One of my fellow Arabic language learners had met Amani, a high school student, and traded off English lessons for Arabic practice. I visited her, too, and found her family very interesting. It was my first opportunity to look at how a Sudanese family lived. Since this girl was in school during the morning, we called on her in the afternoon after lunch, from 4:00-6:00. In the 1980s people came home from work or school around 2:00, rested, unless they were cooking, and ate lunch at 3:00 or 3:30. They served tea after the meal, just in time for visitors. It was unheard of for a visitor to arrive and not receive boiling hot tea in a fruit juice glass!
Visiting took place outside in the hoosh (yard). The women brought beds out of the house and placed them in shady parts of the yard, along with small tables (for setting down your tea). Men often sat in chairs with metal frames and woven plastic string for the seat and back. The advantage of a string chair was that air passed through easily. When the temperature is dropping from 110 degrees, any opportunity for a breeze is welcome. Women often sat on the angareb (wooden bed). The frame was made of wood. The “mattress” part was, much like my rope bed in the jungle, a mesh of rope or colored plastic string woven in lovely patterns. Usually, a cotton mattress was placed on top. They covered the mattress with a beautiful and skillfully embroidered cotton sheet. There was commonly a matching pillowcase covering a rock-hard cotton pillow. Some of the older women preferred to sit on a woven plastic string mat on the ground. In the not-so-distant past, chairs were uncommon and older women were used to sitting with their legs straight out in front of them. I tried that for about thirty seconds before I gave up. There might be a small, square banbur (a low seat or footstool), made in similar fashion to the wooden bed. The most common seat in any Sudanese kitchen was a banbur.
Conversation was the most common pastime. Gossip filled much of the visit. It was not unusual for a female to be asked the price of her shoes or how much rent she paid, or where she found some rare commodity. I, of course, presented a whole new avenue of investigation, once I had enough language to understand the questions and form answers!
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