At work, I am dealing with issues related to war and conflict in Sudan every day. Thus, it is easy to reduce Sudan to big dark land that produces war after war. There is certainly something to this. Just as the North-South conflict, one of Africa’s longest and bloodiest civil war causing roughly two million civilian deaths, came to an end, a new war started in the west, Darfur, killing over 200,000 people, forcing one third of its inhabitants from their homes, and making two third of them dependent on humanitarian aid. In spite of this, it is important to also appreciate Sudan’s friendly face and to distinguish between the goverment’s policies and people’s attitudes. Last weekend, I was lucky enough to get a taste of Sudan’s rich culture and history (or rather cultureS and historIES) and the friendliness and hospitality of its people.

On Friday, Michelle, Jess, a friend from KSG, Eric, a young diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, his wife Molly, who works for Peace X Peace, and I set out for the ultimate martial arts experience in Sudan: Nuba Wrestling. Every few weeks, a series of wrestling matches featuring young men from the Nuba Mountains takes place near a marketplace in the northeast of Khartoum. The event is a big spectacle and attracts hundreds of men, (no women apart from a few khawajas) both Southerners and Northerners. Unlike everybody else, we were punctual and so at first we were a bit unimpressed. But slowly people kept pouring in until the stadium was completely packed when the wrestling started. It was largely thanks to determined crowd controlling by the Sudanese police that things didn’t get out of control.

Nuba wrestling involves two teams with 5-7 members each. Both teams had grand entries into the stadium, their fighters proudly parading around the rink and showing off their strength and masculinity, while being cheered on by their respective fan communities. When the first match finally started, I was desperately trying to make out the rules of the game. All I figured out is that to win, it suffices that the opponent touches the ground with a body part other than his feet and hands. Most matches ended in a tie and involved the two opponents alertly moving around each other at about one meter distance and occasional skirmishes where they (mostly unsuccessfully) tried to grab each other’s legs.

The most interesting part was in between matches when wrestlers and coaches of both teams negotiated who would fight whom next. Both teams would call out different wrestlers from the adversary, only to reject them on the grounds that they weren’t strong enough (or too strong). The procedure was long and highly ritualistic, reflecting a tradition from the Nuba Mountains, where wrestling fights would be staged between different villages and tribes. Betting is illegal in Sudan, but apparently there is quite some money involved in Nuba wrestling and the best fighters can make a living of it. Maybe the champ of the day wins a cow like it is customary in Swiss wrestling (Schwingen)?? Or maybe a camel??

The next day the exploring continued. Michelle, Jess, Garth, and I hired a car and a driver and we left Khartoum (for the first time since our arrival) direction north. The goal of our trip were the pyramids of Maroe. Not nearly as tall as their Egyptian counterparts, the sight of pyramids in the middle of the desert was nonetheless very impressive. All the more from the top of a camel. For a few bucks the locals let us ride their camels from the entry gate to the pyramids and back. It was a great experience, but I have to say it was a rather shaky affair, and a scary one at first, especially when the camel stands up or sits down taking you for a rodeo ride in the process. After the pyramids we went on to see different Nubian temples in the area. Some were a bit of a sorry sight, as they have almost completely submerged beneath the desert sand. Others were astonishingly beautiful, such as the Lion Temple at Musawwarat es-Sufra, which the Sudan Archaeological Society from Berlin restored in the 1960s.

One of the highlights of the trip was talking to our driver, one of the nicest and most knowledgeable guides I have ever come across in my travels. He is the proud father of four children, two girls aged five and two, and new-born twins, a girl and a boy. He got married for the first time fifteen years ago, but very unfortunately his wife wasn’t able to have children. Six years ago he decided to get a second wife. He says he feels sorry for his first wife, but is convinced that his most important duty in life is to have children, and so he maintains there was no other option than divorce. Getting married for the second time cost him a fortune; he had to pay for the wedding party; buy gold jewellery and a suitcase full of clothes for his wife; and treat his wife’s family with exquisite presents. All in all, 6,500 bucks. No peanuts for Sudanese middle class standards. The dowry didn’t include livestock; apparently, modern folks don’t do cows and camels anymore.

