Sudan is the country of the week in my African exploration project. I found a book called “The Other Nile” by Charlie Pye-Smith on our bookshelf; it was published in 1986 and is firmly in the World Traveller genre. Those tales of Western youth who go backpacking around the world and write about their experiences with other Westerners in hostels were all the rage, for a while, but now, they have been replaced by blogs. Most of these books are tedious; there is little plot and a lot of partying. Nowadays, these chronicles are on blogs, not in books.
I was hoping that this book would give a good perspective of Sudan and the factors behind its split with South Sudan, but there was more about finding places that served alcohol. I was disappointed.
So, Sudan: A country of 34 million people, received its independence from the UK in 1956 and then proceeded to spend about 40 years (off and on) in a civil war. Some of the tension is racial, some religious; the people in the north are mostly Arabic and Muslim, the people in the south are mostly black and either Animist or Christian.
Sudan itself is bleak, with a per-capita GDP of $2,600; a population that mostly works in agriculture in a desert land; and its primary resource, oil, stuck mostly in the South.
I’ll revisit Sudan when I get to South Sudan, on the next east-west pass through the continent. Next up is Eritrea.
