Sudanese drinks
Sudanese drinks
Panel design showing infused and soaked drinks in Sudan by Zainab Gaafar
Sudanese cuisine includes many dishes and drinks associated with its dry and hot weather. Certain drinks are served and enjoyed on different occasions or different states of health. Many adults will remember how, as children, they were made to drink different types of teas to ease a bout of stomach pain or cure a sore throat. Areas with dry climates around Sudan produce fruits like baobab, nabag or doum and wild plants like harjal (Solenostemma Arghel), maharib (Lemongrass, barbed wire grass) and roots like ghurunjal (Galangal Root). Locally, there are two known methods used to extract taste and flavor from all these different plants. Infusion, which means the plant is added to hot water or is boiled in water. This process is mainly used to produce teas or hot drinks as well as extracting various health benefits from the plants. Or soaking which means they are left in water at room temperature to allow the taste to infuse slowly. This is mainly used for cold and refreshing beverages.
Karakade or hibiscus tea, is one of the most known Sudanese products and is drunk both as a hot drink, sometimes called shiriya, or as a cold drink, after it is soaked in water for some time, the length of time is relevant to how fresh or strong the hibiscus flowers are.
Fermented drinks also undergo a soaking phase to bring out the taste, such as hilu-mur or abray made from sprouted sorghum seed sprouts that are dried, flavored, fermented and cooked into sheets which are then soaked in water and sugared before serving.
Cover picture © Sari Omer, Eldamazin
Panel design showing infused and soaked drinks in Sudan by Zainab Gaafar
Sudanese cuisine includes many dishes and drinks associated with its dry and hot weather. Certain drinks are served and enjoyed on different occasions or different states of health. Many adults will remember how, as children, they were made to drink different types of teas to ease a bout of stomach pain or cure a sore throat. Areas with dry climates around Sudan produce fruits like baobab, nabag or doum and wild plants like harjal (Solenostemma Arghel), maharib (Lemongrass, barbed wire grass) and roots like ghurunjal (Galangal Root). Locally, there are two known methods used to extract taste and flavor from all these different plants. Infusion, which means the plant is added to hot water or is boiled in water. This process is mainly used to produce teas or hot drinks as well as extracting various health benefits from the plants. Or soaking which means they are left in water at room temperature to allow the taste to infuse slowly. This is mainly used for cold and refreshing beverages.
Karakade or hibiscus tea, is one of the most known Sudanese products and is drunk both as a hot drink, sometimes called shiriya, or as a cold drink, after it is soaked in water for some time, the length of time is relevant to how fresh or strong the hibiscus flowers are.
Fermented drinks also undergo a soaking phase to bring out the taste, such as hilu-mur or abray made from sprouted sorghum seed sprouts that are dried, flavored, fermented and cooked into sheets which are then soaked in water and sugared before serving.
Cover picture © Sari Omer, Eldamazin
Panel design showing infused and soaked drinks in Sudan by Zainab Gaafar
Sudanese cuisine includes many dishes and drinks associated with its dry and hot weather. Certain drinks are served and enjoyed on different occasions or different states of health. Many adults will remember how, as children, they were made to drink different types of teas to ease a bout of stomach pain or cure a sore throat. Areas with dry climates around Sudan produce fruits like baobab, nabag or doum and wild plants like harjal (Solenostemma Arghel), maharib (Lemongrass, barbed wire grass) and roots like ghurunjal (Galangal Root). Locally, there are two known methods used to extract taste and flavor from all these different plants. Infusion, which means the plant is added to hot water or is boiled in water. This process is mainly used to produce teas or hot drinks as well as extracting various health benefits from the plants. Or soaking which means they are left in water at room temperature to allow the taste to infuse slowly. This is mainly used for cold and refreshing beverages.
Karakade or hibiscus tea, is one of the most known Sudanese products and is drunk both as a hot drink, sometimes called shiriya, or as a cold drink, after it is soaked in water for some time, the length of time is relevant to how fresh or strong the hibiscus flowers are.
Fermented drinks also undergo a soaking phase to bring out the taste, such as hilu-mur or abray made from sprouted sorghum seed sprouts that are dried, flavored, fermented and cooked into sheets which are then soaked in water and sugared before serving.
Cover picture © Sari Omer, Eldamazin
Festive food
Festive food
In every culture anywhere in the world, feasts and food at celebrations are always at the heart of any occasion. This is perhaps the one thing that we humans all have in common; that we celebrate with food.
Sudan’s diverse cultures mean people always have different ways they cook and present their food at large events such as religious celebrations - the Moulid, Ramadan or Eid - or when someone returns from a long trip or recovers from an illness or has achieved academic or career success or even at the most popular event, weddings. Women from the family and neighbours from far and near gather to cook hearty meals and delicious dishes. Festivities themselves start well before the day itself usually by preparing, cutting and baking biscuits. The baskawit, khabiz, minen and ajwa biscuits and many more varieties are a very important component served to the waves of guests and well wishers who pass by in weeks and days before and after the wedding day.
The video shows fateer preparations, a light biscuit made especially for weddings consisting of flour, a pinch of salt, baking powder, vanilla, eggs and vegetable oil. The dough is then spread very thinly using a pasta making machine and cut into shapes and deep-fried in oil. The crunchy, light biscuits are dusted in icing sugar and handled with tremendous care not only because of how fragile they are, but because they are likely to be devoured by anyone who gets their hand on one!
Cover picture and video © Zainab Gaafar
In every culture anywhere in the world, feasts and food at celebrations are always at the heart of any occasion. This is perhaps the one thing that we humans all have in common; that we celebrate with food.
Sudan’s diverse cultures mean people always have different ways they cook and present their food at large events such as religious celebrations - the Moulid, Ramadan or Eid - or when someone returns from a long trip or recovers from an illness or has achieved academic or career success or even at the most popular event, weddings. Women from the family and neighbours from far and near gather to cook hearty meals and delicious dishes. Festivities themselves start well before the day itself usually by preparing, cutting and baking biscuits. The baskawit, khabiz, minen and ajwa biscuits and many more varieties are a very important component served to the waves of guests and well wishers who pass by in weeks and days before and after the wedding day.
The video shows fateer preparations, a light biscuit made especially for weddings consisting of flour, a pinch of salt, baking powder, vanilla, eggs and vegetable oil. The dough is then spread very thinly using a pasta making machine and cut into shapes and deep-fried in oil. The crunchy, light biscuits are dusted in icing sugar and handled with tremendous care not only because of how fragile they are, but because they are likely to be devoured by anyone who gets their hand on one!
Cover picture and video © Zainab Gaafar
In every culture anywhere in the world, feasts and food at celebrations are always at the heart of any occasion. This is perhaps the one thing that we humans all have in common; that we celebrate with food.
Sudan’s diverse cultures mean people always have different ways they cook and present their food at large events such as religious celebrations - the Moulid, Ramadan or Eid - or when someone returns from a long trip or recovers from an illness or has achieved academic or career success or even at the most popular event, weddings. Women from the family and neighbours from far and near gather to cook hearty meals and delicious dishes. Festivities themselves start well before the day itself usually by preparing, cutting and baking biscuits. The baskawit, khabiz, minen and ajwa biscuits and many more varieties are a very important component served to the waves of guests and well wishers who pass by in weeks and days before and after the wedding day.
The video shows fateer preparations, a light biscuit made especially for weddings consisting of flour, a pinch of salt, baking powder, vanilla, eggs and vegetable oil. The dough is then spread very thinly using a pasta making machine and cut into shapes and deep-fried in oil. The crunchy, light biscuits are dusted in icing sugar and handled with tremendous care not only because of how fragile they are, but because they are likely to be devoured by anyone who gets their hand on one!
Cover picture and video © Zainab Gaafar
Date harvesting
Date harvesting
Barkal, North Sudan 2015
Zainab Osman Mahgoub and Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar
The strip of land along the banks of the Nile in northern Sudan, the landscape from a distance, on Google Maps for example, may all look very similar. Vast areas of greenery offset the curves of the river with brown-tinted villages enclaved among the gardens. While they may appear similar, in fact there is a wonderful diversity on the ground of villages, towns, tribes, traditions and even languages.
Al-Barkal is one such town with the same palm tree groves inhabited by the people of "Balad Be Tihit" or lower lands, and surrounded by the town of "Be Fawq” who are residents of the highlands living far from the Nile. One of the well-known landmarks of the region, and the reason behind the name of the town, is Al-Barkal mountain, which is a rocky platform rising over 100 metres with a rocky protrusion on the side which has been carved out to resemble a minaret. It is dubbed "Al-Shurayma", or “the crooked tooth” a name created by the most famous Shaygiya tribe poet Hassouna who was expressing his disappointment in one of the great leaders of Al-Barkal saying:
AlBarkal Mountain, the one with a crooked tooth
It cannot compare to Ibn Ouf Mountain in lower Hizaima
The temple of Amun, built by Baankhi and his son Taharqa, can be seen on the side of the mountain along with the disintegrating and slowly vanishing row of stone rams. Some pyramids are scattered around the mountain, and the entire town currently lies on what was the capital of Kush during the reign of the Kingdom of Meroe.
About two kilometres south of the mountain, on the main road, is the house of my grandfather Mahgoub Gaafar Mustafa, a household now inhabited and run by my aunt Ruqayya. The house, and my aunt, are both as important a monument as the ones mentioned above, at least in as far as the following story goes about my visit to the area in 2015, to take part in the date harvesting season, or as it is called "Hash al-Tamur". The text also contains notes by my father, Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar, because my 10-day experience is nothing compared to the length of time he spent there being born in this house and raised on these lands.
The date harvesting season in Al-Barkal begins in September, or "Nasi," as it is called in the old Egyptian Coptic calendar which is used for cultivating and harvesting in most parts of northern Sudan because its months correspond to clear changes in weather patterns and seasons. Al-Barkal produces a variety of dates including the dry variety, when the fruit is left to ripen and dry on the tree before being harvested. This type is easier to preserve and store and is thus more suitable for trading. Soft dates are dates harvested when they are still soft. They are kept in baskets, stacked on top of each other, to maintain their moisture, especially as northern Sudan is a dry region. There are also the semi-soft dates produced in the areas of Rubatab and Jaaliyin in River Nile State, from which types of pressed dates, “ajwa”, are made such as the Mashreq, Wad Laqai and Wad Khatib.
In the past, palm groves in Al-Barkal were secure and left unguarded. However, in more recent times there have been incidents of harvest stealing and a system has therefore been developed to protect the crop. This involves setting a specific day on which the harvest season will begin and within this period, each sagyia, or palm grove, owner will have an allocated day so that everyone knows who will be harvesting their dates on which day. The 18th of September 2015 was the day designated for harvesting the sagyia, owned by my grandfather's family. We went down early in the morning, me and my late aunt Hafsa who was an excellent business woman and who managed our entire family’s date business. The “qafaz” and his family came with us. The “qafaz” is usually a partner of the land owner and cares for, and harvests the dates. The name comes from the term “qafouza”, which is the process of pollinating dates, which takes place in winter, several months before the harvest season.
On our way to the palm groves in the lower lands, we came across a row of young men sitting on the ground next to the main street opposite the farms waiting for work. Myself and my two aunts, Hafsa and Aisha, may God have mercy on both of their souls, were not the only ones who had come to Al-Barkal days before the harvest season. While we had come from Khartoum, this line of young men came from the vast deserts of northern Sudan. During the harvest season, nomadic Arabs camp on the outskirts of the city with men taking up work in harvesting, and women undertaking small domestic chores in the town’s households. The young man whom my aunt hired was from West Africa and had come to northern Sudan to seek an education in Sudan’s khalawi, or Quranic schools. He and his companions had come to work on date harvesting to earn a wage to support him over the next few months. Harvest is a blessed season, characterized by the abundance of wealth and happiness. For a short while people are rich and this is always a reason to celebrate. At the time of our visit, several weddings were planned to take place. Local people who work in Khartoum or other large cities and those who work abroad, usually come home on annual leave during the harvest season. Meanwhile, the reason children are happy is because the harvest season is an official holiday from schools, so that they can help their families harvesting and because the children are given a small wage for gathering dates, whether from their work with their family or from collecting the Haboob dates, which are the dates that are blown down in the strong winds. These latter dates are not of high quality, because they are heterogeneous, but children use them to grow the pile of dates they have gathered.
Ways of paying the workers involved in harvesting varies; the Qafaz usually receives a share of the dates for example one or two branches, or “sabita”, from each palm tree depending on the agreement, and according to the height of the tree. Date pickers prefer money, and are paid per working day, while children and young pickers are paid by the quantity of dates collected. These are usually the dates that fall far away from the area around the palm tree which the children gather in "kaila" which is a tin measuring vessel. One kaila is the equivalent of two rubu which is made up of two malwa while most date sacks are made up of six kaila. These old units of measurement derive from an Islamic heritage. At the end of the season adults buy the dates children have gathered per kaila.
Our small delegation arrived at the sagyia to start the process of harvesting dates. Agricultural plots in northern Sudan are divided into sagiyas, a plot of land approximately twenty to thirty square acres, that can be irrigated with a single traditional water wheel, or saqyia. The name persists even after the old sagyia was replaced by mechanical pumps. The saqya is equal 20 to 30 acres: An acre has twenty four carats, and a carat has twenty four “arrows”, and the sakia is divided by “ropes” and “bones”, which are length measutments, and the happiest is the owner of twenty-four carats of all kinds. The area is divided into a long strip of planting beds called Ingaya, and this strip is watered with a parallel water stream. The side of a single bed is usually in the range of five to six meters, and in the middle of each bed one palm tree is planted, sometimes two palm trees are placed in the corners.
The mother palm tree is called "Omiya", and the small saplings are called "daughters", they can be seen growing next to the tree. Three or four of them are usually left to keep the mother company, and the rest are replanted elsewhere. The palm tree is very similar to humans, it produces off-springs, has male and female trees and lives up to a hundred years, but does not stop growing, and after a while it becomes difficult to reach the top of the dates. A palm tree in Al-Barkal is climbed without using any auxiliary tools such as ropes or ladders. Instead, to climb to the top, date pickers use the dried ridges, called “karoug”, which are left on the trunk when the palm fronds are cut every time the tree grows. Climbers sometimes fall when they step onto the older, weaker ridges.
After the Qafaz climbed the tree, the rest of the workers pulled a piece of tarpaulin underneath. The Qafaz first cut and lowered his branch, and then cut the rest of the branches for the owner of the land, then all the pickers including myself - I was promised a kaila of dates if I helped gather the fallen dates – "scraped" the dates from the branch, that is, by hitting them on the ground until all the dates fell off, then removed the remaining dates by hand. The dates were then gathered in the middle of the linoleum and poured into sacks. Although burlap sacks “shawal” look like they are locally produced, they are in fact imported from India just as they were during British colonial times. The Kanaf factory in the Blue Nile region that was built in the 1970s tried to cover the market's need for sacks, but has now stopped operating. Nowadays sacks are sometimes made of plastic in Sudan. The shawal is then sewn with “arjun” or metal wire and carried home.
Once a shawal was filled we could stop working and have a rest. The place was soon covered with bodies seeking any amount of shade to rest under. Lunch, or brunch, was sent from our house and as usual consisted of gurasa “wheat flat bread” and “waika” dried okra stew, followed by a nap. The cooks at home also have a wage at the end of the season, as no one works for free in the harvest season. At the end of the day we returned home followed by a camel carrying our sacks of dates. The camel walked straight through the door and into the house courtyard just as these animals had entered this same house of my great-grandfather, Mayor Gaafar Wad Mustafa Wad Muhammad, more than sixty years ago. The sacks were lowered into the yard, and then the dates were spread under the sun to dry.
People are usually afraid that the rain will fall suddenly and spoil the crop, because the harvest season corresponds to the rainy season or autumn, and some are so afraid of this happening that they ask the religious Sheikhs to pray and stop the rain falling. Next to our pile of dates was another pile belonging to my other aunt, Aisha, which had arrived on another camel owned by the family of her husband, Muhammad al-Amin Sharif. We found my aunt Aisha sitting proudly next to her high-quality “Gondela” dates, which are called “dates for eating”, such as the tamuda and kalamah variety, which are dates produced in smaller quantities, and distributed in limited ranges. Our pile on the other hand was "Barkawi" which is a commercial date variety produced in large quantities, and exported to different parts of Sudan. "Al-Jaw" meanwhile, is a lower quality date sold to those who do not care about the quality of their dates.