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I will state at the outset that I am just about the furthest thing from fashion-forward that one can imagine – opting for neutral staples as opposed to the latest trends, flip-flops as opposed to three-inch heels, and a quick once over with lip balm as opposed to layers of liner, lipstick and gloss. Therefore, in Tuzla, I am the epitome of a stranger in a strange land.

Walking the Korzo, the main strip of shops in the old town of Tuzla, Bosnis on a Friday or Saturday night is a bit like attending a post-prom party circa 1986. The streets around the local bars and cafes are packed with teenagers strolling up and down, all sporting fashions inspired by Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” years and Don Johnson’s role on “Miami Vice.” I have randomly surveyed my five TV channels in hopes of finding a never-ending rerun of “Pretty in Pink” or “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” that would explain the trend, but to no avail. I do realize that the fashion of the 80s has returned, but the teenagers of Tuzla seem to have really embraced the best of the decade. I have never seen so much blue eye shadow and big hair in one place – not to mention the omnipresent leggings and mullets. Needless to say, people-watching can absorb hours of one’s time.

Eighties fashions aside, living in Tuzla can give the low-maintenance types like myself a bit of a complex. In contrast to the city’s generally drab, industrial appearance, the under-30 crowd of Tuzla is glamorous – not to mention scantily clad. Young women strolling the Korzo favor backless shirts, mini skirts and the highest of heels. Sequined bags, acrylic nails and wide gold belts seem to accompany every outfit. Moreover, each of these adorned women is about 5′10, making them hard to miss.

Borrowing from their American counterparts, young men, slouched in their seats, roll by in Volkswagens and Audis with basses blaring hip hop hits from my 8th grade dances. It is a novelty to have a car here and so showcasing it becomes an activity unto itself. Having a car to park downtown on a Friday night brings a certain celebrity status among the younger population.

Families and elderly couples strolling the Korzo get tangled in the mobs of young people, providing a jumble of new and old, traditional and modern. The effects of war are plainly seen on many of the faces of the older generation; they are tired, worn, and washed out. Tuzla’s young people, by contrast, are clearly carving out lifestyles that separate them from the images of a post-conflict country. This younger generation is more impressed by designer labels and more interested in talk about American hip hop than the intricacies of Bosnian politics.

The women at BOSFAM, the organization where I am interning, have only solidified my observations. Botox has become one of those universal words like email and hamburger. I picked it up recently in one of our morning coffee sessions. I am curious to know what these women, who during the war lived without food, never mind new shoes or dresses, for months on end, think of the high-maintenance members of the next generation. Their hand gestures and tones seemed dismissive of the matter, but as it was outside of my realm of vocabulary about vegetables, it is hard to say.

Having packed a modest wardrobe of skirts and t-shirts I find myself eyeing the scissors in BOSFAM’s office – pondering a shortening of my hemline or the cutting of my t-shirt into something more of the mid-riff variety. However, the thought of high heels and Tuzla’s poorly paved streets has temporarily deterred my fashion make-over. Perhaps I’ll start with a thin layer of blue eye shadow.

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Yesterday, I stood on the balcony of Michelle’s apartment on the top floor of one of the highest building in Khartoum’s Amarat neighbourhood, gazing over the city after dusk. It was prayer time and Allah-akbar chants were radiating in the sky. Usually evening prayer chants get absorbed by the noise of Khartoum’s bustling streets and honking traffic. But 50 meters above ground, the sound of the evening prayers completely takes over. It gave the city a mystical air, which I thought was quite beautiful. From the top, Khartoum looks relatively organized, streets forming a nice grid and square-shaped houses neatly arranged at the side of them. This very much contradicts the impression of chaos one gets walking through the busy and often dirty streets of Khartoum, or worse, trying to navigate Khartoum’s traffic anarchy.

