An advertisement for the Sudanese census

The authorities took this billboard down pretty soon after they discovered what they wrote in English.  :-) 

More details in a recent post for the Peace X Peace blog ...

Khartoum Journal
Commentary by Molly Mayfield Barbee

This weekend, my husband and I hunkered down and waited for the violent conflict on the other side of the river that runs by our home to cease. We huddled together with our laptops in front of the television, radios and mobile phones nearby, culling stories, theories, and any bits and pieces we could find, trying to put together some semblance [a picture] of what was happening.

By now most of you have read or heard about the attack on Sudan’s capital ...

Check out the rest of this post on the Peace X Peace blog.

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The latest from Khartoum

I started out writing tonight with the intention of making light of a stressful situation... but after the last few minutes in front of the television I'm left without much clever or funny to say.

The situation is that our plans for the evening were canceled when the Sudanese government declared a curfew across the whole of Khartoum state. So I had a few moments of quiet in which to finally catch up on the blog. We were supposed to be in Omdurman at a soccer game, which, as you know, is one of our favorite pastimes here... but then armed rebel militias from Darfur rolled into the city and everything has been shut down.

I was going to write about how E and I have been well prepared: plenty of supplies, multiple means of communication at hand, staying calm... but the thing is that real people died tonight and others have been taken as prisoners. Regardless of their political affiliation, ethnicity, religion or history - they have families and friends and causes they believe in too. Images of them will be with us for some time.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/MCD049772.htm