ENGLISH IN SUDAN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 6 December 1924, Page 10

ENGLISH IN SUDAN.

PIONEER WORK. A PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. “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 (says a .correspondent of the London Observer) beyond the fact that on certain, eyenings in the. week they both board the same south-bound train from Cairo, the daily lives of the English' official in Egypt and bis younger brother from the Sudan might he lived in separate continents. “On paper,” indeed, they, might read as much the same story. The diary of each is a record of “murur,” which, is the popular Arabic for “going bh circuit.” journeys of inspection to Overlook this or that departirierital Operation—the collection of taxes, inspections of police. Of the progress of irrigation works, or of 'experiments iri bot-ton-gfowing—represents the daily activities of both. The “Reports,” which record the tale ’of their Work, fire full of the same titles of Mudirs and Mamiii’S, Sheikh's* ahd Oiridhfc, and So bn throUgh all tne gairiut of the nomenclature of Arabic administration. Brifi with this the resemblance ends. The real lives lived in the Servic'd of the neighbouring ' administrations are as different as can .well be imagined. Miifch more divides Egypt and the' Sudan than the widespread expanse bf desert that centres round Wady Haifa; where the younger traveller enters on his own inheritance.

The difference between life in Egypt and a career in the Sudan is the difference between diplomacy and pioneering. In Egypt a host of European complications has compelled England rigidly to adhere, to the cautious plan, adopted oh her first entrance into the country, of tendering advice to hativd officials. But when the era bf British control opened in the Sudan the Erigli shin ah found the country virgin, sbil. He could begin at the beginning. There were no mistakes of system to be undone or tolerated, „for_ no system 'existThe state of the country was a pure and virile barbarism. The Ehglishinan took it over as he fourid it, and from the beginning he has run it in his oivn way. The; million sqtlare miles of the Sudan still represent a sphere where the Englishman is supreme. He has equipped the country with his own law and his own methods of administration, and has had to ask no one’s permission for what he has done. The title of. “Anglo-Egyptiari Sudan” is a diplomatic misnomer. “Allah laughed when he created the Sudan,” says aii Arabic proverb. We should associate, the country with Uganda and the’ Great Lakes, the tropical forests, the rapids and. cataracts, and the savage tribes of Stanley’s explorations, rather -than; with the uniform agd. narrow perspective of a. country like Egypt, where ihultifofm: European influence has for generations overlaid the face-of life with a verifier of Western civilisation.. “Official life in the Sudan is hot- ri hiatter bf office hours arid official routibe. It is a land for young men. Candidates for its service - must be neither ibarried nor engaged to marry. For except the Senior officials, whose work of central administration keeps them in Khartoum, 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 rest-house. He inay have to travel miles through forest or desert on horseback or by camel. His home 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 ah 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 paeans 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; bnt it can hardly be dull. It is surrounded by all manner of dangers. The mosquito of the Sudan has... not been stained as has his fellow in Egypt. He can still carry malaria, fever, or death to life victims. All the wild ' life of the' primeval forest surrounds the worker in these rehaoter regions. The official is in general a specialist. But he is a specialist who, be he engineer, doctor, or agricultural expert, must have a goodly store of knowledge besides his special attainments. An Assistant-Inspector may find him- i self at any time the unquestioned '.'filler' of a. tract of territory as large as the British Isles. His, “subjects,” unlike the population of Egypt, which is one people divided between; tw'o religions; will be of varying colours arid bf multiform faces —as diverse, indeed, as their country with its miles of barren desert, green oases, and untamed forests arid huge tracts of “sudd,” where the choked rivers struggle through tangles bf floating weed and earth. The land is not even the home bf a homogeneous language, for _ though Arabic is the official tongue it is not understood by thousands of the inhabitants, and Out of the 200 and more tribes who form the mixed population Of negroids arid blacks some may speak as many as 20 different dialects. Even religion has failed to unify them, for despite the N widespread extension of Islam there are large tracts where the population are primitive pagans. There is a parable, in the true 6tory of the Sudanese school children who, being provided with clothes to attend school, wore their garments with pride while sitting on. the forms of the “kuttab,” but took them off on the threshold and used them as sacks for their books, while they walked home in comfortable nakedness.

An English official’s life is busy bnough among a population so primitive. It is diversified by an occasional spell of a few days on official business in Khartoum, with its accompanying foregatherings 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 the remoter reaches 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 of “politics.” The only native source of potential agitation,, the. powerful Moslem sect 6, which might inflame fighting races against their white rulers, has raised no opposition to a regime which has consistently supported Islam 'as a great power for good among primitive peoples. If the Oriental is proverbially ungrateful, the same cannot be so truly said of the African.