Exam Stress

Sudan Studies, Number 18, (August 1990)

Siege fever had taken grip of the teachers' 'mez'. Ustaz Abd ar-Rahim, mild-mannered head of geography at Abri Boys' School, had stacked the space under his bed with Molotov cocktails. And Mahmoud, a history teacher from Ed-Dammer, had procured a three foot iron bar which he too stowed away at easy reach beneath his mattress.

This general alert amongst my colleagues had been triggered by ominous rumours emanating from the school boarding house. The Sudan Certificate exams were only into their second day and our pupils were not happy.

They had entered the history exam, the first on the timetable, with expectations of a liberal invigilation regime about to be shattered. Ten minutes into the paper, the first of an endless stream of cheating students was detected and confronted. One irate boy caught with a crib note reportedly raised his chair above his head threatening to strike the invigilator with it.

Unable to consult their smuggled papers in the examination room, pupils filed out to the toilets in droves, hoping to glance over their pre-prepared notes there. Most were intercepted, frisked and relieved of their illegal scraps of paper. Evidence that some boys had succeeded could be seen in the form of torn strips of pages, patterned in scrawls of algebra, history and English, fluttering from the toilets, carried out towards the empty horizon on the hot breeze.

By the end of that first day, hundreds of crib notes had been seized and threats from the pupils had been heaped upon us. If the strict invigilation policy persisted we would be on the receiving end of their wrath.

The second day of exams passed in the same fashion as the first and that evening the school carpenter came to warn us of an imminent attack on the 'mez'. This had prompted Abd ar-Rahim's hurried manufacture of Molotovs and those other preparations, not usually associated with the teacher-pupil relationship.

At first we thought the sounds to be the pattering feet of a cat in the yard. But this illusion lasted for only a second. The first few stones cast were followed by a barrage of rocks and pebbles, raining over the wall into the yard and crashing onto the roof above us.

Abri rocks

Mahmoud, with his iron bar, got to the door of the yard and held it shut. The rest of us stayed under cover while the missiles and angry cries were hurled at us. The attack lasted about five minutes and the mob only moved off to pursue two teachers whom they'd spotted taking flight out of a window.

The doctor's car which doubled as an ambulance, had been in the street outside our house and was badly smashed up by flying stones. But no human casualties resulted from the students' action. The ferocity with which their displeasure had been expressed shocked only me. My colleagues quickly acknowledged that their resolve to invigilate without compromise went against the grain at Abri.

Over the years apparently, Abri had gained a reputation for being a laid-back examination venue. Parents and some local teachers cited Abri's remoteness as one justification. Their children needed a head start they argued, to make up for the poor resources on offer at the school. Teaching time was always lost during the year due to closures, water shortages, student strikes and various logistical problems. In order to put their sons on a level footing with the rest of Sudan when exam times came around, it was necessary to allow a certain amount of blatant cheating, the argument went. However, what was true of Abri in terms of limited facilities was equally true of hundreds of other schools around the country.

The step my colleagues had taken led in only one direction. We abandoned our invigilation duties and took ourselves by lorry to the regional education office in Dongola, to submit a statement, put together in conjunction with the teachers' union.

While we were going through the motions, our headmaster - an Abri man - had recruited primary school teachers and government workers from local offices, to take over the management of the exams. Those candidates identified as cheats were reinstated as far as we could tell and Abri's results in the end, seemed to be respectable enough.

I found it impossible to return to teach in the Northern Province the next year. Presumably because I'd left Abri in solidarity with the other teachers. However, the division of the education administration into academic and technical sections allowed me to switch sides, and swap Abri Boys' (academic) School for al-Ghaba Boys' Commercial (technical) School, which was still in the north.

Far less remote than Abri in the heart of Nubia, al-Ghaba was close to Dongola and I looked forward to a smoother time teaching there. Abd ar-Rahim had moved to al-Ghaba too and we settled into our new post without incident. We often reminisced about the tumultuous end to our Abri careers. On the whole, relations with the pupils had been very good. Perhaps the deeply-held aversion to examinations had little to do with lack of school facilities and everything to do with an acute dearth of university places, even for those few students who emerged from the school system with good exam results. A neighbour in Abri had summed up the extent to which school was seen as an irrelevance when asked what he intended to do on leaving. He was going to devote all of his energies he told us, to getting a visa for a Gulf country, where he could earn large sums for doing fairly menial jobs.

My hopes that al-Ghaba would be different eventually started to crumble. Solitary missiles would occasionally soar across the wall into the yard of our house. One rock cut through the air like a bullet, bounced off a table, around which a group of colleagues were playing cards, and landed at their feet without harming anyone. Compared to the mass charge that night in Abri, this was very low intensity harassment and we lived with it day to day for some time.

