Glancing along the road, there were no obvious tea ladies around, but we noticed a canopy across the street next door to the pharmacy. We headed across the road and asked in our best Arabic if there was any tea, there were several ladies sitting peeling vegetables. The ladies invited us to sit, and after a few minutes a young girl appeared with two teas on a tray for us. In the mean time the other ladies had started chatting to us and one of them told us that someone had died so they were preparing lunch. We were mortified! How crass could we be? Walking into the preparations for a wake and demanding tea? What we needed now was a dignified exit before we could make matters any worse! I figured the best thing to do under the circumstances was to offer to help them with the preparations.
The Sudanese don't bother with chopping boards they just cut and slice into their hands, which may be extremely dangerous especially with my John Lewis kitchen knives from home, but more hygienic and removing all dilemmas about which board to use to avoid cross contamination, with the added bonus that should I lose a finger during the process I would have a indisputable excuse to leave!
How long can it take a group of women to peel and slice a large pan of aubergines anyway? THREE HOURS! - what I hadn't realised was that underneath the large already peeled and sliced pan of onions was another larger pan of aubergines! Still the work was conducted with lively banter and a bit of an Anglo/Arabic lesson, with frequent stops for refreshments. Once all the aubergines had been sliced we announced that we should really go now. "You must stay and have breakfast with us!" the ladies insisted, Well it would seem rude not to, so we did and it was excellent!
By now our hands were attracting a lot of attention - the insides were now the same colour as our new found Sudanese friends hands! "It's no problem" I insist "I'll wash them later," Before we could go phone numbers needed to be exchanged so I popped back to the house to get my phone and wash my hands. After plenty of soap and furious scrubbing they were resolutely the same tone of brown! When I returned with my phone, the ladies showed Billie and I how to rub sand into the stains to get them off and we left shortly after with our hands returned to a near normal colour. "But you must come back for lunch!" they insisted.
Despite our horrific mistake, it was truly the most pleasurable experience in Sudan so far, to sit and chatter with a group of local ladies (whom we'd assumed initially were tea ladies!) There were midwives, teachers, students all mucking in together to prepare the feast for the wake.
After a rest and a shower we went back across the road to rejoin our new found friends. Only to find that the group was now more of a large crowd and there was no one that we recognised. Again we were told to sit, but this time we were asked to show our hands - clearly the white "khawajas" brown hands had been a subject of hilarity after we'd left the first time!
We spent a lovely evening in the company of friends and close family of the deceased, being looked after in true Sudanese style. When our friend Higer left, we saw it as an appropriate time to make our excuses and leave too. However, Higer was not ready to part company with us and kindly invited us to her house where we spent a very pleasant hour or so drinking tea and chatting with her family, after which her husband dropped us back home.
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