Sudan In Flux. Impressions Part II

Earlier this year, I was featured in Cultural Survival about my travels and impressions in Sudan.

This is a wonderful publication that I recommend everyone to read, dedicated to indigenous rights and contemporary issues. My editor, Mark, was a wonderful jolly fellow, excited at the prospect of a photessay about the Habbessab people in north-central Sudan. Below is the pre-edit writings and cover photo of Sudan in Flux.

Enjoy.

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“Ya Habibi!” I was tackled, and lifted my off my feet in a bearhug embrace. I hadn’t seen Helima in seven years, and she hadn’t changed a bit. Barging through the house door with her seventy year old wirey frame; she was our archaeological expedition’s care-taker and surrogate grandmother. Her grin spread from cheek to cheek, and her eyes ablaze with excitment.

Neither one of us could speak the other’s language, but our smiles said all. Helima’s central African roots defined her dark aging figure and singing personality. Wrapped in neon designs and bubbling with energy and laughter, she was the Sudan I remembered. Within minutes, I was on a motor bike speeding towards her shanty home for dinner.


I was home.


As the son of an archaeologist who has spent a lifetime excavating ancient Nubia, I began another season of digging in the desert with my father. This was the second time in seven years I had visited Sudan, a tarnished country, known for its barbaric violence and chronic war. Yet there was no conflict to be found in my immediate surroundings, only a creeping modernization that was changing the very landscape.

Located some 350 km north of Khartoum, the Bayuda Desert is a sea of living sand dunes. The great Paleolithic Mount Jebel Al-Meragh, the site of our excavation, looms to the West. Spending a humbling 8 weeks in this desolate moonscape allowed me to meet, interview and begin to understand Sudan’s northern agricultural people. Descending from thousands of years of intermarriage, these farmers are a proud and unassuming people. Despite meager earnings and a rapid desertification of their land, their hospitality is constant and overwhelming.

Twenty one camels walked in unison, heading to the Hawawiri well several kilometers away. Their owners, two brothers Muhammed Ali and Abdullah approached our excavation site with proud strides.

“Salaaaam Aliekum!” He called arm outstretched in a song like voice. Like clockwork, myself included, all of our workmen raised their hands to him in response,

“Aliekum Al-Salaaam”. The response was less energetic, as these workers were city-folk, and I assumed they regarded our new desert family as country bumpkins.

Muhammed lived 2 kilometers off to the east in a small ramshackle mudbrick house typical of the region. In the mornings, amidst shovels of hot sand, we’d see his camels sauntering single file through the desert towards the watering hole in the distance. Some thirty minutes later, both he and his four year old son would be in lazy persuit with a herd of goats. This was his life. He’d stop by almost daily to chitchat about his family, and the changing living conditions.

Hawawir is a group name of some seven different subsets of people in this part of the Bayuda desert. Brothers Muhammed and Abdullah belonged to the subgroup Habassab, which according to several elders, descended from the north some 13-14 generations ago. Finding their present land unoccupied, they settled around ancient wells, and began settlements that have lasted until the present. Living sometimes up to 10 kilometers apart, family members retain a close knit group claiming territory around common wells to feed their livestalk. They spend a majority of their day tending to their herds and farms, and rely on each other in times of drought or famine. The Wadi, or valley, floods from June to September, providing beans, millet and vegetables. Otherwise, they raise camel and goats to sell in the local markets, some 3 km north in the off season. With many children and grandchildren close by, they rarely have more than the clothes on their back Despite his initial cheery grin and Sudanese hospitality, the reality of his situation eventually broke through. He approached myself and my father.

“Can I have your sweater?” Muhammed was direct, pointing to the heavy cloth on my chest. His slender boney face beemed at us at the mid day sun. It was unseasonable chilly, and last night I could see my breath in the kerosene light. His white jelabiya shirt was tattered and stained by months of use. It was his only clothing.

“My son can’t sleep at night, and we are cold. I don’t have anything to keep me warm”. After digging up all of the extra clothing possible between us, he approached us again the next day. We could only offer food and company to our Habassab neighbor, and despite his tired situation, he always declined out of pride. Over the next six weeks, he and his small family spent many hours with us, excited at our new faces, and dismayed that we couldn’t ease their situation much. Always with a huge smile of crooked teeth, he told us of his increasingly difficult existence in the desert. Bayuda seasons brought searing heat, frigid cold, floods and sandstorms, all of which had been more extreme in the past few years. Coupled with a two year drought, the Bayuda’s new highway had diverted much local traffic away from his home. This led to less trade, and more distances to travel for resources.

Both archaic and an artform, travel through the Bayuda has always been by foot, camel or car. Following previous tracks and landmarks through mountains and valleys has been a method used for hundreds if not thousands of years by desert settlers. This allowed for continual contact, trade, and inclusion of the desert tribes with others. Different tribes from many regions of the desert intermingled, and it became possible to pass down family farmland from one generation from the next. Life was about to change irreversibly. Ten years ago, asphalt began pouring onto the hot sand of the Bayuda and Nubian desert, carving out a new commerce route from the capital to the northern cataracts of the Nile. With the building of Sudan’s first major highway electricity, and the introduction of electricity, commerce from north to south became easier. It cut through some family territory, and moved significantly away from others. Dependent on the older path for trade, the nomads were suddenly isolated from the world and essentially left behind, needing to travel massive distances in order to find human contact. To compound the problem, drought and desertification ion recent years have led to crop failure and decreasing food supplies. Family units and land began to fracture, and the highway became the new lifeline. Small truck stops and nontraditional highway settlements have resulted in the desert nomads adapting to a changing reality.

It is difficult to weigh the costs and benefits for the Habassab, and other tribes buried deep in the Bayuda. Modernization and Progress show no mercy, and the result usually involves a gradual erosion of traditional culture, territory and family. These nomads are the forgotten residents of the Sudanese desert. Amidst declining resources, gradual desertification, and the pull of low wage city jobs, these traditional people are struggling to maintain their traditional economy and culture. With the northern progression of highways, electrical lines, and a burgeoning globalized economy, indigenous Sudanese culture is in flux, and a new history of the Habassab is in the making.

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