During my ten day stay, there was nothing more important than the topic of dates and their condition. Guests, passers-by and even the shopkeeper may ask you how much you had harvested or how the season had been. “Is the date ‘shayil’ or not?” they would ask, referring to the quantity of dates per branch. If the palm trees this season are not “shayil,” everyone would be discussing the reason why this was; it could be climate change, as my aunt Ruqayya said in one such discussion, or because of increasing humidity caused by the lake created by the recently constructed Marawi dam. In any case, dates were the main topic of conversation, only surpassed once during my stay, when a notorious cat stole some fish from a neighbour’s kitchen.
On our second day of work, our house was transformed to prepare for a wedding in the neighbourhood. Women descended on the house to bake the wedding biscuits and pastries for a son’s wedding. They wanted to use our large gas oven which is more efficient than the old stoves run on "wagood,” dry palm fronds, especially the "kood," the wide part of the palm fronds. These large leaves are also used to make children’s toys and sometimes to make whips for disciplining the same children! The family who’s occasion it is, brings trays filled with dishes of food for lunch to feed everyone. Just like with the dates, the owner of the occasion, harvest or wedding, is always responsible for feeding everyone who gives a helping hand.
As usual during wedding preparations, the house is filled with laughter, joviality and singing. In the outdoor kitchen women work a biscuit making machine while others come to chat on the veranda. From the veranda the house’s traditional roof can be seen, made of course, from palm trunks which are cut lengthwise into quarters or sixths and are called "falaga". These form the main structure on which the rest of the roof is built. The stems of palm fronds are tied together and placed on top of the structure. Previously, green palm fronds were usually cut and removed when the trees were pruned outside of the harvest season so that the dates would not be damaged. Palm fronds and mud are then placed on top of newspapers and this is topped with animal manure, usually donkey dung. Before the autumn, this process is repeated before the walls are painted white, and the water drains are cleared, as stagnant water and moisture are the enemies of mud houses.
Once the harvesting season ends, the second stage begins, which involves the packaging and distribution of dates. “The packers" are skilled workers who sort out the dates quickly and pack them. Bad dates, or "karmosha", are thrown to the animals to eat. In the past, dates were stored in clay silos of varying sizes that were raised off the ground called “Qasiba” or “Qusaiba”. These were also used to store crops such as wheat and continue to be used in some villages in the north but in our region, dates are placed in tight sacks, raised above the ground supported by iron beams away from water and insects, and covered with plastic sheeting.
"Al Musharaf dates, which the sam “protective walls” were raised for
The one which before it ripens the “sababa” middle men showed up
The happy one in the world takes the fate of his days
And on you Oh God I don't know what comes ahead
(old Shayqi poet)
A number of traders deal in dates, mostly the “sababa” who are the middlemen who buy dates from the small-scale dealers and pickers and sell them on to market traders. Street vendors buy dates to sell in the market. Merchants store dates in large warehouses and sell them wholesale to other merchants in large cities such as Al-Obeid, Al-Fasher, Nyala, Madani, Damazin, Al-Nuhud and others. In the past, dates were transported down the river by ship to Karima and from there by train onto all these cities. They also travelled by river to the south on the White Nile from Kosti. Dates also have a large market in eastern Sudan delivered there by train and sold by the “malwa” in the market and where they are consumed with coffee.
In the late fifties, during the government of General Aboud and with the help of American aid, a date processing factory was set up in Karima. The machinery arrived from California and was assembled at the factory and the factory produced dates stuffed with walnuts, almonds and coconut packed in beautiful boxes. As part of the packaging process, dates are fumigated to wash, clean and tenderize them to help remove the kernel, which was used as animal feed, and to insert a filling. The factory also produced white spirit or alcohol as a by-product which was used in hospitals to disinfect wounds. The factory stopped fully operating a long time ago, but returned to work seasonally through the efforts of local Sudanese entrepreneurs when the dates were harvested.
I returned to Khartoum with a kaila of dates which was not given to me as payment because I did not last more than a quarter of a day. It was harder than I imagined! The little sack I was given was a gift from my aunts for my efforts.
Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar
Barkal, North Sudan 2015
Zainab Osman Mahgoub and Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar
The strip of land along the banks of the Nile in northern Sudan, the landscape from a distance, on Google Maps for example, may all look very similar. Vast areas of greenery offset the curves of the river with brown-tinted villages enclaved among the gardens. While they may appear similar, in fact there is a wonderful diversity on the ground of villages, towns, tribes, traditions and even languages.
Al-Barkal is one such town with the same palm tree groves inhabited by the people of "Balad Be Tihit" or lower lands, and surrounded by the town of "Be Fawq” who are residents of the highlands living far from the Nile. One of the well-known landmarks of the region, and the reason behind the name of the town, is Al-Barkal mountain, which is a rocky platform rising over 100 metres with a rocky protrusion on the side which has been carved out to resemble a minaret. It is dubbed "Al-Shurayma", or “the crooked tooth” a name created by the most famous Shaygiya tribe poet Hassouna who was expressing his disappointment in one of the great leaders of Al-Barkal saying:
AlBarkal Mountain, the one with a crooked tooth
It cannot compare to Ibn Ouf Mountain in lower Hizaima
The temple of Amun, built by Baankhi and his son Taharqa, can be seen on the side of the mountain along with the disintegrating and slowly vanishing row of stone rams. Some pyramids are scattered around the mountain, and the entire town currently lies on what was the capital of Kush during the reign of the Kingdom of Meroe.
About two kilometres south of the mountain, on the main road, is the house of my grandfather Mahgoub Gaafar Mustafa, a household now inhabited and run by my aunt Ruqayya. The house, and my aunt, are both as important a monument as the ones mentioned above, at least in as far as the following story goes about my visit to the area in 2015, to take part in the date harvesting season, or as it is called "Hash al-Tamur". The text also contains notes by my father, Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar, because my 10-day experience is nothing compared to the length of time he spent there being born in this house and raised on these lands.
The date harvesting season in Al-Barkal begins in September, or "Nasi," as it is called in the old Egyptian Coptic calendar which is used for cultivating and harvesting in most parts of northern Sudan because its months correspond to clear changes in weather patterns and seasons. Al-Barkal produces a variety of dates including the dry variety, when the fruit is left to ripen and dry on the tree before being harvested. This type is easier to preserve and store and is thus more suitable for trading. Soft dates are dates harvested when they are still soft. They are kept in baskets, stacked on top of each other, to maintain their moisture, especially as northern Sudan is a dry region. There are also the semi-soft dates produced in the areas of Rubatab and Jaaliyin in River Nile State, from which types of pressed dates, “ajwa”, are made such as the Mashreq, Wad Laqai and Wad Khatib.
In the past, palm groves in Al-Barkal were secure and left unguarded. However, in more recent times there have been incidents of harvest stealing and a system has therefore been developed to protect the crop. This involves setting a specific day on which the harvest season will begin and within this period, each sagyia, or palm grove, owner will have an allocated day so that everyone knows who will be harvesting their dates on which day. The 18th of September 2015 was the day designated for harvesting the sagyia, owned by my grandfather's family. We went down early in the morning, me and my late aunt Hafsa who was an excellent business woman and who managed our entire family’s date business. The “qafaz” and his family came with us. The “qafaz” is usually a partner of the land owner and cares for, and harvests the dates. The name comes from the term “qafouza”, which is the process of pollinating dates, which takes place in winter, several months before the harvest season.
On our way to the palm groves in the lower lands, we came across a row of young men sitting on the ground next to the main street opposite the farms waiting for work. Myself and my two aunts, Hafsa and Aisha, may God have mercy on both of their souls, were not the only ones who had come to Al-Barkal days before the harvest season. While we had come from Khartoum, this line of young men came from the vast deserts of northern Sudan. During the harvest season, nomadic Arabs camp on the outskirts of the city with men taking up work in harvesting, and women undertaking small domestic chores in the town’s households. The young man whom my aunt hired was from West Africa and had come to northern Sudan to seek an education in Sudan’s khalawi, or Quranic schools. He and his companions had come to work on date harvesting to earn a wage to support him over the next few months. Harvest is a blessed season, characterized by the abundance of wealth and happiness. For a short while people are rich and this is always a reason to celebrate. At the time of our visit, several weddings were planned to take place. Local people who work in Khartoum or other large cities and those who work abroad, usually come home on annual leave during the harvest season. Meanwhile, the reason children are happy is because the harvest season is an official holiday from schools, so that they can help their families harvesting and because the children are given a small wage for gathering dates, whether from their work with their family or from collecting the Haboob dates, which are the dates that are blown down in the strong winds. These latter dates are not of high quality, because they are heterogeneous, but children use them to grow the pile of dates they have gathered.
Ways of paying the workers involved in harvesting varies; the Qafaz usually receives a share of the dates for example one or two branches, or “sabita”, from each palm tree depending on the agreement, and according to the height of the tree. Date pickers prefer money, and are paid per working day, while children and young pickers are paid by the quantity of dates collected. These are usually the dates that fall far away from the area around the palm tree which the children gather in "kaila" which is a tin measuring vessel. One kaila is the equivalent of two rubu which is made up of two malwa while most date sacks are made up of six kaila. These old units of measurement derive from an Islamic heritage. At the end of the season adults buy the dates children have gathered per kaila.
Our small delegation arrived at the sagyia to start the process of harvesting dates. Agricultural plots in northern Sudan are divided into sagiyas, a plot of land approximately twenty to thirty square acres, that can be irrigated with a single traditional water wheel, or saqyia. The name persists even after the old sagyia was replaced by mechanical pumps. The saqya is equal 20 to 30 acres: An acre has twenty four carats, and a carat has twenty four “arrows”, and the sakia is divided by “ropes” and “bones”, which are length measutments, and the happiest is the owner of twenty-four carats of all kinds. The area is divided into a long strip of planting beds called Ingaya, and this strip is watered with a parallel water stream. The side of a single bed is usually in the range of five to six meters, and in the middle of each bed one palm tree is planted, sometimes two palm trees are placed in the corners.
The mother palm tree is called "Omiya", and the small saplings are called "daughters", they can be seen growing next to the tree. Three or four of them are usually left to keep the mother company, and the rest are replanted elsewhere. The palm tree is very similar to humans, it produces off-springs, has male and female trees and lives up to a hundred years, but does not stop growing, and after a while it becomes difficult to reach the top of the dates. A palm tree in Al-Barkal is climbed without using any auxiliary tools such as ropes or ladders. Instead, to climb to the top, date pickers use the dried ridges, called “karoug”, which are left on the trunk when the palm fronds are cut every time the tree grows. Climbers sometimes fall when they step onto the older, weaker ridges.
After the Qafaz climbed the tree, the rest of the workers pulled a piece of tarpaulin underneath. The Qafaz first cut and lowered his branch, and then cut the rest of the branches for the owner of the land, then all the pickers including myself - I was promised a kaila of dates if I helped gather the fallen dates – "scraped" the dates from the branch, that is, by hitting them on the ground until all the dates fell off, then removed the remaining dates by hand. The dates were then gathered in the middle of the linoleum and poured into sacks. Although burlap sacks “shawal” look like they are locally produced, they are in fact imported from India just as they were during British colonial times. The Kanaf factory in the Blue Nile region that was built in the 1970s tried to cover the market's need for sacks, but has now stopped operating. Nowadays sacks are sometimes made of plastic in Sudan. The shawal is then sewn with “arjun” or metal wire and carried home.
Once a shawal was filled we could stop working and have a rest. The place was soon covered with bodies seeking any amount of shade to rest under. Lunch, or brunch, was sent from our house and as usual consisted of gurasa “wheat flat bread” and “waika” dried okra stew, followed by a nap. The cooks at home also have a wage at the end of the season, as no one works for free in the harvest season. At the end of the day we returned home followed by a camel carrying our sacks of dates. The camel walked straight through the door and into the house courtyard just as these animals had entered this same house of my great-grandfather, Mayor Gaafar Wad Mustafa Wad Muhammad, more than sixty years ago. The sacks were lowered into the yard, and then the dates were spread under the sun to dry.
People are usually afraid that the rain will fall suddenly and spoil the crop, because the harvest season corresponds to the rainy season or autumn, and some are so afraid of this happening that they ask the religious Sheikhs to pray and stop the rain falling. Next to our pile of dates was another pile belonging to my other aunt, Aisha, which had arrived on another camel owned by the family of her husband, Muhammad al-Amin Sharif. We found my aunt Aisha sitting proudly next to her high-quality “Gondela” dates, which are called “dates for eating”, such as the tamuda and kalamah variety, which are dates produced in smaller quantities, and distributed in limited ranges. Our pile on the other hand was "Barkawi" which is a commercial date variety produced in large quantities, and exported to different parts of Sudan. "Al-Jaw" meanwhile, is a lower quality date sold to those who do not care about the quality of their dates.
During my ten day stay, there was nothing more important than the topic of dates and their condition. Guests, passers-by and even the shopkeeper may ask you how much you had harvested or how the season had been. “Is the date ‘shayil’ or not?” they would ask, referring to the quantity of dates per branch. If the palm trees this season are not “shayil,” everyone would be discussing the reason why this was; it could be climate change, as my aunt Ruqayya said in one such discussion, or because of increasing humidity caused by the lake created by the recently constructed Marawi dam. In any case, dates were the main topic of conversation, only surpassed once during my stay, when a notorious cat stole some fish from a neighbour’s kitchen.
On our second day of work, our house was transformed to prepare for a wedding in the neighbourhood. Women descended on the house to bake the wedding biscuits and pastries for a son’s wedding. They wanted to use our large gas oven which is more efficient than the old stoves run on "wagood,” dry palm fronds, especially the "kood," the wide part of the palm fronds. These large leaves are also used to make children’s toys and sometimes to make whips for disciplining the same children! The family who’s occasion it is, brings trays filled with dishes of food for lunch to feed everyone. Just like with the dates, the owner of the occasion, harvest or wedding, is always responsible for feeding everyone who gives a helping hand.
As usual during wedding preparations, the house is filled with laughter, joviality and singing. In the outdoor kitchen women work a biscuit making machine while others come to chat on the veranda. From the veranda the house’s traditional roof can be seen, made of course, from palm trunks which are cut lengthwise into quarters or sixths and are called "falaga". These form the main structure on which the rest of the roof is built. The stems of palm fronds are tied together and placed on top of the structure. Previously, green palm fronds were usually cut and removed when the trees were pruned outside of the harvest season so that the dates would not be damaged. Palm fronds and mud are then placed on top of newspapers and this is topped with animal manure, usually donkey dung. Before the autumn, this process is repeated before the walls are painted white, and the water drains are cleared, as stagnant water and moisture are the enemies of mud houses.
Once the harvesting season ends, the second stage begins, which involves the packaging and distribution of dates. “The packers" are skilled workers who sort out the dates quickly and pack them. Bad dates, or "karmosha", are thrown to the animals to eat. In the past, dates were stored in clay silos of varying sizes that were raised off the ground called “Qasiba” or “Qusaiba”. These were also used to store crops such as wheat and continue to be used in some villages in the north but in our region, dates are placed in tight sacks, raised above the ground supported by iron beams away from water and insects, and covered with plastic sheeting.
"Al Musharaf dates, which the sam “protective walls” were raised for
The one which before it ripens the “sababa” middle men showed up
The happy one in the world takes the fate of his days
And on you Oh God I don't know what comes ahead
(old Shayqi poet)
A number of traders deal in dates, mostly the “sababa” who are the middlemen who buy dates from the small-scale dealers and pickers and sell them on to market traders. Street vendors buy dates to sell in the market. Merchants store dates in large warehouses and sell them wholesale to other merchants in large cities such as Al-Obeid, Al-Fasher, Nyala, Madani, Damazin, Al-Nuhud and others. In the past, dates were transported down the river by ship to Karima and from there by train onto all these cities. They also travelled by river to the south on the White Nile from Kosti. Dates also have a large market in eastern Sudan delivered there by train and sold by the “malwa” in the market and where they are consumed with coffee.
In the late fifties, during the government of General Aboud and with the help of American aid, a date processing factory was set up in Karima. The machinery arrived from California and was assembled at the factory and the factory produced dates stuffed with walnuts, almonds and coconut packed in beautiful boxes. As part of the packaging process, dates are fumigated to wash, clean and tenderize them to help remove the kernel, which was used as animal feed, and to insert a filling. The factory also produced white spirit or alcohol as a by-product which was used in hospitals to disinfect wounds. The factory stopped fully operating a long time ago, but returned to work seasonally through the efforts of local Sudanese entrepreneurs when the dates were harvested.
I returned to Khartoum with a kaila of dates which was not given to me as payment because I did not last more than a quarter of a day. It was harder than I imagined! The little sack I was given was a gift from my aunts for my efforts.
Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar
Barkal, North Sudan 2015
Zainab Osman Mahgoub and Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar
The strip of land along the banks of the Nile in northern Sudan, the landscape from a distance, on Google Maps for example, may all look very similar. Vast areas of greenery offset the curves of the river with brown-tinted villages enclaved among the gardens. While they may appear similar, in fact there is a wonderful diversity on the ground of villages, towns, tribes, traditions and even languages.
Al-Barkal is one such town with the same palm tree groves inhabited by the people of "Balad Be Tihit" or lower lands, and surrounded by the town of "Be Fawq” who are residents of the highlands living far from the Nile. One of the well-known landmarks of the region, and the reason behind the name of the town, is Al-Barkal mountain, which is a rocky platform rising over 100 metres with a rocky protrusion on the side which has been carved out to resemble a minaret. It is dubbed "Al-Shurayma", or “the crooked tooth” a name created by the most famous Shaygiya tribe poet Hassouna who was expressing his disappointment in one of the great leaders of Al-Barkal saying:
AlBarkal Mountain, the one with a crooked tooth
It cannot compare to Ibn Ouf Mountain in lower Hizaima
The temple of Amun, built by Baankhi and his son Taharqa, can be seen on the side of the mountain along with the disintegrating and slowly vanishing row of stone rams. Some pyramids are scattered around the mountain, and the entire town currently lies on what was the capital of Kush during the reign of the Kingdom of Meroe.
About two kilometres south of the mountain, on the main road, is the house of my grandfather Mahgoub Gaafar Mustafa, a household now inhabited and run by my aunt Ruqayya. The house, and my aunt, are both as important a monument as the ones mentioned above, at least in as far as the following story goes about my visit to the area in 2015, to take part in the date harvesting season, or as it is called "Hash al-Tamur". The text also contains notes by my father, Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar, because my 10-day experience is nothing compared to the length of time he spent there being born in this house and raised on these lands.
The date harvesting season in Al-Barkal begins in September, or "Nasi," as it is called in the old Egyptian Coptic calendar which is used for cultivating and harvesting in most parts of northern Sudan because its months correspond to clear changes in weather patterns and seasons. Al-Barkal produces a variety of dates including the dry variety, when the fruit is left to ripen and dry on the tree before being harvested. This type is easier to preserve and store and is thus more suitable for trading. Soft dates are dates harvested when they are still soft. They are kept in baskets, stacked on top of each other, to maintain their moisture, especially as northern Sudan is a dry region. There are also the semi-soft dates produced in the areas of Rubatab and Jaaliyin in River Nile State, from which types of pressed dates, “ajwa”, are made such as the Mashreq, Wad Laqai and Wad Khatib.
In the past, palm groves in Al-Barkal were secure and left unguarded. However, in more recent times there have been incidents of harvest stealing and a system has therefore been developed to protect the crop. This involves setting a specific day on which the harvest season will begin and within this period, each sagyia, or palm grove, owner will have an allocated day so that everyone knows who will be harvesting their dates on which day. The 18th of September 2015 was the day designated for harvesting the sagyia, owned by my grandfather's family. We went down early in the morning, me and my late aunt Hafsa who was an excellent business woman and who managed our entire family’s date business. The “qafaz” and his family came with us. The “qafaz” is usually a partner of the land owner and cares for, and harvests the dates. The name comes from the term “qafouza”, which is the process of pollinating dates, which takes place in winter, several months before the harvest season.
On our way to the palm groves in the lower lands, we came across a row of young men sitting on the ground next to the main street opposite the farms waiting for work. Myself and my two aunts, Hafsa and Aisha, may God have mercy on both of their souls, were not the only ones who had come to Al-Barkal days before the harvest season. While we had come from Khartoum, this line of young men came from the vast deserts of northern Sudan. During the harvest season, nomadic Arabs camp on the outskirts of the city with men taking up work in harvesting, and women undertaking small domestic chores in the town’s households. The young man whom my aunt hired was from West Africa and had come to northern Sudan to seek an education in Sudan’s khalawi, or Quranic schools. He and his companions had come to work on date harvesting to earn a wage to support him over the next few months. Harvest is a blessed season, characterized by the abundance of wealth and happiness. For a short while people are rich and this is always a reason to celebrate. At the time of our visit, several weddings were planned to take place. Local people who work in Khartoum or other large cities and those who work abroad, usually come home on annual leave during the harvest season. Meanwhile, the reason children are happy is because the harvest season is an official holiday from schools, so that they can help their families harvesting and because the children are given a small wage for gathering dates, whether from their work with their family or from collecting the Haboob dates, which are the dates that are blown down in the strong winds. These latter dates are not of high quality, because they are heterogeneous, but children use them to grow the pile of dates they have gathered.
Ways of paying the workers involved in harvesting varies; the Qafaz usually receives a share of the dates for example one or two branches, or “sabita”, from each palm tree depending on the agreement, and according to the height of the tree. Date pickers prefer money, and are paid per working day, while children and young pickers are paid by the quantity of dates collected. These are usually the dates that fall far away from the area around the palm tree which the children gather in "kaila" which is a tin measuring vessel. One kaila is the equivalent of two rubu which is made up of two malwa while most date sacks are made up of six kaila. These old units of measurement derive from an Islamic heritage. At the end of the season adults buy the dates children have gathered per kaila.
Our small delegation arrived at the sagyia to start the process of harvesting dates. Agricultural plots in northern Sudan are divided into sagiyas, a plot of land approximately twenty to thirty square acres, that can be irrigated with a single traditional water wheel, or saqyia. The name persists even after the old sagyia was replaced by mechanical pumps. The saqya is equal 20 to 30 acres: An acre has twenty four carats, and a carat has twenty four “arrows”, and the sakia is divided by “ropes” and “bones”, which are length measutments, and the happiest is the owner of twenty-four carats of all kinds. The area is divided into a long strip of planting beds called Ingaya, and this strip is watered with a parallel water stream. The side of a single bed is usually in the range of five to six meters, and in the middle of each bed one palm tree is planted, sometimes two palm trees are placed in the corners.
The mother palm tree is called "Omiya", and the small saplings are called "daughters", they can be seen growing next to the tree. Three or four of them are usually left to keep the mother company, and the rest are replanted elsewhere. The palm tree is very similar to humans, it produces off-springs, has male and female trees and lives up to a hundred years, but does not stop growing, and after a while it becomes difficult to reach the top of the dates. A palm tree in Al-Barkal is climbed without using any auxiliary tools such as ropes or ladders. Instead, to climb to the top, date pickers use the dried ridges, called “karoug”, which are left on the trunk when the palm fronds are cut every time the tree grows. Climbers sometimes fall when they step onto the older, weaker ridges.
After the Qafaz climbed the tree, the rest of the workers pulled a piece of tarpaulin underneath. The Qafaz first cut and lowered his branch, and then cut the rest of the branches for the owner of the land, then all the pickers including myself - I was promised a kaila of dates if I helped gather the fallen dates – "scraped" the dates from the branch, that is, by hitting them on the ground until all the dates fell off, then removed the remaining dates by hand. The dates were then gathered in the middle of the linoleum and poured into sacks. Although burlap sacks “shawal” look like they are locally produced, they are in fact imported from India just as they were during British colonial times. The Kanaf factory in the Blue Nile region that was built in the 1970s tried to cover the market's need for sacks, but has now stopped operating. Nowadays sacks are sometimes made of plastic in Sudan. The shawal is then sewn with “arjun” or metal wire and carried home.
Once a shawal was filled we could stop working and have a rest. The place was soon covered with bodies seeking any amount of shade to rest under. Lunch, or brunch, was sent from our house and as usual consisted of gurasa “wheat flat bread” and “waika” dried okra stew, followed by a nap. The cooks at home also have a wage at the end of the season, as no one works for free in the harvest season. At the end of the day we returned home followed by a camel carrying our sacks of dates. The camel walked straight through the door and into the house courtyard just as these animals had entered this same house of my great-grandfather, Mayor Gaafar Wad Mustafa Wad Muhammad, more than sixty years ago. The sacks were lowered into the yard, and then the dates were spread under the sun to dry.
People are usually afraid that the rain will fall suddenly and spoil the crop, because the harvest season corresponds to the rainy season or autumn, and some are so afraid of this happening that they ask the religious Sheikhs to pray and stop the rain falling. Next to our pile of dates was another pile belonging to my other aunt, Aisha, which had arrived on another camel owned by the family of her husband, Muhammad al-Amin Sharif. We found my aunt Aisha sitting proudly next to her high-quality “Gondela” dates, which are called “dates for eating”, such as the tamuda and kalamah variety, which are dates produced in smaller quantities, and distributed in limited ranges. Our pile on the other hand was "Barkawi" which is a commercial date variety produced in large quantities, and exported to different parts of Sudan. "Al-Jaw" meanwhile, is a lower quality date sold to those who do not care about the quality of their dates.
During my ten day stay, there was nothing more important than the topic of dates and their condition. Guests, passers-by and even the shopkeeper may ask you how much you had harvested or how the season had been. “Is the date ‘shayil’ or not?” they would ask, referring to the quantity of dates per branch. If the palm trees this season are not “shayil,” everyone would be discussing the reason why this was; it could be climate change, as my aunt Ruqayya said in one such discussion, or because of increasing humidity caused by the lake created by the recently constructed Marawi dam. In any case, dates were the main topic of conversation, only surpassed once during my stay, when a notorious cat stole some fish from a neighbour’s kitchen.
On our second day of work, our house was transformed to prepare for a wedding in the neighbourhood. Women descended on the house to bake the wedding biscuits and pastries for a son’s wedding. They wanted to use our large gas oven which is more efficient than the old stoves run on "wagood,” dry palm fronds, especially the "kood," the wide part of the palm fronds. These large leaves are also used to make children’s toys and sometimes to make whips for disciplining the same children! The family who’s occasion it is, brings trays filled with dishes of food for lunch to feed everyone. Just like with the dates, the owner of the occasion, harvest or wedding, is always responsible for feeding everyone who gives a helping hand.
As usual during wedding preparations, the house is filled with laughter, joviality and singing. In the outdoor kitchen women work a biscuit making machine while others come to chat on the veranda. From the veranda the house’s traditional roof can be seen, made of course, from palm trunks which are cut lengthwise into quarters or sixths and are called "falaga". These form the main structure on which the rest of the roof is built. The stems of palm fronds are tied together and placed on top of the structure. Previously, green palm fronds were usually cut and removed when the trees were pruned outside of the harvest season so that the dates would not be damaged. Palm fronds and mud are then placed on top of newspapers and this is topped with animal manure, usually donkey dung. Before the autumn, this process is repeated before the walls are painted white, and the water drains are cleared, as stagnant water and moisture are the enemies of mud houses.
Once the harvesting season ends, the second stage begins, which involves the packaging and distribution of dates. “The packers" are skilled workers who sort out the dates quickly and pack them. Bad dates, or "karmosha", are thrown to the animals to eat. In the past, dates were stored in clay silos of varying sizes that were raised off the ground called “Qasiba” or “Qusaiba”. These were also used to store crops such as wheat and continue to be used in some villages in the north but in our region, dates are placed in tight sacks, raised above the ground supported by iron beams away from water and insects, and covered with plastic sheeting.
"Al Musharaf dates, which the sam “protective walls” were raised for
The one which before it ripens the “sababa” middle men showed up
The happy one in the world takes the fate of his days
And on you Oh God I don't know what comes ahead
(old Shayqi poet)
A number of traders deal in dates, mostly the “sababa” who are the middlemen who buy dates from the small-scale dealers and pickers and sell them on to market traders. Street vendors buy dates to sell in the market. Merchants store dates in large warehouses and sell them wholesale to other merchants in large cities such as Al-Obeid, Al-Fasher, Nyala, Madani, Damazin, Al-Nuhud and others. In the past, dates were transported down the river by ship to Karima and from there by train onto all these cities. They also travelled by river to the south on the White Nile from Kosti. Dates also have a large market in eastern Sudan delivered there by train and sold by the “malwa” in the market and where they are consumed with coffee.
In the late fifties, during the government of General Aboud and with the help of American aid, a date processing factory was set up in Karima. The machinery arrived from California and was assembled at the factory and the factory produced dates stuffed with walnuts, almonds and coconut packed in beautiful boxes. As part of the packaging process, dates are fumigated to wash, clean and tenderize them to help remove the kernel, which was used as animal feed, and to insert a filling. The factory also produced white spirit or alcohol as a by-product which was used in hospitals to disinfect wounds. The factory stopped fully operating a long time ago, but returned to work seasonally through the efforts of local Sudanese entrepreneurs when the dates were harvested.
I returned to Khartoum with a kaila of dates which was not given to me as payment because I did not last more than a quarter of a day. It was harder than I imagined! The little sack I was given was a gift from my aunts for my efforts.
Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar
Harvest season playlist
Harvest season playlist
This playlist contains a combination of traditional harvest songs, music and dances as well as a group of new songs celebrating sudanese produce and harvest.
Harvest music has always been an influence to modern music and songs and the beats of the harvesting a tune for many new music style such as Zanig and Rap.
Header picture © A woman using a local threshing tool called ‘ab rasen’ to separate the grains from the chaff after the harvest. Mohammed Osman, Gezira
This playlist contains a combination of traditional harvest songs, music and dances as well as a group of new songs celebrating sudanese produce and harvest.
Harvest music has always been an influence to modern music and songs and the beats of the harvesting a tune for many new music style such as Zanig and Rap.
Header picture © A woman using a local threshing tool called ‘ab rasen’ to separate the grains from the chaff after the harvest. Mohammed Osman, Gezira
This playlist contains a combination of traditional harvest songs, music and dances as well as a group of new songs celebrating sudanese produce and harvest.
Harvest music has always been an influence to modern music and songs and the beats of the harvesting a tune for many new music style such as Zanig and Rap.
Header picture © A woman using a local threshing tool called ‘ab rasen’ to separate the grains from the chaff after the harvest. Mohammed Osman, Gezira
It’s a rainy day
It’s a rainy day
Cultures determine which foods we crave; in colder countries this could be for comfort foods that are high in energy to warm up the body whereas in hot countries like Sudan, cravings are often associated with foods that cool us down, a cold lime juice or homemade popsicles. In Sudan, and as temperatures drop, during the winter months or at the beginning of the rainy season, people have different cravings. They may choose to spend time outside, eating grilled meats such as agashay and shaya, or fish cooked in different ways like fried or grilled bulti or ijil and sometimes salted fish known as faseekh. A simple milky tea with ligaymat donuts is also a popular choice in the cooler weather. The way people describe the objects of their cravings is indicative of how keen they are; “hot fried fish with fresh rocket and white onions, and an ice cold bottle of fizzy pop” is listed longingly. Whatever the favorite dish, what people enjoy the most is spending time together enjoying the weather and the delicious food.
Cultures determine which foods we crave; in colder countries this could be for comfort foods that are high in energy to warm up the body whereas in hot countries like Sudan, cravings are often associated with foods that cool us down, a cold lime juice or homemade popsicles. In Sudan, and as temperatures drop, during the winter months or at the beginning of the rainy season, people have different cravings. They may choose to spend time outside, eating grilled meats such as agashay and shaya, or fish cooked in different ways like fried or grilled bulti or ijil and sometimes salted fish known as faseekh. A simple milky tea with ligaymat donuts is also a popular choice in the cooler weather. The way people describe the objects of their cravings is indicative of how keen they are; “hot fried fish with fresh rocket and white onions, and an ice cold bottle of fizzy pop” is listed longingly. Whatever the favorite dish, what people enjoy the most is spending time together enjoying the weather and the delicious food.
Cultures determine which foods we crave; in colder countries this could be for comfort foods that are high in energy to warm up the body whereas in hot countries like Sudan, cravings are often associated with foods that cool us down, a cold lime juice or homemade popsicles. In Sudan, and as temperatures drop, during the winter months or at the beginning of the rainy season, people have different cravings. They may choose to spend time outside, eating grilled meats such as agashay and shaya, or fish cooked in different ways like fried or grilled bulti or ijil and sometimes salted fish known as faseekh. A simple milky tea with ligaymat donuts is also a popular choice in the cooler weather. The way people describe the objects of their cravings is indicative of how keen they are; “hot fried fish with fresh rocket and white onions, and an ice cold bottle of fizzy pop” is listed longingly. Whatever the favorite dish, what people enjoy the most is spending time together enjoying the weather and the delicious food.
