Sit alshai - tea lady; events taking place in el meshtal street

Abstract

Sit Alshai is a Sudanese local term that means the lady who sells tea, coffee and other drinks to passersby. There are many issues related to the Tea Lady, as she represents the socio-economic changes in the Sudanese community. These ladies get an income by appropriating parts of the streets of the city and transforming them to temporary cafes where people drink tea and socialize for a while. The authorities however do not approve their business and many times both the government and opposition parties use them as political leverage. The paper will investigate this phenomenon and the effects of it on the urban society. The Tea Ladies can be found in many places in Khartoum where this happens, mostly concentrated in the centre. However this paper will focus on documenting Tea Ladies located on one street in Khartoum, El Meshtal Street. The road has been chosen specifically because of it’s rising importance in the past years and because it is located in an upper-class neighbourhood. The existence of the Tea Ladies on that street symbolizes juxtaposition on that street that is worth being studied and documented.