Giving birth in Sudan: customs and traditions

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Inga who is going to become a mum soon and asked me to write something about Sudanese birthing customs and traditions. Inga is always telling me to write a book about my travel adventures and I’m always never getting around to it. But maybe one day I will and then she'll have a whole book dedicated to her instead of just a single blogpost ... With thanks for all you do xx
 

Leila is an effusive host, eager to please even though she is preoccupied with her new baby, who is just three weeks old and suffering from a fever and chest infection.  

She speaks English at a breathless pace, her words heavy with sentimentality as though I were already leaving Sudan.  

“When you go, you will forget us,” she laments. “But we will never forget you”... leaving me at a loss to explain the impossibility of me ever forgetting Sudan or the friends I've made here.
 

Mona, a mutual friend and teaching colleague has brought me to Leila’s home to meet her new baby Mohannad.

Leila gave birth at home and has four other children. Her baby was born premature and has been sickly ever since. She looks lovely, but exhausted in her bright orange house dress and gold jewellery.

Laid out on a fluffy green mat and covered by a baby-sized mosquito net, Mohannad looks tiny and fragile. His breath is raspy and he doesn’t cry, so much as squeaks.

Discussions over lunch are centred on marriage and childbirth traditions - two inseparable and central tenants of Sudanese society.

Prophet Mohammad extolled the virtues of large families and the Sudanese have definitely adopted the bigger the better approach, with women typically bearing five or more children. Twelve was not unheard of in the past.

Leila shows me photos of her wedding - a fresh-faced woman, with a large, open smile standing at the side of her handsome new husband.

Now married for seven years, Leila concedes the passing of time and multiple births have strained their looks and relationship.

After five babies, she says she’d like to take a break from child bearing to focus on her own health and raising her existing children.

Rich in customs

As the afternoon heat fades, the conversation turns to childbirth customs in Sudan, and the traditional beauty practices still oberved by new mothers for their restorative, purifying and aphrodisiac properties.

Sudanese women are typically confined to their home for 40 days after giving birth to help them recover their strength. They will usually be cared for by their mother or other close female relatives. However, this custom is now less strictly adhered to as women increasingly take on more responsibilities outside the marital home.

During this period, the semaiya or naming ceremony will take place – in which relatives and friends join the family for a meal and the baby’s name is formally revealed for the first time. Male circumcision is sometimes performed at this time as part of the ceremony.

After the confinement period, women perform dokhan (smoke baths), a beautification ritual giving the skin a characteristic colour and smell of musk. New mothers will remove their body hair using a homemade wax made from lemon and caramelised sugar.

Her skin will be decorated with henna as a sign that the woman is refreshed and ready to return to her everyday life and duties.

Healing properties

Fenugreek, dried straw and hagel used to make medicinal tea

Sudanese women also follow a number of traditional healthcare routines during and after pregnancy.

Particularly revered among the Sudanese for its healing qualities is helba (fenugreek), with Leila's older lady relatives quick to recite the old Sudanese proverb to me: “If you knew what was in helba you would weigh it like gold.”

The seeds are boiled in water to make a medicinal tea, which is said to improve women's overall health and wellbeing after pregnancy. Helba is also used to treat stomach pain and stimulate milk production in new mothers.

Another staple is a traditional herbal tea made from hamarayb (dried straw) and the medicinal dried green leaves called hagel to aid women's health and improve appetite.

Pregnant women eat madida helba for strength

During pregnancy, women eat a simple homemade supplement known as madida helba, made from flour, fenugreek, sugar and water.

Fenugreek seeds are added to water and brought to boil. Flour and sugar is added to the mix and cooked until it becomes a thick consistency. 
The dish is sometimes served with milk and butter and is said to improve women’s strength and help fatten expectant mothers. 

Unlike the West, weight gain is seen as attractive in Sudan and many women actively seek to add to their generous curves.

Beauty and birth

Sudanese women keep themselves attractive and refreshed after childbirth with a number of cleansing beauty rituals. Key among these are a variety of skin treatments, as well as the wearing of handmade fragrant perfumes, especially reserved for married ladies.

Traditional perfumes

The most traditional Sudanese perfume worn after childbirth is khumra mahlab, which takes its name from the fragrant kernels of a small wild cherry found in Sudan and used as a key ingredient. A paste is made from various powdered dried ingredients, including mahlab, cloves, nutmeg, dufra, sandalwood and musk. The paste is smoked in a charcoal fire with pieces of sandalwood and other local aromatic wood and later infused with various liquid fragrant oils to produce the perfume.