The cheese of Kazgil
The cheese of Kazgil
The Kazgil region is known for its cheese making and the history of Kazgil cheese dates back to the late 1920s a time when a large number of nomadic tribes, who were able to supply large quantities of milk, came through the area that has an extensive forest and vast agricultural lands. At the beginning, a cheese making school was established in Al-Obaid, and the people of Kazgil were invited to learn the skills required to make various cheeses and were awarded certificates for their efforts. After independence a large and successful development programme was implemented that helped increase the activity of the cheese industry in the area until it became a ‘cheese centre’ and earned a reputation for good quality cheese. Relations between the nomads and local farmers were strengthened and the volume of nomads passing through increased, particularly now that they could earn good money for their milk.
Braided cheese is one of the most famous types of cheeses produced in the area and is a cooked type of cheese similar to mozzarella. After adding rennet, an enzyme that used to be extracted from calf intestines and is now made chemically, the curd is separated from the water and cooked in boiling water. Unlike mozzarella which is shaped into balls, braided cheese is stretched into long strips and salt and nigella seeds are added to the mixture. The difference between cooked and uncooked cheeses, such as white, or feta cheese, is that after the curd separates, the cheese is boiled in salted water for a short period of time and a large amount of salt is added to it to preserve it instead of cooking it. In this way the cheese loses its melting property when cooked. This video was filmed as part of the Heritage Survey and Documentation Project in Kordofan that was conducted in 2021.
The Kazgil region is known for its cheese making and the history of Kazgil cheese dates back to the late 1920s a time when a large number of nomadic tribes, who were able to supply large quantities of milk, came through the area that has an extensive forest and vast agricultural lands. At the beginning, a cheese making school was established in Al-Obaid, and the people of Kazgil were invited to learn the skills required to make various cheeses and were awarded certificates for their efforts. After independence a large and successful development programme was implemented that helped increase the activity of the cheese industry in the area until it became a ‘cheese centre’ and earned a reputation for good quality cheese. Relations between the nomads and local farmers were strengthened and the volume of nomads passing through increased, particularly now that they could earn good money for their milk.
Braided cheese is one of the most famous types of cheeses produced in the area and is a cooked type of cheese similar to mozzarella. After adding rennet, an enzyme that used to be extracted from calf intestines and is now made chemically, the curd is separated from the water and cooked in boiling water. Unlike mozzarella which is shaped into balls, braided cheese is stretched into long strips and salt and nigella seeds are added to the mixture. The difference between cooked and uncooked cheeses, such as white, or feta cheese, is that after the curd separates, the cheese is boiled in salted water for a short period of time and a large amount of salt is added to it to preserve it instead of cooking it. In this way the cheese loses its melting property when cooked. This video was filmed as part of the Heritage Survey and Documentation Project in Kordofan that was conducted in 2021.
The Kazgil region is known for its cheese making and the history of Kazgil cheese dates back to the late 1920s a time when a large number of nomadic tribes, who were able to supply large quantities of milk, came through the area that has an extensive forest and vast agricultural lands. At the beginning, a cheese making school was established in Al-Obaid, and the people of Kazgil were invited to learn the skills required to make various cheeses and were awarded certificates for their efforts. After independence a large and successful development programme was implemented that helped increase the activity of the cheese industry in the area until it became a ‘cheese centre’ and earned a reputation for good quality cheese. Relations between the nomads and local farmers were strengthened and the volume of nomads passing through increased, particularly now that they could earn good money for their milk.
Braided cheese is one of the most famous types of cheeses produced in the area and is a cooked type of cheese similar to mozzarella. After adding rennet, an enzyme that used to be extracted from calf intestines and is now made chemically, the curd is separated from the water and cooked in boiling water. Unlike mozzarella which is shaped into balls, braided cheese is stretched into long strips and salt and nigella seeds are added to the mixture. The difference between cooked and uncooked cheeses, such as white, or feta cheese, is that after the curd separates, the cheese is boiled in salted water for a short period of time and a large amount of salt is added to it to preserve it instead of cooking it. In this way the cheese loses its melting property when cooked. This video was filmed as part of the Heritage Survey and Documentation Project in Kordofan that was conducted in 2021.
Street Food
Street Food
The street food experience is a unique one and offers a huge range of options and menu choices. The most apparent form of street food is that which is sold by the women known as tea ladies who mainly serve hot beverages such as tea, coffee and karkade or hibiscus tea.
These settings are most popular among groups of friends and youth. Other types of food are light snacks such as tamia or falafel and baleela, a boiled grain, as well as desserts such as bakomba, made with another type of wheat grain. Other more substantial food, such as the traditional stew dishes, are served nearer to where manual and other forms of employees work or live such as by construction sites and in central parts of Khartoum. Many traditional restaurants serve food to their customers seated outside in the street rather than indoors.
“One pound for your juice of the lemons of Bara, that arrived by plane!”
Taking a walk through the central bus station in Khartoum you are likely to hear this call by the juice sellers with their plastic buckets brimming with sweet liquid and chunks of ice bobbing on the surface. Fresh juices and snacks are the most common types of street food on offer next to transport hubs. There are also children pushing wheelbarrows selling sticks of sugarcane and roasted corn on the cob, women with baskets on their heads selling dry fruits and nuts, as well as various mixtures of condiments made from tabaldi or baobab powder, men sitting on the side of road with the popular concoction of green marrow with hot sauce, and girls with portable cold boxes selling popsicles. When it is the season, temporary shops appear selling Moulid sweets.
Other street food stalls sell basta, kunafa and basbusa sweets similar to baklava while others, strategically positioned next to bakeries, sell tamia and eggs, ready to be stuffed into a freshly bought hot loaf. Eating these impromptu sandwiches as you wait for the rest of your tamia order is a common phenomenon! It is also common to see small neighbourhood corner shops with large gourds bubbling away on coal stoves outside cooking the most popular of all; ful or fava beans. Orders of ful are placed in containers you bring with you or in a couple of plastic bags if you forget to bring one. More recently fancy food trucks selling western-style foods like burgers and chips have become very popular. Finally, the most commonly known street food experience is market food which includes grilled meats at livestock markets, and various fish options at fish markets or water fronts.
The collection of images in this gallery, showing different experiences of street food around Sudan, were taken by Zainab Gaafar and Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez.
Cover picture © Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez
The street food experience is a unique one and offers a huge range of options and menu choices. The most apparent form of street food is that which is sold by the women known as tea ladies who mainly serve hot beverages such as tea, coffee and karkade or hibiscus tea.
These settings are most popular among groups of friends and youth. Other types of food are light snacks such as tamia or falafel and baleela, a boiled grain, as well as desserts such as bakomba, made with another type of wheat grain. Other more substantial food, such as the traditional stew dishes, are served nearer to where manual and other forms of employees work or live such as by construction sites and in central parts of Khartoum. Many traditional restaurants serve food to their customers seated outside in the street rather than indoors.
“One pound for your juice of the lemons of Bara, that arrived by plane!”
Taking a walk through the central bus station in Khartoum you are likely to hear this call by the juice sellers with their plastic buckets brimming with sweet liquid and chunks of ice bobbing on the surface. Fresh juices and snacks are the most common types of street food on offer next to transport hubs. There are also children pushing wheelbarrows selling sticks of sugarcane and roasted corn on the cob, women with baskets on their heads selling dry fruits and nuts, as well as various mixtures of condiments made from tabaldi or baobab powder, men sitting on the side of road with the popular concoction of green marrow with hot sauce, and girls with portable cold boxes selling popsicles. When it is the season, temporary shops appear selling Moulid sweets.
Other street food stalls sell basta, kunafa and basbusa sweets similar to baklava while others, strategically positioned next to bakeries, sell tamia and eggs, ready to be stuffed into a freshly bought hot loaf. Eating these impromptu sandwiches as you wait for the rest of your tamia order is a common phenomenon! It is also common to see small neighbourhood corner shops with large gourds bubbling away on coal stoves outside cooking the most popular of all; ful or fava beans. Orders of ful are placed in containers you bring with you or in a couple of plastic bags if you forget to bring one. More recently fancy food trucks selling western-style foods like burgers and chips have become very popular. Finally, the most commonly known street food experience is market food which includes grilled meats at livestock markets, and various fish options at fish markets or water fronts.
The collection of images in this gallery, showing different experiences of street food around Sudan, were taken by Zainab Gaafar and Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez.
Cover picture © Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez
The street food experience is a unique one and offers a huge range of options and menu choices. The most apparent form of street food is that which is sold by the women known as tea ladies who mainly serve hot beverages such as tea, coffee and karkade or hibiscus tea.
These settings are most popular among groups of friends and youth. Other types of food are light snacks such as tamia or falafel and baleela, a boiled grain, as well as desserts such as bakomba, made with another type of wheat grain. Other more substantial food, such as the traditional stew dishes, are served nearer to where manual and other forms of employees work or live such as by construction sites and in central parts of Khartoum. Many traditional restaurants serve food to their customers seated outside in the street rather than indoors.
“One pound for your juice of the lemons of Bara, that arrived by plane!”
Taking a walk through the central bus station in Khartoum you are likely to hear this call by the juice sellers with their plastic buckets brimming with sweet liquid and chunks of ice bobbing on the surface. Fresh juices and snacks are the most common types of street food on offer next to transport hubs. There are also children pushing wheelbarrows selling sticks of sugarcane and roasted corn on the cob, women with baskets on their heads selling dry fruits and nuts, as well as various mixtures of condiments made from tabaldi or baobab powder, men sitting on the side of road with the popular concoction of green marrow with hot sauce, and girls with portable cold boxes selling popsicles. When it is the season, temporary shops appear selling Moulid sweets.
Other street food stalls sell basta, kunafa and basbusa sweets similar to baklava while others, strategically positioned next to bakeries, sell tamia and eggs, ready to be stuffed into a freshly bought hot loaf. Eating these impromptu sandwiches as you wait for the rest of your tamia order is a common phenomenon! It is also common to see small neighbourhood corner shops with large gourds bubbling away on coal stoves outside cooking the most popular of all; ful or fava beans. Orders of ful are placed in containers you bring with you or in a couple of plastic bags if you forget to bring one. More recently fancy food trucks selling western-style foods like burgers and chips have become very popular. Finally, the most commonly known street food experience is market food which includes grilled meats at livestock markets, and various fish options at fish markets or water fronts.
The collection of images in this gallery, showing different experiences of street food around Sudan, were taken by Zainab Gaafar and Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez.
Cover picture © Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez
Taste of home
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Taste of home
What food brings back memories of home?
I asked ten Sudanese people to list the food items they used to take with them when they were travelling somewhere such as to another city or abroad.
The question took people back to different periods of their lives and invoked interesting memories. One was about the metal suitcase which many Sudanese have in their homes, stashed away under beds or in dusty store rooms containing everything from old photographs and papers to china dinner sets. The metal box for some was associated with their experience of starting their military service and living in a dorm with many other young men enrolled on the mandatory training. Memories of this particular metal suitcase were of it being tied firmly to the top of a rickety old bus, with all the other luggage, on the way to the camp. It was filled with every possible form of sweet food making it, as one person said, a ‘tahniya box.’ Tahniya or Halva, is a thick paste mainly of sugar and sesame oil which is often used as a sandwich filler.
The cardboard Ramadan food box is well-known to everyone inside and outside Sudan. Every year before Ramadan we would receive fresh produce from farms outside Khartoum brought by family members who were visiting. Distant aunts sent us their signature hilu-mur, dried sheets of fermented sorghum that are soaked to create the popular ‘sweet and sour’ drink, rugag or ‘Sudanese cornflakes’ and gargosh rusks. Other Ramadan boxes people remembered contained ground dried meat, sharmoot, or dried onions which even though you could get these in most places they never tasted the same as the ones sent from home!
People’s answers to what they took on their travels and what reminded them of home were very personal and varied from one person to another; what they loved and what they couldn’t find in the places they were going to. One person explained how her brother loved biscuits and so her mother would pack every type of biscuit into his bag. Another said her mother made her special coffee blends with local flavours while another said she brought frozen minced meat with her because she hadn’t been able to find a butcher who could supply anything that tasted the same. Royal biscuits, the soft drink Pasigianos and powdered milk were some more of the things people admitted to taking with them. Sesame seed oil, local spices including dried, ground okra and of course braided cheese were all common items people took with them regularly.
The taste of home is something we all miss today and every now and then there will be some food we crave. We also miss how we used to enjoy meals together and all the memories associated with it but because of the war, it is very unlikely anybody will receive a box of food from home and will have to make do with local alternatives.
Cover picture and designs © Zainab Gaafar
What food brings back memories of home?
I asked ten Sudanese people to list the food items they used to take with them when they were travelling somewhere such as to another city or abroad.
The question took people back to different periods of their lives and invoked interesting memories. One was about the metal suitcase which many Sudanese have in their homes, stashed away under beds or in dusty store rooms containing everything from old photographs and papers to china dinner sets. The metal box for some was associated with their experience of starting their military service and living in a dorm with many other young men enrolled on the mandatory training. Memories of this particular metal suitcase were of it being tied firmly to the top of a rickety old bus, with all the other luggage, on the way to the camp. It was filled with every possible form of sweet food making it, as one person said, a ‘tahniya box.’ Tahniya or Halva, is a thick paste mainly of sugar and sesame oil which is often used as a sandwich filler.
The cardboard Ramadan food box is well-known to everyone inside and outside Sudan. Every year before Ramadan we would receive fresh produce from farms outside Khartoum brought by family members who were visiting. Distant aunts sent us their signature hilu-mur, dried sheets of fermented sorghum that are soaked to create the popular ‘sweet and sour’ drink, rugag or ‘Sudanese cornflakes’ and gargosh rusks. Other Ramadan boxes people remembered contained ground dried meat, sharmoot, or dried onions which even though you could get these in most places they never tasted the same as the ones sent from home!
People’s answers to what they took on their travels and what reminded them of home were very personal and varied from one person to another; what they loved and what they couldn’t find in the places they were going to. One person explained how her brother loved biscuits and so her mother would pack every type of biscuit into his bag. Another said her mother made her special coffee blends with local flavours while another said she brought frozen minced meat with her because she hadn’t been able to find a butcher who could supply anything that tasted the same. Royal biscuits, the soft drink Pasigianos and powdered milk were some more of the things people admitted to taking with them. Sesame seed oil, local spices including dried, ground okra and of course braided cheese were all common items people took with them regularly.
The taste of home is something we all miss today and every now and then there will be some food we crave. We also miss how we used to enjoy meals together and all the memories associated with it but because of the war, it is very unlikely anybody will receive a box of food from home and will have to make do with local alternatives.
Cover picture and designs © Zainab Gaafar
What food brings back memories of home?
I asked ten Sudanese people to list the food items they used to take with them when they were travelling somewhere such as to another city or abroad.
The question took people back to different periods of their lives and invoked interesting memories. One was about the metal suitcase which many Sudanese have in their homes, stashed away under beds or in dusty store rooms containing everything from old photographs and papers to china dinner sets. The metal box for some was associated with their experience of starting their military service and living in a dorm with many other young men enrolled on the mandatory training. Memories of this particular metal suitcase were of it being tied firmly to the top of a rickety old bus, with all the other luggage, on the way to the camp. It was filled with every possible form of sweet food making it, as one person said, a ‘tahniya box.’ Tahniya or Halva, is a thick paste mainly of sugar and sesame oil which is often used as a sandwich filler.
The cardboard Ramadan food box is well-known to everyone inside and outside Sudan. Every year before Ramadan we would receive fresh produce from farms outside Khartoum brought by family members who were visiting. Distant aunts sent us their signature hilu-mur, dried sheets of fermented sorghum that are soaked to create the popular ‘sweet and sour’ drink, rugag or ‘Sudanese cornflakes’ and gargosh rusks. Other Ramadan boxes people remembered contained ground dried meat, sharmoot, or dried onions which even though you could get these in most places they never tasted the same as the ones sent from home!
People’s answers to what they took on their travels and what reminded them of home were very personal and varied from one person to another; what they loved and what they couldn’t find in the places they were going to. One person explained how her brother loved biscuits and so her mother would pack every type of biscuit into his bag. Another said her mother made her special coffee blends with local flavours while another said she brought frozen minced meat with her because she hadn’t been able to find a butcher who could supply anything that tasted the same. Royal biscuits, the soft drink Pasigianos and powdered milk were some more of the things people admitted to taking with them. Sesame seed oil, local spices including dried, ground okra and of course braided cheese were all common items people took with them regularly.
The taste of home is something we all miss today and every now and then there will be some food we crave. We also miss how we used to enjoy meals together and all the memories associated with it but because of the war, it is very unlikely anybody will receive a box of food from home and will have to make do with local alternatives.
