras and this was how we were able to contact them,” said Mahdi

She added that 100 lawyers came to the station to defend the women and bail them out. They were imprisoned from 11 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

“ We could hear the women signing patriotic songs reminiscent of the independence and the 1964 revolution that led to democracy,” said Mahdi

No case was filed against the protesters until now even though the police forces vied to prosecute them.

Some activists had to seek medical help after the arrests.

Magdi El Gizouli, a Sudanese journalist, blogger and analyst who wrote about the video girl in his daily column in the citizen newspaper believes that the video is a representation of the presence of patriarchy in Sudan.

“The crowd watching including the judge were quite amused one must admit. I do not think the question here is restricted to how the state and its disciplinary institutions behave towards women, but how society at large perceives and deals with the female body,” he told me in an email.

Since coming to power following a bloodless coup in 1989, a government calling itself the national salvation government embarked on “the civilization project” an attempt to reshape the Sudanese nation by introducing a number of new social laws. The public order laws were born in 1991 and they put Sudanese individuals, especially women, at risk of getting arrested, jailed and lashed through a number of ambiguous laws.

The woman getting lashed in the video was persecuted under article 152 of the criminal act laws of 1991 which states that police officers responsible for fighting social corruption have the right to arrest, fine and lash a woman if she is dressed indecently.

“ It is up to the man arresting you to decide what is decent and what is not. It all depends on his personal judgment. We don’t know what to wear anymore, “ said Sally Ahmed*, whose sister was lashed over ten years ago when the public order police barged into their university and arrested many girls at random.

Ahmed added that the officers would actually park their cars in front of their university to harass girls as they leave the campus. The university in question is known for its liberal education and for its activism for gender equality.

After years of being subjected to abuse, Sudanese women were finally inspired by the well-known case of Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese journalist persecuted under article 152 in 2008.

No to women’s oppression, a coalition to campaign against the public order laws was formed to protest the case of Lubna and the coalition continued campaigning against the law and was the main organizer of last Tuesday’s protest.

According to a source in the national police, the video was released to tarnish the reputation of Sudan.

Merely a week after the government claimed to have started investigating the video and the punishment carried out on the girl, President Bashir endorsed the punishment in an official speech and told the Sudanese public to pray and revise their understanding of religion.

The lashed girl in the video and the case of Lubna Hussein sparked national and international outcry, however, the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) puts the number of women lashed in the last year and a half at about 42,000.

Al Gizouli believes that the idea of lashing to public order officers is beyond the execution of a judicial punishment.

“ The audience and the actors, with the exception of the woman, were having fun. This was parody and not punishment. One could sense the obscene joy of male figures observing the disciplining of a female body. You could name it the pornography of punishment,” he told me.

Published: Sudan, Egypt, Libya, and Back Again: Witness to the Revolution

2011-04-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

My recently published article, check it out @ thewip.net

http://thewip.net/contributors/2011/03/sudan_egypt_libya_and_back_aga.html#comments

My father came back from the supermarket armed with bags full of pasta, rice, flour, and canned products. He rushed there after hearing about protests in Benghazi. This was in mid-February, and the world was not yet aware of the events unfolding in Libya. My mother’s health was deteriorating and we were hoping for an immediate medical evacuation to the UK.

At night, in our cold apartment on the seventh floor of a building in Tripoli, the capital of Libya, I tried to figure out whether the sounds I was hearing were gunfire or fireworks celebrating the birth of the prophet Mohamed in Libya. This year Mawlud was on February 15.

Libya was never a favorite place for me, but I have a strong connection to it. I lived there in 1991 and 1992 when my father was working as a professor, and I visited in mid-2010 when my father started working for the UN.

The country seemed stagnant. No real political change had happened since 1969, when Muammar Gaddafi overthrew the king of Libya and established himself as ruler. Unlike Egypt, Libyans did not live in poverty. They had access to education and health care, but the government overlooked their aspirations.

My mother’s friend, a young Libyan woman in her early thirties, told us once that when the late King of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), King Zayid, visited Libya in the 1970s, he told Gaddafi that he wanted his country to be like Libya. Decades later, the UAE became an international phenomenon in development and advancement - its key cities Dubai and Abu Dhabi are icons of intelligent architecture - but Libya is sadly not very different than when we left in 1992. Today Gaddafi seems relentless to hold on to power even if it means ruling only a fraction of his nation.

Yet in Egypt, it took only 49 seconds for a 30-year-old government to quit. Omar Suleiman, a former intelligence chief and Mubarak’s vice-president at the time, announced the resignation of the president in just two sentences.

When we arrived in Cairo on January 27, as my mum was scheduled for an operation at a hospital there, I did not expect the protest to gain momentum. I had witnessed protests in downtown Cairo during my university years, when police officers brutally suppressed each and every demonstration.

People were so used to having Mubarak as the president because he had been in power for 30 years and the devil you know is better than the devil you do not know, they believed. “Who is our next option, the Muslim brotherhood?” was the usual answer I received from friends and colleagues.

On February 9 the UN issued a memorandum urging its staff to evacuate, which brought us to Libya, where my dad was stationed as part of his job with the UN. The day of Suleiman’s speech, my family and I went to a bakery where we purchased a cheesecake and came back home to celebrate while watching news channels.

I remember the beginning, April 6, 2008. It took me less than 30 minutes as opposed to an hour to reach the American University in Cairo from my house. A few weeks earlier a Facebook group called "April 6 Youth Movement" declared the day a national protest day. The whole country was encouraged to stay at home in solidarity with the workers in the factories of the Mahalla-El-Kubra area who were preparing a strike. It is difficult to state whether the movement was successful on April 6 since it did not reach out the way it was expected to - the overwhelming majority did not join the protests. However, it was the first mass mobilization in a very long time in Egypt. At least 70,000 joined the Facebook group. The government cracked down on the founders of the group. The co-founder, Issra Abdel Fatah, was imprisoned for two weeks. After her release, she vowed to quit political activism for good.

Fast-forward to June 2010, when 28-year-old blogger Khaled Said was beaten to death by police in Alexandria. Said was not the first Egyptian to die at the hands of the notorious Egyptian police. According to reports by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other organizations, security forces in Egypt commonly use torture, including beatings, electrocution, and sexual assault, against political prisoners, activists, convicted criminals, or any voice of dissent that needs to be silenced.

HRW disseminated the disturbing picture showing a dead Khaled Said with a broken nose, broken jaw, fractured skull, and other visible injuries, and the Egyptian people took to the streets in mass numbers. Notable protests were organized in Alexandria, his hometown, and quickly spread to the rest of Egypt. A Facebook group, “We are all Khaled Said,” was formed, and this group became a very important organizer of the “day of anger” protest on January 28.

That sole picture of Khaled Said and the April 6 Movement were instrumental in mobilizing young people, who represent 60 percent of Egypt’s population, and inspired in them a sense of political awareness and social change, but the most pressing trigger was the uprising in Tunisia.

Tunisia is one of the jewels of the Arab and African worlds. It brings to mind a peaceful image of beaches, beautiful white houses, and an educated middle class. When Tunisians started mass-protesting last November, inspired by Mohamed Ben Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian man who set himself on fire to protest unemployment, the Arab world was shocked.

But Egyptians were already fed up with the Mubarak regime. It was widely circulated that over 30 percent of Egyptians lived in absolute poverty while the president’s friends and supporters accumulated an enormous amount of wealth. The average monthly salary was 400 EGP ($68 USD), while the rich were buying Chloe bags for over 10,000 EGP ($1,700 USD).

Police brutality was at an all-time high. Editors were fired, harassed, and fined. Ibrahim Eisa, a popular opposition journalist and editor of Al-Dustour stated at a conference I attended in Beirut two years ago that there were over 30 cases filed against him at that time.

Tahrir Square, as it appeared on TV during the protests, was empty of cars as protesters made it the site of their uprising. I used to pass by Tahrir Square every day for three years as a student. It took a lot of courage to cross from one side of the square to another. Thousands of Egyptians flocked to the chronically congested square every day to head to the Mogamma, the epicenter of Egyptian bureaucracy and a huge building where Egyptians go to get their passports and papers and foreigners go to get their visas renewed. The square also houses the Arab League, the Egyptian Museum, and the headquarters of the former ruling party, the National Democratic Party.

“If we left the square, the uprising will die off, and if we failed to overthrow the government, the government will slash our necks,” said activist and journalist Nawara Negm to Al-Jazeera TV. Negm was right. Protesters had been arrested, tortured, and persecuted in Egypt before.

Fear was also an important aspect in convincing more supporters to join the protest. The organizers kept calling on workers to join the protests, but feeling uneasy about losing their jobs, the workers initially shied away. Then as the protests grew larger, workers from national factories, the national TV, and many other national companies joined the protest. The larger the protests, the more protection people felt.

I keep thinking of a friend of mine who was arrested in the beginning of February in an anti-government protest in Northern Khartoum in Sudan. He was just released. I hope change also comes to Sudan. I hope we find inspiration in Egypt’s revolution.

Yes, I'm very jealous

2011-01-11T06:10:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine said that Northerners are upset about the South Sudan referendum because they are jealous that the Southerners have the chance to vote and every Southern vote makes a difference, we have nothing.
Yes, I have to admit..I'm very jealous. I registered to vote in April's elections, but my candidate of choice withdrew from the race and I was left wondering whether my voice would have made a difference in the first place.

I now put myself in the shoes of a Southern woman my age, she heads to the polling station to vote and her vote, her voice, could be the last vote needed to reach the 60% threshold.

Do I not have a reason to be jealous?

A broken country

2011-01-08T03:40:00.000-08:00

In 2005, when the CPA was signed, I did not expect this day to come. At the time, the idea of secession seemed absurd. We were always going to be one country. John Garang was alive and he was going to run for presidency and I was going to vote for him. Even my grandmother said she would vote for him. He repeated slogans such as "united we stand, divided we fall" and mesmerized us when he described the new Sudan.

The New Sudan was a reality and change was going to happen in my lifetime.

I was wrong.

John Garang died in a plane crash and unity died with him. It was buried with him. We believed in the New Sudan and forgot that the old Sudan is cursed.
"We are a cursed nation," my mother tells me. Days before Nimeri was expected to sign a peace agreement, he was toppled and the war dragged on. A month after Garang became the vice-president, he died.

Hell broke loose.

Khartoum, the safest capital in Africa (as we claim) was suddenly a battle-zone. Cars were burned, people were killed, age-old ethnic divisions were unleashed and we were reminded that it takes a very long time for survivors of war to let go of their grudges...
The ugly face of the Northern/Southern division was exposed, hopes for unity were shattered.

Today is Saturday the 8th of Januruary 2011, tomorrow is the day I've never expected to see. Southerners will head to the polls and vote on whether they would like to secede from the North or remain united with the North.

