Monday, January 23, 2012

Hunting for John Kudusay

Aweil has quite a maze of market.  It is a vibrant few square blocks with banks, clothing merchants, food stalls, telephone repair, tailors, bike parts and repair, CDs and tapes, batteries, shoes,  restaurants and one (almost two) hotels.  For a price, you can find a lot in Aweil.  We were told that an ordinary fleece/synthetic blanket would cost 120 Sudanese pounds (we got about 3.4 pounds to the $).  Most of the store keepers were Arabs.  When I thought about it, most of the traders in Juba had been Arabs too.




William had his shopping list, and we needed to exchange some money, so we had plenty of time to look at the goods for sale.  A showcase of perfumes caught my attention. "Immensity pour femme," "First Touch pour homme," "Star People by Carlton Anthony, Paris," "Ambiguous," "Adorable pour femme," and "Attitude" no longer seem quite so funny after spending a few minutes walking through Heathrow's duty free last week.  Fragrance makers need something more memorable than Channel No. 5, or O de Lancome, to hook us these days, apparently.

We asked at the music selling spots if they had any John Kudusay.  One chap had a tape recording.  Not the best option, so the salesman kindly pointed Bert to another place that had some music and was the Aweil internet cafe.  Bert went over to the cafe and asked the fellow on duty if they had any John Kudusay.  Communication wasn't great, so he repeated the name.  The man nodded vigorously and pointed behind Bert.  John Kudusay, himself, was seated at the only computer checking his emails.  So Bert laughingly was able to ask the artist directly where we might find his music.  I think we actually had a better chance of finding his music in the expatriate South Sudanese communities than in Aweil.  We ended up buying that one cassette, and since getting home have found far more available on line.

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