Protests in Shendi amongst other other event

Please read the previous blogs I wrote about Sudan and how incredible and wonderful it is. This experience needs to be understood in context as well as I do want to give yet another impression of Sudan as a conflict only country.

At the end of the week of the 9^th the prices for food items roes instigated by regulations of the government. Where it stood out particularly was in the bread prices. Whilst you could buy 5 breads for 1 guinea you would now only get 4. This was due to the governments regulation to raise the price for bread by 18% ( Quote: The Democrat). Of course this caused outrage among the population of Sudan, which has a high unemployment rate. We had given the students articles to read that week which were talking about different aspects of political life in Sudan ( of course Sudanese newspapers). And now felt rather uncomfortable about having possibly encouraged them to take part in a demonstration which could have become dangerous.

-a little side note here, the limitation of the freedom of press is not as half as great as we expected it. The newspapers clearly state their opinion and are straight forward in their opposition to the government of aspects of the government. Sudanese bluntness in its most lethal use. ( Usually it is just telling people they are fat or look very tired or dehydrated ;-)) Though of course you can get into deep waters with statements and I am pretty sure that being Sudanese you know way better which comments one should make and which one not. Though one is slightly above the law and definitely above conventions/ moral police request as a foreigner, we are aware theat we should tread carefully with political activities and alliances to one party or another. 

So when we went to our Arabic lesson on Monday we were warned that we might not have any students as they were all going to protest in Shendi, workers and students…. (Protests in Shendi????) When we got to class all the students were present. Well the ones who did not skip class. ;-) We asked them about and they were surprisingly unaware of the whole food issue. The next day we walked past a big group of students protesting from one faculty to another within the university compound. Mainly guys but also some girls. Being surprised or not sure whether it was because of the recently circulated video or the food prices we got informed by some of our students walking and chanting that it was the latter. Not surprised by which students were protesting and which not we decided to continue walking to our class and would attempt to hold the class.

Lykke’s class- dutiful first years were all present, my class rebellious Semester 8 was completely absent. Guess they took the chance to skip the class to focus on their research paper as it very unlikely that you would join a protest 1 month before graduation.

So we pretty much only drank a lot of tea that day and expected the next day to go back to normal.

Wednesday: Arabic Lesson in the morning, followed by a late breakfast at a students house.

Huge breakfast at a students house, the calm before the storm!

On our way back we encountered a bunch of students protesting outside the university gates where we stopped and chatted to a few and the continued towards our lecture. 5 min later the situation became heated and the police ended up using tear gas and there was sudden screams by the girls and students were running away from the demonstrations. Later on we found out that this is how demonstrations usually go but if you have never heard tear gas being shot, it does sound like guns, so we were pretty scared at the time. Not for ourselves but for the students.

We could not see what was going on but could get whiffs of tear gas tickling in our noses. There were two more waves of teargas shooting and screaming before the demonstration finally dissolved.  We did not really know what to do and how to react because one part of you agrees with demonstrating and standing up for your own rights whilst the other part just really does not want your students to be hurt. So given that it was already turning wild we opted for trying to discourage the students to get closer.

As we signed a contract to be none political at the beginning of our stay there was not much we could do so we did what all the other students did and retreated to the arts faculty.  (Besides that, you can not protest as a teacher with the students), We sat and had tea with the Dean who half laughingly informed us that this is how demonstrations go in Sudan. (This was confirmed by a good friend of ours, who said that you get used to tear gas and being arrested, that’s just how it is) and then the  Dean started to teach us Arabic- which was a rather bizarre experience given the outside situation, but hey we learned that most things are not entirely logical to our ordered little kawatcha ( white person) minds.

It is quite a shame that the protests turn into violent outbursts. It takes just a couple of heat heads to throw some stones and the situation escalates. One of the other teachers told us that on the first day of the protest, the organisers of the march politely entered the class rooms and asked him politely whether they could take the students out of class, to which he responded who ever was interested could go. It was all very civilized. It makes me wonder to where the violence starts. I know my students as polite, sometimes cheeky, young men and women who do not strike me as stone throwers but I guess it depends on how much you get frustrated with a situation.

The students were stuck on campus or in the girls’ residence, as once they would leave the university compound they would get into trouble from the police. The girls hostel is right behind where the clash between police and students was happening so  that the ones in the hostel could not get out and the ones on campus could not get home. It is about a distance of 40 meters away from each other). The police usually do not enter the university so it was safe to stay on campus. When we thought earlier on that the girls had joined the protest, hearing their voices chanting, they were indeed safely on the roof of the residence encouraging the boys. The reason behind the police keeping the students at bay was that they wanted to prevent the students from getting into town to protest there. The university itself is in the outskirts of Shendi so if they shoot teargas it will only hit students, down town they would not be able to do that, as it is full of women and children and innocent bystanders. Also any violence is limited, according to the Dean, when women are involved in protest. This sometimes leads to the girls taking part of protests for that very reason. It was quite easy to take the students’ side as anyone would automatically but I guess there was some reason for the harsh behaviour of the police. The previous year 2 policemen were killed during a protest in exactly the same spot. I guess that leaves some space for a grey area.

With regards to our rest of the day: We did not have any students for class so that we decided to hang out in the student cafe and chat with who ever turns up. We ended up with 7 students with whom we started talking about the protest, two of them rather feisty young men were in the midst of the protest earlier on but did not get hurt. You could feel their anger and it took about 2 minutes to realize that the problem was not just the bread and also that their was a level of daring of the youth in their participation in the protest. At the same time you could sense their frustration with the whole situation. We mainly listened because lets be honest: What do we know really about what it is like to be in their shoes? It left me personally very humbled about being politically active or talking about right or wrongs in societies. If you protest at home, you might get some wet feet, here you risk being arrested, which did happen to some of the students but they should be out within a day or two the most.

Mohamed, Surajadeen, Mohamed, Hassan, Sami, Asar, Lykke

The conversation became a bit more light hearted when we talked about broken hearts and different approaches to love and then ended in roaring laughter when the students started yet another Arabic lesson focusing on our pronunciation. Fair due, they should be allowed to make some fun of us, we force them to speak English all the time. 

Our crazy day was rounded up with what we thought a dinner at our handy man’s house…. Little did we know that we were in for yet another Arabic lesson. Unfortunately his English was limited to “my house”, “work”, and “about”. Just recall in your mind that we already had 3 hours of Arabic lessons and were a bit shaken by the Protest experience. On top of this, having been for dinners in Sudan before we came prepared, meaning totally empty stomach. So here we were starving, tired and slightly delirious trussed into an hour of hectic pointing at pictures repeating and writing down in Arabic the names of the pictures we saw (dogs that looked like hyenas and sheep that appeared to be prehistoric creatures). What can you do in situations like this? Well you end up laughing hysterically, well trying not to but it did not always work. One hour into the manic teaching, which by the way was observed by 8 women, He indicated to Lykke to finish her juice and we were walked home- again at a very Sudan unusual.

Gosh and just as you think the day comes to an end we bump into our lovely student and friend AbdulRahman who convinces us to have dinner- but they ran out of the good stuff so it was cows foot with bread! I guess it was the right way to end this bizarre day.