The outcome seems like a fact, secession is inevitable.

"They will seperate for a year or two, then they will come back and join the north. They can't have their own country, they need us," said an acquaintance, matter-of-factly......Denial is not just a river in Egypt....

The official argument is that the North has failed to make unity attractive in the past 6 years. People deliberately overlook the fact that the country has been seperating for over 50 years. Ever since Africa's longest-running civil war began, the idea of seperation or "independence" was popular in the south.

I've been thinking a lot about the referendum lately. How does it make me feel? How am I expected to feel? How does it feel to have your country split into two? How does it feel when Sudan is no longer Africa's largest country?

I'm still thinking

Breaking Tweets

2010-12-27T08:33:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon “Breaking Tweets”, an independent news website featuring world news "twitter-style", a few weeks ago and I was adamant to write about it. When I first heard about twitter, I was extremely skeptical of the whole concept. We already update our status on facebook, twitter is yet another time-waster and another social networking tool that will definitely encourage us to single-handedly invade our own privacy.

“ I’m never joining Twitter,” I declared to my friends. Then, my father joined twitter and invited me to follow him and my sister joined twitter and became an active user and I was left out of the loop.

I became interested in Twitter mainly after the Iranian elections. The way the elections were covered by bloggers and Iranian twitter users and the way twitter was portrayed as a credible source by international news agencies.

Since some journalists were arrested and many TV channels were blocked in Iran, Iranians used twitter to communicate with the outside world and to voice out their concerns.

Twitter’s idea is simple. It is free and very quick. The messages you write spread really fast. When an American student was arrested in Cairo a few years ago, he sent one word using twitter and this word “arrested” was read by a friend who contacted the US embassy and he was helped in a very short time.

According to the founders, the website seeks to
1. Put a personal touch and human voice on news events around the world 
2. Help people enhance their worldview or perspective of global events 
3. Increase dialogue about international news both on this site and on Twitter

The website is not concerned with spreading breaking news as much as chronicling daily news and collecting the views of twitter-users on certain events.

Conversations with amjad drivers

2010-12-27T06:16:00.000-08:00

Link to picture:- http://oladiab.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/dsc_11541.jpg?w=150038%3Bh=99

Conversation one

Link to picture:-http://tommycox.com/old_books.jpg

I always seem to have pleasant experiences riding an amjad. I was coming back from a night-out with friends and during the 10-minute ride from Bahri to Omdurman, the driver poured his heart out to me. The main topic of discussion was his desire to take a second wife.
“ I want kids and my current wife can’t have more kids. We had one girl nine years ago and now time is running out for me,” he said
His current wife, naturally, does not approve of him taking a second wife. He bought her a house and he gives her rent money on a monthly basis. He feels that she should feel secure by having a house to her name, she doesn’t.

“ I understand how she feels, no woman wants to share her husband with another woman,” he told me.

My main argument was, you have to talk to her. If she doesn’t want you to marry a second wife, you shouldn’t.
I asked myself whether he wants to get married to have a son. Many men in this country still don’t value their daughters; they would go on and marry two or three wives to have that one precious son.

Sigh

Conversation two

This particular driver was a chocolate expert. For about 15 years, he worked as a sales representative for British chocolate companies. He drove around Khartoum and marketed Mars and Snickers to potential clients. When he started in the 80’s, very few supermarkets in the country had access to different brands of chocolates like nowadays.
I asked him how come chocolate in Sudan tastes different.

He blamed the weather.

“Our weather here is brutal and if chocolate is not stored the right away, the taste will change. Some supermarkets don’t put all their chocolate stock in the fridge. They alternate between storing it in the fridge and in the warehouses. This changes the taste and the color as the chocolate bar keeps melting and freezing, melting and freezing,” he explained to me

In 1986, he was sent to England for a course in sales and marketing.

“ I had a great life, “ he recalled.

Chocolate companies now don’t need sales representatives; his job is, sadly, out-dated.

Conversation Three

It was after a long day spent with a colleague editing, re-editing and translating a video report followed by a long meeting that I finally decided to head home. It was about 9:15 pm when I hailed an amjad to go home. I was exhausted, physically and mentally. The work took seven hours and I was ready to go to bed the minute I reach my room. The music player on my phone was on, I was planning to listen to Nina Simone’s soothing voice the whole time.

The amjad driver was entertaining. He was interested in my family, he figured out my family name as soon as I told him where I live. My house is located in a neighborhood named after my great great grand-father. We became engaged in an intellectual
conversation. I quickly forgot my plans to listen to Nina Simone and listened to him recite lines from Oliver Twist.

He spoke fluent English and was an avid reader. We had similar literary tastes. We both liked Jane Austen, he showed me a tattered copy of Pride and Prejudice, one of his favorite books. The book was obviously read a million times and loved very dearly. Every single page was yellow.... it reminded me of how much I love old books, their familiar smell, the specific words and phrases that are underlined and the notes scrawled in their margins. I have bookmarks in all my favorite books.

He told me I was impressive, he said all girls nowadays are shallow. People don’t read, we agreed. It is rare to talk about books in a social gathering, most people are too engrossed in carrying out mundane tasks, they ignore the joys of reading.

Jane Austen wrote some of the best books published in this world; it is a great loss that many in this country are unaware of her books. Her literature is translated and accessible.

I’m glad one other person cherishes Pride and Prejudice and enjoys reading plays written by Shakespeare....

I thought about going back home and writing a book like Khaled Al Khamissi’s popular book, Taxi. I have enough conversations with Amjad drivers to fill a whole book. Should I?

My elevated differences book review- I want to get married

2010-11-30T11:12:00.001-08:00

She opened the door only to meet Mr. Not-Quite-Right, her technicolor suitor. His shirt was yellow, his pants were blue, and he was wearing purple socks with brown shoes—not to mention the green sweater. "Maybe he is fun and he likes colors", she told herself, in an attempt to convince herself to focus on his personality and brains. The official introduction happened when her father entered the room. "My name is Samy. I'm a physiotherapist," he said. She was impressed until he started rambling about his "imitation skills;" apparently, he could imitate every character in this world. He eventually stopped sharing his talent and asked if the television was working. He turned it on and proceeded to watch a football match. Ghada held in a laugh and tried to pretend that everything is normal, but when her mother criticized his favorite football team, hell broke loose and at the ancient age of twenty-eight, Ghada lost a potential husband. Not only that, she also lost her friend who was angry with her for not being compromising to a "perfect" groom.

I first came across I Want to Get Married! in 2009 and soon afterwards, the blog was turned into a book by a publishing house in Egypt. The blogger/writer is a young Egyptian woman who is a successful pharmacist, but in a country like Egypt, success is measured by your ability to attract a groom at a young age. "The clock starts ticking the day you graduate. Personally, I started feeling like a spinster after I turned twenty-three," Ghada wrote in the introduction to the book.

Currently, Ghada is thirty-two and is still unmarried. After she turned thirty, her family and friends narrowed down her husband wish-list to a man "with a heartbeat." After introducing her to numerous men, from the technicolor suitor to the paranoid policeman who was adamant to get her fingerprints for "research," they gave up on her.

In her book, she chronicles the at least thirty prospective grooms she was introduced to from the age of twenty-five. This is how it works: Someone nominates her to an eligible bachelor, and the bachelor brings his nuclear family to meet her and her family. If she feels something towards him, they start dating to get to know each other. Not only does Ghada hilariously document meeting the men; she also shares the struggles of young women in Egypt who face societal pressure to tie the knot.

Recent statistics state that there are at least nine million unmarried women in Egypt. Social scientists consider rising costs as the main reason to blame for the delayed age for marriage, and they even use the term "marriage crises" to describe the situation of late marriage in Egypt. Diane Singerman, a professor of Comparative Politics at American University, uses the term " wait-hood" to describe the marriage situation in Egypt. She states that women used to get married by seventeen or nineteen in the past and men were ready to get married around the same age or even at twenty-five. Currently, the average marriage age for men in Egypt is thirty-one. Singerman estimates the cost of marriage at eleven times the annual household expenditure per capita. As economic reasons make it hard for couples to marry, women take the brunt of this delay. Ghada is such an example, but she took advantage of the digital age and empowered herself by blogging about her situation. Not only has she established herself as a great social commentator, but she reached out to millions of unmarried women and helped them deal with the social stigma they face.

This Ramadan, after reading the book, I watched I Want to Get Married! as a TV series and today, I will also get the chance to read the book in English as well.

I Want to Get Married!: One Wannabe Bride's Misadventures with Handsome Houdinis, Technicolor Grooms, Morality Police, and Other Mr. Not-Quite-Rights

By Nora Eltahawy, Ghada Abdel Aal
University of Texas Press, Dar El Shorouk
The first suitor was a friend of a friend's husband. Along with his family, he came to Ghada's house. He was a doctor, she was told. Excited at the idea of finally meeting a potential husband, she washed the carpets, mopped the floor, scrubbed the stairs, and cleaned all the windows.

350 in Sudan (posted many weeks later)

2010-11-30T11:09:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, 10.10.10, was a special day in our lifetimes, we’ll only see 11.11.11 and 12.12.12. My Facebook was bombarded with people simply stating 10.10.10 in their statuses. Millions were celebrating this day, but a certain virtual organization specializing in environmental-campaigning has declared this day “special” a very long time ago!

350, an ongoing online international campaign to create momentum and formulate a movement of people demanding climate change justice and solutions by governments and through community work, has grown at an alarming rate over the last two years. This year, on the 10th of October 2010, millions of environmentally conscious people in 188 different countries organized more than 7300 events. Events attracted thousands around the world, hundreds were organizing in Vermont while 10 people got together in Khartoum to support the cause and state their pledges to combat climate change.

Why 350?

It started out as a walk against global warming in Vermont, a small state in the US, organized by environmental activist and writer, Bill McKibben. A Harvard graduate, McKibben is internationally known as a writer on climate change, alternative energy and the need for localized economies.

The organization’s name is based on a statement made by climate scientist James Hansen statement in winter 2008 when he declared that any atmospheric concentration of CO2 above 350 is unsafe. 350 is the safe upper limit, we are currently hovering at 390 ppm.

Recent environmental catastrophes (floods, increasing temperatures that have led to melting of Arctic glaciers, etc) have led many experts and scientists to conclude that at the current level, our planet and us are far from safe.

Last year, in October 2009, the organization was able to mobilize millions to create what the CNN called the ‘most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history’ with 5200 rallies and demonstrations in 181 countries. Foreign Policy took notice and called it “the largest global coordinated rally of any kind”.

What is happening?

Although the year 2010 has been anything but effective in the climate change battle, with the failure of COP15, 350 continues to mobilize supporters around the world.
10/10/10 was declared as “global work party”, individuals in different corners of the world planted trees, installed solar panels and participated in a number of environmentally conscious activities.