After nearly five weeks in Khartoum I more or less know my way around. Sometimes I am under the illusion that I actually know the city. But of course I don’t. So even after settling down, I think it is important to seek new discoveries and to get to know people and cultures of your host country better. I had one such opportunity last week when my friend Jago invited me to see a dance performance in a cultural center in Khartoum 1 neighborhood. We had the privilege of seeing the group Kwato, an ensemble of 10 dancers and drummers from the Nuba Mountains and South Sudan. Kwato is quite famous in Sudan; they performed in different cities in Europe, and most notably, during the ceremony for the signature of the north-south peace agreement — the CPA — on January 9, 2005 in Nairobi. This week, the group is playing at the Pan-African Music Festival in Congo-Brazzaville.

Kwato’s performance was a fusion between dancing, singing, and drama. The dancing was absolutely spectacular, with rhythmic high energy up-and-down jumping and feet-stomping in all kinds of formations. I’m still puzzled by the stamina of the dancers, who went on without a break for almost two hours. The drama element provided an insight in Southern Sudanese culture, the different acts covering various aspects of Southern Sudanese life including friendship, love, marriage, war, and death. In the beginning only half of the seats were taken. But as the show went on the whole neighborhood seemed to congregate in the courtyard of the cultural centre to get a glimpse of the spectacle.

Among the spectators was a representative of the Sudanese Ministry of Education, a quintessential Northern Sudanese governmental official: a chubby Northern Sudanese man dressed in a white jallabiya and skull cap, well aware of his status and authority. He was definitely emanating an air of superiority; nonetheless the presence of a Northern Sudanese government official at an event for the celebration of Southern Sudanese culture is quite remarkable. It shows that despite the (too) slow progress in the implementation of the CPA, there are people in the Sudanese government who want the north-south peace to be sustainable. Many people, however, see the glass as being half empty. Last week, for example, the deadline for the withdrawal of Northern forces from the south and vice versa expired. The parties haven’t kept their promises and especially in the oil-production areas forces remain deployed where they shouldn’t be according to the CPA.

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Conducting Ph.D. research in West Africa is tons of fun, but, like life in general, unpredictable. Only on my fifth day in the country, and no necessarily by design, I found myself across the table from one of the three main contenders for the upcoming (August 11) presidential elections. I was interviewing the spokesperson of the All People’s Congress (APC), the main opposition party in the country, when he suddenly jumped up from his chair and said, “let’s see if the candidate is available to greet you.” He disappeared next door and two minutes later ushered me in. There he was, Ernest B. Koroma, former insurance manager, Member of Parliament, and presidential contender of the APC in the first post-war elections in 2002, which he lost to current president Ahmed Tejan-Kabbah from the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP). Now he is re-running again, after his party seemed to make significant gains in the 2004 local government elections. After a few moments of awkwardness (due to my surprise of suddenly facing a potential future president of the country), which were graciously bridged by the Spokesman singing the praises of the candidate’s genius and integrity, I briefly explained my research project and was invited to ask a few questions. My question about how the APC, which is traditionally supported by people from the North of the country is seeking to extend its base into the south and east of the country, prompted the candidate to get up and explain to me in great detail pointing at a large map displaying all the electoral districts in the country which constituencies/voting precincts his party was sure to win and how it will all add up to a majority in the presidential contest. When I asked the Candidate how he can be sure that those constituencies are “his,” he just laconically said, “these are constituencies where we have strong commitment from the population.”

For the student of African politics, this is an intriguing statement – Will votes be bought by generous distributions of cash, food, or other handouts, a common practice in West African political campaigns? Will people vote for whichever party their chief or other figures of authority tell them to vote for? Will they vote according to the ethnic or regional affinity they see represented by the different parties? Or do people have a lot more autonomous decision-making power (”agency” in social science speak) than many analysts give them credit for?

Well, anyway, I’m actually getting a bit too carried away by the daily politics of the country, while my PhD research is a lot more historic. My dissertation will be a comparative study of the long-term processes of state development and “failure” in the West African countries of Côte d’Ivoire (CI), Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Of these, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and CI experienced the state breakdown of political institutions and order and war in the 1990s, despite different colonial experiences (Sierra Leone was a British colony; Liberia was founded by freed American slaves and is the oldest Republic in Africa (since 1847); Côte d’Ivoire was a French colony) and quite different post-independence political dynamics. Curiously, Guinea has been an apparently fairly unstable political entity for many years, but has never experienced all-out war, even though it hosted and supported rebel groups in all of the neighboring wars and was (unsuccessfully) attacked by Liberian and Sierra Leonean warring factions in September 2000.