Cover picture and designs © Zainab Gaafar
Know your leaves
Know your leaves
Sudanese drinks
Sudanese drinks
Panel design showing infused and soaked drinks in Sudan by Zainab Gaafar
Sudanese cuisine includes many dishes and drinks associated with its dry and hot weather. Certain drinks are served and enjoyed on different occasions or different states of health. Many adults will remember how, as children, they were made to drink different types of teas to ease a bout of stomach pain or cure a sore throat. Areas with dry climates around Sudan produce fruits like baobab, nabag or doum and wild plants like harjal (Solenostemma Arghel), maharib (Lemongrass, barbed wire grass) and roots like ghurunjal (Galangal Root). Locally, there are two known methods used to extract taste and flavor from all these different plants. Infusion, which means the plant is added to hot water or is boiled in water. This process is mainly used to produce teas or hot drinks as well as extracting various health benefits from the plants. Or soaking which means they are left in water at room temperature to allow the taste to infuse slowly. This is mainly used for cold and refreshing beverages.
Karakade or hibiscus tea, is one of the most known Sudanese products and is drunk both as a hot drink, sometimes called shiriya, or as a cold drink, after it is soaked in water for some time, the length of time is relevant to how fresh or strong the hibiscus flowers are.
Fermented drinks also undergo a soaking phase to bring out the taste, such as hilu-mur or abray made from sprouted sorghum seed sprouts that are dried, flavored, fermented and cooked into sheets which are then soaked in water and sugared before serving.
Cover picture © Sari Omer, Eldamazin
Panel design showing infused and soaked drinks in Sudan by Zainab Gaafar
Sudanese cuisine includes many dishes and drinks associated with its dry and hot weather. Certain drinks are served and enjoyed on different occasions or different states of health. Many adults will remember how, as children, they were made to drink different types of teas to ease a bout of stomach pain or cure a sore throat. Areas with dry climates around Sudan produce fruits like baobab, nabag or doum and wild plants like harjal (Solenostemma Arghel), maharib (Lemongrass, barbed wire grass) and roots like ghurunjal (Galangal Root). Locally, there are two known methods used to extract taste and flavor from all these different plants. Infusion, which means the plant is added to hot water or is boiled in water. This process is mainly used to produce teas or hot drinks as well as extracting various health benefits from the plants. Or soaking which means they are left in water at room temperature to allow the taste to infuse slowly. This is mainly used for cold and refreshing beverages.
Karakade or hibiscus tea, is one of the most known Sudanese products and is drunk both as a hot drink, sometimes called shiriya, or as a cold drink, after it is soaked in water for some time, the length of time is relevant to how fresh or strong the hibiscus flowers are.
Fermented drinks also undergo a soaking phase to bring out the taste, such as hilu-mur or abray made from sprouted sorghum seed sprouts that are dried, flavored, fermented and cooked into sheets which are then soaked in water and sugared before serving.
Cover picture © Sari Omer, Eldamazin
Panel design showing infused and soaked drinks in Sudan by Zainab Gaafar
Sudanese cuisine includes many dishes and drinks associated with its dry and hot weather. Certain drinks are served and enjoyed on different occasions or different states of health. Many adults will remember how, as children, they were made to drink different types of teas to ease a bout of stomach pain or cure a sore throat. Areas with dry climates around Sudan produce fruits like baobab, nabag or doum and wild plants like harjal (Solenostemma Arghel), maharib (Lemongrass, barbed wire grass) and roots like ghurunjal (Galangal Root). Locally, there are two known methods used to extract taste and flavor from all these different plants. Infusion, which means the plant is added to hot water or is boiled in water. This process is mainly used to produce teas or hot drinks as well as extracting various health benefits from the plants. Or soaking which means they are left in water at room temperature to allow the taste to infuse slowly. This is mainly used for cold and refreshing beverages.
Karakade or hibiscus tea, is one of the most known Sudanese products and is drunk both as a hot drink, sometimes called shiriya, or as a cold drink, after it is soaked in water for some time, the length of time is relevant to how fresh or strong the hibiscus flowers are.
Fermented drinks also undergo a soaking phase to bring out the taste, such as hilu-mur or abray made from sprouted sorghum seed sprouts that are dried, flavored, fermented and cooked into sheets which are then soaked in water and sugared before serving.
Cover picture © Sari Omer, Eldamazin
Festive food
Festive food
In every culture anywhere in the world, feasts and food at celebrations are always at the heart of any occasion. This is perhaps the one thing that we humans all have in common; that we celebrate with food.
Sudan’s diverse cultures mean people always have different ways they cook and present their food at large events such as religious celebrations - the Moulid, Ramadan or Eid - or when someone returns from a long trip or recovers from an illness or has achieved academic or career success or even at the most popular event, weddings. Women from the family and neighbours from far and near gather to cook hearty meals and delicious dishes. Festivities themselves start well before the day itself usually by preparing, cutting and baking biscuits. The baskawit, khabiz, minen and ajwa biscuits and many more varieties are a very important component served to the waves of guests and well wishers who pass by in weeks and days before and after the wedding day.
The video shows fateer preparations, a light biscuit made especially for weddings consisting of flour, a pinch of salt, baking powder, vanilla, eggs and vegetable oil. The dough is then spread very thinly using a pasta making machine and cut into shapes and deep-fried in oil. The crunchy, light biscuits are dusted in icing sugar and handled with tremendous care not only because of how fragile they are, but because they are likely to be devoured by anyone who gets their hand on one!
Cover picture and video © Zainab Gaafar
In every culture anywhere in the world, feasts and food at celebrations are always at the heart of any occasion. This is perhaps the one thing that we humans all have in common; that we celebrate with food.
Sudan’s diverse cultures mean people always have different ways they cook and present their food at large events such as religious celebrations - the Moulid, Ramadan or Eid - or when someone returns from a long trip or recovers from an illness or has achieved academic or career success or even at the most popular event, weddings. Women from the family and neighbours from far and near gather to cook hearty meals and delicious dishes. Festivities themselves start well before the day itself usually by preparing, cutting and baking biscuits. The baskawit, khabiz, minen and ajwa biscuits and many more varieties are a very important component served to the waves of guests and well wishers who pass by in weeks and days before and after the wedding day.
The video shows fateer preparations, a light biscuit made especially for weddings consisting of flour, a pinch of salt, baking powder, vanilla, eggs and vegetable oil. The dough is then spread very thinly using a pasta making machine and cut into shapes and deep-fried in oil. The crunchy, light biscuits are dusted in icing sugar and handled with tremendous care not only because of how fragile they are, but because they are likely to be devoured by anyone who gets their hand on one!
Cover picture and video © Zainab Gaafar
In every culture anywhere in the world, feasts and food at celebrations are always at the heart of any occasion. This is perhaps the one thing that we humans all have in common; that we celebrate with food.
Sudan’s diverse cultures mean people always have different ways they cook and present their food at large events such as religious celebrations - the Moulid, Ramadan or Eid - or when someone returns from a long trip or recovers from an illness or has achieved academic or career success or even at the most popular event, weddings. Women from the family and neighbours from far and near gather to cook hearty meals and delicious dishes. Festivities themselves start well before the day itself usually by preparing, cutting and baking biscuits. The baskawit, khabiz, minen and ajwa biscuits and many more varieties are a very important component served to the waves of guests and well wishers who pass by in weeks and days before and after the wedding day.
The video shows fateer preparations, a light biscuit made especially for weddings consisting of flour, a pinch of salt, baking powder, vanilla, eggs and vegetable oil. The dough is then spread very thinly using a pasta making machine and cut into shapes and deep-fried in oil. The crunchy, light biscuits are dusted in icing sugar and handled with tremendous care not only because of how fragile they are, but because they are likely to be devoured by anyone who gets their hand on one!
Cover picture and video © Zainab Gaafar
Date harvesting
Date harvesting
Barkal, North Sudan 2015
Zainab Osman Mahgoub and Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar
The strip of land along the banks of the Nile in northern Sudan, the landscape from a distance, on Google Maps for example, may all look very similar. Vast areas of greenery offset the curves of the river with brown-tinted villages enclaved among the gardens. While they may appear similar, in fact there is a wonderful diversity on the ground of villages, towns, tribes, traditions and even languages.
Al-Barkal is one such town with the same palm tree groves inhabited by the people of "Balad Be Tihit" or lower lands, and surrounded by the town of "Be Fawq” who are residents of the highlands living far from the Nile. One of the well-known landmarks of the region, and the reason behind the name of the town, is Al-Barkal mountain, which is a rocky platform rising over 100 metres with a rocky protrusion on the side which has been carved out to resemble a minaret. It is dubbed "Al-Shurayma", or “the crooked tooth” a name created by the most famous Shaygiya tribe poet Hassouna who was expressing his disappointment in one of the great leaders of Al-Barkal saying:
AlBarkal Mountain, the one with a crooked tooth
It cannot compare to Ibn Ouf Mountain in lower Hizaima
The temple of Amun, built by Baankhi and his son Taharqa, can be seen on the side of the mountain along with the disintegrating and slowly vanishing row of stone rams. Some pyramids are scattered around the mountain, and the entire town currently lies on what was the capital of Kush during the reign of the Kingdom of Meroe.
About two kilometres south of the mountain, on the main road, is the house of my grandfather Mahgoub Gaafar Mustafa, a household now inhabited and run by my aunt Ruqayya. The house, and my aunt, are both as important a monument as the ones mentioned above, at least in as far as the following story goes about my visit to the area in 2015, to take part in the date harvesting season, or as it is called "Hash al-Tamur". The text also contains notes by my father, Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar, because my 10-day experience is nothing compared to the length of time he spent there being born in this house and raised on these lands.
The date harvesting season in Al-Barkal begins in September, or "Nasi," as it is called in the old Egyptian Coptic calendar which is used for cultivating and harvesting in most parts of northern Sudan because its months correspond to clear changes in weather patterns and seasons. Al-Barkal produces a variety of dates including the dry variety, when the fruit is left to ripen and dry on the tree before being harvested. This type is easier to preserve and store and is thus more suitable for trading. Soft dates are dates harvested when they are still soft. They are kept in baskets, stacked on top of each other, to maintain their moisture, especially as northern Sudan is a dry region. There are also the semi-soft dates produced in the areas of Rubatab and Jaaliyin in River Nile State, from which types of pressed dates, “ajwa”, are made such as the Mashreq, Wad Laqai and Wad Khatib.
In the past, palm groves in Al-Barkal were secure and left unguarded. However, in more recent times there have been incidents of harvest stealing and a system has therefore been developed to protect the crop. This involves setting a specific day on which the harvest season will begin and within this period, each sagyia, or palm grove, owner will have an allocated day so that everyone knows who will be harvesting their dates on which day. The 18th of September 2015 was the day designated for harvesting the sagyia, owned by my grandfather's family. We went down early in the morning, me and my late aunt Hafsa who was an excellent business woman and who managed our entire family’s date business. The “qafaz” and his family came with us. The “qafaz” is usually a partner of the land owner and cares for, and harvests the dates. The name comes from the term “qafouza”, which is the process of pollinating dates, which takes place in winter, several months before the harvest season.
On our way to the palm groves in the lower lands, we came across a row of young men sitting on the ground next to the main street opposite the farms waiting for work. Myself and my two aunts, Hafsa and Aisha, may God have mercy on both of their souls, were not the only ones who had come to Al-Barkal days before the harvest season. While we had come from Khartoum, this line of young men came from the vast deserts of northern Sudan. During the harvest season, nomadic Arabs camp on the outskirts of the city with men taking up work in harvesting, and women undertaking small domestic chores in the town’s households. The young man whom my aunt hired was from West Africa and had come to northern Sudan to seek an education in Sudan’s khalawi, or Quranic schools. He and his companions had come to work on date harvesting to earn a wage to support him over the next few months. Harvest is a blessed season, characterized by the abundance of wealth and happiness. For a short while people are rich and this is always a reason to celebrate. At the time of our visit, several weddings were planned to take place. Local people who work in Khartoum or other large cities and those who work abroad, usually come home on annual leave during the harvest season. Meanwhile, the reason children are happy is because the harvest season is an official holiday from schools, so that they can help their families harvesting and because the children are given a small wage for gathering dates, whether from their work with their family or from collecting the Haboob dates, which are the dates that are blown down in the strong winds. These latter dates are not of high quality, because they are heterogeneous, but children use them to grow the pile of dates they have gathered.
Ways of paying the workers involved in harvesting varies; the Qafaz usually receives a share of the dates for example one or two branches, or “sabita”, from each palm tree depending on the agreement, and according to the height of the tree. Date pickers prefer money, and are paid per working day, while children and young pickers are paid by the quantity of dates collected. These are usually the dates that fall far away from the area around the palm tree which the children gather in "kaila" which is a tin measuring vessel. One kaila is the equivalent of two rubu which is made up of two malwa while most date sacks are made up of six kaila. These old units of measurement derive from an Islamic heritage. At the end of the season adults buy the dates children have gathered per kaila.
Our small delegation arrived at the sagyia to start the process of harvesting dates. Agricultural plots in northern Sudan are divided into sagiyas, a plot of land approximately twenty to thirty square acres, that can be irrigated with a single traditional water wheel, or saqyia. The name persists even after the old sagyia was replaced by mechanical pumps. The saqya is equal 20 to 30 acres: An acre has twenty four carats, and a carat has twenty four “arrows”, and the sakia is divided by “ropes” and “bones”, which are length measutments, and the happiest is the owner of twenty-four carats of all kinds. The area is divided into a long strip of planting beds called Ingaya, and this strip is watered with a parallel water stream. The side of a single bed is usually in the range of five to six meters, and in the middle of each bed one palm tree is planted, sometimes two palm trees are placed in the corners.
The mother palm tree is called "Omiya", and the small saplings are called "daughters", they can be seen growing next to the tree. Three or four of them are usually left to keep the mother company, and the rest are replanted elsewhere. The palm tree is very similar to humans, it produces off-springs, has male and female trees and lives up to a hundred years, but does not stop growing, and after a while it becomes difficult to reach the top of the dates. A palm tree in Al-Barkal is climbed without using any auxiliary tools such as ropes or ladders. Instead, to climb to the top, date pickers use the dried ridges, called “karoug”, which are left on the trunk when the palm fronds are cut every time the tree grows. Climbers sometimes fall when they step onto the older, weaker ridges.
After the Qafaz climbed the tree, the rest of the workers pulled a piece of tarpaulin underneath. The Qafaz first cut and lowered his branch, and then cut the rest of the branches for the owner of the land, then all the pickers including myself - I was promised a kaila of dates if I helped gather the fallen dates – "scraped" the dates from the branch, that is, by hitting them on the ground until all the dates fell off, then removed the remaining dates by hand. The dates were then gathered in the middle of the linoleum and poured into sacks. Although burlap sacks “shawal” look like they are locally produced, they are in fact imported from India just as they were during British colonial times. The Kanaf factory in the Blue Nile region that was built in the 1970s tried to cover the market's need for sacks, but has now stopped operating. Nowadays sacks are sometimes made of plastic in Sudan. The shawal is then sewn with “arjun” or metal wire and carried home.
Once a shawal was filled we could stop working and have a rest. The place was soon covered with bodies seeking any amount of shade to rest under. Lunch, or brunch, was sent from our house and as usual consisted of gurasa “wheat flat bread” and “waika” dried okra stew, followed by a nap. The cooks at home also have a wage at the end of the season, as no one works for free in the harvest season. At the end of the day we returned home followed by a camel carrying our sacks of dates. The camel walked straight through the door and into the house courtyard just as these animals had entered this same house of my great-grandfather, Mayor Gaafar Wad Mustafa Wad Muhammad, more than sixty years ago. The sacks were lowered into the yard, and then the dates were spread under the sun to dry.
People are usually afraid that the rain will fall suddenly and spoil the crop, because the harvest season corresponds to the rainy season or autumn, and some are so afraid of this happening that they ask the religious Sheikhs to pray and stop the rain falling. Next to our pile of dates was another pile belonging to my other aunt, Aisha, which had arrived on another camel owned by the family of her husband, Muhammad al-Amin Sharif. We found my aunt Aisha sitting proudly next to her high-quality “Gondela” dates, which are called “dates for eating”, such as the tamuda and kalamah variety, which are dates produced in smaller quantities, and distributed in limited ranges. Our pile on the other hand was "Barkawi" which is a commercial date variety produced in large quantities, and exported to different parts of Sudan. "Al-Jaw" meanwhile, is a lower quality date sold to those who do not care about the quality of their dates.
