My Sudanese friend Lubna Abdelrahman is a very enterprising lady. In the last 18 months, she has set up an organisation to help immigrant women and their families and is also busy writing articles for and promoting the new Alqalam Arabic newspaper in the Vancouver area. Her new outfit, Bitmakaly Women’s Association, hosted a community fair...

It seemed an indelicate way to arrive at a religious ceremony. We bumped in, out and around gravestones set in desert scrub, before pulling up in the minivan in front of a huge circle of men in white robes. The pounding beat got louder as we walked to the edges of the circle and saw what they were all watching: green, red and leopard-clothed...

By Alison Bate The capital of Sudan feels a little lost and empty these days. The distinctive Dinkas – the impossibly tall, thin Southerners – and their fellow compatriots have mostly left Khartoum for their new homeland and the deadline for the rest to leave is just months away. After April 9, 2012, any southerners remaining...

1. Take lots of US dollars in cash, in fact everything you’ll need, as none of your western ATMs or credit cards will be accepted. 2. Change money on the black market, not in banks or official exchanges. As of Dec.1, 2011 you’ll get about 4.2 Sudanese pounds to $1 US on the black market, compared with only about 2.75 SP to the...

I’m in a hot little internet café up some very narrow stairs, so narrow I had to squeeze sideways to get up here, helped marginally by a wobbly rail. The internet in Sudan is sometimes very good and sometimes very bad and slow. The connection keeps dropping, and I’ve just managed to switch out of Arabic and change the direction...