By comparing long-term trajectories of state failure, I hope to identify the underlying dynamics of state formation processes in West Africa and how those strategies contributed to the outbreak of violence and disorder in the 1990s. In addition, understanding the historical evolution of political institutions should also help international organizations and donor agencies such as the United Nations or the World Bank to be more sensitive to local political dynamics and to better support post-war reconstruction in countries devastated by war.

So much about the nerdy topic of my academic research, though. I also have a personal stakes in West Africa, in particular in Sierra Leone. This is the first time that I’m coming back to Sierra Leone in more than two years. I had worked there from February 2003 to May 2005 as Deputy Country Director for the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organization.

Stay tuned for more impressions about life in the country and how things are going five years after the war.

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There are no two ways about it, I have road rage. It is of the teeth gnashing, wild gesticulating, screaming expletives sort. It grabs me suddenly and with such force that I have no choice but to succumb to the rather embarrassing aforementioned tendencies. Fortunately for the rest of the world, my rage really only has the capacity to harm me (well OK perhaps I might squish a few toes, but nothing much more serious). This is because I am raging from atop a ten-year-old red bicycle complete with mismatching pedals (one rusted off while I was riding the other day and had to be replaced), a basket in the front and a child’s seat at the rear. Adding to the ignominy, I am sporting a black helmet with a blue lightning pattern on it and generally have a large sweat patch on my back and my behind from the thick Beijing heat. My fury is directed at the multitude of Audis, Jeeps, Chevys, Hyundais, and VW cabs that go rolling on by with their tinted windows rolled up and their air-conditioning blasting, so that I cannot even get a good look at the faces that have so wronged me. But even if they had their windows rolled down and even if they could understand my crass English, they probably couldn’t hear me over the blare of their horns. But, unlike me, they are not raging. This honking is done not out of impatience or anger as it is in the States. The honk is neither a command nor a request, but rather an announcement, “I am coming.” And I, biker, am in the way. It matters not that there is a nice green light in the shape of a bicycle telling me that I can go, and a big red light telling them that they cannot. They are in cars, they have money, they have somewhere to be, and I am in the way.

It’s not that there is no law of the road here, but it is something more akin to that law of Thermodynamics about entropy. Things have resorted to their most fundamental state of disorder, but in this fundamental state, there is a kind of order. Those who have nicer or faster vehicles get to pass whomever wherever however and are allowed to do such things as drive the wrong way down a highway in the bike lane. Indeed, not a few cars have installed police-style horns and lights which they turn on at red lights and go right on through to emphasize this very point. The second rule is that anything can happen at anytime, so be prepared. Everyone knows, for example, that when you are driving straight down the road, you will suddenly have to maneuver to the left to allow incoming traffic to merge despite the clearly marked rang (let) sign saying that you have the right of way. But, fortunately, you don’t need to check your mirrors before you swerve into the next lane (albeit at only about 35 miles per hour), because the driver in that lane has been likewise prescient and has also moved over to afford you space, as will the bus to his left, and so on. Like a flock of birds meeting some mid-flight disturbance, the entire highway moves in unison and then recovers all for the sake of one individual who just couldn’t wait. Now what could be more egalitarian (or dare I say communist) that that?

We bikers really are no better. (Well we are better in the sense that you can fit many more of us on the road and we are not contributing to the horrendous air quality). Nevertheless, we do our share of selfish lane shifting. To be fair, we would like to stay in the broad bike lanes, but find that every few hundred meters or so, there is a cabbie parked askew in our lane with his door open and his legs sticking out, reading the morning paper and smoking a cigarette, the red tip of which just grazes my arm. If it’s not a cab then it’s a cement truck, or a three-wheeled cart filled with nine-foot long metal poles, or a bus, packed to the brim, trying to pick up just one more passenger. So we too do our share of swerving and don’t often have time to look before we do. And indeed, there are times when we bikers are much worse, because the law is on our side you see. If we do get hit we are always in the right, even if we were crossing across four lanes of traffic going the wrong way on the Fourth Ring Road. And this is perhaps the only reason why these cars bother slowing at all while they lay on their horns.