During my ten day stay, there was nothing more important than the topic of dates and their condition. Guests, passers-by and even the shopkeeper may ask you how much you had harvested or how the season had been. “Is the date ‘shayil’ or not?” they would ask, referring to the quantity of dates per branch. If the palm trees this season are not “shayil,” everyone would be discussing the reason why this was; it could be climate change, as my aunt Ruqayya said in one such discussion, or because of increasing humidity caused by the lake created by the recently constructed Marawi dam. In any case, dates were the main topic of conversation, only surpassed once during my stay, when a notorious cat stole some fish from a neighbour’s kitchen.
On our second day of work, our house was transformed to prepare for a wedding in the neighbourhood. Women descended on the house to bake the wedding biscuits and pastries for a son’s wedding. They wanted to use our large gas oven which is more efficient than the old stoves run on "wagood,” dry palm fronds, especially the "kood," the wide part of the palm fronds. These large leaves are also used to make children’s toys and sometimes to make whips for disciplining the same children! The family who’s occasion it is, brings trays filled with dishes of food for lunch to feed everyone. Just like with the dates, the owner of the occasion, harvest or wedding, is always responsible for feeding everyone who gives a helping hand.
As usual during wedding preparations, the house is filled with laughter, joviality and singing. In the outdoor kitchen women work a biscuit making machine while others come to chat on the veranda. From the veranda the house’s traditional roof can be seen, made of course, from palm trunks which are cut lengthwise into quarters or sixths and are called "falaga". These form the main structure on which the rest of the roof is built. The stems of palm fronds are tied together and placed on top of the structure. Previously, green palm fronds were usually cut and removed when the trees were pruned outside of the harvest season so that the dates would not be damaged. Palm fronds and mud are then placed on top of newspapers and this is topped with animal manure, usually donkey dung. Before the autumn, this process is repeated before the walls are painted white, and the water drains are cleared, as stagnant water and moisture are the enemies of mud houses.
Once the harvesting season ends, the second stage begins, which involves the packaging and distribution of dates. “The packers" are skilled workers who sort out the dates quickly and pack them. Bad dates, or "karmosha", are thrown to the animals to eat. In the past, dates were stored in clay silos of varying sizes that were raised off the ground called “Qasiba” or “Qusaiba”. These were also used to store crops such as wheat and continue to be used in some villages in the north but in our region, dates are placed in tight sacks, raised above the ground supported by iron beams away from water and insects, and covered with plastic sheeting.
"Al Musharaf dates, which the sam “protective walls” were raised for
The one which before it ripens the “sababa” middle men showed up
The happy one in the world takes the fate of his days
And on you Oh God I don't know what comes ahead
(old Shayqi poet)
A number of traders deal in dates, mostly the “sababa” who are the middlemen who buy dates from the small-scale dealers and pickers and sell them on to market traders. Street vendors buy dates to sell in the market. Merchants store dates in large warehouses and sell them wholesale to other merchants in large cities such as Al-Obeid, Al-Fasher, Nyala, Madani, Damazin, Al-Nuhud and others. In the past, dates were transported down the river by ship to Karima and from there by train onto all these cities. They also travelled by river to the south on the White Nile from Kosti. Dates also have a large market in eastern Sudan delivered there by train and sold by the “malwa” in the market and where they are consumed with coffee.
In the late fifties, during the government of General Aboud and with the help of American aid, a date processing factory was set up in Karima. The machinery arrived from California and was assembled at the factory and the factory produced dates stuffed with walnuts, almonds and coconut packed in beautiful boxes. As part of the packaging process, dates are fumigated to wash, clean and tenderize them to help remove the kernel, which was used as animal feed, and to insert a filling. The factory also produced white spirit or alcohol as a by-product which was used in hospitals to disinfect wounds. The factory stopped fully operating a long time ago, but returned to work seasonally through the efforts of local Sudanese entrepreneurs when the dates were harvested.
I returned to Khartoum with a kaila of dates which was not given to me as payment because I did not last more than a quarter of a day. It was harder than I imagined! The little sack I was given was a gift from my aunts for my efforts.
Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar
Barkal, North Sudan 2015
Zainab Osman Mahgoub and Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar
The strip of land along the banks of the Nile in northern Sudan, the landscape from a distance, on Google Maps for example, may all look very similar. Vast areas of greenery offset the curves of the river with brown-tinted villages enclaved among the gardens. While they may appear similar, in fact there is a wonderful diversity on the ground of villages, towns, tribes, traditions and even languages.
Al-Barkal is one such town with the same palm tree groves inhabited by the people of "Balad Be Tihit" or lower lands, and surrounded by the town of "Be Fawq” who are residents of the highlands living far from the Nile. One of the well-known landmarks of the region, and the reason behind the name of the town, is Al-Barkal mountain, which is a rocky platform rising over 100 metres with a rocky protrusion on the side which has been carved out to resemble a minaret. It is dubbed "Al-Shurayma", or “the crooked tooth” a name created by the most famous Shaygiya tribe poet Hassouna who was expressing his disappointment in one of the great leaders of Al-Barkal saying:
AlBarkal Mountain, the one with a crooked tooth
It cannot compare to Ibn Ouf Mountain in lower Hizaima
The temple of Amun, built by Baankhi and his son Taharqa, can be seen on the side of the mountain along with the disintegrating and slowly vanishing row of stone rams. Some pyramids are scattered around the mountain, and the entire town currently lies on what was the capital of Kush during the reign of the Kingdom of Meroe.
About two kilometres south of the mountain, on the main road, is the house of my grandfather Mahgoub Gaafar Mustafa, a household now inhabited and run by my aunt Ruqayya. The house, and my aunt, are both as important a monument as the ones mentioned above, at least in as far as the following story goes about my visit to the area in 2015, to take part in the date harvesting season, or as it is called "Hash al-Tamur". The text also contains notes by my father, Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar, because my 10-day experience is nothing compared to the length of time he spent there being born in this house and raised on these lands.
The date harvesting season in Al-Barkal begins in September, or "Nasi," as it is called in the old Egyptian Coptic calendar which is used for cultivating and harvesting in most parts of northern Sudan because its months correspond to clear changes in weather patterns and seasons. Al-Barkal produces a variety of dates including the dry variety, when the fruit is left to ripen and dry on the tree before being harvested. This type is easier to preserve and store and is thus more suitable for trading. Soft dates are dates harvested when they are still soft. They are kept in baskets, stacked on top of each other, to maintain their moisture, especially as northern Sudan is a dry region. There are also the semi-soft dates produced in the areas of Rubatab and Jaaliyin in River Nile State, from which types of pressed dates, “ajwa”, are made such as the Mashreq, Wad Laqai and Wad Khatib.
In the past, palm groves in Al-Barkal were secure and left unguarded. However, in more recent times there have been incidents of harvest stealing and a system has therefore been developed to protect the crop. This involves setting a specific day on which the harvest season will begin and within this period, each sagyia, or palm grove, owner will have an allocated day so that everyone knows who will be harvesting their dates on which day. The 18th of September 2015 was the day designated for harvesting the sagyia, owned by my grandfather's family. We went down early in the morning, me and my late aunt Hafsa who was an excellent business woman and who managed our entire family’s date business. The “qafaz” and his family came with us. The “qafaz” is usually a partner of the land owner and cares for, and harvests the dates. The name comes from the term “qafouza”, which is the process of pollinating dates, which takes place in winter, several months before the harvest season.
On our way to the palm groves in the lower lands, we came across a row of young men sitting on the ground next to the main street opposite the farms waiting for work. Myself and my two aunts, Hafsa and Aisha, may God have mercy on both of their souls, were not the only ones who had come to Al-Barkal days before the harvest season. While we had come from Khartoum, this line of young men came from the vast deserts of northern Sudan. During the harvest season, nomadic Arabs camp on the outskirts of the city with men taking up work in harvesting, and women undertaking small domestic chores in the town’s households. The young man whom my aunt hired was from West Africa and had come to northern Sudan to seek an education in Sudan’s khalawi, or Quranic schools. He and his companions had come to work on date harvesting to earn a wage to support him over the next few months. Harvest is a blessed season, characterized by the abundance of wealth and happiness. For a short while people are rich and this is always a reason to celebrate. At the time of our visit, several weddings were planned to take place. Local people who work in Khartoum or other large cities and those who work abroad, usually come home on annual leave during the harvest season. Meanwhile, the reason children are happy is because the harvest season is an official holiday from schools, so that they can help their families harvesting and because the children are given a small wage for gathering dates, whether from their work with their family or from collecting the Haboob dates, which are the dates that are blown down in the strong winds. These latter dates are not of high quality, because they are heterogeneous, but children use them to grow the pile of dates they have gathered.
Ways of paying the workers involved in harvesting varies; the Qafaz usually receives a share of the dates for example one or two branches, or “sabita”, from each palm tree depending on the agreement, and according to the height of the tree. Date pickers prefer money, and are paid per working day, while children and young pickers are paid by the quantity of dates collected. These are usually the dates that fall far away from the area around the palm tree which the children gather in "kaila" which is a tin measuring vessel. One kaila is the equivalent of two rubu which is made up of two malwa while most date sacks are made up of six kaila. These old units of measurement derive from an Islamic heritage. At the end of the season adults buy the dates children have gathered per kaila.
Our small delegation arrived at the sagyia to start the process of harvesting dates. Agricultural plots in northern Sudan are divided into sagiyas, a plot of land approximately twenty to thirty square acres, that can be irrigated with a single traditional water wheel, or saqyia. The name persists even after the old sagyia was replaced by mechanical pumps. The saqya is equal 20 to 30 acres: An acre has twenty four carats, and a carat has twenty four “arrows”, and the sakia is divided by “ropes” and “bones”, which are length measutments, and the happiest is the owner of twenty-four carats of all kinds. The area is divided into a long strip of planting beds called Ingaya, and this strip is watered with a parallel water stream. The side of a single bed is usually in the range of five to six meters, and in the middle of each bed one palm tree is planted, sometimes two palm trees are placed in the corners.
The mother palm tree is called "Omiya", and the small saplings are called "daughters", they can be seen growing next to the tree. Three or four of them are usually left to keep the mother company, and the rest are replanted elsewhere. The palm tree is very similar to humans, it produces off-springs, has male and female trees and lives up to a hundred years, but does not stop growing, and after a while it becomes difficult to reach the top of the dates. A palm tree in Al-Barkal is climbed without using any auxiliary tools such as ropes or ladders. Instead, to climb to the top, date pickers use the dried ridges, called “karoug”, which are left on the trunk when the palm fronds are cut every time the tree grows. Climbers sometimes fall when they step onto the older, weaker ridges.
After the Qafaz climbed the tree, the rest of the workers pulled a piece of tarpaulin underneath. The Qafaz first cut and lowered his branch, and then cut the rest of the branches for the owner of the land, then all the pickers including myself - I was promised a kaila of dates if I helped gather the fallen dates – "scraped" the dates from the branch, that is, by hitting them on the ground until all the dates fell off, then removed the remaining dates by hand. The dates were then gathered in the middle of the linoleum and poured into sacks. Although burlap sacks “shawal” look like they are locally produced, they are in fact imported from India just as they were during British colonial times. The Kanaf factory in the Blue Nile region that was built in the 1970s tried to cover the market's need for sacks, but has now stopped operating. Nowadays sacks are sometimes made of plastic in Sudan. The shawal is then sewn with “arjun” or metal wire and carried home.
Once a shawal was filled we could stop working and have a rest. The place was soon covered with bodies seeking any amount of shade to rest under. Lunch, or brunch, was sent from our house and as usual consisted of gurasa “wheat flat bread” and “waika” dried okra stew, followed by a nap. The cooks at home also have a wage at the end of the season, as no one works for free in the harvest season. At the end of the day we returned home followed by a camel carrying our sacks of dates. The camel walked straight through the door and into the house courtyard just as these animals had entered this same house of my great-grandfather, Mayor Gaafar Wad Mustafa Wad Muhammad, more than sixty years ago. The sacks were lowered into the yard, and then the dates were spread under the sun to dry.
People are usually afraid that the rain will fall suddenly and spoil the crop, because the harvest season corresponds to the rainy season or autumn, and some are so afraid of this happening that they ask the religious Sheikhs to pray and stop the rain falling. Next to our pile of dates was another pile belonging to my other aunt, Aisha, which had arrived on another camel owned by the family of her husband, Muhammad al-Amin Sharif. We found my aunt Aisha sitting proudly next to her high-quality “Gondela” dates, which are called “dates for eating”, such as the tamuda and kalamah variety, which are dates produced in smaller quantities, and distributed in limited ranges. Our pile on the other hand was "Barkawi" which is a commercial date variety produced in large quantities, and exported to different parts of Sudan. "Al-Jaw" meanwhile, is a lower quality date sold to those who do not care about the quality of their dates.
During my ten day stay, there was nothing more important than the topic of dates and their condition. Guests, passers-by and even the shopkeeper may ask you how much you had harvested or how the season had been. “Is the date ‘shayil’ or not?” they would ask, referring to the quantity of dates per branch. If the palm trees this season are not “shayil,” everyone would be discussing the reason why this was; it could be climate change, as my aunt Ruqayya said in one such discussion, or because of increasing humidity caused by the lake created by the recently constructed Marawi dam. In any case, dates were the main topic of conversation, only surpassed once during my stay, when a notorious cat stole some fish from a neighbour’s kitchen.
On our second day of work, our house was transformed to prepare for a wedding in the neighbourhood. Women descended on the house to bake the wedding biscuits and pastries for a son’s wedding. They wanted to use our large gas oven which is more efficient than the old stoves run on "wagood,” dry palm fronds, especially the "kood," the wide part of the palm fronds. These large leaves are also used to make children’s toys and sometimes to make whips for disciplining the same children! The family who’s occasion it is, brings trays filled with dishes of food for lunch to feed everyone. Just like with the dates, the owner of the occasion, harvest or wedding, is always responsible for feeding everyone who gives a helping hand.
As usual during wedding preparations, the house is filled with laughter, joviality and singing. In the outdoor kitchen women work a biscuit making machine while others come to chat on the veranda. From the veranda the house’s traditional roof can be seen, made of course, from palm trunks which are cut lengthwise into quarters or sixths and are called "falaga". These form the main structure on which the rest of the roof is built. The stems of palm fronds are tied together and placed on top of the structure. Previously, green palm fronds were usually cut and removed when the trees were pruned outside of the harvest season so that the dates would not be damaged. Palm fronds and mud are then placed on top of newspapers and this is topped with animal manure, usually donkey dung. Before the autumn, this process is repeated before the walls are painted white, and the water drains are cleared, as stagnant water and moisture are the enemies of mud houses.
Once the harvesting season ends, the second stage begins, which involves the packaging and distribution of dates. “The packers" are skilled workers who sort out the dates quickly and pack them. Bad dates, or "karmosha", are thrown to the animals to eat. In the past, dates were stored in clay silos of varying sizes that were raised off the ground called “Qasiba” or “Qusaiba”. These were also used to store crops such as wheat and continue to be used in some villages in the north but in our region, dates are placed in tight sacks, raised above the ground supported by iron beams away from water and insects, and covered with plastic sheeting.
"Al Musharaf dates, which the sam “protective walls” were raised for
The one which before it ripens the “sababa” middle men showed up
The happy one in the world takes the fate of his days
And on you Oh God I don't know what comes ahead
(old Shayqi poet)
A number of traders deal in dates, mostly the “sababa” who are the middlemen who buy dates from the small-scale dealers and pickers and sell them on to market traders. Street vendors buy dates to sell in the market. Merchants store dates in large warehouses and sell them wholesale to other merchants in large cities such as Al-Obeid, Al-Fasher, Nyala, Madani, Damazin, Al-Nuhud and others. In the past, dates were transported down the river by ship to Karima and from there by train onto all these cities. They also travelled by river to the south on the White Nile from Kosti. Dates also have a large market in eastern Sudan delivered there by train and sold by the “malwa” in the market and where they are consumed with coffee.
In the late fifties, during the government of General Aboud and with the help of American aid, a date processing factory was set up in Karima. The machinery arrived from California and was assembled at the factory and the factory produced dates stuffed with walnuts, almonds and coconut packed in beautiful boxes. As part of the packaging process, dates are fumigated to wash, clean and tenderize them to help remove the kernel, which was used as animal feed, and to insert a filling. The factory also produced white spirit or alcohol as a by-product which was used in hospitals to disinfect wounds. The factory stopped fully operating a long time ago, but returned to work seasonally through the efforts of local Sudanese entrepreneurs when the dates were harvested.
I returned to Khartoum with a kaila of dates which was not given to me as payment because I did not last more than a quarter of a day. It was harder than I imagined! The little sack I was given was a gift from my aunts for my efforts.
Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar
Barkal, North Sudan 2015
Zainab Osman Mahgoub and Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar
The strip of land along the banks of the Nile in northern Sudan, the landscape from a distance, on Google Maps for example, may all look very similar. Vast areas of greenery offset the curves of the river with brown-tinted villages enclaved among the gardens. While they may appear similar, in fact there is a wonderful diversity on the ground of villages, towns, tribes, traditions and even languages.
Al-Barkal is one such town with the same palm tree groves inhabited by the people of "Balad Be Tihit" or lower lands, and surrounded by the town of "Be Fawq” who are residents of the highlands living far from the Nile. One of the well-known landmarks of the region, and the reason behind the name of the town, is Al-Barkal mountain, which is a rocky platform rising over 100 metres with a rocky protrusion on the side which has been carved out to resemble a minaret. It is dubbed "Al-Shurayma", or “the crooked tooth” a name created by the most famous Shaygiya tribe poet Hassouna who was expressing his disappointment in one of the great leaders of Al-Barkal saying:
AlBarkal Mountain, the one with a crooked tooth
It cannot compare to Ibn Ouf Mountain in lower Hizaima
The temple of Amun, built by Baankhi and his son Taharqa, can be seen on the side of the mountain along with the disintegrating and slowly vanishing row of stone rams. Some pyramids are scattered around the mountain, and the entire town currently lies on what was the capital of Kush during the reign of the Kingdom of Meroe.
About two kilometres south of the mountain, on the main road, is the house of my grandfather Mahgoub Gaafar Mustafa, a household now inhabited and run by my aunt Ruqayya. The house, and my aunt, are both as important a monument as the ones mentioned above, at least in as far as the following story goes about my visit to the area in 2015, to take part in the date harvesting season, or as it is called "Hash al-Tamur". The text also contains notes by my father, Dr. Osman Mahgoub Gaafar, because my 10-day experience is nothing compared to the length of time he spent there being born in this house and raised on these lands.
The date harvesting season in Al-Barkal begins in September, or "Nasi," as it is called in the old Egyptian Coptic calendar which is used for cultivating and harvesting in most parts of northern Sudan because its months correspond to clear changes in weather patterns and seasons. Al-Barkal produces a variety of dates including the dry variety, when the fruit is left to ripen and dry on the tree before being harvested. This type is easier to preserve and store and is thus more suitable for trading. Soft dates are dates harvested when they are still soft. They are kept in baskets, stacked on top of each other, to maintain their moisture, especially as northern Sudan is a dry region. There are also the semi-soft dates produced in the areas of Rubatab and Jaaliyin in River Nile State, from which types of pressed dates, “ajwa”, are made such as the Mashreq, Wad Laqai and Wad Khatib.
In the past, palm groves in Al-Barkal were secure and left unguarded. However, in more recent times there have been incidents of harvest stealing and a system has therefore been developed to protect the crop. This involves setting a specific day on which the harvest season will begin and within this period, each sagyia, or palm grove, owner will have an allocated day so that everyone knows who will be harvesting their dates on which day. The 18th of September 2015 was the day designated for harvesting the sagyia, owned by my grandfather's family. We went down early in the morning, me and my late aunt Hafsa who was an excellent business woman and who managed our entire family’s date business. The “qafaz” and his family came with us. The “qafaz” is usually a partner of the land owner and cares for, and harvests the dates. The name comes from the term “qafouza”, which is the process of pollinating dates, which takes place in winter, several months before the harvest season.
On our way to the palm groves in the lower lands, we came across a row of young men sitting on the ground next to the main street opposite the farms waiting for work. Myself and my two aunts, Hafsa and Aisha, may God have mercy on both of their souls, were not the only ones who had come to Al-Barkal days before the harvest season. While we had come from Khartoum, this line of young men came from the vast deserts of northern Sudan. During the harvest season, nomadic Arabs camp on the outskirts of the city with men taking up work in harvesting, and women undertaking small domestic chores in the town’s households. The young man whom my aunt hired was from West Africa and had come to northern Sudan to seek an education in Sudan’s khalawi, or Quranic schools. He and his companions had come to work on date harvesting to earn a wage to support him over the next few months. Harvest is a blessed season, characterized by the abundance of wealth and happiness. For a short while people are rich and this is always a reason to celebrate. At the time of our visit, several weddings were planned to take place. Local people who work in Khartoum or other large cities and those who work abroad, usually come home on annual leave during the harvest season. Meanwhile, the reason children are happy is because the harvest season is an official holiday from schools, so that they can help their families harvesting and because the children are given a small wage for gathering dates, whether from their work with their family or from collecting the Haboob dates, which are the dates that are blown down in the strong winds. These latter dates are not of high quality, because they are heterogeneous, but children use them to grow the pile of dates they have gathered.
Ways of paying the workers involved in harvesting varies; the Qafaz usually receives a share of the dates for example one or two branches, or “sabita”, from each palm tree depending on the agreement, and according to the height of the tree. Date pickers prefer money, and are paid per working day, while children and young pickers are paid by the quantity of dates collected. These are usually the dates that fall far away from the area around the palm tree which the children gather in "kaila" which is a tin measuring vessel. One kaila is the equivalent of two rubu which is made up of two malwa while most date sacks are made up of six kaila. These old units of measurement derive from an Islamic heritage. At the end of the season adults buy the dates children have gathered per kaila.
Our small delegation arrived at the sagyia to start the process of harvesting dates. Agricultural plots in northern Sudan are divided into sagiyas, a plot of land approximately twenty to thirty square acres, that can be irrigated with a single traditional water wheel, or saqyia. The name persists even after the old sagyia was replaced by mechanical pumps. The saqya is equal 20 to 30 acres: An acre has twenty four carats, and a carat has twenty four “arrows”, and the sakia is divided by “ropes” and “bones”, which are length measutments, and the happiest is the owner of twenty-four carats of all kinds. The area is divided into a long strip of planting beds called Ingaya, and this strip is watered with a parallel water stream. The side of a single bed is usually in the range of five to six meters, and in the middle of each bed one palm tree is planted, sometimes two palm trees are placed in the corners.
The mother palm tree is called "Omiya", and the small saplings are called "daughters", they can be seen growing next to the tree. Three or four of them are usually left to keep the mother company, and the rest are replanted elsewhere. The palm tree is very similar to humans, it produces off-springs, has male and female trees and lives up to a hundred years, but does not stop growing, and after a while it becomes difficult to reach the top of the dates. A palm tree in Al-Barkal is climbed without using any auxiliary tools such as ropes or ladders. Instead, to climb to the top, date pickers use the dried ridges, called “karoug”, which are left on the trunk when the palm fronds are cut every time the tree grows. Climbers sometimes fall when they step onto the older, weaker ridges.
After the Qafaz climbed the tree, the rest of the workers pulled a piece of tarpaulin underneath. The Qafaz first cut and lowered his branch, and then cut the rest of the branches for the owner of the land, then all the pickers including myself - I was promised a kaila of dates if I helped gather the fallen dates – "scraped" the dates from the branch, that is, by hitting them on the ground until all the dates fell off, then removed the remaining dates by hand. The dates were then gathered in the middle of the linoleum and poured into sacks. Although burlap sacks “shawal” look like they are locally produced, they are in fact imported from India just as they were during British colonial times. The Kanaf factory in the Blue Nile region that was built in the 1970s tried to cover the market's need for sacks, but has now stopped operating. Nowadays sacks are sometimes made of plastic in Sudan. The shawal is then sewn with “arjun” or metal wire and carried home.
Once a shawal was filled we could stop working and have a rest. The place was soon covered with bodies seeking any amount of shade to rest under. Lunch, or brunch, was sent from our house and as usual consisted of gurasa “wheat flat bread” and “waika” dried okra stew, followed by a nap. The cooks at home also have a wage at the end of the season, as no one works for free in the harvest season. At the end of the day we returned home followed by a camel carrying our sacks of dates. The camel walked straight through the door and into the house courtyard just as these animals had entered this same house of my great-grandfather, Mayor Gaafar Wad Mustafa Wad Muhammad, more than sixty years ago. The sacks were lowered into the yard, and then the dates were spread under the sun to dry.
People are usually afraid that the rain will fall suddenly and spoil the crop, because the harvest season corresponds to the rainy season or autumn, and some are so afraid of this happening that they ask the religious Sheikhs to pray and stop the rain falling. Next to our pile of dates was another pile belonging to my other aunt, Aisha, which had arrived on another camel owned by the family of her husband, Muhammad al-Amin Sharif. We found my aunt Aisha sitting proudly next to her high-quality “Gondela” dates, which are called “dates for eating”, such as the tamuda and kalamah variety, which are dates produced in smaller quantities, and distributed in limited ranges. Our pile on the other hand was "Barkawi" which is a commercial date variety produced in large quantities, and exported to different parts of Sudan. "Al-Jaw" meanwhile, is a lower quality date sold to those who do not care about the quality of their dates.
During my ten day stay, there was nothing more important than the topic of dates and their condition. Guests, passers-by and even the shopkeeper may ask you how much you had harvested or how the season had been. “Is the date ‘shayil’ or not?” they would ask, referring to the quantity of dates per branch. If the palm trees this season are not “shayil,” everyone would be discussing the reason why this was; it could be climate change, as my aunt Ruqayya said in one such discussion, or because of increasing humidity caused by the lake created by the recently constructed Marawi dam. In any case, dates were the main topic of conversation, only surpassed once during my stay, when a notorious cat stole some fish from a neighbour’s kitchen.
On our second day of work, our house was transformed to prepare for a wedding in the neighbourhood. Women descended on the house to bake the wedding biscuits and pastries for a son’s wedding. They wanted to use our large gas oven which is more efficient than the old stoves run on "wagood,” dry palm fronds, especially the "kood," the wide part of the palm fronds. These large leaves are also used to make children’s toys and sometimes to make whips for disciplining the same children! The family who’s occasion it is, brings trays filled with dishes of food for lunch to feed everyone. Just like with the dates, the owner of the occasion, harvest or wedding, is always responsible for feeding everyone who gives a helping hand.
As usual during wedding preparations, the house is filled with laughter, joviality and singing. In the outdoor kitchen women work a biscuit making machine while others come to chat on the veranda. From the veranda the house’s traditional roof can be seen, made of course, from palm trunks which are cut lengthwise into quarters or sixths and are called "falaga". These form the main structure on which the rest of the roof is built. The stems of palm fronds are tied together and placed on top of the structure. Previously, green palm fronds were usually cut and removed when the trees were pruned outside of the harvest season so that the dates would not be damaged. Palm fronds and mud are then placed on top of newspapers and this is topped with animal manure, usually donkey dung. Before the autumn, this process is repeated before the walls are painted white, and the water drains are cleared, as stagnant water and moisture are the enemies of mud houses.
Once the harvesting season ends, the second stage begins, which involves the packaging and distribution of dates. “The packers" are skilled workers who sort out the dates quickly and pack them. Bad dates, or "karmosha", are thrown to the animals to eat. In the past, dates were stored in clay silos of varying sizes that were raised off the ground called “Qasiba” or “Qusaiba”. These were also used to store crops such as wheat and continue to be used in some villages in the north but in our region, dates are placed in tight sacks, raised above the ground supported by iron beams away from water and insects, and covered with plastic sheeting.
"Al Musharaf dates, which the sam “protective walls” were raised for
The one which before it ripens the “sababa” middle men showed up
The happy one in the world takes the fate of his days
And on you Oh God I don't know what comes ahead
(old Shayqi poet)
A number of traders deal in dates, mostly the “sababa” who are the middlemen who buy dates from the small-scale dealers and pickers and sell them on to market traders. Street vendors buy dates to sell in the market. Merchants store dates in large warehouses and sell them wholesale to other merchants in large cities such as Al-Obeid, Al-Fasher, Nyala, Madani, Damazin, Al-Nuhud and others. In the past, dates were transported down the river by ship to Karima and from there by train onto all these cities. They also travelled by river to the south on the White Nile from Kosti. Dates also have a large market in eastern Sudan delivered there by train and sold by the “malwa” in the market and where they are consumed with coffee.
In the late fifties, during the government of General Aboud and with the help of American aid, a date processing factory was set up in Karima. The machinery arrived from California and was assembled at the factory and the factory produced dates stuffed with walnuts, almonds and coconut packed in beautiful boxes. As part of the packaging process, dates are fumigated to wash, clean and tenderize them to help remove the kernel, which was used as animal feed, and to insert a filling. The factory also produced white spirit or alcohol as a by-product which was used in hospitals to disinfect wounds. The factory stopped fully operating a long time ago, but returned to work seasonally through the efforts of local Sudanese entrepreneurs when the dates were harvested.
I returned to Khartoum with a kaila of dates which was not given to me as payment because I did not last more than a quarter of a day. It was harder than I imagined! The little sack I was given was a gift from my aunts for my efforts.
Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar
Harvest season playlist
Harvest season playlist
This playlist contains a combination of traditional harvest songs, music and dances as well as a group of new songs celebrating sudanese produce and harvest.
Harvest music has always been an influence to modern music and songs and the beats of the harvesting a tune for many new music style such as Zanig and Rap.
Header picture © A woman using a local threshing tool called ‘ab rasen’ to separate the grains from the chaff after the harvest. Mohammed Osman, Gezira
This playlist contains a combination of traditional harvest songs, music and dances as well as a group of new songs celebrating sudanese produce and harvest.
Harvest music has always been an influence to modern music and songs and the beats of the harvesting a tune for many new music style such as Zanig and Rap.
Header picture © A woman using a local threshing tool called ‘ab rasen’ to separate the grains from the chaff after the harvest. Mohammed Osman, Gezira
This playlist contains a combination of traditional harvest songs, music and dances as well as a group of new songs celebrating sudanese produce and harvest.
Harvest music has always been an influence to modern music and songs and the beats of the harvesting a tune for many new music style such as Zanig and Rap.
Header picture © A woman using a local threshing tool called ‘ab rasen’ to separate the grains from the chaff after the harvest. Mohammed Osman, Gezira
It’s a rainy day
It’s a rainy day
Cultures determine which foods we crave; in colder countries this could be for comfort foods that are high in energy to warm up the body whereas in hot countries like Sudan, cravings are often associated with foods that cool us down, a cold lime juice or homemade popsicles. In Sudan, and as temperatures drop, during the winter months or at the beginning of the rainy season, people have different cravings. They may choose to spend time outside, eating grilled meats such as agashay and shaya, or fish cooked in different ways like fried or grilled bulti or ijil and sometimes salted fish known as faseekh. A simple milky tea with ligaymat donuts is also a popular choice in the cooler weather. The way people describe the objects of their cravings is indicative of how keen they are; “hot fried fish with fresh rocket and white onions, and an ice cold bottle of fizzy pop” is listed longingly. Whatever the favorite dish, what people enjoy the most is spending time together enjoying the weather and the delicious food.
Cultures determine which foods we crave; in colder countries this could be for comfort foods that are high in energy to warm up the body whereas in hot countries like Sudan, cravings are often associated with foods that cool us down, a cold lime juice or homemade popsicles. In Sudan, and as temperatures drop, during the winter months or at the beginning of the rainy season, people have different cravings. They may choose to spend time outside, eating grilled meats such as agashay and shaya, or fish cooked in different ways like fried or grilled bulti or ijil and sometimes salted fish known as faseekh. A simple milky tea with ligaymat donuts is also a popular choice in the cooler weather. The way people describe the objects of their cravings is indicative of how keen they are; “hot fried fish with fresh rocket and white onions, and an ice cold bottle of fizzy pop” is listed longingly. Whatever the favorite dish, what people enjoy the most is spending time together enjoying the weather and the delicious food.
Cultures determine which foods we crave; in colder countries this could be for comfort foods that are high in energy to warm up the body whereas in hot countries like Sudan, cravings are often associated with foods that cool us down, a cold lime juice or homemade popsicles. In Sudan, and as temperatures drop, during the winter months or at the beginning of the rainy season, people have different cravings. They may choose to spend time outside, eating grilled meats such as agashay and shaya, or fish cooked in different ways like fried or grilled bulti or ijil and sometimes salted fish known as faseekh. A simple milky tea with ligaymat donuts is also a popular choice in the cooler weather. The way people describe the objects of their cravings is indicative of how keen they are; “hot fried fish with fresh rocket and white onions, and an ice cold bottle of fizzy pop” is listed longingly. Whatever the favorite dish, what people enjoy the most is spending time together enjoying the weather and the delicious food.
