Fri 8 Apr

Helen is a 20-year-old student from Cambridge who's visiting Sudan for a month in her Easter holidays. She's staying with a posh family up the road from us in exchange for teaching their children. In Cambridge she's studying Arabic – so she's here to practice her language. She's also deciding if she would like to come back as a volunteer teacher for the next academic year. We've tried to encourage her to move in with us and find out what it's like to eat in the souq and ride on the local buses.

Today, being Friday, I've suggested we go to the wrestling, I've only been once before and it's the sort of thing I expected to do more often while I'm here.

It takes two buses and over an hour to get to Hal Jusif on the other side of Bahri, but we're on schedule and meet Awad as planned. He's one of my students and comes every week. In fact he tells us he used to be a wrestler for a year or so. He's certainly honoured by our visit and finds us VIP seats in the shade.

The wrestling goes quite well. Coincidently the champion from my previous visit is making his first return appearance since then. He does a lap of honour collecting praise and bank notes from the crowd before anyone has even started.

The hype continues through the afternoon with typical taunting and withdrawing. Then with 10 minutes to go a referee's decision is taken badly – the mood turns sour and one camp abandons the tournament – the afternoon's entertainment is over.

Helen seems to have enjoyed the afternoon and sportingly agrees to return to Omdurman with Awad as I have a date elsewhere.