Not just new to me

One week into my stay in Sudan and I finally feel settled. I am oriented to the layout of Khartoum and Omdurman, the old city and northwest section of Khartoum state on the other side of the Nile. I know where to buy groceries. I know how to navigate the bus system, and more importantly, how to signal to the driver of these 30 passenger mini-buses packed with people that you need to get off – you snap and make a ticking-type sound. I’m even able to estimate the time of day based on the calls to worship that resonate throughout the city calling all Muslims to pray five times a day.

With the basics down, I’ve started working on my Arabic and exploring more of Khartoum. Last night I attended a community rally for Darfur run by my friend Amira (more on that once I get my photos together), and this evening my friends Sharaf and Tarig humored me by accompanying me on a trek to the Nile to take photographs of sunset over the sacred river. It seemed the perfect way to end the day… except that I forgot that we needed to transfer buses in the center of downtown Khartoum at the heart of rush hour. Unfortunately, the sun set as we were getting off the bus, so I didn’t get my sunset photos. En route to the Nile, however, we walked past an electricity plant with a water tower painted as a 7-Up can. Tarig made a joke about Egyptians coming to Sudan thinking that the tower was full of 7-Up, making both Sharaf and I laugh. I went to pull out my camera to take a photo of the tower before the sun went down when Tarig stopped me. “Don’t take a picture. The police will think you are a spy and they will take your memory card right out of your camera.” Spy? I questioned laughingly. “But it is true. This is considered a security area with the electricity and they will think you are an American spy.” So I zippered my camera case again. Thank goodness Tarig and Sharif came along with me.

Experiences such as this remind me daily that even with the increase of freedoms seen in Sudan over the past several years, this is still very much a dictatorship where traditional practices and power structures that oppress women and children and limit freedom of speech are prevalent. Today, an editor of the Khartoum Monitor, the local newspaper in English, was arrested and made to pay $5000 USD for an article he wrote last year that criticized the Government of Sudan (GoS). Over lunch, I was talking with a colleague about FGM (female genital mutilation) and my experience seeing it while amongst the Massai. For some reason, I had foolishly assumed that many of the women my age, who are social change activists and of a progressive political nature, are not circumcised, particularly here in Khartoum. But in fact, almost all of them are circumcised. However, many girls born after 1985 (particularly in Khartoum) are not circumcised, and the practice is now, thankfully, on the decline.

1985. That was the year the dictator Jaafar Nimereri was swept from office by a military coup, the same fashion in which he took the government in 1969, and democracy was re-instated in Sudan. This democratic interlude lasted only a few years before the current president, Omar al-Bashir, took power in 1989. 1986 was the last time the Sudanese people voted for Members of Parliament and for President. All of the women who are currently MP’s in the National Assembly are appointees. In signing the CPA in 2005, the GoS agreed to democratic elections in 2008 with international observers. An Election Commission of 11 appointees (all men) is currently creating the timeline, guidelines, and procedures for these elections (to the best of my understanding).

Thus, I decided that I will do my first training (of three) for the women in SuWEP this Thursday on political campaigns: “Electing Women to Office: Running a Political Campaign”. The other two trainings I am doing over the course of the next two weeks are on fundraising and advocacy. I am nervous about doing this election training. Voting and political campaigns are entirely new to the women here, and I worry that with the translation into Arabic of what I am trying to teach, the content and main points might be lost. How does one break down the importance of GOTV (get-out-the-vote) to people who have never voted before? I’m not quite sure, but I’m aiming to do my best. So little information exists about how the 2008 elections will run here, how the political parties and candidates will file and run campaigns, and how the voting process itself will work, that I feel like I’m creating this training in a vacuum.

In the north, the women are aiming to fill 30% of their National Assembly seats with women, and in the south, they are aiming for 20%. Currently, only 17% of the total national seats are held by women, so this is a significant increase. The need is great for women to be trained and encouraged to run for office. Let’s hope that just as I’m learning and grasping new concepts from Sudanese culture, the 30 women attending the training tomorrow will be able to do the same from my presentation of how U.S. political campaigns work. We’ll see how it goes!