Why keep a notebook

2010-11-30T11:05:00.000-08:00

I decided to do the unthinkable this weekend and unpack some old notebooks from dusty boxes in the family’s disorganized library. Some dated back to my freshmen year and contained notes about how to not get lost around campus. For some reason, I went to my advisor three times in September and checked out over 20 books on acting in October. I was obviously a nerd, I constantly raided the library for good books or old out-dated books. I also kept writing notes to myself about reading this partiular (READ: boring) book for my cultural anthropology class on the way to university. I never had the chance or will to finish it, but at least I tried. Everything seems like a lifetime away, but the notebook dates back to 2006.
I also managed to find old pocket-calendars. I spent much of my university years meeting professors, going to auditions and rehearsals and going to meetings. I was active in extra-curricular activities, hence, the need for 10 notebooks per semester to help keep me organized.
I also found my student-reporter notebook. I became a reporter for the student newspaper in Fall 2006. I walked around with this notebook (and another one, yet to be located) for about a year and a half. In the beginning, I used to use random pieces of paper, but my bag was already littered with scrappy pieces of paper. I decided to try being tidy and note things down on a notebook and it worked. I interviewed the facilities and services department about fire alarms (they kept going off for some reasons) on 2/11/2006. The interview obviously didn’t go very well, I didn’t write much down. I do remember the unbearable heat that day; maybe it just made me too lazy to write things down.
Towards the end of the notebook, I have pages and pages of notes on healthy living. I don’t recall reading them after writing them down. I do remember the amazing creamy (expensive) ice cream I was obsessed with in my sophomore year.
One note written by a friend warmed my heart. The person asked for money to get home. My reply was “sure” in bold. We were all poor students, but you we always helped each other out.
In December 2006, I wrote down “ I can’t wait to get home and watch tv”. I wonder if I had time to watch tv in December. Didn’t I have a paper to write?
In 2007, my handwriting didn’t get any better. It is almost embarrassing, but then again, I was a student reporter and students were always too busy to take their sweet time giving me their opinion. It usually took 5 seconds for them to speak. I had to document what they said, consequently, without became w/o and senior became sen.
In 2008, I wrote down “ Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux”. I stopped using this notebook and I probably forgot about this book. I purchased it in January 2010 to my surprise.
It was a great weekend. I really enjoyed going through a number of notebooks.
They represent memorabilia for me. I don’t have a lot of pictures, but I have notes and notebooks. Memories are written down. I have letters from friends, random notes sent during class, notes in bold reminding me to write, finish or edit papers, one-liners about how university is evil and a certain professor needs to be nicer.

Quote

2010-09-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

Missing you could turn from pain to pleasure, if I knew you were missing me too. ~Author Unknown

Voices on Circumcision

2010-08-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

Recalling a 60's experience

A.M.H was circumcised at the tender age of 9. She remembers the nitty-gritty details of this ordeal even though it has occurred over 40 years ago.
Her father, a highly-educated man was in a conference outside Sudan , he has repeatedly warned her mother and his mother, her grand-mother, of taking her to the cutter.
" My daughters will not be circumcised, this is backwards and oppressive, " stated her father, a US- educated Sudanese professional.
The women gathered, conspired and produced a detailed plan of taking her to the cutter while her father, her only savior, was away. The plan was successful and A.M.H was pampered that day and promised a lot of sweets and toys. She was excited, she didn't know what was in store for her.
Two women held her down with all their force and proceeded to cut a part of her body.
She remembers the blood gushing out of her , the overwhelming soreness, the inability to get up.
She wanted to get up and play, but she couldn't move an inch. She felt disabled and helpless.

When her father came back a few days later, he figured out that something was wrong. He asked her and she told him the truth. She shared her pain with him.

It was the 1960's and female circumcision was a widespread practice , hence, when her father announced his decision to divorce her mother for disobeying him, he was brushed off as insane.

The divorce never materialized, but female circumcision was the main cause of conflict between the young couple for the rest of their lives. It has changed their marriage as much as it changed the life of this 9 year old girl.

A.M.H is now a mother. When she married the father of her daughters in the early 80's, they jointly made a decision to not let their daughters undergo this painful procedure. Despite protests from close family members, they've rejected their pleads and ignored their heartfelt advices.

Where did it come from?

Female circumcision is the excision of any part of the female genitalia. A age-old tradition passed down from the Pharaohs , it's a popular practice in Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia. It's also practiced in certain communities in Iraq, Yemen, Burkina Faso and Kenya.

Until very recently, the Sudanese were known for practicing the most severe type of circumcision, pharaonic circumcision or infibulation, in which all of the external genitalia is removed. However, in recent years, the least severe type, clitoridectomy, also known as sunni circumcision, has been on the rise. Pharanoic circumcision causes serious health problems and complications during pregnancy and childbirth since the sutures are cut and after the baby is delivered, the woman is sewn up again or refibulated.

According to traditional beliefs, the purpose of FC is to reduce a woman's sexual desire to make sure that she remains a virgin until her marriage. It also aims at increasing the amount of sexual pleasure for the male partner.
However, some wholeheartedly believe that circumcision has roots in Islam.

Just a few days ago , M.S., a young Sudanese mother in her early 30's organized a circumcision ceremony for her 6 year old daughter in a country where FC is a crime punishable by imprisonment.

"I've conducted intensive research and based on this research, I believe that this practice is first and foremost an Islamic practice," stated M.S.

Despite attempts from family and friends to intervene, M.S. used a book by an unknown Egyptian sheikh as her sole reference.

Although FC predates Islam, some scholars believe that Islam had to tolerate the practice as it was already ingrained in the society. In a hadith, the Prophet (PBUH) stated that FC shouldn't be excessive and harmful to the woman in question.

In modern times, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Prof Dr. Ali Goma'a announced during a meeting with ten scholars from all over the world that Muslims shouldn't practice this custom seeing that it is a crime against humanity.

Urban Atittudes

In an attempt to understand the relevance of FC to today's urban youth living in Khartoum and its twin cities, I was able to conduct an anonymous survey in which the participants were asked whether they are aware of the practice and whether they are familiar with circumcised girls and their opinion about the practice. Female participants were asked if they had undergone FC.

A.M, a 27 year old Sudanese man believes that we should distinguish between ordinary or sunna circumcision and pharaonic circumcision.
" Ordinary circumcision is common in most Islamic and gulf countries and it protects the female from herpes and infections in the long term," explains A.M.

A.A, a 24 year old Sudanese male agrees with A.M and adds that it's important not only from a medical point of view, but it also ensures hygiene.

M.G , a 25 year old Sudanese male student living in the United States believes that circumcision is a crime.

On the other hand, a young Sudanese woman working in the field of journalism stated that FC is "a traumatizing experience which can be likened to the horror of rape."

She added that FC is based on cultural beliefs regarding a woman's honor.

Other young Sudanese women interviewed used words such as damaging and painful to describe the practice.

From the results of my survey, I realized that Sudanese men are more aware of the different types of circumcision as opposed to Sudanese women who view FC as one barbaric practice and fail to see any variations.

What A Man Wants

In an article written by Meghan Sapp for Women-e-news, she recalls the story of a young Sudanese man, a son of a diplomat who has recently returned to Khartoum. He fell in love with a young lady and was getting ready to marry her.

He was hesitant about asking his young bride about FC so he asked her sister if she had undergone FC. The sister miscommunicated this question and the young woman panicked and before their wedding, she had the procedure performed.

The marriage didn't last, FC was one of the main reasons to blame.

Dr. Babikar Bedri, a prominent researcher in the field of female circumcision at Ahfad University believes that there are no studies tackling how young couples discuss this issue before marriage.

According to Dr. Bedri, contrary to the old days when grooms returned their uncircumcised wives, a study carried out at Khartoum University among male students found out that 75% would like to have an un-excised future wife.

As our perceptions about a woman's right to choice and female sexuality are changing at an alarming rate due to living in the digital age and the government's intervention , I can't help but wonder whether the desires of men to have an "un-circumsised" wife will play a significant role in decreasing the practice in the near future.

The Fatal Beauty of Tajooj

2010-08-02T05:08:00.000-07:00

My artwork offers a glimpse into my world. I hope that it inspires your imagination and leaves you with a lasting impression. - Suzanne Hilal

Last Thursday, in a small cafe in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, guests sipped lemon juice and lattes and listened to a number of young men perform modern love songs as Suzanne Hilal transported a sizable audience hundreds of years back to an isolated place in East Sudan through her collection of print works. Hilal, a Sudanese-English artist whose work spans a range of mediums including printmaking, pastels, and ink, is known for the way her works are inspired by Sudanese folktales and reflects the country's culture and history.

The name of the exhibition, The Fatal Beauty of Tajooj, is taken from a well-known and tragic love story. According to Sudanese grandmothers, Tajooj was the most beautiful girl in Sudan during their time. She was also the love interest of her cousin, who was known for attacking neighboring tribes. One version of Tajooj's story tells us that the cousin in question, Mohlaq, was forced to divorce Tajooj because she was expected to marry another man. Another telling of the legend says Mohlaq's uncle refused the marriage proposal to his daughter because Mohlaq publicly declared his love for Tajooj in a song, which was against the traditions of his tribe.

Wandering the desert for the rest of his life, Mohlaq was brokenhearted and lost. The beautiful Tajooj was attacked and killed by a group of bandits. A sword was plunged deep into her chest, we are told.

Hilal was first introduced to folktales as an undergraduate student working on a paper comparing Sudanese and Arab stories. During her research, she read five books of these stories from different regions and tribes, and stumbled upon the story of Tajooj in Ali Lutfi Abdallah's The Clever Sheikh of the Butana and Other Stories.

"Her beauty is taken from Tajooj" declares a popular Sudanese song. "You will see the beauty of Tajooj in her people," declares another song about Kassala, the closest city to the town Tajooj was from.

One day, between her artwork and studying law in Chicago, Hilal plans to write and illustrate her own love story. Based on her own multicultural heritage, the story will be set in Sudan, but will end like an English love : happily.

Madonna for LV -no airbrushing or re-touching

2010-07-27T05:22:00.000-07:00

Burning money for a cause

2010-07-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

Apparently a Swedish feminist group burned $13,000 to protest unequal pay for women.

According to AP,

"The Feminist Initiative party says the money set ablaze on the Swedish island of Gotland on Tuesday represents the amount of money the country's women miss out on every minute in comparison to men."

It is sad to think of how much could've been done with this amount of money.

Dear Swedish Feminists,

This is not activism, this is just waste of cash.

PS:-
Flags were burned in front of me, but this hurts a bit more.

