On patience: perseverance and imposed waiting during dam-induced displacement in Northern Sudan

Abstract

In this paper, I explore patience as an attitude towards imposed waiting in uncertainty among peasants in rural Northern Sudan who were flooded out of their homes along the Nile during the 2003–2009 Merowe dam construction project. My aim is to examine the complex temporalities that appear in the politics of displacement. I show how such temporal alterations were related to the implementation of a large infrastructural project and to the shaping of the Manasir people’s perception of time as they attempted to stay and revive life in their homeland on the shores of the emerging reservoir. Corresponding to the gendered experience of imposed inactivity and the resultant dissolution of time, patience is practised to varying degrees. Amongst the displaced communities, patience, as a temporal practice, represents a commitment both to future divine rewards and to living within the present situation. This commitment, in turn, offers hope and enables people to persevere. I argue that patience is not, as is often assumed, a quietist attitude, but a political practice directed against attacks by the state.

Dans cet article, j’explore la patience en tant qu’attitude envers l’attente imposée dans l’incertitude parmi les paysans dans le Nord-Soudan rural qui ont été chassés par les inondation de leur domicile au bord du Nil pendant le projet de construction du barrage de Merowe en 2003–2009. Mon objectif est d’examiner les temporalités complexes qui apparaissent dans la politique de déplacement. Je montre que de telles altérations temporelles étaient liées à la mise en œuvre d’un grand projet infrastructurel et à la formation de la perception du temps de la population Manasir alors qu’ils cherchaient à rester et vivre à nouveau sur leurs terres sur les rives du réservoir émergent. Correspondant à l’expérience sexuée de l’inactivité imposée et la dissolution du temps en découlant, la patience est pratiquée à différents degrés. Au sein des communautés déplacées, la patience, en tant que pratique temporelle, représente un engagement aussi bien envers des récompenses divines à venir qu’envers la vie dans la situation actuelle. Cet engagement, à son tour, apporte de l’espoir et permet à la population de persévérer. Je défends que la patience n’est pas, contrairement à ce que l’on croit souvent, une attitude quiétiste, mais une pratique politique dirigée contre des attaques par l’Etat.

Keywords:

• patience
• temporality
• waiting
• Islam
• infrastructures
• Sudan

Mots clés:

• patience
• temporalité
• attente
• Islam
• infrastructures
• Soudan

Acknowledgements

I thank the men and women I here called by various pseudonyms for their willingness to share their experiences with me. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the workshop on ‘Krisen/Zeit. Krisenhaftigkeit und Temporalität im Nahen und Mittleren Osten und Nordafrika’ at the Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA) and at the workshop on ‘Waiting in Africa’ at the University of Bayreuth. I thank all participants for their comments and the lively discussion. I also thank the reviewers of the article for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For more details on the dam project see Hänsch (2012, 2019). I conducted ethnographic fieldwork among Manasir families at the Fourth Nile Cataract and in the governmental resettlement areas of al-Mukabrab and al-Fidda during 2008–2009. The paper also draws on follow-up research conducted in 2010, 2015 and 2018. Apart from widely known politicians, all the names of the persons mentioned have been changed to ensure privacy.

2 More than two-thirds of Manasir families (about 10,000 families) attempted to stay in their homeland along the Fourth Nile Cataract, whereas only one-third (about 2500 families) resettled both before and during the drowning in 2007–2010 to the governmental sites al-Mukabrab and al-Fidda (Hänsch 2012, 2019).

3 I am aware of the problems and effects of the term ‘crisis’ which appears as an omnipresent term in today’s discussions of the world and which has been critically engaged by several scholars (Goldstone and Obarrio 2016; Roitman 2014). I do not take ‘crisis’ as an a priori but refer to a phenomenological notion of ‘crisis’ (cf. Schütz 2004) as a crisis of the life-world, which I have outlined above to describe the experience of my research partners.

4 There is a strong parallel to the concept of sumud in the Palestinian context. I thank the reviewer for drawing my attention to this concept. According to Schiocchet (2012, 69), sumud means steadfastness in the process of resistance against the occupation; sumud is essential for social practices of ‘hyper-expression of identity’, which represent ‘Palestinianness’. In contrast to the Manasirs’ practice of patience, sumud is much more elaborated in popular culture.

Additional information

Funding

The Open Access publication of this article was funded by the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, University of Bayreuth.