One night we heard the clatter of yet an other projectile hitting the roof under which six of us were trying to sleep. In the morning the precise nature of this latest salvo could be seen. Lying on the ground were the shattered pieces of a smashed bottle, around whose neck, a dark stain in the sand showed where the bottle's contents had leaked out. A singed bung of cotton wool lay in the same place. Clearly what had struck the roof the previous night had not been a stone but a Molotov cocktail. Confirmation that the academic year had come full circle. It was the morning of the first day of the Sudan Certificate Exams.

Riding the Desert Trail

Sudan Studies, Number 7 (January 1990)

Review: Riding the Desert Trail (by bicycle to the source of the Nile, by Bettina Selby. Sphere Books, Penguin, London, 1989)

This competently written account of the author's bicycle trek from the Nile Delta to the river's source at Lake Victoria in Uganda, presents a very typical traveller's log. In one sense it is a book of impressions rather gathered at speed, which barely scrapes the surface of its subject matter. Such a treatment is perhaps consistent with the transitory nature of the expedition undertaken by the author, but what she lacks in accuracy or detail, she makes up for in her sincere approach and sympathetic appreciation of the hardships endured by those who live in this region.

Just over half of the book covers time spent in Sudan and Bettina Selby dutifully records all the 'usual' things visitors encounter there. The friendliness of the people and their unstinting hospitality are present alongside the obstructiveness and apparent intransigence of Sudan's more fickle bureaucrats.

Opting to follow the Nile from Wadi Halfa rather than strike out into open desert and slog her way to Abu Hamed along the railway track (surely an impossible task by bike), the author loads her 18-speed, all-terrain bicycle into a souk lorry and enters Nubia through the 'Belly of Stones'. Alighting from the lorry at an unnamed village (most probably Abri) she moves through Sudan by pedal power for the first time. At Dongola she boards the Nile steamer which carries her upstream to the rail head town of Karima; after which she takes the train to Atbara, before mounting the saddle once again.

Inevitably her momentum is arrested when she comes up against barricades of paper work in Khartoum but she is persistent and manages to visit Renk and Nyala and gets through to Juba in a small plane piloted by an Indiana Jones clone posing as an aid worker.

The most valuable part of the book is that which deals with the author's experiences in the tragic southern region of Sudan. Not only does she paint a haunting picture of local people striving to lead normal lives amidst famine and war; her stop-over in the south gives a rare insight into the life of Juba and the ex-patriot community in that blighted part of the world.

The good intentions of Bettina Selby cannot be doubted. Her respectful adherence Sudanese dress codes, unlike the semi-naked trippers she meets on the Aswan-Halfa ferry, is the first indication of how receptive and open her attitude to her environment is going to be, and it sets the tone for the rest of the book.

Unfortunately many of her observations highlight the fact that she is taking everything in from her position on a moving platform and although insignificant in themselves, the book's errors are irksome. Had she taken a little more trouble on the southward, Halfa-Dongola leg of her trip, she would have quickly discovered that the stretch of rocky desert, empty save for a single dead tree at its halfway point - which she places after the village of Kerma - actually comes directly before that village; the place she was referring to, being Fareig.

Similarly, a stroll to the prow of the Nile steamer at some time during her three day cruise would have allowed her to quote with authority, from the brass plaque there, that the vessel was built by Clyde Shipbuilders in Paisley, instead of simply guessing that the British had, "undoubtedly built it".

Anyone who's paid any attention to her, "notorious packs of savage dogs" in Sudan knows that their notoriety stems from gross cowardice when confronted with nothing more threatening than a raised human hand. Bettina Selby's constant motion denies her the space to set these and other discrepancies to rights and it is tempting to suggest that the whole contrived venture was a pointless waste of energy. Rather, suffice it to say that the author's admirable conduct in Sudan is an example which future (sic) travellers would do well to copy. Her courage must be saluted, but the flimsiness of this well-intentioned work must call into question the validity of the short and sweet school of travel writing.

Saad Sweets had sweet wrappers to die for

From Argo to Leicester Square

Sudan Studies, Number 7 (January 1990)

It was 3.30pm on a hot dusty day in the northern Sudanese village of Argo and it was my turn to make the tea. Mohammed Osman had broken into his usual banter about my status as an 'unbeliever' as soon as we'd left the school in which we taught. In his opinion, my atheistic Scottish soul was destined to join the shrieking hordes of other 'kaffirs' in Islam's everlasting bonfire. To those of my friends who had feared for my sanity when I left the cold comfort of dreich Edinburgh Saturdays, for the blast furnace of the Sudanese desert, my tenancy of hell was already an established reality.