High Fidelity

2010-07-18T06:50:00.001-07:00

I wanna read the book over and over again and watch the movie over and over again and memorize every line.

I didn't expect myself to enjoy it , after all, it offers a male-centric perspective on relationships, but, I did.

Favorite Quotes:_

Rob: She didn't make me miserable, or anxious, or ill at ease. You know, it sounds boring, but it wasn't. It wasn't spectacular either. It was just good. But really good

Barry's Customer: Hi, do you have the song "I Just Called To Say I Love You?" It's for my daughter's birthday.
Barry: Yea we have it.
Barry's Customer: Great, Great, can I have it?
Barry: No, no, you can't.
Barry's Customer: Why not?
Barry: Well, it's sentimental tacky crap. Do we look like the kind of store that sells I Just Called to Say I Love You? Go to the mall.

Rob: Marvin Gaye.
Laura: I know.
Rob: Let's get it on. That's our song. Marvin Gaye is responsible for our entire relationship.
Laura: Oh, is that so? I'd like a word with him then.

On Life

2010-07-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

“I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables, I thought about my small victories and everything I’d seen destroyed. I’d swum through mink coats on my parents’ bed while they hosted downstairs, I’d lost the only person with whom I could have spent my only life, I’d left behind a thousand tonnes of marble from which I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself, I’d experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering…”
— Jonathan Safran Foer

Kataha (sand-storm)

2010-07-11T04:27:00.000-07:00

NOTE

I was slapped across the face yesterday. The ever so surprising “kataha” or sandstorm slapped me as harshly as a wife-beater. I ran from my cousin’s car to my house hoping to get there before it hits me. It out-smarted me and as I was trying to open the door, it hit me with full-force.

I stood there, dumb-founded, wondering why this country is so evil. The next day as I was heading to work, it was so humid; I started thinking about shaving my hair.

Sudan’s weather is cruel, it’s like a mean high school bully ( you are beaten, humiliated and you go home hungry after you were forced to surrender your lunch)

Why am I ranting about the weather?

I just wanted to point out that this kind of weather stifles creativity. It suffocates your mind and your heart and pushes you towards stagnation.

Flavoured Lattes

2010-07-11T03:57:00.000-07:00

As I venture into the real world, I continue to struggle to make sense of my surroundings. I’ve graduated almost a year ago, but I still feel lost.

University was my comfort-zone. My friends were like me; we had the same interests and hailed from the same background. I went to the prestigious American University in Cairo where everything and everyone was a walking advertisement of Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Porsches were parked in front of the main gate and we had flavored lattes on campus. My favorite flavor was “Irish Cream” and my second favorite was vanilla. Yes, I used to drink flavored latte and discuss Isabel Allende. I have to admit, I was a bit of a cliché. The spoiled kid, a pseudo-intellectual, excited about the prospects of getting a job, but too worried about managing her own finances.

On Thursday, I stayed on campus after my classes. Our auditorium was turned into a cinema hall and we had the chance to watch all the new movies from Hollywood for free.

Really.

You just had to show them your ID.

Armed with a number of witty comments, we would head to a café and discuss the movie over lattes.

Sometimes, our conversations shifted and we talked about the real world. In a few years, we would be graduates, getting our MA’s and getting real jobs. We talked about graduation; we claimed to be ready to graduate.

I graduated and it hit me.

University didn’t prepare me for the real world. I’m still shocked, dumb-founded. I still can’t wrap my head around the idea. Getting a job seems like a mystery.

Once upon a time, in the comfort of AUC, we were told we were special. Our parents paid large amounts of money for us to receive quality education. We speak good English and we have a number of extra-curricular activities to brag about. When we graduate, we will get a job in the blink of an eye. Oh how I miss university! The feeling of being unique, well-educated and privileged. The feeling that nothing is out of our reach. You just have to take a deep breath and reach for it.

As I sit at my desk in Khartoum two. I reminisce about flavored lattes and an overpriced twix tart. I can smell onions as I climb the stairs to my office ( Sudanese people ate the heaviest breakfast in the world at 1 pm) and I start thinking to myself: maybe this is how the real world smells, different, but at times, challenging.

Life

2010-05-11T04:22:00.000-07:00

I’m going to go next door and borrow a cup of sugar.
I don’t need a cup of sugar
I just need to know that still happens
because once it stops
we’re lost.

- dallas clayton

Why did I trust my Husband?

2010-05-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

I got to know E through my aunt. A secretary-turned activist, she now devotes much of her time and energy to helping women in prison and she also volunteers with senior citizens.

E was beautiful, a kind of beautiful that defies description. She comes from a middle-class background and lives in the city of Omdurman, 20 minutes away from the capital.

My aunt met her in prison, Omdurman Women’s Prison. The prison is known for the fact that most women there are convicted of selling or making alcohol. Depending on your location, selling Alcohol is against the law in Sudan, if caught; the punishment is a few weeks to a few years.

Al-Manar, an NGO working with women in prison, estimates that 90% of women imprisoned are guilty of wine-making.

Currently, the demographics are changing. Many women are there for embezzling money. E, like other women was only trying to help her husband become a successful businessman when she helped him secure a loan to import furniture from China. Armed with millions of Sudanese pounds , her husband left her and disappeared. With limited resources, E couldn't afford to pay back the loan.

Her petite form crouched together and her head tilted back, she now calls an overcrowded cell her home.

The cell, originally built for 10 women, is now home to 50 women.

When she is asked about her situation, she tries to change the subject; E has accepted her fate and knows that there is nothing to be done about it.

The woman next to her, a mother of two in her early 30’s, knows what it's like to be in her shoes. She owes 150,000 USD to the bank. Like E, she regrets trusting her husband.

After hearing their stories, I couldn't help but feel powerless. I wanted to be rich enough to bail them out. I wanted to pay their debts and take them home to their children. My aunt works hard and tirelessly to raise funds to bail out a few women, the ones with the least debts. With the help of other concerned women, enough funds were raised to help a number of women pay a large part of their debt. Many remain incarcerated while their husbands are free.

My review of in natural colors (www.menassat.com)

2010-01-26T16:02:00.001-08:00

The struggle of young Egyptian artists in natural colors

Posted January 22nd, 2010

In Natural Colors, Egyptian director Osama Fawzy's latest film, has caused a stir. Among its critics, students and staff from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo where the film is set have protested at "a distortion of their image on the big screen." Reem Shawkat went to see the controversial film.

Reem Shawkat

Extracts from the film "With Natural Colors", by the Egyptian director Osama Fawzy's.

A few weeks ago, I was told that a new movie featuring art students had come out. An avid art lover, I rushed to the movies to watch art students paint and try to interpret, re-interpret, and reflect on their paintings.

I was excited. The actor playing Yousef, the film's main character, was my classmate in sophomore year. We took history of the theatre and drama classes together. Yosra Al-Lozy, his co-star, also went to my university. I took a class with her brother and I became acquainted with her mother when I organized a poetry night.

Finally, I believed, my generation, with all its contradictions, frustrations and attempts at escapism, was going to be represented.

The film opens with a clip of a young man by the name of Yousef, played by Kareem Qasim, reading verses from the Holy Quran, then praying to God. His prayer resonated some of my own prayers four years ago before taking my final high school exams.

Yousef is facing a serious dilemma too common to ignore in the Arab world. We are introduced to his mother's dream, to see her son become a doctor, and to his dream, to become an artist.

Yousef is fragile. He is sensitive to his single mother's sacrifices and he wants to please her, but there is one problem. He can't pass chemistry to save his life. In fact, organic chemistry makes him hallucinate. He is living in limbo. He can either pass chemistry to please his mother or follow his number one passion, art.

Yousef, like other young Arab men and women, is torn between his dreams and a society that sees science as superior to social sciences and the arts.

Artists are struggling all over the world, but sadly, in the Arab world, they struggle to secure much-needed resources in the form of grants, residencies and venues to showcase their work. I wasn't an art student, but as a student of journalism and sociology, I struggled to convince others that what I was studying was not easy or unproductive. Art students were met with even more criticism. Not only is art viewed as a major for the eccentric, but its students are written off as elitists living in their own secure bubble.

Chemistry pushed Yousef into the Faculty of Fine Arts. The school is a microcosm of Egyptian society - the ultra-religious with their beards and loud calls for prayers during classes, the westernized urban youth struggling to grasp the glaring contradictions between their religious and cultural heritage and their lifestyle, and the corrupt professors who are willing to sell grades in exchange for sex, money or even valuable resources.

In the film, Yousef leaves the Faculty of Fine Arts to retake his exams. The trigger is nudity as he decides to leave art school because he feels guilty about painting naked bodies. But his inability to do anything other than art eventually pushes him back to art school a few weeks later.

Art is embodied in the bodies of man and woman, declares professor Naeem in the movie. Always in shorts, summery Hawaiin t-shirts, and with a scooter, his chosen method of transport, Mahmoud Al-Lozy shines in his role as Naeem, the hip and least corrupt professor on campus.

He brings in a number of male and female models who strip in front of his class. Yousef is flabbergasted, the veiled girls look away, and the students with beards are too shocked to even utter a word.

Naeem is uncompromising and, like Al-Lozy in his theatre classes at the American University in Cairo in real life, is a master at teaching students about art by teaching them about life.

Art vs. religion

Religion is so obvious in Egypt today that it's difficult not to include it in movies. With Natural Colors features veiled women and we see prayers or gatherings encouraging extremism, as well as many Muslims struggling to balance their faith with a modern life.

In this movie, the struggle between religion and modernity is portrayed through the voice of youth. It focuses on the internal dialogue of Egypt’s youth. They want to party, love and express their love by having sex, but then there is always remorse.

Elham, played by Yousra Al-Lozy longs for Yousef's kisses. She sleeps with him, but cries in his arms after sex. Guilt-stricken, she dons the veil, then covers her face with the niqab. We don't see her face much after that and she disappears from the movie. We only see her tearful green eyes in one scene when she is asking God for forgiveness and then again when she glances at Yousef. She stops returning his calls, because, she says, she has to chose between leading a sinful life or being a Muslim.

The struggle to choose

In my opinion, Elham emulates the main idea of the movie: struggle. All the students and professors are struggling to make choices.

Yousef has to choose between medicine and art. He has to chose between alcohol and his prayer mat. He has to chose between being corrupt and selling his art or not.

There is the gay professor with little choices to make, and the young female professor in tight blouses and short skirts having to chose between money and love. A young artist played by Ramzy Lener has to choose between taking responsibility for a child born out of wedlock or living the free life that he thinks he deserves.

Yousef's struggle is always connected to religion, and throughout the movie, he is pursued by a sheikh. He haunts him like a ghost, appearing in different scenes and trying to lead him onto the right path. He chases him around to remind him that art is haram. He wants him to make the right choice.

