CHAPTER 4
The pick-up truck bumped and swayed across a lunar landscape. My mouth was so dry with thirst I could barely speak and motion sickness was setting in. I was on my way to St Stephen’s School in Dar es Salaam, one of the many areas for displaced Southerners and Westerners in the outlying parts of Khartoum. How people found their way to wherever they were going was a mystery. There were no roads, just trails in the sand left by the wheels of other vehicles that had passed by recently; no landmarks, just acre after acre of desert scrub dotted with identical mud brick houses and the odd shop selling a few basic items like oil, salt, sugar, candles and soap. Boys played football with balls made of knotted rags. Weary donkeys drawing carts laden with great barrels delivered water to the residents.
St Stephen’s was one of the stops on the ELF Mobile Library circuit.
Lillian had set up the Mobile Library in 1996. The idea for it took root while she was visiting a school in Soba Aradi, a displaced persons camp in the south of Khartoum, with the Bishop of Bradford. The Bishop was horrified to find that the 400 pupils and teachers had only one book between them. On his return to Bradford he organized a collection of books from families in his diocese and soon had sixty boxes to send out to Khartoum. These were followed by a second shipment and then a third. Altogether about 10,000 books had found their way from Bradford to Sudan.
The books were loaned out to about thirty schools in and around Khartoum. The schools were also given a secure cupboard to keep the books in if necessary. A librarian visited them regularly to check that everything was in order and to change the books when required. At St Stephen’s things were not in order.
When I took over management of the Library it was being half-heartedly tended by a Southerner whose services, I quickly realized, had to be dispensed with. In his place I appointed another Southerner, Clement, and a Northerner, Abdul Rahman.
Clement had impressed me with the draft of a novel which he was writing. Although its structure was flawed, giving the impression of three different sets of writing put together like a club sandwich, his powerful use of language was striking. Sadly he hadn’t yet been able to start work as his wife had just died in childbirth and the baby with her, after which Clement himself fell ill with malaria. Such tragedies were commonplace in the displaced camps. Abdul Rahman was also an impressive character – industrious and dynamic, in contrast to the usual laid-back laissez-faire Sudanese way of doing things. It was Abdul Rahman who accompanied me now.
One staff member at each stop was supposed to be in charge of the library. At St Stephen’s this person was a teacher called Jimmy Francis. But Jimmy had moved to another school a year previously and had refused to surrender the key to the book cupboard
On a previous visit Abdul Rahman had learned that the books had never been used, not even before Jimmy Francis left. He tracked Jimmy down at a neighbouring school. No, said Jimmy, he couldn’t hand over the key because he didn’t have it on him. And no, it wasn’t true that the books weren’t being used. They were for all the schools in the parish and he was opening up the library several times a week, though not just then as the parish priest was keeping everybody too busy with other activities for them to have time for reading. That was Jimmy’s story anyway. It was more likely, Abdul Rahman told me, that he was unwilling to relinquish the feeling of power that the possession of a key to a cupboard full of books gave him.
We had come now to sort things out once and for all. We found the school deserted, apart from an old Dinka caretaker who told us that Jimmy Francis had now disappeared completely and that the book cupboard had never been opened in all the three years it had been there. I decided to get a locksmith to open the door and fit a new lock. By this time our driver had gone off for a prolonged breakfast (the Sudanese breakfast is more of a brunch and eaten in the late morning) so we had to traipse across the desert, ankle-deep in sand in the noonday sun, to fetch a welder, that being the closest we could get to a locksmith. The welder broke open the lock but the only way of making the cupboard secure again was to take it to his workshop and get some welding done so that a padlock could be fitted. Abdul Rahman, who didn’t realise that not everyone wanted to work like a Trojan 14 hours a day as he did, was all for humping the cupboard across to the workshop and getting it done right away but by this time the driver had returned and was champing at the bit to get back to Khartoum so we just piled all four hundred books into the car and took them back with us. St Stephen’s seemed to be one of the schools where the Bradford books were treated like best crockery, kept in a china cabinet for display only. We would find a better placement for them elsewhere.
