Under the large thatched roof, a game of dominoes is in full swing at the far end of the bar. Crammed into worn sofas with curvaceous wooden armrests, regulars sip glasses of wine to the sound of a creaking fan and Bob Marley. On this rainy Saturday, night falls on the Baobab House, a unique establishment in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. Fairy lights twinkle in the trees at the four corners of the outdoor space, with paintings by local artists adorning the walls.
There are countless concerts, exhibitions, performances and artistic workshops of all kinds that have been held in this small red brick house-workshop backed by a leafy baobab, the tree that has given its name to the place since its opening in 2019. At the time, its founder, the South Sudanese painter and activist Abul Oyay, anxious to see an end to the conflicts that were tearing her country apart, wanted to welcome “conscious artists”, whether poets, musicians, painters or photographers, South Sudanese or from other countries in the region. A bubbling community gravitates around this cultural place.
The hostess often drinks homemade baobab juice but, tonight, it’s a sweet-tasting hibiscus cocktail that she enjoys. “I have no privacy,” she says. It is my private home that I share with people. The Baobab House, at the entrance cluttered with tools, construction materials and canvases, is first and foremost her home, which she has transformed into a cultural place. Only his bedroom is locked, the rest is accessible to all.
“Until the Morning”
A breath of freedom emanates from this space, a real bubble where one escapes, for the time of a concert or a sleepless night of intoxicating discussions, from the torments and constraints of the outside. “Here, you can be whoever you want, we don’t have the pressure of South Sudanese society, which remains very strict,” says Abul Oyay, who herself is an exception. “It’s quite unacceptable to most South Sudanese that a woman my age is not married,” she said.
“Here, don’t seek anonymity, everyone is connected in one way or another,” describes Ade, the author of two books of poetry including the self-published If Men Cried, where he questions “the way of which we are taught to be men in South Sudan”. It was also at the bar of the Baobab House, perhaps between two shots of tequila, that he debated with a passing client the merits of his reflection on the subject. “He accused me of wanting to emasculate men, of employing a colonial approach aimed at denigrating our culture,” he recalls, amused. “It’s easy to get caught up in discussions here until the wee hours,” he says, as the swirls of shisha wrap around in the warm lights.
There was also that evening at the end of May, when Ade heard oud melodies echoing somewhere in the back of the house. It was that of Abu Obeida Hassan who accompanied the voice of Omar Gaweesh, a duo of Sudanese musicians who fled Khartoum at war. “I approached them, I did not know this instrument, because I have never lived in Khartoum”, recalls the poet, who then improvises lyrics to the rhythm of “Ana Sudani” (“I am Sudanese ), a traditional tune that is familiar to him. The song was on repeat on Sudanese TV, widely watched in Juba, at the time of the 2019 revolution in Khartoum which brought down Omar Al-Bashir, a dictator against whom the South Sudanese had also fought for twenty-one years. of civil war. It was following the 2005 peace agreement that South Sudan became independent in 2011.
A “New Sudan”
This painful history of civil wars and divisions in old Sudan, which continue to ravage on both sides of the border, Abu Obeida Hassan evokes without managing to contain his tears. Between two sets of the “Sudanese Rhythms” concert organized in early June at Baobab House, where he performed with Omar Gaweeshle alongside local artists, he thinks of those wasted decades, those missed opportunities for the people of Sudan.
“John Garang…”, whispers the musician, remembering the South Sudanese leader who had for project a united, secular and democratic “New Sudan”, who died in a helicopter crash in 2005. “Maybe one day the South will reunite with the North,” he confides, his oud neatly laid beside him.
That night, on the dance floor of the Baobab House, in the white light of the electric garlands, her dream came true. Once the concert was over, the crowd went up in flames and the whole bar started singing at the top of their voices when the DJ started playing hits that rocked the youth of many South Sudanese in Khartoum, and whose they never forgot the lyrics.