Artists, we are reminded, are frowned upon by society. They are seen as enemies of religion by extremists who outlaw any work of art that is not a mere representation of nature.

Critics divided

I was introduced to the film’s director, Osama Fawzy, through his controversial 2004 film, I Love Cinema. Set in the 1960s, the story is told from the point of view of a six year old boy, Na'em, who loves cinema.

The main family in the film is a Coptic Christian family, a minority that is rarely represented in mainstream Egyptian cinema. As in In Natural Colours, it discusses the themes of freedom, the struggle to make choices, religion and art.

Some critics see Yousef as the grown-up version of Na'em, and the movie as a continuation of Fawzy's journey to tackle all the restrictions forced on art in all its forms.

Whether it is film-making, painting, writing or event performing, the significance of art is often overlooked. But art, contrary to a luxury, is a necessity in all societies that helps them grow and reflect on their development through creative means.

According to Fawzy, "freedom of thought and creativity is a victim of change in society, because of the wide incursion of fundamentalists, even in the Faculty of Fine Arts, which is a symbol of freedom of creativity in the country.”

The film was attacked when the trailer came out, and critics established a facebook group calling for a general boycott of the movie. Art students protested the negative light in which art was presented.

Fawzy was shocked at how the movie was received and perceived. He viewed his film as much more than a film about Art students, in his view, it was a documentation of Egyptian society over the last 25 years, the time interval was changed to five years to make more sense.

A reflective film

Fawzy's films tend to suffer. Their production time is usually longer than that of commercial films, and production companies tend to avoid artistic films like his because they don't consider them to be profitable.

Commercial films -the majority of films produced in Egypt- are box office successes because they are embraced by an Egyptian population desperately seeking a laugh. Perhaps the economic woes and difficult life in present-day Egypt forces Egyptians to shy away from more serious and reflective movies. They want a funny movie with one or two good songs to sing along to.

More reflective movies are rare, and this is mainly why I was certain that I wanted to watch this one.

As much as it was criticized for its unrealistic portrayal of art students, the critics should be reminded that any faculty or institution is only representative of the society in which it exists.

And In Natural Colors doesn't present a new image of artists to the Egyptian public. The image of artists here is already negative.

First Sudanese LGBT Oganization

2010-01-13T06:53:00.000-08:00

http://freedomsudan.webs.com/apps/photos/

About Freedom Sudan:-

Freedom Sudan is the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organization in Sudan. Our organization has been formed in December 2006. Our status is illegal. Homosexual behavior is illegal in Sudan and homosexuals facing the death penalty. That's why our organization was formed in secret and all our activities are carried out secretly, hoping that one day we will get accepted in our communities and even in our families, and hope that we can be FREE to be the way we are. Freedom Sudan is an organization run by volunteers only.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Sudan Elections

2009-11-18T02:19:00.000-08:00

Want to read party profiles and know more about the elections in Sudan? Interested in reading about the Debated issues?

Follow the elections @ http://www.electionnaire.org/index2.php?q=4&a=-1

Thanks to the Peace Research Institute @ the University of Khartoum (U of K) , Media in Cooperation and FES sudan, you have a unique website with a lot of resources.

Meeting the King of Cool or the King of People of Color (his emphasis!)

2009-11-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

It was about 1 pm when Brooke called me. My friend was sleeping over and I was making her breakfast. Yes, we slept in, guiltlessly. The conversation was short and to the point.

"Samuel L Jackson is here for the Cairo international film festival, he is giving a lecture at Sofitel Sheraton at 4, I have a press pass, you can come with me if you want. Can you?"

I was flabbergasted. I've yet to meet any hollywood celebrities. I was a building away from George Clooney when he came to Cairo! Yeah.... I did say hi to John Prendergast ( he is not part of Hollywood, but he is a celebrity and he is good friends with Don Cheadle, so it counts!) .

Me:- Brooke, I will get back to you in less than 10 minutes.

I DID!

"Yes, I can make it, I will be there at 3:30, we can meet in the lobby!"

So I dress up, formal, but not too formal. Funky formal. Jeans (the new ones from Mango), formal white shirt from Bhs, brown boots and my long-champ, the medium-sized one.

I took money from my emergency wallet ( in case he agrees to have coffee with us , I'm sure we are gonna go somewhere expensive! ( always be prepared if you want my advice!).

Then, I started panicking. What am I gonna do with my hair? It was oily as hell and thanks to this new oil I'm using (it really works with my Sudanese hair:d), it smells funny.

So, I had to think fast. Damage control 101! If I washed it, it's gonna be all over the place in exactly an hour.

Despite the oil and "funky" smell, I loved the curls!

So, I compromised. I let it down and used loads of perfume (Channel No.5, to add some class), I'm meeting Samuel L Jackson after all.

4:00 pm

We are inside the hall, the sheraton room, and it looks like he is gonna be late. I run into a few people I know. Cairo is a big city with loads of familiar faces!

Waiting.

4:40 pm

He enters the room, completely ignoring the photographers swarming around him like bees. He looks cool, no wonder he is called the king of cool..... He is so collected and confident. Standing at 6'3, it's hard to miss him.

He sat down between this other guy and Ezzat Abu-Ouf (Egypt's Harrison Ford).

Hemade a few jokes, we laughed.

I smiled at him.

I was sitting in the third row, but I was right in front of him. We made sure we sit in the exact middle! We made great eye-contact a few times and I kept nodding at him for no apparent reason.

He seemed nice, not as star-struck and arrogant.

Question 4:- what do you think about Egypt and do you feel safe here?

King of Cool:- I feel safe anywhere if there are people of color.

.................................

Awkward silence followed the awkward reply.

Awkward.

More awkwardness.

First of all- Egyptians don't think of themselves as people of color. This is a very American term and concept.

Second of all-Do you or do you not feel safe in Uncle Sam, Sam?

Third of all- That was just inappropriate and confusing to the audience.

It sure was a miss!

Then, an Algerian film-maker asked him if he would like to be in one of her movie( she is a film-maker). He said yes, write me a cheque for $ 2 M and we will talk.

(No independent movie for you Mr.cool :)

I have to admit, he was funny and he gave me a sweet smile:)

PS:- can you give me $2 M before I do anything because I'm me?:D

The art of job-hunting

2009-10-27T12:34:00.001-07:00

Wholeheartedly Sudaniya is a graduate!

After 3.5 years of writing papers, pretending to study, taking notes, interning, volunteering and attending lectures given by Jimmy Carter, the Queen of Swaziland (no I don't mean Switzerland) and Jerry Leach (he is such a sweetheart!), she is done. No more papers and waking up at 5 in the morning to register for classes and no more student discounts (I just realized how useful being a student is a month ago when I finally decided to get fit and join the gym!).

After a summer of pretending to be working and doing important things...wait:- why do people ask you about your plans a week after you graduate? are you expected to get a job the day you graduate?

I wanted to chill the whole summer,but I did end up working as a research assistant twice and doing some volunteering ( I was a lazy volunteer!) , but I did think about getting an actual full-time job. Not the 9-5 crap because once you start doing it, you are sucked in. You are in it "till death do you part".

Finally, after Ramadan...

I started job-hunting. I looked at the usual :- relief-web, alert-net, Irin news etc... Anything to do with communications in an NGO or other humanitarian vacancies. Then I had to write cover letters, now this is the difficult part, I hate writing cover letters...why? I lack the qualifications to "bull-shit". I can't convince you of something to save my life....

So after a number of cover letters..... I got lucky.

I never got any full-time job, but I did get lucky. A freelance opportunity here, an editing stint there, I managed to keep myself busy and satisifed. The hard part is when people ask me what I do. I mean, come on, working from home or in your pj's is not considered "real work" in the minds of older people ( the emphasis is mine!). I'm expected to find something proper, wear trousers , a shirt and carry a formal (black or brown) bag , wake up at 7:30, drink my cup of coffee and rush out the door.

For now, I'm gonna continue doing random things, sleeping in and reading my favorite magazines and books.

Maybe I will get a "normal" job someday, but for now, I feel very blessed:)

Pretty in Uggs!:)

2009-10-26T05:14:00.001-07:00

Who said you need to live in a cold country where it snows a lot to wear uggs:)

It was in the cold( warm compared to other countries) winter of 2006 in Cairo that I was first introduced to the wonderful Ugg boots by my best friend Sarah. We used to work with refugee children an hour away from where we lived, waking up at 7 o'clock in the coldest winter ever was not my favorite experience!

Sarah is so in-love with the Chest-nut Uggs (see picture)

For a great ugg-boot brand, check out Ugg boots. They offer very warm and comfortable ugg boots at great prices!

PS:- If you decide to buy whooga ugg boots, mention my blog and get a $20 discount!:)

Ugg boots

Poetry

2009-10-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

I'm loving Kenyan poet and artist, Shailja Patel.

Check her out @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8bxP2AP5xQ&feature=player_embedded#at=177

Since when is wearing trousers against the law?

2009-09-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

Most of you don't know me in person, but anyways, I love Jeans...a lot. I wear jeans all the time, everywhere, even in Sudan. So when Lubna and a bunch of other women were arrested for wearing pants, I was shocked.
This is how I see it, Lubna is a journalist (so she is targeted by the government) and not only that, she writes a controversial column and being the brave woman she is, she is not afraid to write about anything an anyone. So the whole thing was probably targeted at her.

she was arrested with other women at a cafe in Khartoum for "indecent dress" (sounds vague?). This doesn't really happen in Sudan, you just don't get arrested for wearing pants!
A Sudanese official said she was actually arrested for smoking shisha. Again, you don't get arrested for smoking shisha.
So why was Lubna arrested?

Someone is not telling us the truth.

Jamie Oliver and the Sudanese in him

2009-08-27T18:17:00.000-07:00

The Insider is spreading the word and it seems to be true. His great uncle told him a family secret before his death, he is 1/6 Sudanese.

Maybe the Naked Chef should consider visiting K-town:)

PS:- Jamie, I totally love how we see you go shopping for all the food you are planning to cook:)

Amnesty International and Domestic Violence

2009-07-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

Amnesty International doesn't only expose atrocities worldwide, they also have a new unique interactive billboard. Looking at it, you see a happy couple, when you look away, the image changes to one of domestic violence.

This is what happens all over the world, domestic violence happens behind closed doors, we don't see it. so we don't always acknowledge it's existence.

Great job Amnesty International.

I miss I have no tribe, I'm Sudanese!

2009-06-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have been gone for a long time. I can summarize my reasons in one word " senior year"! I was a senior and exactly 10 days ago, I received my undergraduate degree. I'm a graduate. I was busy with studies for a year. I've been horrible to this blog. I don't even think about that much anymore. I stopped bringing up my involvement in my blogosphere. Now, I want to come back and start blogging, wholeheartedly. I've grown a lot in the past year and I want to communicate that. This blog contributed to my personal growth. I've meet great people, read great posts and opened up to a whole new world.