Thus far the Mobile Library was the only charitable, as opposed to commercial, activity that ELF was undertaking. Now that the commercial operation was on a sounder footing I could start to expand the kind of work that would fall within our charitable remit.
I had got to know about an English speaking club called Step by Step. It had a membership of several hundred and seemed to be well structured. They met twice a week and held discussions in groups of ten. Each group had a leader, a Catalyst, who had been given some training in group dynamics. I decided to offer a subsidized course for the Catalysts. Sally, a British teacher working at Unity High School, agreed to teach it.
I had some preliminary discussions with Jamal, the chairperson of Step by Step. He said that he would be too busy to get involved himself but that one of the committee members, Shamboul, would help with organizing the course.
The next day an elongated young man loped into the office. His jacket reached halfway down his thighs and his hair looked as if it had been styled by a topiarist. Shamboul looked cool, super-cool. He was charming and articulate. His English was excellent. He looked like the sort of person one could do business with. Everything was sure to go smoothly with a person like this in charge.
Together we made up a list of the twenty people who were to do the course. Shamboul was to collect the money from them and pass on the details about time and place. The fee was to be paid in full before the beginning of the course.
‘Yeah, no problem. Just leave everything to me. We’re all really grateful for this opportunity you’re giving us. We’re really looking forward to the course. I’d like to thank you very much, ma’am. We really appreciate this.’
The course was to run from five o’clock to seven o’clock, twice a week. On the first day a host of people swarmed into the garden from 4.30 on. By 5.15 when Shamboul arrived there were far more than the twenty people indicated on the list.
‘Shamboul, can you sort this out, please. Who’s supposed to be here and who isn’t?’
‘Sure, lady. Just leave it to me.’
Shamboul ushered everyone through the office and into the big room in the centre of the house.
‘You the teacher?’ he asked Sally.
‘Yes, that’s right. I’m…’
‘Okay, everyone here? Let’s start.’
‘No, just a minute, Shamboul,’ I said. ‘First of all, there should only be twenty people in the group and there seems to be about twenty-seven. And you’ve only given me the money for twelve people. No one can start without paying the fee.’
‘Aw, come on. You know how it is in Sudan. These people, they have no money. Some of them aren’t working. Some of them are teachers. They’re earning just 200,000 pounds a month. They’ll pay you later. But right now they haven’t got the money.’
I’d already talked about this with Jamal. We’d agreed that the course wouldn’t be free, the thinking being that the participants would feel more committed if they had to pay, even if it was only a small amount, and we’d fixed the fee at an affordable level. I wasn’t going to start arguing about it now.
‘Shamboul, in this room there should be only the people whose names are on the list and who have paid.’
It turned out, of course, that some of the people Shamboul had taken money from had not been on the list.
‘Listen, lady, these people have paid. They’ve got to do the course.’
What could I say?
‘Shamboul, this room can only take twenty people. And with the kind of course we’re doing, it won’t work with more than twenty. Twenty is the maximum. Please sort this out.’
We reached an unsatisfactory compromise whereby the twenty-seven who were there could stay for that lesson because, well, after all, they were there, but for the next class only those on the original list – and who had paid – would be allowed in.
At the time of the next class I had a meeting elsewhere and had to leave things in the hands of Sally. Babiker handed me a note from her when I got back. Things had been just as chaotic as on the previous occasion, with Shamboul trying to cram even more people in. As well as that, a number of other Step by Step people had turned up and made themselves at home in the garden, much to the gratification of Babiker who was now running a nice little business in cigarettes and chewing gum from his cardboard box. To make matters worse, Shamboul had been rude to Sally who was now threatening to abandon the course.
I called Sally to mollify her and assured her I’d be around for the next class.
The following Tuesday there were twenty-eight people in the classroom at five o’clock. None of them had the course material. Shamboul, who had taken the material to get it photocopied for everyone three weeks previously, had still not done so. Another fifteen or so people were sitting around in the garden. Shamboul arrived at quarter to seven.
