THE ENGLISHMAN IN THE SUDAN

Evening Star, Issue 18785, 8 November 1924, Page 13

THE ENGLISHMAN IN THE SUDAN

PIONEER WORK. PROBLEMS OP A PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. [From the ' Observer.’] “He has a job in Egypt —or the Sudan. I forget which.” Behind the frequent phrase lurks a conviction that the distinction is hardly worth drawing. Yet, beyond the fact that on certain evenings in the week they both board the same soutabound train from Cairo, the daily lives ot the English official in Egypt and his younger brother from the Sudan might be lived in feparate continents.' “ On paper,” indeed, they might read as much the same story. The diary of eacn is a retard of “ raurur,” which is the popular Arabic for “ going on circuit Journeys of inspection to overlook this or that departmental operation—the. cul'ectiou of taxes, inspections of police, of the progress of irrigation works, or. of experiments ’n cotton-growing—represent the daily activities of both. The ‘ 18-noi'is, which record the tab of their work, are full of the same titles of Mudirs and Manila's, Sheiks ..nd Orndas, and so on through alt the gamut of the nomenclature of Arabic administration. But with this the resemblance ends. The real lives lived in tlio service of the neighboring administrations are as different as can well be imagined. Much more divides Egypt and the Sudan than the widespread o:>pans3 of desert that centres round Wady Haifa, where the younger traveller enters on his own inheritance. The dilfcrence between life in Egypt and a career rn the Sudan is the difference between diplomacy and pioneering _ In Egypt a host of European complications has compelled England rigidly to t.dhn'3 to the cautious plan, adopted on her first entrance 'nto the country, of tendering advice to native officials. 13nt when the era of British control opened in the Sa dnn tiie Englishman found the coiiuby virgin soil. He could begin at the beginning. Thera were no mistakes of system to be undone or tolerated, for no system existed. The state, of the was a pure and virile barbarism. The Lngli'hman took it over as ho found it, and from die beginning lie lias run it in his own way. The million square miles of the Sudan Mill represent a sphere where the Englishman is supreme. He has eimm the country with his own law and his own methods of administrate n, and has had to ask no one’s permission for what he lias done. The title of 1 Anglo-Egyptian Sudan ’ is a diplomatic misnomer. LIFE IN THE WILDS, “Allah laughed when ho created the Sudan,” says an Arabic proverb. We should associate the country with Uganda and the Great Lakes, the tropical forests, the rapids and cataracts, and the savage lilies of Stanley’s explorations, rather than with the uniform and i arrow perspective of a country like Egypt, where multiform European influence has for generations overlaid the face of life with a veneer of Western civilisation. Official life in the Sudan is not a matter of office hours and official routine. It is a land for young men. Candidates for its service must be neither married nor engaged to u any. For, except for seniftr ofliciars. whose work of central administration keeps them in Khartum, the Sudan is no place for English women. Its official lives in the wilds. His tours of'inspection are no matter of comfortable train journeys and nights at a Government resthouse. He may have to travel miles through forest or desert on horseback or by camel. His homo for months on end may be a mud cottage or a hut built of grass. Scores carry on in the position of two isolated Englishmen, a doctor and an engineer, of whom I know, who, periodically relieved, live some hundreds of miles from their kind, engaged in special work at the head waters of the Nile on the Abyssinian frontier. In the remoter spots of the Sudan young Englishmen, far beyond means of prompt communication with their kind, may still have need of the masterful qualities of a Clive or a John Nicholson. The work is lonely, but it can hardly bo dull. It is surrounded by all manner of dangers. The mosquito of the Sudan lias not been tamed, as has his fellow in Egypt. He can still carry malaria, fever, or death to his victims. All the wild life of the primeval forest surrounds the worker in these remoter regions. The official is in general a specialist. But he is a specialist who, be ho engineer, doctor, or agricultural expert, must have a goodly store of knowledge beside his special attainments. BACE3 AND RELIGIONS. An assistant inspector may find himself at any time the unquestioned ruler of a tract of territory as largo as the British Isles. His “ subjects,” .unlike the population of Egypt, which is one people divided between two religions, will be of varying colors and of multiform races—as diverse, indeed, ns their country with its miles of barren desert, green oases, and untamed forests and huge tracts of “ sudd.” where the choked rivers struggle through tangles of floating weed and earth. The land is not even the home of a Homogeneous language, for though Arabic is the official' tongue it is not understood by thousands ot the inhabi-. tants. and out of the two hundred and more tribes who form the mixed population of negroids and black some may speak as many as twenty different dialects, Even religion lias failed to unify them, for despite the widespread extension of Islam there are large tracts where the population are primitive pagans. And all alike are practically pure savages. There is a, parable in the true story of the Sudanese school children who, being provided wun domes to attend school, wore their garments with pride while sitting on the forms of the "kullab.” but took them oft on the threshold and used them ns sacks for their books, while they walked home in comfortable nakedness.

An nEglish oflicial’s life is busy enough among a population so primitive. It is diversified by an occasional spell of a few days on oliicial business in Khartum, with its accompanying forgatherings at the club or on the polo ground, and by periodical “ leaves." For the rest, there is the consolation of sport, which is to be had in abundance in (he remoter readies of a country alive with all manner? of game. But the service is peculiarly Englishman’s work. No other nation could rule a country so diverse and primitive. And “ the Englishman on his own ” has had no interference in his work. The country is too primitive for the mischievous activities ot "politics." The only native source of potential agitation, the powerful Moslem sects, which might inflame, fighting races against their white rulers, lias raised no opposition to a regime which has consistently supported Islam ns a great power for good among primitive peoples. If the Oriental is proverbially ungrateful, the same cannot be so truly said of the African.