A stroll through the market
A stroll through the market
By Stan Stalla, The Village Soup
DARFUR, SUDAN (Oct 28): In the Islamic World, Friday is the day of rest. It’s the day that many devout Moslems go to their neighborhood mosque, if they live in an urban area like Nyala. For foreigners like me, it’s a time to check e-mails, write reports, read a book or even take a stroll through the town’s market.
My Sudanese colleagues tell me that Nyala is Sudan’s second-largest city. I doubt that anyone has more than a vague idea of how many people actually live here these days. The violence of the past 18 months has changed Darfur’s demographics in ways that will take years to sort out. Nyala’s urban dwellers have taken in relatives and friends fleeing the violence of the countryside.
Seven camps for Internally Displaced Persons sprawl along the city’s fringe. Driving toward town from the airport, there are hundreds of white, plastic sheeting roofs glistening under the desert sun. Those are the smaller camps of Otash and Dereig, with a combined population of close to 30,000. On the opposite side of Nyala, with its population of 160,000 people, Kalma Camp is reportedly the largest IDP camp in the world.
With my work week focused on the problems of Darfur’s displaced people, I wanted to see a side of town not affected by the suffering of the surrounding camps. After breakfast, my colleagues and I set out for the Nyala market. As is the custom, shopkeepers group according to their wares. Tinsmiths work in one area, basket weavers in another. There are several rows where people sell fresh produce, arranged in bright pyramids of oranges and reds and greens and purples. When Tom asked where we could find the daggers and swords typical of the region, a local merchant pointed down one of the sandy lanes.
Within a matter of a few steps, we were on a street of farm implements. The first shops had piles of spades and picks. Further along, was a section of small-bladed tools – the unseen daggers worn by men under the long, white sleeves of their jalabiyehs; flat, semicircular hoes that, when connected to a long pole, allow a worker to clean a courtyard of weeds without bending her back unnecessarily; and piles of axe heads of different lengths and curvatures.
As in all poor countries, everything is recycled. Tom and I bought a couple of daggers and hoes that had been forged from the iron springs of dilapidated trucks. A few stalls further, we entered the donkey supplies emporium – saddles made out of a few pieces of wood lashed together, and whips made of goats’ tails, their handles braided from colorful plastic strips.
Though I don’t have any donkeys, I was happy to listen to the shopkeeper’s pitch. He explained that donkey whips have a dual purpose. Besides their obvious use, he told us that they were an important part of the traditional wedding ceremony of the area.
He described how the groom’s brother receives 100 lashes of a goat’s tale whip from the bride’s brother – a reminder to the groom of what would happen if he were to one day mistreat his wife.
Having struggled to follow this convoluted story, I decided to add the whip to my Sudan memorabilia when he agreed to lower his price to 200 dinars (80 American cents). With daggers and hoe blades and whip in hand, we were about to turn back to buy our lunch supplies when another fellow suggested, “Go down as far as the wadi, then take a left, and you’ll find a place where they make earthen bowls to store the local brew.”
We couldn’t pass up a chance to stumble across an illicit alcohol business, so we kept walking toward the wadi. Rounding another curve, I stopped in my tracks. Not far ahead was a gnarly tree. In the topmost branches, at least a dozen storks jostled to keep their balance among as many nests. As I paused to take pictures, a couple of old men seated in the sand under a lean-to of sticks and straw beckoned me over. Around them were thin paperbacks with Arabic script and small leather pouches, the size of a box of matches. I recognized the pouches to be the amulets worn by many Darfurians to ward off harm. Stuffed inside are scraps of paper with Koranic verses.
I’ve seen the thinnest, most malnourished boys, barely strong enough to stand, with four or five amulets strung on a leather thong around their necks. Men often wear a larger version around their biceps, like their daggers, hidden under their long, white sleeves. My Sudanese companion explained that there is a special amulet that will make a man invisible and impervious to gunfire. Among the new, lighter-colored ones, I spotted a thong with five old, etched pouches, stained dark with sweat and worn smooth with age. Eight hundred dinars later, I pocketed this reminder that traditions in the middle of Africa die slowly, more slowly than those who believe in them.
We turned left and followed the course of the wadi. Instead of open-air shops, we were in an area of donkey carts and goats foraging for scraps. This was the poorest section of the market I had seen, but one that was to provide us with the most enchanting experience of the morning. In a small sand pit glowed the orange-black of a charcoal fire.
A young man sat near the fire, flapping his arms out, then in. With a steady motion, his animal skin bellows pushed air through two hollow, metal tubes that burrowed into the center of the forge.
A second young man, also seated, used crude tongs to pull a glowing iron rod out of the fire. Within 10 seconds, he hammered, twisted, and shaped it into a perfect hook-the kind that could hang a 50-pound hunk of meat from a wooden cross beam. Pulling another rod from the fire, he next pounded it into a perfect oval. After each 10-second task, he grabbed another handful of charcoal behind him and tossed it in the fire.
Suddenly, he did a gentle rat-a-tat a few times on his anvil. Alerted by this metallic rhythm, a third fellow standing nearby picked up a heavy sledgehammer. With grace from practice, he swung it over his head, then lowered it with force on the metal rod being tapped and twisted by his seated companion. For the next several seconds, there was perfect harmony between the heavy blows of the sledgehammer and the rat-a-tats of his partner’s small mallet. After a final, mighty blow, the tall guy severed the newly shaped instrument from its cylindrical base, then turned and grinned at us.
After these exhilarating five minutes at the blacksmith forge, the rest of our stroll was a pleasant denouement. Seated next to a fire of a few burning sticks, a woman kept her aluminum kettle on constant bubble. We sniffed the contents of the several glass jars she had on display — powdered coffee from South Sudan and small bits of tea, perhaps from Uganda.
Now in a hurry to buy those vegetables for lunch, we rounded another curve and spotted the earthen bowls predicted by the man at the donkey shop. They are simple and functional. The large, hourglass shapes can be seen throughout the towns and villages of Darfur. Filled with drinking water, they are a kind of public water fountain.
Thirsty passersby dip a communal plastic or tin cup into their depths, slaking their thirst with the freshness kept cool in the ceramic depths. According to the man at the donkey supplies shop, the smaller, round bowls are used to store the homemade brew of fermented millet, unofficially enjoyed by a large number of Darfurians.
After a few more steps, we came across a third row of ceramic pots displayed on the side of the sandy lane – Nyala’s drum market. Across their tops were stretched dry sheepskins, each at a different pitch in response to our thumping fingers. Rounding one more curve, we discovered that we had circled round to the food area. I took pictures of piles of grains and dried herbs. My favorites were the desiccated hibiscus blossoms. When brewed for a few minutes in boiling water, they create a tart, dark-purple drink rich in Vitamin C, and known in Sudan as karkadeh.
We also bought a couple of dusty, green pods – the fruit of the baobab tree. These contain a cream-colored pulp that, when boiled, imparts a guava taste. I was also intrigued by the piles of mottled brown, peeled, tamarind fruit, their stickiness suggesting an exotic taste. But, with hibiscus blossoms and baobab fruit in hand, the tamarind fruit would wait for another day. After buying the vegetables we had originally set out to purchase, we headed back to the guesthouse to prepare lunch.
The two hours in Nyala’s market had been rich with people, products and new experiences. It’s always good to take a Friday morning stroll in the town, with its reminders of how life may once again be for the thousands of IDPs who linger at its outskirts.