Display of colonial Sudan in Durham, UK

http://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/disappearingheritage/full75420.jpg

British and Egyptian flags flying in front 

0f a motor carriage used during the visit 

to Khartoum of Khedive Abbas Hilmi II. 

Photograph by R. Von Slatin, 1901

A series of photographs that capture the disappearing elements of Sudanese development in the 20th Century will be on display at Oriental Museum of the University of Durham, from January 1 - March 1, 2013.

Many culturally important buildings built during the rule of the British are slowly deteriorating due to neglect of maintenance.  They have been reused for other purposes. Some of the railway buildings have been abandoned to the desert. Frederique Cuventas captured many photos during a six year period up to 2010.

The exhibit is called: Disappearing Heritage of Sudan, 1820–1956: Photographic and Filmic Exploration in Sudan. It documents the remnants of the colonial experience in Sudan from the Ottoman, Egyptian and British periods.

This exhibition has previously been shown at the Brunei  Gallery at the University of |London, UK. For a few months, starting in September 2013, it will be shown at the University of Khartoum.

United Nations urged to ban FGM

The United Nations adopted a resolution on Thursday, December 20, urging countries to ban female genital mutilation. The resolution is not legally binding.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 140 million girls and women have received this operation, which removes part or all of the external female genitalia.

At the UN, nations have been asked to approve the resolution: "take all necessary measures ... to prohibit Female genital mutilation and to protect women and girls from this sort of violence.

Egypt has banned clitorectomies, and Eritrea has too.

Tourism Festival opens in Port Sudan

The British Ambassador to Sudan visited Port Sudan a few days ago, for the opening of the Sixth Red Sea Tourism Festival based in east Sudan. Check out his blog entry. The article starts out like this...

I visited Port Sudan for a few days last week.  A 10 hour car journey that began several hours before dawn finally drew to an end as we weaved through the Red Sea hills into a Port Sudan decked out in bunting for the opening of the 6th Red Sea Festival for Tourism and Marketing and caught our first sight of the sea.

The festival was one reason for my visit. We are participating in the exhibition with a display of photos about HM The Queen’s State Visit to Sudan in 1965. It’s part of our celebration of her 60^th jubilee  this year.




It seemed particularly appropriate to bring the display to Port Sudan because there is an even earlier royal connection here: King George V (the Queen’s grandfather) visited near-by Suakin in 1912.

The British Ambassador, Peter Tibber, also shared his visit with some local Beja people.