Take a pew
Many Sudanese Christians celebrated Easter with their Coptic co-religionists on 27 April but with a difference, as Gamal Nkrumah finds out
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Southern Sudanese Christians celebrate Easter in the grounds of St Andrews Church, Cairo
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All are welcome at St Andrew's Church in Cairo. It is an oasis of peace and quiet in one of the most polluted, crowded and traffic- clogged parts of the city. The walled grounds of St Andrew's are a world apart from the maddening din of traffic outside. The tranquil sanctuary is ordinarily a hideaway for Sudanese refugees in Cairo. On Easter Sunday, however, it was transformed into a beehive of activity.
Easter is without rival the most important religious event in the Coptic Christian calendar. Christmas is referred to as the Eid Al- Soughayar (Little Feast), and Easter is the Eid Al-Kebir (Big Feast).
I popped into St Andrew's shortly before the Sudanese Easter Sunday morning service commenced. With dwindling European churchgoers, St Andrew's Church, originally Scottish Presbyterian, now primarily serves the southern Sudanese.
For the hundreds of thousands of southern Sudanese asylum seekers, economic migrants and refugees in Cairo, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a hallowed event. Some Sudanese even celebrate two Easters: the Western Christian Easter which this year fell on 20 April, a week before the Coptic Christian Easter of pomp, ceremony and pious candle-lit processions. Instead of the Coptic doff (cymbal) and trianto (triangle), the Sudanese have drums, tom-toms and tambourines.
The service at St Andrew's, typically Sudanese, was unconventional to say the very least. Inter-denominational, the readings were in different languages -- English, Arabic, and the languages of the Dinka and Nuer people of southern Sudan.
Drumming, clapping and singing are the tangible expressions of faith and worship among the Sudanese, but dancing is frowned upon in church even though it is permitted outside the church itself. The Sudanese mass has none of the stuffy formality and meticulous, scrupulous adherence typical of a Coptic Easter service.
Elderly churchgoers wallow in blissful nostalgia for the dear old days when peace and contentment reigned supreme in an idyllic southern Sudan. Nobody, except perhaps for the crone seated in the corner, can remember those days. Southern Sudan has been riveted by war, Africa's longest running, since 1983 when fighting erupted between the Sudan People's Liberation Army and Sudanese government forces. Before that, the war-torn region enjoyed a brief spell of uneasy peace in the aftermath of the first civil war, which broke out soon after the country gained its independence from the UK in 1956.
The women came to the Easter service dressed in their Sunday best. While some donned beautiful, billowing African robes, others were obviously on their beam-ends. At St Andrew's, like most other Sudanese churches, women sit on the pews to the left, the men on the right. But this rule is not strictly adhered to as it is in Coptic churches. A few men were seated on the pews to the left and a woman or two sat on the right.
The music, too, was unusual for Cairo. Out of the blue the church resonated with the steady beat of tom-toms. Ten minutes later the drumming climaxed into a deafening crescendo. The Dinka beat is sonorous, dignified -- even regal. The Nuer's is faster paced and rhythmically varied.
The hymns, sung in the local southern Sudanese languages, are a heartfelt reminder of the homes, family and friends left behind in Sudan. The lyrics revolved around the Easter theme.
Children ran up and down the aisle. Crying babies were taken out of the church by their distraught mothers. A Dinka woman stood and delivered an eloquent prayer for peace in colloquial Sudanese Arabic. The sermon and other prayers for peace in Darfur and southern Sudan were also given in Sudanese Arabic.
A nostalgic longing for peace and home permeates the air even though the service pulsates with raw energy. Women draped in turquoise sashes and wearing matching white dresses and head-dresses sat on the third and fourth pews to the left. Occasionally one would raise an arm to punch the air and ululate in almost total abandon. The women belong to a Nuer women's group.
Although Egypt's Coptic Christians attend church on Saturday evening for a special Easter service, the celebrated midnight mass, there is no midnight service for the vast majority of Sudanese Christian residents in Cairo. Although some Sudanese attend the traditional Coptic midnight mass, most prefer to celebrate on the morning of Easter Sunday as in the Western fashion.
