By Alison Bate A well-worn package arrived today from northern Nigeria. The Fedex package looked lumpy, heavily inspected, with yellow and blue stickers and tape splashed with orange type declaring “Inspected by Canada Customs”. The sender: W.J. Bush & Co. of Kano, Nigeria. The original company of W.J.Bush & Co. may...

By Alison Bate (See also: Surprise in the Souk) In the Reader’s Digest Canada article about my grandfather and Bint el Sudan, there wasn’t room to include all the information and memories I collected about the perfume. Here, then, are some of the emails I received about Bint el Sudan, starting with the present, and followed by...

On a trip that took me to Africa, I found my grandfather’s lasting legacy—the continent’s signature scent—in a market in Sudan. This story “The Bint Formula” was published in the December 2009 issue of Reader’s Digest Canada magazine. For more information about Bint el Sudan, see the following: * Surprise in the Souk * Memories of Bint el...

My story about teaching in Khartoum, Sudan in 2007 is now on the Transitions Abroad website. It begins this way: By Alison Bate Shortly after I arrived in Sudan, one of my favorite male students quietly passed me a handwritten note, whispering that I should read it later. After class, I read a charming explanation that because he was Muslim and I was a woman, he...