“Look, I will stand with Palestine, of course”, says master student Social and Cultural Anthropology Nusiba Abdalla (35) about the protests against the war in Gaza at the VU campus and the rest of the world. “It’s horrible what is done to the Palestinian people. But the whole world seems concentrated just on what’s happening in Gaza. They neglect what is happening in Sudan, where the violence, the mass murders, rape and torture are actually even worse. It feels like a double standard to stand up for Palestine, but at the same time ignore Sudan, and Yemen, and Congo.”
Abdalla found out that many Dutch people, even at VU, even teachers, don’t know what is happening in her motherland, where a civil war has been raging since 2023, only four years after the country’s Islamist military dictator Omar al-Bashir was ousted and replaced by a secular, civilian government. Not only are the Sudanese people plagued by war violence, but also by hunger, diseases and natural disasters.
But Sudan seldom makes the headlines, nor do Congo and Yemen, also torn by violence and disasters. “Why can’t there be protests in solidarity with Gaza and Sudan, Congo and Yemen together?” Abdalla wonders. “If you really care about people being oppressed and victimized by war violence, then why make a difference between those you acknowledge and those you ignore? Why divide people and put them in boxes?”
Most of her family have left Sudan and are living in Egypt, but one brother is still in Sudan. Sometimes, when somehow the internet is working, she succeeds in contacting him and talking to him. Obviously, she is very worried. “The situation in Sudan is only getting worse.”
Married with children
Abdalla left the country long before war broke out. She worked for the Sudanese Ministry of Agriculture, having an academic degree in agriculture, and went to the Netherlands, without permission of her employer, to follow additional studies at the Wageningen Agricultural University. She says she was already in trouble for being a women’s rights activist, even when Bashir was still in power and she was still in college.
She considers herself lucky, because she could study as a woman in Sudan. She comes from an affluent family, her father was a highly educated feminist and after his death her mother continued to fully support her, encouraging her to study and obtain an academic degree. “It’s not normal in Sudan, where a young woman is expected to marry soon, settle down and have kids”, she says. “Most women in Sudan are not as fortunate as I am.”
‘Why divide people and put them in boxes?’
This is not to say that she, as an educated, privileged woman, could do as she liked in Sudan. “Women in Sudan have to fulfill the expectations of society and live very confined lives. Follow the rules or face the consequences. You can’t be yourself, because you represent your family. You must always consider your family. Bringing shame on yourself is bringing shame on your family.”
She escaped that when she left Sudan and arrived in Wageningen – only to realize studying agriculture had never really been her own choice either. “I didn’t really enjoy it; it was something I chose because I didn’t really know what else to study. Agriculture as a discipline is very scientific and fixed and I prefer to study human behavior.”
She realized this at the Foundation Academy of Amsterdam, a private institution founded by Samuel Lee, also a lecturer at VU Amsterdam and the director of the VU-related Center for Theology of Migration.
Misrepresented and overlooked
The Foundation Academy offers education for people who want to develop themselves, even if they don’t have the necessary papers to study at a Dutch university or graduate school, such as migrants and refugees. Abdalla took a course in anthropology there and discovered that this was her passion, the study of human beings, or: “what people do and why they do it”, Abdalla says. She applied both to Leiden University and VU and was accepted by both. “I chose VU because it’s in Amsterdam.”
It was the right choice for her. “The student population is very mixed, with many students from different backgrounds, many international students as well. I feel connected, it’s easy to bond with students here.”
This had been different in Wageningen, she says. At that university, the vast majority of students are white and didn’t seem very interested in her. She had one friend there and mostly felt alone. People were making, or so she felt, all kinds of assumptions about her. “Here at VU, it’s totally different. When you feel connected with others, you can connect with yourself, and then you can get to learn to know yourself and feel confident about yourself and be yourself.”
Her master’s thesis is about asylum seekers in detention centers. The fieldwork she does for her research consists of interviewing such asylum seekers. “It broke my heart to see the conditions they were kept in”, Abdalla says. She was in the detention center in Rotterdam where she saw “inhuman treatment of people who are not criminals.” Some of them, she says, had already been there for eight months. After her graduation, she hopes to get the chance to be a PhD student and continue her research. She feels this group is “misrepresented and overlooked.”
Insistence on independence
Abdalla feels at ease in the Netherlands. “You can be yourself here, be who you want. I feel free now.” She feels happy when she looks at people’s faces in the Amsterdam tram. “They’re faces from all over the world. I love Amsterdam, It’s a home for everyone. I love diversity so much!”
But she doesn’t have a connection with Dutch culture, she says. “I don’t feel connected to any culture.” We come to talk about this a little, and it turns out Abdalla abhors social pressure. “I want to make my own decisions and live my own life, be my own boss. In fact, I want all women to be able to live their own lives, the lives that they themselves choose.” She is very passionate when she speaks about women’s issues.
She says she is fond of the famous (or infamous) Dutch directness. She loves that Dutch people just tell you what they want or don’t want, without all the energy and time-consuming pleasantries of Sudanese society. “In Holland, when people want to come visit you, they don’t mind being told it’s not a good time because you’re tired. In Sudan I have to welcome and entertain visitors even when I’m dying.”
But she does think that the Dutch overdo their individuality and their insistence on independence. “It can make a person feel left alone and it’s in stark contrast with Sudanese collectiveness, which means people are supposed to take care of each other.” A collectivist society, however, can make you lose your identity, she feels. “What I would like is something in the middle of Dutch individuality and Sudanese collectivism.”