‘Hi, how’s it going? Everything fine?’
‘Shamboul, everything is not fine. There are still too many people in the class. Five of the people who are supposed to be in it still haven’t paid. And my garden is full of people who have no business being here.’
Shamboul pushed past as if I hadn’t spoken and went into the classroom to speak to the Catalysts, interrupting Sally without as much as a nod in her direction.
The next day I wrote to Jamal telling him that Shamboul was banned from the ELF premises and I hired a ‘bouncer’ for the Step by Step classes. Abdul Moniem, a former British Council librarian who was waiting for the go-ahead for a job in the Gulf (where so many Sudanese teachers go), had previously helped out sometimes in the office. His presence had been so punctuated by visits from friends, absences to attend to personal matters, phone calls and al fresco breakfasts with relatives in the garden that it had not been worth while continuing that arrangement. But he made an excellent bouncer, parked genially on a chair at the gate, turning away all unwanted visitors and intervening masterfully whenever a spot of bother had to be sorted out.
After that the normal drop off in attendance that typifies Sudanese courses brought the class size down to a manageable level. Sally began to enjoy the group and six months later everything ended happily with a farewell picnic in a park on the banks of the Nile.
For once everything went smoothly. The Catalysts hired a bus and prepared the food. They brought a cassette player and some Sudanese music. As we laid out the mats some of the men started dancing, swaying to the undulations of the repetitive Sudanese rhythms and throwing their hands high above their heads with a loose flick of the wrist as if they were fly-fishing with invisible rods. After the meal we played party games. Then everyone had to sing a song or recite a poem. It reminded me of the Christmas parties I had as a child with the Brownies. Afterwards we paddled in the Nile.
As darkness fell we got back into the bus and drove towards the park exit where we found the gate closed and locked. There was some amicable argument about how we had got into this situation and how we were to get out of it. The cassette player was set in motion again as background to the chatter and laughter and singing. The bus driver was talking on his mobile. Sally and I were assured that someone would eventually come to let us out. But by this time we both wanted to get home. We thanked our hosts, got off the bus and made our escape. As with much of what astonished us at Sudanese behavior, the sight of two mature women clambering up a big wrought iron gate and jumping down the other side must have struck the Sudanese as strange and undignified. At the time I didn’t give it a second thought. But culture shock goes both ways.
St Stephen’s was one of the stops on the ELF Mobile Library circuit.
Lillian had set up the Mobile Library in 1996. The idea for it took root while she was visiting a school in Soba Aradi, a displaced persons camp in the south of Khartoum, with the Bishop of Bradford. The Bishop was horrified to find that the 400 pupils and teachers had only one book between them. On his return to Bradford he organized a collection of books from families in his diocese and soon had sixty boxes to send out to Khartoum. These were followed by a second shipment and then a third. Altogether about 10,000 books had found their way from Bradford to Sudan.
The books were loaned out to about thirty schools in and around Khartoum. The schools were also given a secure cupboard to keep the books in if necessary. A librarian visited them regularly to check that everything was in order and to change the books when required. At St Stephen’s things were not in order.
When I took over management of the Library it was being half-heartedly tended by a Southerner whose services, I quickly realized, had to be dispensed with. In his place I appointed another Southerner, Clement, and a Northerner, Abdul Rahman.
Clement had impressed me with the draft of a novel which he was writing. Although its structure was flawed, giving the impression of three different sets of writing put together like a club sandwich, his powerful use of language was striking. Sadly he hadn’t yet been able to start work as his wife had just died in childbirth and the baby with her, after which Clement himself fell ill with malaria. Such tragedies were commonplace in the displaced camps. Abdul Rahman was also an impressive character – industrious and dynamic, in contrast to the usual laid-back laissez-faire Sudanese way of doing things. It was Abdul Rahman who accompanied me now.
