On the busy streets of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, Salma Awad, 28, rides her bike. Working as a messenger, she delivers orders to her clients by means of a social media app. Whereas she loves the liberty her bike offers her, and the actual fact it retains her in form, Salma says coping with all of the negativity is not simple. For girls, using a bicycle goes in opposition to social norms in Sudan.
“I discovered many issues and dangers on the road the place I’m harassed by drivers who typically throw water bottles and stones,” she says. “I normally go away the primary streets and use facet streets however then I am chased by stray canine.”
The variety of ladies on bikes is rising due to teams such because the Sudanese Feminine Cyclists Initiative, primarily based in Khartoum, which holds academic programs and workshops for feminine cyclists.
“That is first time in Sudan’s trendy historical past that we have seen women using a bicycle,” says Enass Mazamel, who based the group in 2016.
“It is a human rights venture to scale back the gender hole in public locations and present ladies’s pursuits in sports activities that had been the solely for males.”
Clerics and hardliners in Sudan say ladies shouldn’t be allowed to do sports activities. Ladies using bicycles on public roads is seen as a violation of Islamic traditions.
Non secular schooling instructor Mohammed Abuelnour says that Allah would curse males imitating ladies and girls imitating males.
As a result of they’ve “difficulties with motion”, ladies ought to experience bicycles “for folks with disabilities”, he says.
“However for the usage of bicycles that showcase ladies’s points of interest within the public, they are going to have to take action in closed areas particularly for ladies not close to males’s eyes.”
No to Ladies’s Oppression (NWO) is a Khartoum-based group calling for the repeal of legal guidelines proscribing ladies, particularly their proper to motion.
“We’re working to boost consciousness amongst women and girls to experience a motorbike within the streets,” says NOW member Hind El Tjani.
“That is their proper, and we inform them they need to be extra brave and ignore harassment, bullying and verbal violence whereas using.”
This text was initially heard on RFI’s Africa Calling podcast.