Swedish tourists in Port Sudan

The last week has passed extremely fast - probably because I have had friends from Sweden visiting me. After showing Nadine, Anna and Per around Port Sudan, I realized how little I have actually written about the town on my blog and how few pictures there are of the town itself. This will now change!


A typical street picture in the centre of Port Sudan (picture: Per Björklund)

Port Sudan is the main port of Sudan, and was founded by the British about 100 years ago. According to the last official census (2008), the population of Port Sudan had then reached a number of 283 953 inhabitants (1 396 110 in the whole of Red Sea State). There is a large number of IDPs (Internally Displaced People) as well as Eritrean refugees in the city, most of them living in the southern suburbs.

There aren't too many tourist attractions in Port Sudan, except the Red Sea with its famous reefs and sharks, so we have shown our Swedish friends our daily life here; the Red Crescent, movie nights at the French Centre, tea and ice cream on the corniche and the Salabona fishmarket.


Anna at the women centre in al-Qadisiyya


Near the fishmarket in Salabona (pictures: Per Björklund)

Preparing a General Assembly

For the past few weeks, the volunteers and volunteer coordinators have been preparing the branch's General Assembly, which is scheduled to be held before the end of March.

The newly introduced database needs to be filled with information, and volunteer registration forms have been handed out all throughout Port Sudan. During the day, the office is filled with leaders handing in their unit's forms; they then need to be organised and registrered. By the end of this week, volunteers and staff will start putting the information into the actual database and in some weeks all the volunteers in the Red Sea State will have Red Crescent identity cards. Insha'allah.


Abeer from the center sector


Volunteers from the southern sector of Port Sudan registrating the forms