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It is 5:30 in the morning and I am on my way to class. It has rained last night, so my brakes aren’t working properly for the first few minutes. My pedals squeak with every push, my tires are threadbare, and my front wheel bends to the right thanks to a battered bearing. But the rain means that the sky is clear and the air feels fresh. I can, for the first time, make out the fragrant hills (xiang shan) off in the distance. I merge into the rest of the bike traffic, which is already heavy despite the early hour. There are few automobiles, however, so that the only sound is the squeaking and breathing of my fellow commuters and the occasional wush as we cruise through muddy puddles, legs lifted high to avoid it splattering our pants. The woman to my right is wearing a face shield to protect herself from the still weak sun. The woman in front of her sports a floral print shirt and wide-brimmed white sun hat. She bikes with a small dog in her basket. A group of migrant workers passes quickly on my left, their safety helmets in their baskets, cigarettes glowing cheerily. We come to a stop in unison at a red light and stare straight ahead, close but not touching, somewhere I hear oil popping in a wok and can smell the long thin deep fried doughnuts.

This is the way rush hour is meant to be I think, and I just smile when the honking starts.

The conversation has turned again to the weather, as it has nearly every lunchtime for the past five weeks. We sit around a plastic table on the third floor, hunched over metal trays, staring out over the broadness of Futong dong Avenue. The building across the street is under construction, one of about twelve or so in such a condition on this single city block. This one takes up most of the view; it is in that stage when it could be anything, a car park, an apartment complex; only the cement backbone has been laid. Fourteen floors are visible so far, but more are promised by the green mesh and orange metal patchwork of a support structure reaching past the top floor into gray skies. Unlike most of the other buildings on this block, I have never seen a single worker in this one. No yellow hats bobbing furiously up and down, no bright hot white sparks from a welder flying out onto the street below. Ke neng xia yu, I offer, it might rain. There are nods, neither hopeful nor bleak, indeed the sky is dark today everyone agrees. The particulate matter is high, yesterday people were told to stay indoors. I can’t follow the Chinese as well as my other laowai co-workers, but I can pick out the necessary words, “desert, wind, sand, closer” and I’ve heard it many times before. It is something all Beijingers know, the desert is coming, and even the stepped-up efforts of government rainmaking–lacing the clouds with shells filled with silver iodide–cannot keep the Gobi at bay.

I am a child of New England, and so am familiar with this sort of talk, where comments about the weather are offered as greetings, “cold out there today,” followed by long silences, nods of agreement. Sitting poking at my baozi, I can suddenly hear the downeast accent of my hometown and see my father’s hands, raw and red, cradling a ceramic coffee cup while, outside, wet and heavy snow slaps the windows. Beijingers and New Englanders (we other dongbei people) share this art for the understated, this pride in surviving such an inhospitable climate, this quiet forbearance. But despite the training of my girlhood, I can’t quite make the leap from the stinging cold of those winters to the soupy skies of Beijing. Here the light is so weak that at five a.m. or ten, the sun’s strength feels the same, I feel confused and then hurried when I awaken. The air and heat make for bad sleeping, so that my brain feels covered in the same film that coats my desk and dresser each morning as I trip about in a rush to prepare instant coffee. The day itself seems likewise befuddled, as though it doesn’t know how to progress, whether it is starting or ending. There are no early morning or late afternoon shadows–the kind that add depth, making the ordinary suddenly lovely–instead, all is revealed in a single hue and uniform dimension. I walk to my bus stop, holding my breath for long stretches at a time. My neighborhood is particularly bad; it is the site of the stadium for the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. Nicknamed the bird’s nest, niao chao, this massive structure does indeed resemble the nest of some fantastic mythological bird, the metal “straws” wrapping back in on themselves elaborately. The morning shift workers, hailing from nearly every province, slurp noodles on the sidewalk and stare at me as I pass, others lay sleeping beside them. Last year, the city government received some 600,000 complaint letters about the environment. Signs for the “green” Olympics are everywhere. Commercials on TV urge people to become Olympic volunteers, and there is talk of shutting down the factories outside the city nine months before the games and making rain the week before to ensure blue skies.