Sudan's detractors for a glittering cast of thousands starting with the ancient Egyptians who refer to that part of the world still beyond their ken, south of present-day Wadi Halfa, as 'the land of the dead'. Centuries later, a passing explorer by the name of Ewart Grogan, described southern Sudan as, "God-forsaken" and a, "desolation of desolations". He felt his journey to be kind of apprenticeship for existence in the afterlife, taking a consolation of a sort in the words, "I have passed through it (southern Sudan) and now have no fear of the hereafter". The north did not escape criticism of this sort. The distinguished journalist, G W Steevens, writing at the turn of the (19th - 20th) century was eloquently damning in his appraisal of the north; describing it as, "a God-accursed wilderness, an empty limbo of torment forever and ever". Try as they might, commentators found it impossible to conjure up positive images of the 970,000 square miles which constitutes Africa's largest country. Even the Sudanese who are less vituperative about their homeland, than outsiders such as General Gordon, who called the country a, "useless possession", have a saying that 'when Allah made the Sudan, he laughed'.

I was not disposed to laughter when I learned that I had been transferred from my teaching post in Argo to a new one in the remote Nubian village of Abri. My journey began in the cold 6 o'clock morning air, some two hours after the most devout had ventured into the mosques for dawn prayers. I had to take a box from the centre of the village to Kerma, a breathtakingly beautiful village, where a weekly market day meant I could catch one of the Halfa-bound lorries. A box is a Toyota pickup with two benches for passengers in the back and often has a locally made roof which provides shade for those inside and extra space for luggage or passengers on top. The concept of transport is based on the principle of moving from A to B in Sudan. The comfort of the journey is of little importance. I was not put out when I found myself pinned to my seat, with restricted breathing by the presence of two very large Sudanese ladies on either side. People overcome the hardships of such travel by a wonderful act of will. They simply ignore all the signs of pain and irritation.

Dongola 'bus' prepares to leave Omdurman

The box took us through the streets of Argo, passing Arab-style houses constructed of mud bricks and largely left unpainted, giving the impression that they were natural outcrops rising out of the sandy ground. The world of Tarmac roads was some 300 miles south in Khartoum. Drivers here lived on their considerable skills, literally piloting their vehicles through the rutted sand. Capsized lorries were not uncommon and a journey in which the vehicle did not get bogged down in deep sand at least once was an almost unheard of rarity. As we slewed through the streets, boys would jump onto the back of the truck and hang on nonchalantly, with one foot on the back steps and one hand on the rear rail of the roof rack. In four years I never saw one of these exhibitionists come to grief.

By the time we reached Kerma most of my fellow travellers had got so engrossed in conversation with each other that they'd quite forgotten how uncomfortable they were; clutching at the seats and rails unthinkingly, when the pickup bounced over rough terrain, threatening to throw us up and slam our heads against the low ceiling which bristled with exposed screws and nails.

Kerma is effectively the gateway to the Mahas region of the north. From al Ghaba south of Dongola up to Burgeig - which lies between Kerma and Argo on the east bank of the river - the people speak a local language or 'rotana' called Donagla. On Badin island which sits in the Nile level with Kerma, local people often speak both Donagla and Mahasi, of which the latter is a form of the same basic dialect and extends from Kerma as far north as Akasha; after which, yet another refinement of the language known as Halfawi is prevalent. All of these groups form the original Nubian language and culture of the region (pre-dating Arabic considerably) which is dying out in the same way that Celtic culture and Gaelic language has lost ground in Scotland.

I found the place where the lorries began their journeys in Kerma on the bank of the river. By this time the sun had begun to beat down mercilessly and it was a blessing that a row of large leafy neem trees lined the river bank offering luxurious shade to market goers, lorry drivers and loiterers alike. Behind the trees I could see large, locally-made feluccas ferrying groups of women to and from Badin island, their white patchwork sails hardly unfurled at all as they glided with silent, swan-like, majesty across the face of the Nile. A clamour rose from a line of sacking shelters in which bands of blacksmiths hammered away, sweating copiously from the combined heat of the sun and their fires, which were sustained by young men pumping bellows at their sides.

During the course of that journey (to Abri) I was treated regally by my fellow travellers. A handful of dates extended from the press of bodies; a house in a tiny Nubian village providing tea for forty of us; countless offers of water from roadside houses; invitations to share travelling meals in a tiny mosque - traditionally the place to receive strangers. Such treatment was not given exclusively to me. Some unspoken understanding meant that all present gave each other equal consideration. The Sudanese proverb, "ar-raffiq gubl at-tariq" (travelling companions are more important than the journey itself) has rung resoundingly true on every trip I have ever made in Sudan.


Puncture? 'ma fi mush killa'

If anything I grew more agitated and 'hellbound' on the homeward UK-bound journey, the further Sudan Airways took me from one of the hottest parts of the world. Heathrow engulfed me and I was again amongst a sea of fixed expressions, cold and uncommunicative; in a world where an extended kindness to a stranger could be interpreted as some kind of assault. I entered the maw of the Underground as I would the portals of the infernal regions. A passenger bumped into me neither hearing nor expecting my muttered apology and below on the platform, the guards were demons wielding the train doors as instruments of torment. I could almost detect a whiff of sulphur as I stepped onto the next train for Leicester Square.

Abu Nakhla - as smoked on Sudanese public transport