A More Traditional Culture

Dear Friends,
Greetings! Yesterday I worshipped at the Pentecostal church and then spent the day and evening with friends. A. is a teacher at Nile Theological College and M. is his wife. There two daughters were off visiting friends. They took me to their house for lunch and other friends of theirs joined me. It was a good day and evening.

I am feeling like I am learning more about Sudan at a wee bit deeper level now. The title of this blog, "A More Traditional Culture" can be taken in many ways. Tradition has many dimensions in this land of sand and blue, blue sky. Today I walked to the little grocer just down the road for yogurt, bread and eggs and I was struck by the fact that the sky is today as blue as the ocean.

Tradition means, in one sense of the word, a culture and society that is not materialistic in the same was as the West. I do not get the feeling here that keeping up with the Joneses or having the latest technological advances in one's home or pocket are important -- at least not yet. I don't know what will happen in Sudan or other parts of Arabian culture in the future. And I have not yet been to the African part of Sudan in the South. Because I know that it is less developed than Northern Sudan I imagine that it too is less materialistic than the West.

There seems to be a more expansive openness to God here than I ever experienced in China, for instance. Maybe with less materialism there are not as many distractions to pull people away from the roots of life. While many of the young Muslim women do make fashion plate statements with the head scarves and modest dress, the reality that I am aware of every place that I go are the tobes, the full cover cloth that women put over their dresses, the long white tobes that the men wear, often with beards -- and the ever present donkeys with their carts.

Yesterday my friend M. said that things are improving here for women. Some women are now wearing jeans and women do not have to wear burkas if they do not want to. She also said that Khartoum is a good place to raise children. This is the second time that I have heard that sentiment. I thought about it and I realized -- no drugs, no alcohol, maybe less peer pressure. The thing of it is that for instance even the young men in their 20's seem to still live at home until they are married. Who is perpetuating this conservative society? The people who grow up and become adults in it. I think that there may be a higher value put on things like respect and honor than what I have seen in the West. Something that I realized in this conservation was that there is a difference between respecting culture and being held captive by it.

Now, traditional of course can mean other things as well. Even among Christians the cultural traditions often hold more weight than Biblical principles. Marriages are still often arranged. Women are essentially "sold" to the highest bidder. Marriages within families are not unusal. There was an interesting article on the internet a couple of days ago -- actually more like heartbreaking. The article focused on two 16 year old male Palestinian cousins. Until they hit puberty they had been believed to be girls. They attended girl's school and were socialized as females in their society. With the onset of puberty came facial hair and male characteristics, both physically and hormonally. They have had to cut their hair, begin to attend a boy's school and begin the difficult adjustment of being male in a society where previously they had been female. A medical authority has stated that this problem, which is not uncommon in Arabic cultures, is caused by inbreeding. Cousins marry cousins, families do not want to go out of the family for marriages. I have also heard this about some of the African tribes.

Here in Sudan, and probably other countries as well, there is a high bride price. The perspective son-in-law will collect money from his uncles to help pay the price so that after the marriage the bride is expected to wait on the husband and the extended family as well because they all own a piece of her so to speak.

It was an overwhelming day yesterday learning so many things that seem like they would be in the distant past but are instead life today. What an amazing thing though to live in a place in the world that is so incredibly different than where I grew up. Because I am still who I am here it can be hard to remember that outside of some of the ex-pats, the people who I come into contact with every day see the world very differently than I do. They experience life from a different car. At the table yesterday we discussed how when people from different cultures marry one another it is so important that they would have learned how to talk to one another. Some of the women here may marry a Westerner to show off that a light skinned person desired them. Many women bleach their skin because they believe the lighter they are the more refined they are. I was told that there are some light skinned Arabs who will not intermarry with others because they do not want to lose their original light skin. The light skin issue also appears to have to do with the racism that is directed towards the Africans by the Arabs. The lighter a person is the further from being African they appear.
Blessings,
Debbie