Sudanese wedding

Last night we attended a wedding party with Abdalla and his family. Finally we could see the famous Sudanese way of celebrating weddings with our own eyes!! Sudanese weddings usually have hundreds of guests, and we were told that this wedding had more than 700 people attending...

Abdalla's daughter, Sama.

Abdalla and Christina.

Manal, Abdalla's wife.

It is a tradition that the wedded couple sits on this bed, while their family are "preparing" them for the wedding night, with perfume, incense, dancing for them.

The couple has changed from a wedding dress and suit to more traditional clothing before the traditional prepartion for the night.

Dancing was, of course, the main activity all night!

And, as an easy target, being white and tall, Mona got dragged up on stage to dance with some of the groom's friends. As they did not take no for an answer, Mona got to challenge her stage fright in front of more than 700 people (each having a camera pointed towards her at some point), as well as Christina and Abdalla who could not stop laughing.

Abdalla with his daughter and two sons.

Data collection!!

The team in our mini bus taking us to the field. Ten 13 persons (+ the driver), food, drinks and 100 questionnaires every day. Ready for some real work in the real heat!!!

Distribution of the questionnaires before the day starts. (For those who believes that Mona has hired 10 data collectors just for her study: not the case. But yes: the team is doing that one in addition).

As the weird white persons we are wherever we go: we needed a picture of the donkey!

Christina with her amazing interpreter: John.

Zeinat

One of the groups the team is divided into every day. Mona was lucky enough to be following them around one of the days.

The two Niles becoming one

You can easily see the two different colors of the water coming from the two Niles, meeting just outside Khartoum. The White Nile, coming from southwest is more slow running and broader, the Blue Nile, coming from the southeast is more narrow and faster. In this picture, the White Nile provides the blue water, while the Blue Nile is more muddy and red. The two rivers become one, but the water does not mix until some distance into the Greater Nile, giving this spectacular view of a two colored river.

Our first foul-experience. Traditional Sudanese food with the main ingredients of beans, made in the large pot shown above.

\

Sunrise on our way out of Khartoum heading for Medani, Gazeera.

A road trip along the Blue Nile!

The new health center build after recommendations from the first fase of the Sudan Mental Health research project, compared with the old one.

Sufi dancing, a traditional group healing seremony.

This is the area where the hut of the traditional healer outside Medani is located.

A new hospital is being built in the same area, on the initiative from the traditional healer and funding from him and his followers.