Beauty blossoms in South Sudan
By Stephanie McCrummen
December 19, 2007 (JUBA) — One recent afternoon in this dusty frontier town, soldiers lazed under trees, goats trotted down red-dirt roads, and outside Juba’s only conference center — a place called Home and Away — giggly young women in stiletto heels practiced their best catwalk struts under a hot, setting sun.
In a small sign that peace and modernity are settling over this region devastated by Africa’s longest civil war, rehearsals were under way for southern Sudan’s first-ever beauty pageant — Miss Malaika, or Miss Angel.
“When we do the turn, we’re going to go like this at the end,” said one of the pageant organizers, jutting her right hip. “Let me see your turns!”
Adak Paul, who once escaped falling bombs by diving into a dirt trench, flashed a toothy smile and swiveled. Awar Ring, who grew up in a crowded Kenyan refugee camp and wore a T-shirt reading “Love Forever,” struck a pose worthy of Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek.
In clear-heeled mules and secondhand skirts, plastic pearls and sequined belts, the 10 finalists clopped down the outdoor patio like so many lanky fashionistas in the making.
Exhibiting confidence
A sign for the Miss Malaika contest asked: “Do you think you have what it takes?” The contestants in the final event, held Dec. 1, seemed confident they do (contest results were not readily available).
“I see that I’m very beautiful,” said Paul, 24, explaining matter-of-factly one reason she decided to compete. “I have nice skin and nice teeth, and I know how to speak very well. I wanted to do this to show other girls in my village that they can do this also — that things are going on in the world and they can do these things, too.”
Although the Miss Malaika pageant is conventional in many ways, in others it is distinctly African.
Contestants must parade in day wear and evening wear, for instance, but also in traditional dress. Natural hair, rather than chemically straightened hair, is preferred. Though some Sudanese women tend to be naturally tall and thin, curvy figures are appreciated, organizers said. And the use of skin-lightening cream is forbidden.
Skin lightening is still a craze in Juba, a practice left over from the Arab-dominated government’s wartime occupation of this town in the mostly animist and Christian south. Southern Sudanese women, whose skin tones range from chocolate to almost blue-black, often used such products in an attempt to suit the preferences of the lighter-skinned Arab men.
But now, “we can be proud of our beauties,” said Evans Maendeh, a founder of the South Sudan Artists Association, a contest sponsor. “Even though the war destroyed so much, at least we can show that we have some culture.”
The winner of the Miss Malaika pageant will go on to compete in larger pageants around the world. A South Sudan version was held in exile in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, two years ago, but Maendeh said the idea was always to move it home after the war ended in 2005.
There were many hurdles to that goal, including a lack of roads, electricity and a place more suitable than a stick-and-tarp shelter in which to hold the event. But in the past two years, southern Sudan has slowly come back to life.
Refugees, including many of the contest finalists, have been returning home by the tens of thousands to rebuild villages and towns emptied during the war.
The hot and swampy regional capital, Juba, now has stick-walled markets and government ministries housed in prefabricated buildings. There are even a couple of hotels in addition to the two-story conference center.
An escape route
Paul said she signed up for a variety of reasons, including a desire to escape the fate of many young girls here.
“In my village, they keep girls just for cows,” she said, referring to the traditional dowries in which families are paid cows for brides. “That thing to me is not good. I want to be a model and go to school.”
Paul, whose mother was a rebel soldier during the war, grew up in a village near the town of Rumbek. As a little girl, she said, she often had to flee with her family into the tangled bush to escape fighting. A bomb once struck so close to the trench where she was hiding that she was covered in dirt from the blast.
Home is a tent
She moved to Nairobi to live with family members who had fled there, and she recently moved back to Juba, where she is staying in a tented army camp with her mother.
“I’m very proud to be a southern Sudanese and very proud to be an African,” said Paul, dressed elegantly in a black tank top, denim skirt and silver hoop earrings. “As Africans, we often have such a hard life, but we manage that.”
Awar Ring, all arms and legs and liquid brown eyes, said she decided to compete in Miss Malaika to “represent South Sudan and be a black beauty.” But she also hopes that winning might pay off more tangibly, with a job and money.
Her father, a soldier, was killed during the war, and her mother died recently in a refugee camp in Kenya, leaving Ring, 24, supporting her siblings. For the moment, she lives in a tent and makes money braiding hair for brides. If she wins, she said, she hopes to help injured soldiers and war widows.
(Chicago Tribune)