The Sudanese Catholic Church on Ahmed Said Street, also called Al-Sakakini, in the Deir Al-Malak area of the Abbassiya district of Cairo is one of the main meeting points for southern Sudanese in Cairo. It is an exception to the Sudanese rule. A midnight mass conducted in Arabic and local southern Sudanese languages is traditionally celebrated. The service, uniquely Sudanese, tends to be presided over not by southern Sudanese priests but rather by Father Claudio, an Italian national. Father Claudio is often helped by a priest from Uganda, Father Peter, and another from Kenya, Father Simon. The congregation, however, is predominantly Sudanese. A sprinkling of other nationalities, mostly other Africans, are invariably present. In the evening, the services are usually conducted in Arabic, while in the morning they are in English and French.
Across the city, there is another popular Sudanese church in the sprawling Cairene suburb of Shubra. Other churches frequented by southern Sudanese are scattered throughout the city and outlying shanty towns where Sudanese are concentrated, from Arbaa Wi- Noss (the notorious Four-and-a-half) to the poorer areas surrounding the upscale suburb of Maadi.
Anna Angelou, an ethnic Dinka from Aweil, in southern Sudan, has been living in Cairo since 1998 and misses celebrating Easter in her native country. "In Sudan, we celebrate Easter in public gardens and outdoors. We dance and play our traditional music. We picnic and eat fisikh (salted, raw fish) like Egyptians," Angelou mused. "Here, we don't picnic. We stay at home."
Many Sudanese fast during the 40 days of Lent preceding Easter. Ironically, the Sudanese fast tends to be more akin to the Muslim fast than to the Coptic Christian tradition: the Sudanese abstain from food and drink from dawn to dusk and eat whatever is available when breaking the fast. Copts, in sharp contrast, do not touch animal products, including fish, eggs and diary products, throughout Lent. Most Copts also do not fast from dawn to dusk but eat and drink in moderation throughout the day.
Consuming flesh, therefore, is an important component of the traditional Coptic Easter celebrations. Among the Sudanese, the festivities are marked by feasting, music and dancing in parks and gardens. "Conditions do not permit us to celebrate in public places here in Cairo. There are few places we can go to celebrate. But we do go to church," Angelou stressed. Indeed, churches have become the main focus of southern Sudanese social life in Cairo.
However, among the exiled community of southern Sudanese in Cairo, new and unconventional notions that break with tradition emerge. "In those days [back in Sudan] women tended to do what men told them to do. Today women are more independent and are encouraged to voice their own opinions," Angelou, who is also a community leader, told Al-Ahram Weekly.
"Most of the southern Sudanese who attend church yearn for a better education and better job opportunities. Many have had poor schooling and have suffered from the war back in Sudan," said Deng Agoth, an ethnic Dinka who was born in Omdurman, Sudan.
Like many of his southern Sudanese peers in Cairo, Deng is restless and is hankering after something more than a life of dull drudgery.
A young man of boundless energy and enthusiasm, Deng hopes to move on to greener pastures in Australia, Canada or the United States. He wants to leave because he sees no future for himself in Egypt. He dares not look back because he cannot return to Sudan either. He must move on.
"One of our ministries is to help refugees. We focus on educational programmes, teaching English, teaching computer and other technical skills," St Andrew's Pastor David Grafton, an American Lutheran, told the Weekly. "We offer an English language course for children in which we focus on mathematics, reading, physical education and English," said Grafton, who peppers his conversation with references to members of his congregation to whom he often turns for queries and advice.
Many Sudanese refugees are in the process of applying for resettlement in countries such as Australia, Canada and the US. Exile and the host community's scrutiny have become constant themes in their lives.
Primarily because of the war raging in their native Sudan, the southern Sudanese in Cairo tend to be an insular and inward- looking community. Church helps them sample the different cultures. "People relish experiencing something new and doing things in a different way," Grafton explained.
