News of Ben

My wife and I lived in a large village in the Gezeira province of Sudan about 5 hours south of Khartoum. We were teachers in the secondary schools. We rented a house in the centre of the village. Since cooking was done on charcoal we sometimes bought sandwiches from the football club rather than spend an hour lighting the stove. One evening we had visitors and we were eating our sandwiches and chatting away. The topic was nearly always family as this is so important in Sudan. The conversation turned to our nephew, Ben, who was studying at Keele University and volunteered in hospital radio. As we were talking I noticed that, unusually, the newspaper that the sandwich was wrapped in was English. I was amazed to look more closely and see that it was the Staffordshire News. I turned it over and there in the centre of the page was a photo and an article about Ben!