The Real World: Khartoum
Moving from America to the Sudan was not difficult in many senses. After all, my parents were Sudanese and I grew up knowing that I was too. I hadn't had any illusions about the country I was going back to, although I couldn't comprehend the completeness with which the move would change my environment. It goes far beyond power and water outages and the bewildering onslaught of language, to placement on the social ladder and a new awareness of the outside world.
In NY I was a tough (but relatively sheltered) kid who would confidently stride into a bar to get change for the bus, but in Sudan I had no idea where anything was and couldn't take a bus on my own for many years. So I went from having little freedom but a good idea of what do with it, to having a lot of freedom and nowhere to go. Moreover, there were the questions of class.
In NYC we were part of a broad middle class, the same as the kids we went to school with, the people we shopped with (tax-free) in NJ and the guys down at the corner store. In the Sudan, where there is both no class consciousness and a range of subtle distinctions, we were in new territory. It is a world that is fiendishly complicated, and moreso when you straddle two worlds within it.
Our schoolmates were the sons of diplomats, of foreign businessmen, the wealthy scions of the Sudanese upper crust. They lived a life of social clubs, large air conditioned cars, and trips abroad in the summer. Straddling the economic divide, my siblings and I got to travel, but also visited members of our family who lived with more modest means. I didn't think anything of it, until I mentioned what I did on the weekend. With my family I went to visit my cousins in Alkalakla, which is a sprawling neighborhood to the south of Khartoum. Its residents typically are of modest means, with small homes. They are hospitable and open, and in some cases, they are related to me. Unfortunately for my social standing at my posh school, they are also ... well, not rich, I guess. So I was roundly razzed and felt embarrassed, twice: first for being not rich, and then for being ashamed of being not rich.
This was to be the first of my many run ins with my upscale peers. It was also the first indication of the (at least) two worlds I would be living in. The Sudan is not a rich country, and at the end of the 80's the days of a more or less level economic landscape were almost over. In addition to the general poverty (which mind you, many people, including myself didn't quite notice) there was an influx of refugees fleeing war in Ethiopia, in Chad and in the Sudan itself. These unfortunate people were scattered around Khartoum, the lucky in the poor quarters, the rest in shanty towns. It's not hard to see them unless you're not looking, and I looked.
It's simultaneously interesting and heartbreaking, and that feeling is made more vivid by the contrast between the worlds I inhabited. I witnessed many examples of those contrasts, such as the bottomless boy sprawled out in the sun on the ground outside the school gate. I looked to my parents for some indication of how I should handle it, and it seemed to be a combination of down to earth pragmatism and distaste for the ostentation of the well-off. This is something I've carried with me into my current life, and leaves me on the odd side in the class wars despite the advantages I've had. In terms of my relationship with the Sudan, particularly, it's left me with a discomfort around modern comforts. I much prefer to be in the homes of my "normal" relations, sitting on metal frame beds in the living rooms and drinking tea out of simple glasses, and eating traditional Sudanese food instead of the globalized cuisines that have sprouted in the capital. I prefer to walk around in my traditional clothes rather than slick blue jeans and brand new sneakers. I prefer to be Sudanese and not a visitor to Sudan.