The cheese of Kazgil
The cheese of Kazgil
The Kazgil region is known for its cheese making and the history of Kazgil cheese dates back to the late 1920s a time when a large number of nomadic tribes, who were able to supply large quantities of milk, came through the area that has an extensive forest and vast agricultural lands. At the beginning, a cheese making school was established in Al-Obaid, and the people of Kazgil were invited to learn the skills required to make various cheeses and were awarded certificates for their efforts. After independence a large and successful development programme was implemented that helped increase the activity of the cheese industry in the area until it became a ‘cheese centre’ and earned a reputation for good quality cheese. Relations between the nomads and local farmers were strengthened and the volume of nomads passing through increased, particularly now that they could earn good money for their milk.
Braided cheese is one of the most famous types of cheeses produced in the area and is a cooked type of cheese similar to mozzarella. After adding rennet, an enzyme that used to be extracted from calf intestines and is now made chemically, the curd is separated from the water and cooked in boiling water. Unlike mozzarella which is shaped into balls, braided cheese is stretched into long strips and salt and nigella seeds are added to the mixture. The difference between cooked and uncooked cheeses, such as white, or feta cheese, is that after the curd separates, the cheese is boiled in salted water for a short period of time and a large amount of salt is added to it to preserve it instead of cooking it. In this way the cheese loses its melting property when cooked. This video was filmed as part of the Heritage Survey and Documentation Project in Kordofan that was conducted in 2021.
The Kazgil region is known for its cheese making and the history of Kazgil cheese dates back to the late 1920s a time when a large number of nomadic tribes, who were able to supply large quantities of milk, came through the area that has an extensive forest and vast agricultural lands. At the beginning, a cheese making school was established in Al-Obaid, and the people of Kazgil were invited to learn the skills required to make various cheeses and were awarded certificates for their efforts. After independence a large and successful development programme was implemented that helped increase the activity of the cheese industry in the area until it became a ‘cheese centre’ and earned a reputation for good quality cheese. Relations between the nomads and local farmers were strengthened and the volume of nomads passing through increased, particularly now that they could earn good money for their milk.
Braided cheese is one of the most famous types of cheeses produced in the area and is a cooked type of cheese similar to mozzarella. After adding rennet, an enzyme that used to be extracted from calf intestines and is now made chemically, the curd is separated from the water and cooked in boiling water. Unlike mozzarella which is shaped into balls, braided cheese is stretched into long strips and salt and nigella seeds are added to the mixture. The difference between cooked and uncooked cheeses, such as white, or feta cheese, is that after the curd separates, the cheese is boiled in salted water for a short period of time and a large amount of salt is added to it to preserve it instead of cooking it. In this way the cheese loses its melting property when cooked. This video was filmed as part of the Heritage Survey and Documentation Project in Kordofan that was conducted in 2021.
The Kazgil region is known for its cheese making and the history of Kazgil cheese dates back to the late 1920s a time when a large number of nomadic tribes, who were able to supply large quantities of milk, came through the area that has an extensive forest and vast agricultural lands. At the beginning, a cheese making school was established in Al-Obaid, and the people of Kazgil were invited to learn the skills required to make various cheeses and were awarded certificates for their efforts. After independence a large and successful development programme was implemented that helped increase the activity of the cheese industry in the area until it became a ‘cheese centre’ and earned a reputation for good quality cheese. Relations between the nomads and local farmers were strengthened and the volume of nomads passing through increased, particularly now that they could earn good money for their milk.
Braided cheese is one of the most famous types of cheeses produced in the area and is a cooked type of cheese similar to mozzarella. After adding rennet, an enzyme that used to be extracted from calf intestines and is now made chemically, the curd is separated from the water and cooked in boiling water. Unlike mozzarella which is shaped into balls, braided cheese is stretched into long strips and salt and nigella seeds are added to the mixture. The difference between cooked and uncooked cheeses, such as white, or feta cheese, is that after the curd separates, the cheese is boiled in salted water for a short period of time and a large amount of salt is added to it to preserve it instead of cooking it. In this way the cheese loses its melting property when cooked. This video was filmed as part of the Heritage Survey and Documentation Project in Kordofan that was conducted in 2021.
Street Food
Street Food
The street food experience is a unique one and offers a huge range of options and menu choices. The most apparent form of street food is that which is sold by the women known as tea ladies who mainly serve hot beverages such as tea, coffee and karkade or hibiscus tea.
These settings are most popular among groups of friends and youth. Other types of food are light snacks such as tamia or falafel and baleela, a boiled grain, as well as desserts such as bakomba, made with another type of wheat grain. Other more substantial food, such as the traditional stew dishes, are served nearer to where manual and other forms of employees work or live such as by construction sites and in central parts of Khartoum. Many traditional restaurants serve food to their customers seated outside in the street rather than indoors.
“One pound for your juice of the lemons of Bara, that arrived by plane!”
Taking a walk through the central bus station in Khartoum you are likely to hear this call by the juice sellers with their plastic buckets brimming with sweet liquid and chunks of ice bobbing on the surface. Fresh juices and snacks are the most common types of street food on offer next to transport hubs. There are also children pushing wheelbarrows selling sticks of sugarcane and roasted corn on the cob, women with baskets on their heads selling dry fruits and nuts, as well as various mixtures of condiments made from tabaldi or baobab powder, men sitting on the side of road with the popular concoction of green marrow with hot sauce, and girls with portable cold boxes selling popsicles. When it is the season, temporary shops appear selling Moulid sweets.
Other street food stalls sell basta, kunafa and basbusa sweets similar to baklava while others, strategically positioned next to bakeries, sell tamia and eggs, ready to be stuffed into a freshly bought hot loaf. Eating these impromptu sandwiches as you wait for the rest of your tamia order is a common phenomenon! It is also common to see small neighbourhood corner shops with large gourds bubbling away on coal stoves outside cooking the most popular of all; ful or fava beans. Orders of ful are placed in containers you bring with you or in a couple of plastic bags if you forget to bring one. More recently fancy food trucks selling western-style foods like burgers and chips have become very popular. Finally, the most commonly known street food experience is market food which includes grilled meats at livestock markets, and various fish options at fish markets or water fronts.
The collection of images in this gallery, showing different experiences of street food around Sudan, were taken by Zainab Gaafar and Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez.
Cover picture © Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez
The street food experience is a unique one and offers a huge range of options and menu choices. The most apparent form of street food is that which is sold by the women known as tea ladies who mainly serve hot beverages such as tea, coffee and karkade or hibiscus tea.
These settings are most popular among groups of friends and youth. Other types of food are light snacks such as tamia or falafel and baleela, a boiled grain, as well as desserts such as bakomba, made with another type of wheat grain. Other more substantial food, such as the traditional stew dishes, are served nearer to where manual and other forms of employees work or live such as by construction sites and in central parts of Khartoum. Many traditional restaurants serve food to their customers seated outside in the street rather than indoors.
“One pound for your juice of the lemons of Bara, that arrived by plane!”
Taking a walk through the central bus station in Khartoum you are likely to hear this call by the juice sellers with their plastic buckets brimming with sweet liquid and chunks of ice bobbing on the surface. Fresh juices and snacks are the most common types of street food on offer next to transport hubs. There are also children pushing wheelbarrows selling sticks of sugarcane and roasted corn on the cob, women with baskets on their heads selling dry fruits and nuts, as well as various mixtures of condiments made from tabaldi or baobab powder, men sitting on the side of road with the popular concoction of green marrow with hot sauce, and girls with portable cold boxes selling popsicles. When it is the season, temporary shops appear selling Moulid sweets.
Other street food stalls sell basta, kunafa and basbusa sweets similar to baklava while others, strategically positioned next to bakeries, sell tamia and eggs, ready to be stuffed into a freshly bought hot loaf. Eating these impromptu sandwiches as you wait for the rest of your tamia order is a common phenomenon! It is also common to see small neighbourhood corner shops with large gourds bubbling away on coal stoves outside cooking the most popular of all; ful or fava beans. Orders of ful are placed in containers you bring with you or in a couple of plastic bags if you forget to bring one. More recently fancy food trucks selling western-style foods like burgers and chips have become very popular. Finally, the most commonly known street food experience is market food which includes grilled meats at livestock markets, and various fish options at fish markets or water fronts.
The collection of images in this gallery, showing different experiences of street food around Sudan, were taken by Zainab Gaafar and Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez.
Cover picture © Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez
The street food experience is a unique one and offers a huge range of options and menu choices. The most apparent form of street food is that which is sold by the women known as tea ladies who mainly serve hot beverages such as tea, coffee and karkade or hibiscus tea.
These settings are most popular among groups of friends and youth. Other types of food are light snacks such as tamia or falafel and baleela, a boiled grain, as well as desserts such as bakomba, made with another type of wheat grain. Other more substantial food, such as the traditional stew dishes, are served nearer to where manual and other forms of employees work or live such as by construction sites and in central parts of Khartoum. Many traditional restaurants serve food to their customers seated outside in the street rather than indoors.
“One pound for your juice of the lemons of Bara, that arrived by plane!”
Taking a walk through the central bus station in Khartoum you are likely to hear this call by the juice sellers with their plastic buckets brimming with sweet liquid and chunks of ice bobbing on the surface. Fresh juices and snacks are the most common types of street food on offer next to transport hubs. There are also children pushing wheelbarrows selling sticks of sugarcane and roasted corn on the cob, women with baskets on their heads selling dry fruits and nuts, as well as various mixtures of condiments made from tabaldi or baobab powder, men sitting on the side of road with the popular concoction of green marrow with hot sauce, and girls with portable cold boxes selling popsicles. When it is the season, temporary shops appear selling Moulid sweets.
Other street food stalls sell basta, kunafa and basbusa sweets similar to baklava while others, strategically positioned next to bakeries, sell tamia and eggs, ready to be stuffed into a freshly bought hot loaf. Eating these impromptu sandwiches as you wait for the rest of your tamia order is a common phenomenon! It is also common to see small neighbourhood corner shops with large gourds bubbling away on coal stoves outside cooking the most popular of all; ful or fava beans. Orders of ful are placed in containers you bring with you or in a couple of plastic bags if you forget to bring one. More recently fancy food trucks selling western-style foods like burgers and chips have become very popular. Finally, the most commonly known street food experience is market food which includes grilled meats at livestock markets, and various fish options at fish markets or water fronts.
The collection of images in this gallery, showing different experiences of street food around Sudan, were taken by Zainab Gaafar and Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez.
Cover picture © Issam Ahmed Abdelhafiez
Taste of home
Taste of home
What food brings back memories of home?
I asked ten Sudanese people to list the food items they used to take with them when they were travelling somewhere such as to another city or abroad.
The question took people back to different periods of their lives and invoked interesting memories. One was about the metal suitcase which many Sudanese have in their homes, stashed away under beds or in dusty store rooms containing everything from old photographs and papers to china dinner sets. The metal box for some was associated with their experience of starting their military service and living in a dorm with many other young men enrolled on the mandatory training. Memories of this particular metal suitcase were of it being tied firmly to the top of a rickety old bus, with all the other luggage, on the way to the camp. It was filled with every possible form of sweet food making it, as one person said, a ‘tahniya box.’ Tahniya or Halva, is a thick paste mainly of sugar and sesame oil which is often used as a sandwich filler.
The cardboard Ramadan food box is well-known to everyone inside and outside Sudan. Every year before Ramadan we would receive fresh produce from farms outside Khartoum brought by family members who were visiting. Distant aunts sent us their signature hilu-mur, dried sheets of fermented sorghum that are soaked to create the popular ‘sweet and sour’ drink, rugag or ‘Sudanese cornflakes’ and gargosh rusks. Other Ramadan boxes people remembered contained ground dried meat, sharmoot, or dried onions which even though you could get these in most places they never tasted the same as the ones sent from home!
People’s answers to what they took on their travels and what reminded them of home were very personal and varied from one person to another; what they loved and what they couldn’t find in the places they were going to. One person explained how her brother loved biscuits and so her mother would pack every type of biscuit into his bag. Another said her mother made her special coffee blends with local flavours while another said she brought frozen minced meat with her because she hadn’t been able to find a butcher who could supply anything that tasted the same. Royal biscuits, the soft drink Pasigianos and powdered milk were some more of the things people admitted to taking with them. Sesame seed oil, local spices including dried, ground okra and of course braided cheese were all common items people took with them regularly.
The taste of home is something we all miss today and every now and then there will be some food we crave. We also miss how we used to enjoy meals together and all the memories associated with it but because of the war, it is very unlikely anybody will receive a box of food from home and will have to make do with local alternatives.
Cover picture and designs © Zainab Gaafar
What food brings back memories of home?
I asked ten Sudanese people to list the food items they used to take with them when they were travelling somewhere such as to another city or abroad.
The question took people back to different periods of their lives and invoked interesting memories. One was about the metal suitcase which many Sudanese have in their homes, stashed away under beds or in dusty store rooms containing everything from old photographs and papers to china dinner sets. The metal box for some was associated with their experience of starting their military service and living in a dorm with many other young men enrolled on the mandatory training. Memories of this particular metal suitcase were of it being tied firmly to the top of a rickety old bus, with all the other luggage, on the way to the camp. It was filled with every possible form of sweet food making it, as one person said, a ‘tahniya box.’ Tahniya or Halva, is a thick paste mainly of sugar and sesame oil which is often used as a sandwich filler.
The cardboard Ramadan food box is well-known to everyone inside and outside Sudan. Every year before Ramadan we would receive fresh produce from farms outside Khartoum brought by family members who were visiting. Distant aunts sent us their signature hilu-mur, dried sheets of fermented sorghum that are soaked to create the popular ‘sweet and sour’ drink, rugag or ‘Sudanese cornflakes’ and gargosh rusks. Other Ramadan boxes people remembered contained ground dried meat, sharmoot, or dried onions which even though you could get these in most places they never tasted the same as the ones sent from home!
People’s answers to what they took on their travels and what reminded them of home were very personal and varied from one person to another; what they loved and what they couldn’t find in the places they were going to. One person explained how her brother loved biscuits and so her mother would pack every type of biscuit into his bag. Another said her mother made her special coffee blends with local flavours while another said she brought frozen minced meat with her because she hadn’t been able to find a butcher who could supply anything that tasted the same. Royal biscuits, the soft drink Pasigianos and powdered milk were some more of the things people admitted to taking with them. Sesame seed oil, local spices including dried, ground okra and of course braided cheese were all common items people took with them regularly.
The taste of home is something we all miss today and every now and then there will be some food we crave. We also miss how we used to enjoy meals together and all the memories associated with it but because of the war, it is very unlikely anybody will receive a box of food from home and will have to make do with local alternatives.
Cover picture and designs © Zainab Gaafar
What food brings back memories of home?
I asked ten Sudanese people to list the food items they used to take with them when they were travelling somewhere such as to another city or abroad.
The question took people back to different periods of their lives and invoked interesting memories. One was about the metal suitcase which many Sudanese have in their homes, stashed away under beds or in dusty store rooms containing everything from old photographs and papers to china dinner sets. The metal box for some was associated with their experience of starting their military service and living in a dorm with many other young men enrolled on the mandatory training. Memories of this particular metal suitcase were of it being tied firmly to the top of a rickety old bus, with all the other luggage, on the way to the camp. It was filled with every possible form of sweet food making it, as one person said, a ‘tahniya box.’ Tahniya or Halva, is a thick paste mainly of sugar and sesame oil which is often used as a sandwich filler.
The cardboard Ramadan food box is well-known to everyone inside and outside Sudan. Every year before Ramadan we would receive fresh produce from farms outside Khartoum brought by family members who were visiting. Distant aunts sent us their signature hilu-mur, dried sheets of fermented sorghum that are soaked to create the popular ‘sweet and sour’ drink, rugag or ‘Sudanese cornflakes’ and gargosh rusks. Other Ramadan boxes people remembered contained ground dried meat, sharmoot, or dried onions which even though you could get these in most places they never tasted the same as the ones sent from home!
People’s answers to what they took on their travels and what reminded them of home were very personal and varied from one person to another; what they loved and what they couldn’t find in the places they were going to. One person explained how her brother loved biscuits and so her mother would pack every type of biscuit into his bag. Another said her mother made her special coffee blends with local flavours while another said she brought frozen minced meat with her because she hadn’t been able to find a butcher who could supply anything that tasted the same. Royal biscuits, the soft drink Pasigianos and powdered milk were some more of the things people admitted to taking with them. Sesame seed oil, local spices including dried, ground okra and of course braided cheese were all common items people took with them regularly.
The taste of home is something we all miss today and every now and then there will be some food we crave. We also miss how we used to enjoy meals together and all the memories associated with it but because of the war, it is very unlikely anybody will receive a box of food from home and will have to make do with local alternatives.
Cover picture and designs © Zainab Gaafar
Know your leaves
Know your leaves