Armed with my diploma , nothing can stop me;)

The first thing I want to do now is:- introduce myself. This blog was written by Kizzie. Kizzie was actually the name of the cat I wanted to get. I ended up not getting it, but I was attached to it, it was the first thing that came to mind when I wanted to start a blog. Kizzie became me and I became Kizzie. When I was an intern at a refugee council last January, I used to make phone calls to schedule appointments with guest-speakers for our weekly or bi-monthly events, I used to forget and say, hey I'm Kizzie.

A small introduction:-

My name is Reem. I just graduated from the American University in Cairo with a BA in Journalism and Mass Communications and a minor in Sociology. I live in Cairo for now, moving back home in September or October. I'm a research assistant this summer. I'm always doing things all over Cairo. A typical day for me is spent going to at least 3 different places. I love eating out, if you are in Cairo, go to Maison Thomas (they have amazing pizza and their cheesecake is soo amazing!). I have great friends here, my best friend Sarah just left to the Netherlands and I'm trying to adjust to life without her! So, we are going separate ways, but looking at the bright side, there is skype ,g-chat and the good old way of communicating - writing letters (Yes, I'm old-fashioned sometimes) I'm a city girl! I don't like the country -side that much. I can live there for a bit, but I love chaos and night-life!

Favorite Drink:- Irish-cream latte from Starbucks/ green-tea latte from Second Cup

Favorite Food:- Cake ( Carrot cake and strawberry cheese cake)

Obsessions:- watching sit-coms/ coffee/volunteering

The Death of Nimery

2009-05-31T05:17:00.000-07:00

It's funny how the Sudanese people hated him, but now we have good memories of the Nimery days.

Rest in Peace.

We will never understand you.

A Graduate

2009-05-28T06:36:00.001-07:00

I finished my last exam yesterday. I'm leaving 3.5 great undergraduate years behind me!

I can finally return to this blog:)

Cairo on $2 a day

2009-04-28T06:38:00.001-07:00

Elaine @ Expat Egypt wrote an excellent account of trying to live like the average Egyptian of a day

Shobra is a neighborhood of faded glory. Stately building facades, covered by centuries of Sahara sands, cast shadows on the crowded working class streets below. This is the neighborhood of taxi drivers, policemen and waiters.

Al Ahram, Egypt’s leading newspaper, estimates that 50 percent of Egyptians live on $2 a day or less. So when I decided to investigate what living on $2 daily entailed, it made sense to head to Shobra, the “shaabi” heart of Cairo.

I took all the money out of my wallet, save for 11 Egyptian pounds, which is equivalent to $2. I wanted to see if I could get by for a day spending no more than your average Egyptian.

Leaving my apartment in the leafy upscale neighborhood of Zamalek, I waved off a handful of taxi drivers and headed to the metro. The walk was long and inconvenient but I couldn’t afford to take one form of public transportation to get to another.

I paid my 1 pound near Cairo’s impressive opera house and headed out on an overcrowded train, choked with the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke. I considered the Metro fee to be the cost of a commute to work.

I asked the man standing next to me at which stop I should get off. He raised his eyebrows in alarm.

“I haven’t heard of a foreigner going to Shobra before,” he said in Arabic.

At the man’s suggestion, I got off at Ramses Square on the outskirts of Shobra and began to wind my way through the packed streets.

My first order of business was to find lunch. I had skipped breakfast, worried I wouldn’t have enough cash to last me the day, so I looked for a corner sandwich shop — the kind that the working class frequents.

Before I could find one, I passed a Koshari stand. Koshari, a dish made up of macaroni, rice and lentils, is informally referred to as the national dish of Cairo. But at 2 pounds a dish, it was out of my reach.

A few doors down, I found what I was looking for and went in. The men behind the counter gave me the rundown of prices. Liver sandwiches, a local favorite, cost 2 pounds. Cheaper, at 75 piasters (100 piastres = 1 pound) were foul, falafel and French fry sandwiches.

I knew foul, a bean dish akin to refried beans, to be a working class favorite, so I chose it over the falafel balls crackling in a nearby pot of oil. The sandwich guy took a scoop of the foul, stuffed it in a pita, topped it off with a little bit of lettuce and tomato, and handed it to me.

As I walked down the street munching on my lunch, I figured I ought to top the meal off with a bit of fruit. A few blocks down, a man selling tangerines offered me one for 25 piastres. So I began digging through the crate looking for one that wasn’t too soft or full of holes. It wasn’t easy, but I found one that looked palatable enough.

From there I headed to a shisha cafe for a smoke. Shisha is a water pipe used for smoking tobacco, known commonly in the United States as a hookah. Here, shisha is less of a luxury than it is a social obligation. Men from the top to the bottom of the economic food chain gather in cafes daily to smoke and talk.

I found a small spot just off a main road. Some men sat on chairs outside, while others played backgammon inside. I sat down near the counter and ordered a tobacco flavored shisha (this, as opposed to the fruit-flavored tobacco preferred by most foreigners) and a tea.

“Do you want bongo with the shisha,” asked the waiter. Bongo is the popular term here for marijuana.

Never having been asked that before and not sure whether he was kidding, I waved him off with a laugh. But then I heard him engage in a fierce conversation with the other waiter. The only words I picked up were “bongo” and “foreigner.”

Alarmed, I repeated to him that I didn’t want marijuana, which is common among the working classes, and he assured me I’d only be smoking tobacco.

The men next to me were eating lunch, and they promptly asked me to join them. It is a cultural obligation here to offer food to others. In a taxi, the driver might offer his passenger the last bite of a sandwich. Anybody eating on the street will offer what they’re eating to just about anyone who passes by.

It’s courtesy, but it’s also the basis of a social safety net that insures everyone eats and survives despite low wages and high unemployment.

The men ate a salad with tomatoes, cucumbers and a cheese called Old Cheese, which looks (and smells) as the name implies. They had bread and green beans on the side.

Finishing up my smoke, I paid 2 pounds and headed off down the street until I ran into an older man who approached me speaking perfect English.

“Don’t go this way anymore,” he said. “The people here are all right. The ones past the tunnel that way are stupid.”

After thanking him profusely for his advice, I bee-lined in the direction he’d warned me against. After a few blocks, I found myself in a poorer section of Shobra. With the grand, if faded, architecture behind me, I saw only poor concrete structures. Donkey carts ruled there, and many of the smaller side streets were unpaved.

With 7 pounds in my pocket, and one of those dedicated to the return metro ride, I went to find dinner. Inspired by the men sitting next to me at the cafe, I stopped off at a produce market. Two tomatoes and two cucumbers cost me 2 pounds. I found an Old Cheese vendor a few blocks later and paid 2 pounds for half a kilo.

That would be good enough for an evening salad. I rode the metro home with 2 pounds to my name. I was discouraged that my 11 pounds was really only enough to buy the food and drink.

Yet many Egyptians support a family on the same amount

Sudan's new envoy

2009-04-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

His name is Scott Gration and he is America's new envoy to Sudan. They said he is the perfect man for the job since he grew up in the Congo and he speaks Swahili.....

Is Sudan the Congo and do we speak Swahili?:S

Lost my phone

2009-03-30T05:52:00.000-07:00

Grrr. Ok I admit it was my fault.
I left my phone next to my bag and left it there for 3 minutes to go to the loo. I came back and it wasn't there:(
I know I should've known better, I usually take my phone with me. I forgot to do that today:(

This is so frustrating because I've a lot of numbers and really nice messages and I feel so alienated and lost without it. I also hate wearing watches and now, I can't tell what time it is. I can't look at my phone during class to tell when this class is going to end (only some classes:)!!!)

Is it possible to respect one of the "Pope's" statements?

2009-03-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Pope is in "Africa" and he is making headlines. It's good that he is here given that at least 1/5th of Africans are Catholics, however, his opposition to condoms is completely unfounded.

In some AIDS-ravaged African countries, abstinence is not the only solution to combating AIDs. It worked in Uganda, but the shoe doesn't fit all situations here. It's not working in other countries.

Even if using condoms is against Catholicism, if it's a matter of life and death, God is forgiving.

He chose the wrong continent to make such a statement, doesn't he know how religious many Africans are? They are going to respect his words.

Our S.O.B- What comes first, peace or justice?

2009-03-07T02:58:00.000-08:00

Michael White put it in a good way @ his Guardian column .

It's not a generalization to say that the overwhelming majority of Sudanese people despise Bashir. They would love to see him ousted, they desperately want a new president. But the ICC's arrest warrant was issued at a tricky time. The international community expresses moral outrage at "some" conflicts and there are obvious double-standards to matters of justice. So, Bashir is going to rally support from his people and the Arab and African worlds.

The scenario is such a common post-colonial one, the south VS. the "hypocritical" north.

Justice is seen to be selective. The scary part is human rights abusers such as Bashir , Mugabe and many others are manipulating this to their own benefit. So until "all" countries are literally forced to ratify the Rome Stature and all human rights abuses go punished, Mugabe is going to call aid agencies a colonial conspiracy and Bashir is going to call the ICC the White Man's Tribunal.

So Michael White got it right, He may be a SOB, but he is our SOB.

I really think that it's absurd to say that Bashir shouldn't be tried because other war criminals are not tried and accused of committing atrocities, it's only fair for Bashir to be tried along with other war criminals. The list is long...

Update:-

James Tyson from NJ wrote an interesting letter in the NY Times. He said that "Regardless of the local tumult it may temporarily create, or the difficulties involved in actually arresting President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, the court’s decision to uphold the preservation of human rights over sovereign immunity sets an essential precedent".

Let's revisit the "local tumult" it's going to create for a bit. It seems that the only individuals benefiting from the decision right now are activisits living in faraway places. In Darfur, the effects were definitely felt, many aid organizations were kicked out. People are surprised, they obviously forgot the Government of Sudan's recent warnings. A UN official called it a "worst case scenario". What did people expect? The government is going to hold it's citizens hostage while it buys more time to stay in power and rally support against what they called the "white man's tribunal".

Update:- I found an interesting article in the Economist about trying Bashir in Sudan.
Read it

"It is an intriguing proposal. The idea of mixing national and international procedure has been accepted in Sierra Leone and Cambodia. And Mr Mahdi has huge weight, as head of the Umma party, Sudan’s main opposition. He was the last prime minister to be democratically elected, back in 1986. He is also the spiritual leader of the powerful Ansar sect. Like many others, he says an ICC indictment of Mr Bashir would lead to “chaos” in Sudan; he hopes that his third way would “reconcile stability with accountability”."

As much as this idea seems noble. Sudan's judiciary is a total mess.

I know since we had to bribe someone to give us our own house back.

