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Al Rashida tribe (SUDAN)
Normally we are used to travelling miles and miles, a hard and exhausting struggle to reach tribes in the many other regions of the world. We would fly to the region with charters, board on primitive canoos and pass through swamps, trek through virgin jungles with who knows what species of animal and insects to reach certain tribes. But for the first time in our lives to reach the location where the Al-Rashida tribe resided in, we passed through the main coastal road to Port Sudan some 5-10 kms and there they were the descendants of the Rashida tribe.
The Rashidas are a nomadic tribe immigrants from Yemen and compared to other tribes they have their particular rules when dealing with foreigners and expecially when dealing with photo-shots. You need to be careful and scrupulous not to anger a Rashida man when taking a photo of the women in the location, for they are not open to such kind of acts expecially towards their women.
What was very particular of this tribe, was their attire, contrary to other tribes we had seen in Africa or the Amazon, their garments covered them fully, especially the women were covered up to their eyes. Even though they were covered, the beautiful colors of their clothes was a sight to see. Especially almost all the men wore the colour “lila” a purplish pink color. The women had the most beautiful adornments on top of their garments.
The Rashida tribe was very hospitable towards us, we were offered continous cups of tea, and a warm conversation. And….. while the men were not around, we did convince the women to take some pictures of them, in return of giving them the polaroid versions of their photos.
The Rashida tribe welcomed us and to showed their hospitality they performed for us their traditional “Sword dance”. When we first saw the young man with the sword we thought we were busted for having taken photos, however, later on we were relieved to hear that the sword dancing was performed to very special guests they liked as a sign of hospitality.
On our way back to Port Sudan, about 200 km North east of Khartoum, we encountered ancient Meroe, the region of dozens of pyramids from the kingdom of ancient Nubia, spread over the hill. These pyramids were much smaller than the Egyptian ones. We were informed that the underground graves of these Nubian pyramids were richly decorated and that not all of them belonged to kings, some belonged to high ranking priests or persons that had obtained sacerdotal dignity.
We realized that some pyramids had smashed tops and found out that this was due to the fact that all the pyramids in Mero had been pludered by the Italian Explorer Giuseppe Ferlini in the 19 th century in hope of finding treasure. To his disappointment, all 40 of the pyramid’s tops were smashed for only one cache of gold…..