Beja

 

There are between two and two and a half million Beja living primarily in the north-east of Sudan but also spilling over into Eritrea and Egypt. Port Sudan on the Red Sea is their main city.

 

For more than four thousand years the Beja have roamed this hot, dry desert land and the bleak Red Sea Hills in their search for pasture for their herds of camels, cattle, sheep and goats. It is a harsh place in which to live.

 

The Beja people keep to themselves and don't make friends easily with strangers.

They are not Arabs and their origin is uncertain. Some assert that the tribe is descended from Kush, the son of Ham, and migrated to the Sudan after the flood.

 

Many Beja are still nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists. If it rains they cultivate crops. Some are dock workers in Port Sudan.

 

To-Bedawie, spoken by the Beja, is the largest unwritten language in Africa. Its structure is still only partly analysed, but a group of linguists are now working on how to write it down. There are five divisions of the Beja people; the three Sudanese divisions largely speak only To-Bedawie. It is estimated that approximately 20% of these Beja speak any Arabic.

 

All Beja are Muslims and have been since the thirteenth century. Very few of them understand the Muslim faith or pray and fast as Muslim law demands. They do, however, practice 'folk Islam', blending what suits them from Islam with their traditional beliefs, which include magic and witchcraft.

 

Beja life is centred around social gatherings at which they celebrate their loves, ideals and battles in songs and poetry. Coffee drinking has become an obligatory ritual at all these gatherings. This coffee is sometimes spiced with pepper!

 

Only a few Beja have ever become Christians.