Across the street, the bottom three floors of the building are wrapped in advertising boards that promise that this will be a “fancy living green scenery area.” The advertisement obscures the construction from street level and displays a European style chalet in the mist of a verdant golf course. As we sit in the lunch room, the light gets low. A storm is coming. I walk down the stairs and look out my own office window, the wind picks up until I can see nothing but my own reflection staring back at me. I turn off the lights as heavy plops, infrequent at first, hit the pane and splash on the dusty sidewalk. Suddenly the men in yellow hats appear, running from the construction site as a clap of thunder sounds. I turn to see my co-worker, Professor Zhu at my office door. “bao feng yu” he says, it’s a storm. Yes, I agree and we watch it roll in in silence.

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When I wrote my first blog post I had doubts if anyone was ever going to read it. Then, two days after my blog-début, I received an e-mail from Kurt Eilhardt, an incoming Fletcher student who is working for International Aid Services, a Swedish relief NGO, in Khartoum. He had read my blog and suggested we meet up for a coffee. Wow. What an impressive demonstration of the connecting potential of both The Fletcher Schoo and blogs.

It has been nearly three weeks since I arrived in Khartoum and I pretty much settled in: I more or less know my way around the city; I know a couple of really decent and inexpensive food stalls and restaurants; the staff at my favourite Internet café know my name and they start preparing my preferred mango shake as soon as I walk in; I picked up a few words in Arabic for daily use. And, most importantly, I found a place to live. George, Garth and I spent a good part of our first week touring Khartoum with various agents – some more dodgy than others – in search of a suitable apartment. After having looked at about 15 places, we decided to go for an apartment in a brand-new building in Khartoum’s Amarat neighbourhood west of the airport and not too far from UNMIS headquarters. The place is nice and most of the things in it are functional – except for the microwave, hot water, shower curtain, and satellite TV (depending on the weather). But whatever. The air-condition works and keeps us cool. And Garth and his superior cooking skills keep us well-fed.

Our apartment is, however, very expensive. I am paying more than $600 per month. Which is more than I paid for accommodation in Boston or Geneva, two of the most expensive cities in the world. Don’t worry, Prof. Najam’s negotiations class isn’t lost on me. We (mostly George) bargained hard and managed to get, according to Khartoum insiders, a good deal. Rents for internationals just are that high. I have to say it took me a while to accept this fact. And to this day I am looking for a plausible explanation for the Khartoum rent inflation. My Sudanese friend Hamid simply thinks that we khawaja (”foreigner” in Sudanese Arabic) simply get ripped off. Other people think that fully equipped and nicely located apartments in Khartoum that fit Westerners’ standards are scarce and therefore expensive. But then there are new apartment buildings being erected all over the place. Maybe there is an economist out there who would be kind enough to enlighten me. Anyone?

Work is interesting so far and I am learning a lot about the workings of UN peacekeeping missions and about Sudan. Darfur is on everybody’s mind at UNMIS, especially now that the preparation for the new hybrid UN-AU mission has begun. All the international actors in Sudan – the UN, NGOs, embassies – focus strongly on Darfur and one gets the impression that because of it building peace in South Sudan does not get the attention and resources it deserves, indeed, needs. This is not to say that managing conflict in Darfur is not very important. It undoubtedly is. But, ditto Prof. Kennedy (I am currently reading his book “Dark Sides of Virtue”), there seems to be a lack of awareness that more donor money, media attention, soldiers for peacekeeping missions, pressure on the government etc. with regards to one issue (e.g. managing conflict in Darfur) may mean less of the above for another, maybe more or equally important issue (e.g. building peace in South Sudan). So, George Clooney, if you are reading this, why don’t you give half of the $9.3 million you and your Hollywood buddies raised for Darfur to peacebuilding projects in South Sudan?

Any views expressed here are mine only; they do not in any way reflect official United Nations positions and opinions.

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