One staff member at each stop was supposed to be in charge of the library. At St Stephen’s this person was a teacher called Jimmy Francis. But Jimmy had moved to another school a year previously and had refused to surrender the key to the book cupboard
On a previous visit Abdul Rahman had learned that the books had never been used, not even before Jimmy Francis left. He tracked Jimmy down at a neighbouring school. No, said Jimmy, he couldn’t hand over the key because he didn’t have it on him. And no, it wasn’t true that the books weren’t being used. They were for all the schools in the parish and he was opening up the library several times a week, though not just then as the parish priest was keeping everybody too busy with other activities for them to have time for reading. That was Jimmy’s story anyway. It was more likely, Abdul Rahman told me, that he was unwilling to relinquish the feeling of power that the possession of a key to a cupboard full of books gave him.
We had come now to sort things out once and for all. We found the school deserted, apart from an old Dinka caretaker who told us that Jimmy Francis had now disappeared completely and that the book cupboard had never been opened in all the three years it had been there. I decided to get a locksmith to open the door and fit a new lock. By this time our driver had gone off for a prolonged breakfast (the Sudanese breakfast is more of a brunch and eaten in the late morning) so we had to traipse across the desert, ankle-deep in sand in the noonday sun, to fetch a welder, that being the closest we could get to a locksmith. The welder broke open the lock but the only way of making the cupboard secure again was to take it to his workshop and get some welding done so that a padlock could be fitted. Abdul Rahman, who didn’t realise that not everyone wanted to work like a Trojan 14 hours a day as he did, was all for humping the cupboard across to the workshop and getting it done right away but by this time the driver had returned and was champing at the bit to get back to Khartoum so we just piled all four hundred books into the car and took them back with us. St Stephen’s seemed to be one of the schools where the Bradford books were treated like best crockery, kept in a china cabinet for display only. We would find a better placement for them elsewhere.
Thus far the Mobile Library was the only charitable, as opposed to commercial, activity that ELF was undertaking. Now that the commercial operation was on a sounder footing I could start to expand the kind of work that would fall within our charitable remit.
I had got to know about an English speaking club called Step by Step. It had a membership of several hundred and seemed to be well structured. They met twice a week and held discussions in groups of ten. Each group had a leader, a Catalyst, who had been given some training in group dynamics. I decided to offer a subsidized course for the Catalysts. Sally, a British teacher working at Unity High School, agreed to teach it.
I had some preliminary discussions with Jamal, the chairperson of Step by Step. He said that he would be too busy to get involved himself but that one of the committee members, Shamboul, would help with organizing the course.
The next day an elongated young man loped into the office. His jacket reached halfway down his thighs and his hair looked as if it had been styled by a topiarist. Shamboul looked cool, super-cool. He was charming and articulate. His English was excellent. He looked like the sort of person one could do business with. Everything was sure to go smoothly with a person like this in charge.
Together we made up a list of the twenty people who were to do the course. Shamboul was to collect the money from them and pass on the details about time and place. The fee was to be paid in full before the beginning of the course.
‘Yeah, no problem. Just leave everything to me. We’re all really grateful for this opportunity you’re giving us. We’re really looking forward to the course. I’d like to thank you very much, ma’am. We really appreciate this.’
The course was to run from five o’clock to seven o’clock, twice a week. On the first day a host of people swarmed into the garden from 4.30 on. By 5.15 when Shamboul arrived there were far more than the twenty people indicated on the list.
‘Shamboul, can you sort this out, please. Who’s supposed to be here and who isn’t?’
‘Sure, lady. Just leave it to me.’
Shamboul ushered everyone through the office and into the big room in the centre of the house.
‘You the teacher?’ he asked Sally.
‘Yes, that’s right. I’m…’
‘Okay, everyone here? Let’s start.’
‘No, just a minute, Shamboul,’ I said. ‘First of all, there should only be twenty people in the group and there seems to be about twenty-seven. And you’ve only given me the money for twelve people. No one can start without paying the fee.’
‘Aw, come on. You know how it is in Sudan. These people, they have no money. Some of them aren’t working. Some of them are teachers. They’re earning just 200,000 pounds a month. They’ll pay you later. But right now they haven’t got the money.’
