In many ways what you describe is no different from what happens to marginalised, impoverished populations in cities the world over. Where there are gaps they find social and economic niches. The will to continue on despite difficulties and barriers leads people to assess, apply and negotiate various tactics and strategies that make sense for the moment or foreseeable future. I saw similar practices in Cairo.

However, I am inclined to explore and draw upon in thinking, what anthropologist, Sandra Wallman, has often posed as an important question to ask in urban situations: What difference makes the difference? In Cairo, without access to nationality or legality, the Dinka mustered, and even carried over from their displacement in Khartoum, quasi-communities, associations and institutions that were strongly “cultural” and “customary” (e.g. continuing with rigourous bridewealth systems and negotiations within and across urban and transnational space, only partially replacing cattle with cash; celebrating “Abyei” and “being Dinka” as potent meaning and identity, even for those who had never been to Abyei or Dinkaland).

I’m not sure if I agree with the comment that, “…the collective orientation of the poor…[is]…to engage the city as an embodiment of specific long-term aspirations…” as interpreted from the poor simply trying to get by under terrible conditions. You make a good comparison with the consumption behaviour of ruling elite, but it is also possible to observe how people can continue, for long periods, to see their place in an adverse environment as temporary, while doing their best to manage their marginalised existence.

It should also not be forgotten that societies ‘make space’ for the liminal, crises, for being “outside” and “away” from what is acceptable, familiar, valued etc., for events of geographical and social dislocation. This is what the Dinka call - aci roor (’in the forest’) - both a reality and metaphor for places and social spaces where access to common ties, relations and locations are suspended, that although generally seen as threatening ‘the coherence of cultural practices’ - for that very reason insist upon them lest one lose meaning altogether. Again, these hybrid centres can be seen as acceptable while temporary. An example might be the early apartments rented by Dinka students in Cairo to help incoming members of their subgroups (people from their own territorial/ethnic areas), but how kinship took over later with the larger influx of Dinka asylum seekers and availability of these normative ties.

The now fact of violent Sudanese gangs in urban Cairo terrorising even their own people brings us back to Wallman’s good question that is not easy to answer, althought from my own observations I would say that the rise is the “straw that broke the camel’s back” after years of extreme suffering within a world of steel walls.

Alex de Waal’s final question about Khartoum is one that I have consistently pondered. The Sudanese themselves might fathom some guesses that would be interesting to discuss and analyse.

I have two questions. First, is an urban environment that relies on social intersection sustainable? The specific context I have in mind is the imminent decision on whether Sudan is one nation or two. In Southern Sudan and the adjoining areas, secession can in principle be handled through geographical separation. Difficult though that will be, it is surely simpler than the implications of secession for Sudan’s metropolitan population which has such a large population of people who hail from the South.

Second, is there something peculiarly Sudanese about how the extraordinary extent of urbanization has been handled with remarkably low levels of evident friction? Khartoum is an astonishingly safe city, with events such as the riots following the death of Dr John Garang exceptional incidents of large-scale violence. What has made it possible for Sudanese to live together in peace in the city–albeit with glaring inequities and injustices–while war rages in the peripheries?