Mastering Sudan Part I

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve written in you blogger.

Remember the time you threatened to close down, and I went to tumblr and then tumblr and I didn’t understand each other and then you didn’t close down after all and then we got back together. *sigh*

Yes, well, I’m back. I quit my old job, and now I work on the radio – closer to my field and it’s kind of a nice post. So a quick recap for those who are not familiar with my blog – I am a random British raised, Sudanese woman describing my encounters since moving to Sudan in September 2012.

I am not treated as a Sudanese, but neither am I treated as a foreigner because even though I was never raised here, I am technically Sudanese, which makes it much more difficult for people to forgive my mistakes when I don’t greet them properly or say the correct line when someone dies… at first it was really upsetting… I felt very guilty but mostly I was confused - there are so many conventions and rules and it’s nearly impossible to do them all without feeling like a fraud... so I discovered a way around it.

If I wanted to live happily in Sudan, I had to remember a few simple things. 1) Kindly leave my moral compass and common sense in the cupboard along with my empty suitcase for when I leave again, and 2) Don’t think about anything.

At first I was so afraid of offending people because well, it’s really just not nice to… and in Sudan people take offence very easily – But what I discovered is that they also forgive very easily too. The best thing about this place is that as soon as people realize your intentions were not bad, they will automatically make excuses for you - forever; it’s actually really sweet – another thing that they do is they accept you regardless of who you are, no one is ever isolated. They say ‘Ho tab’o kida’ (6b3o kida) – which means ‘It’s just his/her nature’ – this is pretty much my free-pass card. Now when I don’t go to greet people, they come to me because ‘my nature is cold’ and they are not upset about it anymore. In fact, now if I do it, its like ‘wow Hind is amazing’ and if I don’t no one gets upset!!

It’s all about consistency, I realized that trying to change who I was to fit it and not offend anyone was just silly because I was setting myself up for a standard that I could not keep up with, whereas now that I’ve been branded in the ‘confused person’ category my life is pretty much awesome.