Sudanese law doesn't exactly include laws against war crimes or crimes against humanity, unless you want to try Gosh and Bashir for murder, it's difficult to try them in Sudan. Even if the trial was to take place in Sudan, we have to abide by international law. Let's not forget that trying a president is merely a "symbolic" act. Even if he went to prison or faced execution, Justice doesn't end there. Militias need to be tried. Torturers need to be charged. Embezzlers need to be located.

Note to the Save Darfur Coalition and George Clooney:- applaud your success for now given that you are not going to be in Sudan with us nursing a disintegrating country when "things fall apart" :)

An Example I thought of :-
I tried to think of something to describe the arrest warrant, this is what came to mind.

300,000 people died in 6 years of fighting in Darfur, we need to bring their killers to justice.

Imagine this for now, there is a house on fire. Some people are dead and some are stuck in a room and you have the means to save them. What do you do? Do you start collecting dead bodies for burial or do you save the individuals stuck in a room?

By choosing justice before peace, we are burying the dead bodies and not taking into consideration the millions of people we need and we could save.

Sudan is waiting for Justice

2009-03-03T02:19:00.000-08:00

The long awaited arrest warrant of Bashir is due to be released tomorrow afternoon. Some Sudan "experts" forsee a bigger Sudanese crises, the disintegration of the Sudanese state. Andrew Natsios, former US envoy to Sudan is worried about a Somali-like situation with an Afghanistan-like intervention.

African and Arab leaders are standing together against the ICC's decision. When the arrest warrant is issued, they are going to be very silent. Bashir's party is already divided. Most of his advisors asked him to step down. He wouldn't.

Let's see what's going to happen

Tayeb Salih, you introduced the world to African literature

2009-02-28T07:42:00.001-08:00

RIP Tayeb Salih. You wrote the best Arabic novel of the 20th century and one of the very first novels written in post-colonial Africa.

Obituary written by Sudanese/British author Jamal Mahjoub

Tayeb Salih, who has died aged 80, was Sudan's most illustrious literary figure, a critically acclaimed and popular writer in the Arab world. His later work was largely overshadowed by Mawsim al hijra ila al shimal (Season of Migration to the North, 1966), a slim, idiosyncratic novel that was immediately lauded and has subsequently been translated into more than 30 languages. It has spawned vast amounts of academic analysis.

It tells the story of a man who returns to his village after years of study abroad, only to discover that another man, Mustapha Sa'eed, has taken his place. A strange, elliptical work, Season of Migration to the North reads like a series of theatrical monologues which map out the distance between the rural countryside of northern Sudan and cosmopolitan London of the 1920s. Colonial and sexual conquests compete across the east-west divide in one of the most remarkable encounters of its kind. In a form of revenge for the colonial "taking" of his country, Sa'eed devotes himself to seducing English women by posing as the fulfilment of their Orientalist fantasies.

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Salih refused to settle for a simplistic denouncement of colonialism. In Salih's world, everything remains uncomfortably ambiguous. It is this ability to evade all fixed labels that accounts for the novel's longevity. Salih manages to put his finger on the root of our intertwined fates. The novel is also equally critical of parochialism and the hardships endured by women in traditional society. Edward Saïd described it as being among the six finest novels of modern Arabic literature. In 2001 it was declared the most important Arabic novel of the 20th century by the Arab Literary Academy in Damascus.

Salih was a quiet, courteous man. Respectful of tradition, yet not bound to it, he enjoyed intellectual discussion and always had time for younger writers. He played an active role in the world of letters, presiding over literary prizes and speaking at conferences throughout the region. A popular series of his collected works is widely available in Arabic and reflects a much more diverse range of writing than is obtainable in translation, spanning decades of fiction, literary criticism, travel writing and political commentary.

Born in Karmakol, near Al Debba, Salih moved to Khartoum as a young man to attend Gordon Memorial College (later Khartoum University). In 1952 he travelled to London as part of the first generation of Sudanese educated in Britain in preparation for independence, which came in 1956. Salih's encounter with the west was to mark his fiction and his life, though his depiction of village life in northern Sudan formed the centrepiece of most of his fiction. Through a rendering that is both realistic and absurdist, he transformed that humble setting into a universal stage.

Salih was to remain abroad for most of his life. He joined the BBC Arabic Service, becoming head of drama, followed by a period with the Ministry of Information in Qatar before he joined Unesco in Paris. Britain was to provide a fixed point of reference on his errant course. His life, like his work, reflected the cadences and discords of bridging the gap between east and west. He married a Scottish woman, Julia Maclean, in 1965 and settled in south-west London.

In the 1990s, in an article entitled, "Where did these people come from?", Salih voiced his disapproval of the Islamist regime in Khartoum, questioning the displacement of Sudanese culture and values in the name of Islam and "national salvation". Season of Migration to the North, which is sexually very frank and depicts the drinking and bawdy language of the villagers, was banned briefly, though it did little harm to a book that was already a classic.

In one of Salih's best-known short stories, A Handful of Dates, a young boy comes to realise that the idyllic world he lives in is ruled by tensions of which he is unaware. For the first time, he sees that life is full of choices and is obliged to face the fact that his beloved grandfather is not so innocent. It is this depiction of complicity and disgust that conscience can evoke that makes Salih a writer of truly universal proportions, and one whose work will continue to resonate through coming generations.

He is survived by his wife, Julia, and three daughters, Zainab, Sara and Samira.

• Tayeb Salih, writer, born 12 July 1928; died 18 February 2009

Release Nahla Bashir Adam now!

2009-02-24T22:10:00.000-08:00

Front Line is deeply concerned following reports that human rights defender, Ms Nahla Bashir Adam, was arbitrarily arrested and detained on 15 December 2008. Nahla Bashir Adam is Deputy Director of the Youth for Children Association (YCA), a non-governmental non-profit organization which was founded in 2003. The YCA works in South Kurdufan to promote the rights of children and awareness on issues such as education and health regarding children, especially those with disabilities and chronic diseases in Sudan.

Read More and take action:

http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/1808/action

I urge the authorities in Sudan to:

1.Immediately and unconditionally release Nahla Bashir Adam, as I believe that she is being held solely as a result of her legitimate and peaceful work in the defence of human rights;

2.Carry out an immediate, thorough and impartial investigation into the arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment of Nahla Bashir Adam, with a view to publishing the results and bringing those responsible to justice in accordance with international standards;

3.Take all necessary measures to guarantee the physical and psychological security and integrity of Nahla Bashir Adam;

4.Take measures to end all intimidation of human rights defenders in Sudan so that they are free to continue with their activities in defence of human rights without fear of reprisals

Talk about Conspiracy Theory.

2009-02-15T10:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivblcs4Dy8o&hl=un

It's good to be home!

2009-01-26T05:54:00.001-08:00

My cousin. I'm really proud of her.

Becoming a Refugee (part 1)

2009-01-26T05:39:00.000-08:00

Our country receives refugees, it doesn't produce refugees, we believe. We like to think of our country as safe and stable. Stable is the keyword here. We want to leave it and come back only to find it there. To find that nothing has changed. It is still the same.

We want to make future plans and we want to dream . We want to believe that our future is in our country. We want our dreams to become true even if a new government came to power.
We want to live in our country with dignity. We want to make the choice to leave it or not.
We don't want to be forced out of it. Noone wants to live in exile, noone wants to be a refugee. We think of Refugees as second-class citizens . The host countries are like airports. They wait there until they can go back to their homelands. They wait while we take our country for granted.

My parents used to take Sudan for granted. My dad was a doctor. We lived in a nice apartment in Khartoum. My mother loved her career and we even had a good old Eritrean nanny. Her name was Momena and we called her Nana.

Then the coup happened.

On the 30th of June 1989, the army was on the streets. It didn't take long until we heard the coup music on the radio. The familiar music they play everytime a coup happens.

We've had so many coups in Sudan. In some places,people vote to bring a new president to power, in other places, you just wake up one day only to find out you don't even know the name of the current president.

No one expected the government to last long, I mean who would have thought an Islamist government would find any support in Sudan?

20 years on, we were proven wrong. They did find a place in Sudan through terrorism.
My dad was told he is now a retired man. He was in his 30's at the time. Apparently, he was on the government's blacklist because he was in the opposition. All of a sudden, he found himself unemployed with the rest of his friends. They compromised the professional class in the Sudan. If you wanted a job, you had to be with them. You had to support the regime if you wanted food on the table.

He looked everywhere for any kind of job . Finally, he found a job. He became a truck driver.

To be Continued

In the memory of Emma McCune, support the Emma Academy

2009-01-14T02:15:00.000-08:00

About Emma:-

Emma McCune was a British aid worker working in Sudan in the 1980's and early 1990's. She was also the wife of "rebel leader", Riek Machar. She was killed in a car accident in Kenya in 1993 at the age of 29.

Emma saved at least 150 war orphans before her death. One of them is world renowned rapper, Emmanual Jal.

In her honour, support the Emma Academy in South Sudan

For more information go to:- www.emmaacademyproject.com

What's up with Obama?!

2008-12-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

What's up with Obama? Why is he making the wrong choices? Is this the change he was talking about?

Yes, I know it's too early to judge, but I'm about to tell my family and friends, I told you so!

First he hires Ron Emmanuel, so let's say goodbye to peace in the Middle East. This guy prefers the use of force , does he even believe in peace?

Also, is he thinking about Susan Rice? Didn't she suggest bombing Sudan?
What do people say,oh yeah.... bombing for peace is like ****ing for virginity?
Yes, Sudan is in chaos but bombing it is not going to solve any problem! Stop trying to "save "us by bombing us! I don't get your logic Rice.
Do me a favour LAY OF Sudan because you don't understand it.

Another thing,

Richard Miniter, author of Losing Bin Laden, David Rose of Vanity Fair and Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani businessman all believe that Rice was central in refusing Sudan's office to turn Bin Laden over to the US.

Searching for a feminist interpretation of the Qu'ran

2008-11-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

My good friend /blogger African Sister and I are looking for a feminist interpretation of the Qu'ran. We believe in Ijtehad, but we also believe that women should be involved in the reinterpretation of the Qu'ran.

Please suggest articles/books or anything of use.

If not, we are going to consider writing one!

Why the Arabic language is problematic in the Sudan

2008-11-13T12:12:00.001-08:00

Is colonialism really over? A question asked many times by the Southern Sudanese and other marginzalied ethnic groups. Officially, Sudan is no longer Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, but it is still a colony. A colony of the Arabized Northerners.

The colour of the colonial masters is different, but their actions are not.

Our new masters speak Arabic, practice Islam and read Naguib Mahfouz. They wear the toub and look down on "tribal" languages and custom.

