Tag: Sudan stamp

Malaria is a quite deadly disease in the Sudan. One can see then why this stamp expresses the hope that the World Health Organization’s new effort to eradicate the disease will be a great benefit. Now it is my job to figure out how that worked out. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Has we moved into the 1960s, this stamp shows how much hope there was among the newly independent countries. The international bodies were untarnished by colonial grievances but able to direct expertise and resources of the advanced countries into the poor ones in a non threatening way. Unfortunately this period is over with stamps. Now the UN features an individual from the poor land as a symbol of equality and coping with challenges and forgets to even pretend to fix the problems of a place like Sudan.

Todays stamp is issue A23, a 15 millimes stamp issued by independent Sudan on April 7th, 1962. It was a two stamp issue in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

90 percent of malaria cases in the Sudan begin with nighttime bites from the female Anopheles mosquito. From the bite, a single celled parasite named plasmodium falciparum is implanted that leads to malaria. Over 40,000 malaria deaths a year plague Sudan, with children and pregnant women hardest hit. This is actually worse that the situation in 1962.

This is a strange thing because the WHO efforts to eradicate malaria in the Sudan were largely successful in period. The USA and Japan funded the program that aggressively sprayed insecticides especially along the Nile River so there would be less transmission of the parasite.

Around 1990 there was reorganization that ended the spraying in exchange for a different program that sought to strengthen Sudan’s health infrastructure to lower the death rate among those bitten by the bug. Sudan itself pleaded for the spraying to continue pointing to provinces where spraying had virtually eradicated malaria transmission. The malaria death rate in the Sudan shot to new highs never seen before though Sudan by then was a much more populous country.

In 1998, Sudan itself started a new roll back malaria program hoping to eradicate malaria by 2010. By then the Sudanese health infrastructure tried to use the deaths to justify more health spending from the government. The program had 60% goals on a veriety of fronts. That 60 percent of new transmissions would be in treatment within 8 hours of symptoms. That 60 percent of pregnant women and children under 5 would receive intermittent preventive treatment and be under insecticide spayed bug nets. There would also be a surveillance system nationally to spot severe local outbreaks that would trigger spraying. One can see how this was a formula to spend a large amount of money. It is not so clear how this was an eradication rather than dealing with it strategy. Naturally it failed. Those that promoted the program blame inconsistent government funding and malaria drug treatment switching to more expensive drugs. Meanwhile 40,000 a year continue to die.

Well my drink is empty. It is hard to blame Sudan for their malaria situation. Somewhere along the line, our experts lost there expertise and were only comfortable doing certain things. If Sudan pays the price, so be it. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The Egyptian Kingdom replaced the Ottomans in northern Sudan. Of course the British were also there but in the background. After the war, where Sudanese including the Hadendoa fuzzy wuzzies had helped fight off the Italians and Egypt was especially weak, it was a good time for the native Sudanese to make their case for a nation. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Naturally during the co dominion period, the postal service was left to the British. A dominion on the way to independence will show more of the local flavor of the place but still with a colonial perspective. So here we have a member of the Hadendoa tribe appearing on a stamp. The Hadendoa tribe is a mixed group with black African and Arab heritage. The wild hair that they process was what stood out about them to the British and what appears on this later stamp. The Hadendoa were the subject of the term Fuzzy-Wuzzies that Rudyard Kipling made famous. The Hadendoa do not feature on more modern Sudanese stamps. They did not win the power struggle post independence.

Todays stamp is issue A11, a 10 Milliemes/1 Piaster stamp issued by Sudan in 1951. This was while it was still under the co dominion of Egypt and Britain. It was a 17 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

The Hadendoa (lion clan) was a nomadic tribe that were part of the old Christian Kingdom of Axum in eastern Sudan and Ethiopia. The tribe was gradually  converted to Muslim mainly by intermarriage. The Muslims of Sudan thought that the Ottomans to the north were too lax in upholding Islam while the British to the south were preventing the conversion of Africans in southern Sudan. The Sudanese united under a Muslim cleric named Mohamad Ahmad who had proclaimed himself Mahdi. A Mahdi is a redeemer of the Islamic world. The uprising lasted 18 years before the British finally won. That is of course if you accept that winning in Sudan is being allowed to stay there.

After World War II, the group put down in the Mahdi uprising were elevated briefly by the British. The British were looking to leave Sudan while the Egyptians desired to stay and formally annex it. British efforts toward nation building included a plebiscite on the future of Sudan that supporters of Egypt boycotted. Thus the late days colonial government perhaps over represented the Hadendoa. The British had built a dam on the Nile river that had greatly increased the area of cultivated land and this was used to raise cotton for use in the then British textile industry. During this period the Monarchy in Egypt fell and the new government renewed efforts to influence Sudan with an eye toward merging the countries. When there was a second election to chose the post independence government, the pro Egyptian party won and became the dominant force in early post independence Sudan.

Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait till tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Another story of the breakup of the Ottoman empire and another British mandate to try to stand between different races. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The design of this stamp is one of the longest lived I have come across. As it states on this jubilee edition  the design dates from 1898. What the stamp doesn’t make clear is the design with very few modifications was in use until independence in 1956. There was no 1998 100th  anniversary version but the stamp was not done. It came back virtually unchanged in a 2003 issue, except reflecting the current debased currency. The camel rider is actually a postman.

Todays stamp is issue A9 a two Piaster stamp issued by the Sudan on October 1st 1948. It was a single stamp issue that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Sudanese stamp issue in 1898. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents.

Sudan in theory was to be jointly administered by Egypt and Great Britain as the Ottoman Empire was fading. The Egyptian royal family was still tied to the Ottomans but the reality was that the British in Sudan were running the show. There is a divide in the country as the north is Arabic and Muslim with traditional ties to Egypt. The south is black and not Muslim. The British addressed this by having a closed door policy to the south, with no outsiders allowed in. This did not sit well with the Arabs to the north. Britain pretty much left the south alone except  for tamping down on tribal warfare and fighting the banned slave trade.

The north saw much more development. The Nile was damned and the increase in arable land was taken by cotton plantations. Railroads and new Port Sudan allowed for exports. Khartoum also grew with more Sudanese taking their place in the administration. Into this Egypt declared it’s independence but left vague its claim on Sudan. The British Governor General of Sudan was then assassinated in Cairo and the British then removed all Egyptians from the Sudanese administration and armed forces. The northern Sudanese were divided as to whether they wanted a union with Egypt and the south was divided as to whether they wanted to stay with Sudan or go with the then British colony of  Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. At this point the British were getting ready to leave and so the question was who to turn it over to.

The independence movement was overwhelmingly Northern and Arab but strangely its leader was a southern black named Ali Abd al Latif. He was part of an educated group of blacks that became left wing politicized and agitated for insurrection. This landed Ali in jail and later exiled to Egypt and put in an insane asylum where he died in 1948. His fame grew though and his white flag movement provided a good cover for the Northern Arab minority who wanted independence from both Britain and Egypt to succeed taking over the whole country.

The south of Sudan was hardly at all consulted and the division left Sudan divided with a hot and cold civil war that still did not end when South Sudan became independent in 2005. The British did manage to get out of the Sudan in the mid 1950s so probably are the real winners of the story.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the camel riding postman on todays stamp. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.