Mohammed Wardi, the legendary Sudanese crooner, has joined the pessimistic chorus predicting a weak and battered Sudan after next month’s southern secession vote.
In a recent interview with the Al Ahdath newspaper in Khartoum, translated by the Sudan Votes website, Wardi says “the current unity [of Sudan] is nothing but a lie and it is not attractive.”
Do you mean that we are living on borrowed time?
We do not even have borrowed time. I am really worried about what will come later. Oil and borders are not the only issues to worry about; there is also the future of Darfur, the East and the North. Eventually, Sudan will turn into dub-districts.
As I recounted in this 2007 article, Wardi is beloved in Sudan and across the Sahel region for incorporating diverse melodies and rhythms into his songs. He’s been imprisoned and exiled for his stands against Sudan’s various dictators, and he was by far the most prominent northern member of Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. (A more evocative account of my meeting with Wardi — complete with a pair of caged fauns and a fast-flowing bottle of Chivas — can be found in Chapter Nine of The Black Nile.)
Travel writer 
In my latest piece on the National Geographic website, members of a tiny Indian hill tribe insist their distinct language is no different from that of their neighbors — and the bigger tribe agrees. In reality, the tongues are as different as English and Hindi.
Travel guide author Steve Waters, writing at the Lonely Planet website, 
The forests of Bangladesh are dwindling by the day, creating a furry refugee crisis among forest-dwelling animals who are forced into towns and villages in search of food.
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