A key ingredient in many Sudanese perfumes and cosmetics, dufra rather bizarrely takes its divine scent from the crushed shells of sea molluscs harvested from Sudan’s Red Sea coast. Proper cleaning is very important as any residual flesh will spoil the perfume. Women clean excess fat or dirt on shell particles using a razor, before soaking them in a mixture of either Pepsi or sorghum and water.

Mizeek, another typical Sudanese beauty product, is a fine yellow powder extracted from crocodile glands and used by women as an underarm deodorant. It is also sprinkled on clothes when ironing to give garments a fresh, fragrant smell.

To cleanse and exfoliate the skin, Sudanese women use dilka - a dark fragrant paste, which usually takes 3-5 days to prepare. The dough is made by mixing a number of fragrant oils and spices with sorghum or durra (durum) flour. Small chips of finely ground fragrant talih (acacia wood) are also added. 

The paste is spread around the inside of a bowl and placed upside down over a small dug hole, filled with a variety of different woods that produce a fragrant, sensual smoke when burnt. 

The time-consuming process is repeated at regular intervals until all of the paste has been added. Perfumed oils are added at the end, with the dough kneaded into small balls before being stored in an airtight container.

Dilka and deeheen ready for use

Used as an exfoliant, women mix the dilka with a small amount of water and rub it over the body, removing any residual paste with deeheen – an oily cream made from animal fat and perfumed using sandalwood oil or orange peels dried and boiled until the water evaporates. Performed regularly, the procedure is said to help women maintain clean, supple, fragrant and healthy skin. 

Leila says perfumes and other beauty rituals are used by women after childbirth largely for rejuvenation purposes, as well as to mask the smell of breast milk and remain sexually attractive to their husbands.

The alluring musky smell produced by such beauty treatments, particularly dokhan in which women smoke themselves with fragrant wood is enough to drive the average Sudanese man “crazy” with desire, I’m told.

 

“Sudanese men like their ladies very much when they do dilka. This because it make their skin more soft and smell beautiful. The lady become even more lovely and the man he come to her,” Leila explains before they both collapse in a fit of giggles.

As well as cleansing their bodies, Sudanese women also purify their home after childbirth by burning bakhoor – a fragrant incense made from soaking small woodchips in sandaliyya (sandalwood oil). The wood is burnt over charcoal in a traditional incense holder, with the thick musk-scented smoke seen as a way of restoring purity and positive energy in the home, as well as give blessing for the birth of a child.

Life in Ed Damer so far

Our courtyard

A home away from home

Our home in Ed Damer is a simple, yet comfortable sanctuary surrounded by mud brick walls, with a wide verandah and white-washed arches that lend a certain colonial elegance.

A hardy tree and several henna bushes also add an unexpected splash of green to the otherwise bare courtyard.

There is one tap in the bathroom, but water is only switched on at certain times of the day, so to ensure we have enough to keep us going, we fill a large barrel for use throughout the day.

Tap water...after boiling

These days I use a bucket for almost everything  - from showering, to flushing, laundry and washing up.

The water supply is pumped directly from the Nile and is brown in colour, with a slight muddy consistency, even when boiled. 

The locals say it’s safe to drink, but I’m not too keen to risk it.

Ed Damer itself is a biggish town with a village feel that on the surface seems rather unremarkable.

Wide dusty streets comprise of a series of low-level interconnected mud-brick houses distinguished by the brightly coloured metal gates so typical in Sudan.

There is little in the way of restaurants, cafes or entertainment. Even the omnipresent tea ladies so common in Khartoum are hard to come by.

Railway tracks cut through the centre of town, with a modest brick structure marking the station. The bustling rail industry during British colonial has long since faded and passenger services no longer operate.

The rhythm of life here beats at a constant and unhurried beat, driven by the ties of family, duty and faith.

Nights are mostly quiet and uneventful here, except for the distinctive braying of donkeys.

My bed, with improvised net

I sleep outside on the verandah under my mosquito net – and although it’s winter in Sudan at the moment, you’d hardly know it.

As I watch the stars just before falling asleep, I sometimes get the feeling I’ve fallen off the edge of the world.

Our neighbor and alarm clock every morning is the local Suhaili mosque next door, which sounds the morning call to prayer at about 4.30am each day.

