Lately, my blog has been getting hits from Drima’s Blog since he included me in his latest post about Sudan. Therefore, I decided to take advantage of this free publicity and update my blog. Yeah, that’s right, how Lubna of me. I noticed that some of you commented on the fact that Lubna is an opportunistic gold-digging whore (not exact verbatim but you get the point.) I find this fascinating because I don’t personally see how her being married to Jiddo Ghani is in anyway linked to her being screwed over by her government and other journalists while she’s actually putting her reputation/future on the line to defend their very freedom to write crap about anyone else they wish to? I would call Lubna another O word other than Opportunist: Oprah. No, just kidding. I think she’s an Optimist. Lubna simply turned a very unfortunate situation to…a fortune. The woman had to leave her position with the UN, her family in Sudan, and move all because she wore pants. If she doesn’t deserve to write a book, I don’t know who does?
The disappointing stereotype about Sudanese people around the Arab world is that we are lazy. For a long time I suspected that this was because an Arab person stumbled into the house of a Sudanese person and saw that they have beds in their living room. Or a checkout lady in a store who was wondering why the Sudanese Lady at her counter was buying so many melayat (bed sheets) and concluded that Sudanese life must be one big slumber party (which isn’t so far off from the truth.) While my hypothesis might hold some truth to it, I think I might have a better understanding of where that stereotype came to be by simply observing the Sudanese psyche.
The opposite of Opportunist is: Sudanese. Folks, I wouldn’t critisize my people unnecessarily but for God’s sake have you seen the country recently? Have you seen how nonchalant people are about the state of their country? A lot of people seem to think that Omar Al Bashir will inevitably win the elections because he will manipulate the results. I personally think he won’t even have to because he’s luckily operating in an environment where no one is working hard enough to rise as a strong and decent contender. No one, as far as I’m concerned, is ceasing the opportunity of this upcoming election and it’s rather alarming. I only hope that more Sudanese people are going to become opportunists and take advantage of our country, because after all, successful capitalist countries were only built by opportunists.
I, the Sudanese Opportunist, approve this message (but disapprove of the laziness stereotype. It’s not funny)
The Sudanese Optimist 