I’d already talked about this with Jamal. We’d agreed that the course wouldn’t be free, the thinking being that the participants would feel more committed if they had to pay, even if it was only a small amount, and we’d fixed the fee at an affordable level. I wasn’t going to start arguing about it now.
‘Shamboul, in this room there should be only the people whose names are on the list and who have paid.’
It turned out, of course, that some of the people Shamboul had taken money from had not been on the list.
‘Listen, lady, these people have paid. They’ve got to do the course.’
What could I say?
‘Shamboul, this room can only take twenty people. And with the kind of course we’re doing, it won’t work with more than twenty. Twenty is the maximum. Please sort this out.’
We reached an unsatisfactory compromise whereby the twenty-seven who were there could stay for that lesson because, well, after all, they were there, but for the next class only those on the original list – and who had paid – would be allowed in.
At the time of the next class I had a meeting elsewhere and had to leave things in the hands of Sally. Babiker handed me a note from her when I got back. Things had been just as chaotic as on the previous occasion, with Shamboul trying to cram even more people in. As well as that, a number of other Step by Step people had turned up and made themselves at home in the garden, much to the gratification of Babiker who was now running a nice little business in cigarettes and chewing gum from his cardboard box. To make matters worse, Shamboul had been rude to Sally who was now threatening to abandon the course.
I called Sally to mollify her and assured her I’d be around for the next class.
The following Tuesday there were twenty-eight people in the classroom at five o’clock. None of them had the course material. Shamboul, who had taken the material to get it photocopied for everyone three weeks previously, had still not done so. Another fifteen or so people were sitting around in the garden. Shamboul arrived at quarter to seven.
‘Hi, how’s it going? Everything fine?’
‘Shamboul, everything is not fine. There are still too many people in the class. Five of the people who are supposed to be in it still haven’t paid. And my garden is full of people who have no business being here.’
Shamboul pushed past as if I hadn’t spoken and went into the classroom to speak to the Catalysts, interrupting Sally without as much as a nod in her direction.
The next day I wrote to Jamal telling him that Shamboul was banned from the ELF premises and I hired a ‘bouncer’ for the Step by Step classes. Abdul Moniem, a former British Council librarian who was waiting for the go-ahead for a job in the Gulf (where so many Sudanese teachers go), had previously helped out sometimes in the office. His presence had been so punctuated by visits from friends, absences to attend to personal matters, phone calls and al fresco breakfasts with relatives in the garden that it had not been worth while continuing that arrangement. But he made an excellent bouncer, parked genially on a chair at the gate, turning away all unwanted visitors and intervening masterfully whenever a spot of bother had to be sorted out.
After that the normal drop off in attendance that typifies Sudanese courses brought the class size down to a manageable level. Sally began to enjoy the group and six months later everything ended happily with a farewell picnic in a park on the banks of the Nile.
For once everything went smoothly. The Catalysts hired a bus and prepared the food. They brought a cassette player and some Sudanese music. As we laid out the mats some of the men started dancing, swaying to the undulations of the repetitive Sudanese rhythms and throwing their hands high above their heads with a loose flick of the wrist as if they were fly-fishing with invisible rods. After the meal we played party games. Then everyone had to sing a song or recite a poem. It reminded me of the Christmas parties I had as a child with the Brownies. Afterwards we paddled in the Nile.
As darkness fell we got back into the bus and drove towards the park exit where we found the gate closed and locked. There was some amicable argument about how we had got into this situation and how we were to get out of it. The cassette player was set in motion again as background to the chatter and laughter and singing. The bus driver was talking on his mobile. Sally and I were assured that someone would eventually come to let us out. But by this time we both wanted to get home. We thanked our hosts, got off the bus and made our escape. As with much of what astonished us at Sudanese behavior, the sight of two mature women clambering up a big wrought iron gate and jumping down the other side must have struck the Sudanese as strange and undignified. At the time I didn’t give it a second thought. But culture shock goes both ways.