Ed Damer sits on the Nile and this is undoubtedly the town's jewel and lifeblood, with the famed river's clear blue waters flowing through fertile farmlands on its way north to Cairo.

There is something majestical about watching the sunlight reflect off its glimmering surface as men in white jalabiyas walk stroll along its banks with donkeys in tow.

When cultures collide

I’m yet to start teaching as it has been a holiday since my arrival and my timetable arrangements are also still being decided.

Rebecca has introduced me to some of the local English teachers at a nearby girls’ boarding school.

Local ladies

They are enthusiastic and welcoming, although their language abilities are limited.

I find myself experiencing a collision of worlds when a discussion begins about polygamy. 

For me the idea is unthinkable, but the women here are pragmatic.

As the head of the English department explains, while ladies certainly don’t like sharing their husbands, under Islam men are permitted up to four wives and if their husband decides to take another woman as his wife it is their duty to accept it.

Later the conversation turns to life in Ed Damer. I ask one of the young ladies about a camel market I have heard about it, and her eyes widen in surprise.

Women aren’t allowed, she explains, it’s only for men. I ask if I can go if I am accompanied by a local man, but she says even that is not permitted.

Girls' boarding school

In fact I soon discover that women are not allowed at any of the markets – with the exception of the ladies souk on Saturday.

If women need something during the week they must send their husband or a male relative to fetch it.

This seems ridiculous given that women in Sudanese households manage all of the cooking and domestic chores.

I can't imagine Sudanese men have a particular love of grocery shopping either.

The teacher also tells me that as a young, unmarried woman she never goes to the souk herself, sending instead her mother or sister in her place - even on Saturdays.

Market handicrafts

She recommends I do the same myself, although I’m not sure of how the logistics of that would work given that my mother isn't exactly living in the same neighbourhood.

When I ask the young lady why she doesn’t go to the market to get the things she needs herself … she shrugs and says that’s the way it is.

I bite my tongue at the time….but I still can’t completely shake off my feeling of annoyance at what feels like an imposed restriction on women from going about what is essentially a normal daily routine.

My Sudanese family

Fadia and her family have taken us under their wing since our arrival in Ed Damer and have been very helpful in settling us into our new home.

Their house opens out onto a lovely green courtyard and has a comfortable, lived-in feel.

The Nile in all its loveliness

Fadia's children Sheza and Ali also speak English and have been very welcoming. I feel as though I have already started to consider them my Sudanese family.  

They invited us for lunch at their home on the weekend, and we passed a lovely afternoon that turned into evening as we sat chatting, drinking iced karkade  (a sweet drink made from hibiscus flowers) and milk tea.

After lunch we set out for a short walk through the neighbouring farmland to the banks of the Nile. Along the way we bump into some local brick builders, who oblige by posing for a photo.

We reach the Nile just as the sun is setting. It’s a beautiful site as the orange and pink hues converge and sink below the horizon.

The moon is nothing more than a thin sliver and Fadia clasps her hands in front of her sends a short prayer into the sky, a special hadith said at this time of year to mark Al-Hijra (the Islamic New Year).

Local brick workers

When we return Griselda recites a limerick verse she composed for me while we were out concerning my encounters with the vagaries of Sudanese bureaucracy. 

It’s the first time someone has written a limerick for me and I’m quite chuffed to say the least.

The following day we picnic on the banks of the Nile a short distance from home. 

I play marbles and Scrabble in probably the first time since high school and somehow manage to fail convincingly at both.

Fadia also takes us to the ladies souk to shop for weekly supplies. It’s a noisy, assault-on-the-senses, but easily laid out with all the essentials. 

Fadia helps with bargaining and I memorise the prices of things so I can try out my own negotiating skills next time.

I’m still pretty shy when it comes to bargaining, but it’s a way of life here, so it’s something I’ll just have to get used to.

Picnic by the Nile

The traders are wide-eyed to see Griselda and two other Khawajias (foreigners) wandering amongst them and words soon spreads around the souk like a game of Chinese whispers. 

Of course everyone wants to know what we are doing and why we are here.

After the hustle and bustle of the souq Rebecca plays us all a tune on her viola back at the house. 

There are tears in Griselda’s eyes at the end as she tells us how much her late husband would have loved to have been here to hear music played in their home and how glad she is to see it come alive again.

On the wall hanging opposite us a portrait shows a reclining Abdullah Tayib laughing and relaxed, so in some way it feels as if his presence is here after all.