Sense and Censorship

A couple of days ago one of the French teachers was grabbed and pulled off the bus at the busy main bus station. She screamed for the police and 2 police came. The man who grabbed her kept trying to take her mobile phone away. It turned out that the grabber was a plain clothes police officer. She showed the 3 of them her French passport but to no effect, the officers got her into a car and started driving. She phoned a Sudanese friend and explained what was happening, each time she described a landmark they turned the car.

She got away, uncharged, with the help of her friend. They said they had seen her going to the University and didn't know who she was. She is Black, her parents from Chad, so they may have thought she was an illegal immigrant. She is also French, so dresses western, perhaps a bit too much for a black woman here. I don't know, it seems to be just chance it you get pulled up for something and equally just chance if you get away.

There is a long process of paperwork and red tape here. It requires a lot of keeping on the ball as to knowing what you need or don't need. My visa runs out on the 15th. It can be extended, but because I am staying here for 7 months they are applying for residency. This means a long progress: AIDS tests, paperwork and more waiting, also more pushing people to do stuff. I don't want to be here illegally (obiviously). This is not a country to be illegitimate in, and it is easy to be in the wrong: you must have a permit to take photos, all travel South, East, and West requites permits, permits are also required to visit historic sites... Americans are not allowed more than 25 miles outside Khartoum... unless of course they have a special permit.

So my job this week is to make sure my residency is secured or my visa extended. The advantage is, these things are done through the volunteer programme. So there is the support of the Ministry of higher education, and the Ministry of foreign affairs. The disadvantage is that the one person whose job it is to do this has not once, ever, done what he said he would do. I have given up trying to bully him into action and am now enlisting the help of his much more competent co-worker (who got my passport registered).

I have to edit the truth a bit, and often. If I am hanging out with Mick, he is my Husband or brother. Woman are 'valued' and of course if a woman is wandering off by herself, without any man to care for her, watch over her and protect her, then of course she must be not worthy: she is invaluable. It has also been recommended to me to say that I am Christian when asked my religion. This was suggested by some liberal Sudanese people I was already editing the truth. I certainly wouldn't say witch, the connotations are far too horrific, and pagan is also dodgy. So I was flippantly switching between Agnostic and atheist, the former not understood and the latter 'shameful'. I have managed to avoid saying I'm Christian... I just don't know if I can bring myself to do it.

No one knows of my burlesque past (not even fellow westerners, Mick suggests that it is too much information, so I shall take his advice until I don't). Most definitely, no one knows of the wee spot of stripping in did. I hate the censorship. I'm proud of my previous occupations. I know I have to bend and adapt to this culture, I have to realise that my morals are viewed here as absolutely shocking and disgusting (in a country where there is no age limit to marry and a man can take 4 wives). But how far do I bend? Do I attempt to intergrate until I'm in a burka myself? Till I believe what the government says? Till I stop questioning? The difference with me (as compared to the people who sit beside me tapping away on their computers) is that I know differently, I have experienced other ways, and I'm only here temporally, I will leave, I have no reason to create change. I just need to watch, listen, learn... and attempt to understand.

I heard word that one of the former volunteers was deported for insighting revolutionist tendencies in her class. I'm supposed to avoid the topics of religion, sex and politics in my University discussion groups... not easy as I need to get the students talking, and these are the 3 topics that will guarantee a conversation. It has been suggested that there may be at least one student in each class that is being paid by the police to be an informant. So it is in my best interests to steer conversations way from the present government, or Daufur, or UN, or well just about anything in the newspapers.