My father learned the Arabic language at the age of 7. Before that, he lived with his grandmother in a village in Nubian-sudan and spoke Nubian.
Then came the move to Port Sudan. His father was working there at the time, so he left his village to join them. School was difficult, it was in another language. You couldn't speak a language other than the Arabic language there. If you break the rule, teachers beat you.
You are abused into learning a language.
He never taught me Nubian though. We always spoke Arabic at home.
I grew up believing it was for my own good. I lived in the Middle East most of my life and speaking Arabic made me less of an outsider there.
The official language of the Sudan is Arabic or so they tell us. There are currently 142 langauges spoken in the Sudan. Eight are extinct.
In the future, the Nubian language is going to be extinct too. I don't speak it , I can't pass it on to the next generation. Most Nubians my age don't speak it.
Language represents a big part of culture. If you speak a certain language, you start reading books in it, listening to music in this language and so on. Your cultural entity becomes unidenitifed.
I don't speak Nubian. I don't like listening to music in the Nubian language, it sounds weird. When I visit the ancient pyramids and monuments built by my ancestors, I wouldn't be able to understand what's written on them.

African Sister joined the blogosphere!

2008-09-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

My wonderful friend Sarah joined the blogosphere.
She is a delightful Dutch/Egyptian/Zambian university senior interested in feminism, globalization and its impact, reading, travelling, colonialism, post-colonialism, African studies, Europe, photography, shopping, and chocolate.
If you are interested in Africa, Islam, gender issues (especially in the Middle East/Africa region) and Muslim/western, Arab/western relations, this is your blog.

Read her blogs @ http://africansoulsearcher.blogspot.com/

Note:- America is under the curse of Bush

2008-09-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

9/11, Hurricane Katrina and now Hurricane Ike. Did Bush curse America?

A Long Overdue Note.

2008-09-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

The ICC issued charges against my president for war crimes and genocide...old news!

It's hard for me to write about it because I'm in the grey area right now. It brought the Sudanese together and the overwhelming majority are against the ICC's verdict to indict Bashir ( note:-We all dislike the government, but for the average Sudanese, it was a verdict against Sudan more than its head of state). We are patriotic as hell. The international community doesn't know that. So the anti-Ocampo protests surprised them.

I want to see Bashir rotting in jail , but if he promised to LEAVE US THE HELL ALONE, I personally don't mind giving him amnesty. He should bugger off and allow the formation of another transitional-government.

The international community is happy about this decision( keep in mind, most of them know nothing about Sudan and Sudanese politics). They probably don't know that Bashir is just a puppet. He didn't even go to university for crying out loud! But he is surrounded with Oxford,Cambridge and Sorbonne-educated advisers. Many of them are lawyers and they know all about international law. They know how to break the laws and get away with it.
Bashir deserves what he got, but a part of me feels that he shouldn't go down alone. He is not the mastermind.

Never mind...... I'm off to watch Bones....

Me on the BBC radio

2008-08-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

Listen to some of my comments on Africa have your say, BBC Radio.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/africa_have_your_say/default.stm
The topic was African films and as an aspiring scriptwriter, I was asked to join the discussion. It was an honour to hear some of Africa's greatest film-makers share their thoughts on the future, past and present of African films.

Pakistan and Sudan- what they have in common

2008-08-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article by Paul Sullivan about Pakistan and then it hit me...everything he said screamed Sudan.
The two countries have a lot in common

- Ranked Failed states in 2007 by ForeignPolicy
- Extremism
-Distortion of Islam
-Inequalities
-Constant war-fare ( exported to Afghanistan)
-Badly maintained infrastructure
-Ethnic biases and clashes
-Failure of political parties to unite
-Political Feuds
-Bitterness on all sides ( especially ethnic and religious minorities)
-Culture of Revenge
- A weak state

Interview

2008-08-26T16:16:00.000-07:00

The Arab Press Network interviewed me

http://www.arabpressnetwork.org/articlesv2.php?id=2564

RIP Levy Mwanawasa

2008-08-22T11:50:00.001-07:00

Mwanawasa,59, the president of Zambia died last Tuesday in a hospital in Paris.

The world is going to remember him as a competent and responsible African leader, Zambians are going to remember him for his great economic policies and the nation-wide fight against corruption.
He encouraged investments to Zambia and he stood up against African tyrants like Mugabe.

Mwanawasa was only 59 ( Mugabe is 84 and Bashir is in his early 60's and they are healthy and wealthy.)

Paying for your rights

2008-08-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

In Sudan, there is no rule of law, I believe.
I've been trying to convince myself that things in Sudan are "not that bad" for a while now.. but it is not working!
Sudanese people are known to use the word "ma3leesh" ( sorrry) and"mafi moshkela"( no problem) a lot. Something happens and we are quick to say not a big deal, thank god for everything else!
The war in Sudan is the longest-running war in Africa- it's ok, at least it's not the longest-running war in the world!
At least 2 million died in the war- well, 38 million are still living! Thank god for that!

But sometimes it's difficult to say mafi moshkela.

We have two stores in my house in Sudan. They are facing the main street and we usually rent them . A few years ago, we rented it to this guy who looks exactly like an arms dealer.
Anyways, a few years later, our deal with him was over and we wanted him out. He also didn't pay a penny in a very long time.
Apparently, the guy had contacts in the government. We had documents and we were the owners of the store. So, the court was on our side.

Wrong Answer.

I don't know how much it costs to bribe a judge , but he bribed him and we knew it.

Three years on, three lawyers and thousands of dollars later, he is out of OUR property.

I don't feel any better knowing that there is no rule of law in Sudan. I don't feel any better knowing that if you don't know the right people, you don't have any rights.

I can't help but wonder if my mother's friend gave us the best advice when she said " hire a few thugs, let them break into the store and smash everything there"
I mean I don't support violence , but what do you do to get your rights in Sudan?

Take up arms like the rebels. Be gangster about it. Bribe or my favorite, sleeping with an official to get what you want ( according to my sources: it works!)

If you want Africa to Unite, think again

2008-07-03T05:38:00.000-07:00

Countenance @ http://countenance.wordpress.com/ wrote a very interesting post about the so-called United States of Africa.

"When the African Union website opens, a welcome message declares that “Africa must unite.” But while such sentiment may be growing, an initiative to move the continent towards a formal union has failed.

Good luck. East Africans in a little east African country couldn’t even get along to the point where one ethnicity slaughtered a million of the other in an attempt at genocide in 1994.

How East Africans, West Africans, South Africans, Arabs and North Africans are supposed to compete for singular control of a unitary continental state without butchering each other is beyond me.

If there can be such a thing as a semi-successful AU, it will have to: (1) Apply only to sub-Saharan (i.e. black) Africa, (2) Allow for three sub-AU semi-sovereign entities encompassing the three major types of black Africans, (3) erase the current political map of sub-Saharan Africa, a legacy of European colonialism, and redraw the boundaries around tribes and ethnicities, (4) restore Zimbabwe and South Africa to white rule. "

I don't agree with everything he said, but the African Union needs to know that Africa is going to unite (eventually) just give it a few decades. Uniting by 2012 is out of the question.

This is Zimbabwe- The Campbell's are alive but traumatized for life.

2008-07-03T05:14:00.000-07:00

Mike Campbell (74), his wife Angela (70) and their son-in-law-Ben were abducted from their farm in Zimbabwe and badly beaten.

Hat tip- This is Zimbabwe @http://www.sokwanele.com/thisiszimbabwe/archives/1142

"Mike, Angela and Ben were taken by a “war vet” named Gilbert Moyo and approximately twenty thugs to Pixton Mine (Pixton Mine is currently being used as a youth militia torture camp). Implicated in the attack is a Zanu PF party member named ‘Mazambani’ and an army General.
Cold water was thrown over them before all were beaten.
Mike Campbell, who is 74 years old, was beaten with rifle butts. Mike has serious concussion and a broken collar bone and fingers.
Mike’s wife Angela (70) was thrown to the ground by the abductors resulting in a double fracture of her arm/shoulder, requiring surgery. One of the militia took burning twigs from the fire and put them on her lips."

The attack was of course "justified", after they were beaten to near death, they were forced to sign a formal withdrawal of their case from the SADC Tribunal.
All of this was to take their farm away.

God help them.

The Human Stain

2008-07-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

Most of the movies nowadays are based on books. Personally, I prefer the books. You just have to read The Notebook and a Walk to Remember before watching them. When you read a book, you start painting pictures of charcters in your mind.

The Human Stain was a good movie based on a great book.

The book is loosely based on the life of Anatole Broyard, a Creole ( mixed race) literary critic. When he started his career after World War 2, he decided to "pass" as white. After his death, his race was questioned in many articles. This encouraged his daughter to trace her roots back to West Africa.

The book is about Coleman Silk, a professor of Classics at a fictitious university in Massachessets. At first, we knew nothing of his background , he was just your average Jewish-American man. Earlier in the movie, he is accussed of using a racial slur and because of that, he quits his job.
The movie is narratted by Nathan Zuckerman, his close friend who ends up writing his story. Then the flashbacks start, we are introduced to his family. His mother had an affair with a white men and he was the product, a green/blue-eyed very light-skinned Colored man.

Silk just chose the easy way out, all he had to do is check white on applications.

He chose to live a lie his whole life.

nterestingly, it was played by WentWorth Miller, an American of Syrian,Jamaican, African American, Lebanese, Somali, Russian and German heritage. He describes his father as black and his mother as white.

In 1994, Miller was a student at Princeton. He published a cartoon in the Daily Princetonian. The cartoon was misunderstood and he was accussed of being a racist. Interestingly, he didn't use the race card to explain this misunderstanding.

Africa and Zimbabwe- Quiet Diplomacy

2008-06-30T03:23:00.000-07:00

Today, president Mugabe is in Egypt for a key African Union (AU) summit. He is going to look for support and for a man so convinced that the situation in Zimbabwe is "fine", he is going to deny what happened...what is happening.

After a long war with the Rhodesian government in the 1970's, Mugabe emerged as a national hero in 1980. Currently, he is an internationally-disrespected thug. Zimbabwe, the breadbasket of Southern Africa and one of the best economies in Africa went down the drain.

In an interview with Heidi Holland, the author of "dinner with Mugabe", he said "what country is [as good as] Zimbabwe?...What is lacking now are goods on the shelves - that is all."

Obviously, Mugabe doesn't live in the Zimbabwe we know. Mugabe is as insecure as an overweight high school girl, he surrounds himself with family and friends,his only supporters. His supporters keep giving him what he wants all the time, reassurance.

African leaders need to speak up and the African Union needs to impose severe sanctions on Mugabe and his cronies. Quiet diplomacy doesn't work all the time.

The Southern African community needs to take some serious action, last time I checked South Africa was losing millions of dollars because of Zimbabwe ( mainly foreign investment).