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UNESCO Selects 34 Elements Marking Sudan's Intangible Cultural Heritage

The UNESCO headquarters building, seen here, is located in Paris. (© Charles Platiau/Reuters)
The UNESCO headquarters building, seen here, is located in Paris. (© Charles Platiau/Reuters)
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UNESCO Selects 34 Elements Marking Sudan's Intangible Cultural Heritage

The UNESCO headquarters building, seen here, is located in Paris. (© Charles Platiau/Reuters)
The UNESCO headquarters building, seen here, is located in Paris. (© Charles Platiau/Reuters)

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced the selection of 34 elements of the Sudanese intangible cultural heritage to make part the human cultural heritage, including "the cheese ritual, coffee, the Sudanese dress, and the Sudanese henna."

The selection came during a workshop in Khartoum aimed at developing strategies for safeguarding and developing intangible Sudanese cultural heritage and strengthening national capacities to carry out this mission in partnership with the UN and other global institutions.

In a keynote delivered during the opening of the workshop on Tuesday, Faisal Mohamed Saleh, minister of Culture and Information, said the partnership with the international community represented by the UNESCO, with the participation of the UAE, and the National Council for Cultural Heritage and Promotion Of National Languages, as well as the civil society organizations, is a good start for the development of strategies and indicators to safeguard the intangible cultural heritage of Sudan.

"The official institutions have been suffering from failure in managing cultural diversity, due to a lack of care and financial support," Saleh added.

For her part, Minister of Education and Scientific Research Intisar Saghiroun emphasized the important role of the heritage and unity centers in El Fashir and Blue Nile Universities and the Sinnar Regional Center for Dialogue and Cultural Diversity in this mission.

She also said her ministry's institutions are ready to assist and encourage studies in the field of "intangible heritage." The strategy for safeguarding intangible heritage is the first step in a project supported by the Heritage Fund and funded by the UNESCO and the UAE's Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority.

The project debuted in 2013 with the training and qualification of 164 administrators and researchers in heritage and culture. "There is little national capacity for heritage, so we signed the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage with the UNESCO in 2003, and 30 experts were invited to urge the safeguarding of heritage. We aim to highlight and preserve the rich Sudanese heritage, which gathers the African and Arabic cultures, as a symbol of national identity," Hassan said.

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$344 for a Coffee? Scottish Farm is Selling UK's Most Expensive Cup

This undated handout photo shows farmer and owner of Mossgiel Organic Farm Bryce Cunningham, right, giving a bottle of milk to barista Jacob Smith, as they pose outside The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow, Scotland. (Mossgiel Organic Dairy via AP)
This undated handout photo shows farmer and owner of Mossgiel Organic Farm Bryce Cunningham, right, giving a bottle of milk to barista Jacob Smith, as they pose outside The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow, Scotland. (Mossgiel Organic Dairy via AP)
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$344 for a Coffee? Scottish Farm is Selling UK's Most Expensive Cup

This undated handout photo shows farmer and owner of Mossgiel Organic Farm Bryce Cunningham, right, giving a bottle of milk to barista Jacob Smith, as they pose outside The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow, Scotland. (Mossgiel Organic Dairy via AP)
This undated handout photo shows farmer and owner of Mossgiel Organic Farm Bryce Cunningham, right, giving a bottle of milk to barista Jacob Smith, as they pose outside The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow, Scotland. (Mossgiel Organic Dairy via AP)

It's an enormous price to pay for a little cup of coffee, but the man behind the pitch promises it won't leave a bitter taste behind as it comes with the sweetner of a share of a dairy farm.
A Scottish dairy is offering what it bills as the UK's most expensive cup o' joe: 272 British pounds ($344) for a flat white — a double shot of espresso topped with a layer of steamed milk and a fleeting work of foam art, The Associated Press reported.
The costly cup is actually a perk for purchasing shares in Mossgiel Organic Dairy's crowdfunding campaign to enlarge its sustainable operation and produce more milk. Investors who buy 34 shares in the farm get a certificate for a flat white that can be redeemed starting this weekend at one of 13 coffee shops in Scotland that use the dairy's milk.
“This coffee costs nearly 80 times the price of an average flat white in the UK — but it’s much more than just a lovely drink,” said owner Bryce Cunningham. "We know it sounds crazy, but when you break it down, it’s a pretty good deal. How much is the future of farming worth?”
The price tops the eye-watering 265 pounds that Shot London, a coffee bar in the posh Mayfair and Marylebone neighborhoods, charged for a flat white made with rare beans from Okinawa, Japan. The Telegraph reported in April that it was the most expensive coffee in Britain.
Before launching the coffee promotion, Cunningham had already raised more than a third of the 300,000 pounds he is seeking from small investors as he tries to get a 900,000 pound loan that will help him double operations and expand out of Scotland and as far as coffee shops in London.
Shareholders receive other rewards, too, such farm tours, milk delivery discounts and invites to special events. But investors are also given a standard warning that they could lose some or all of the money they invest — except for the coffee.
The tenant farm in Mauchline, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Glasgow, was worked in the 18th century by poet Robert Burns, who penned “Auld Lang Syne" and many other well-known works. Burns, who is considered the national poet of Scotland, wrote while working in the fields there for two years and his face graces each glass bottle of Mossgiel milk.
Cunningham, a former service manager for Mercedes-Benz, took over the operation in 2014 after his father and grandfather died in 2014 from terminal illnesses.
The collapse of milk prices that year and other problems forced him to sell off most of the herd and reinvent the business as an organic farm. He uses a process to “brew” the milk, instead of pasteurize it, that he said gives it the creamer taste and texture of raw milk without the health risks.
Todd Whiteford, one of the owners of The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow that is serving the costly cups, said they’ve been using Mossgiel's milk for several years. Despite “outrageous offers" from competitors to switch, he said other milk producers can't match the quality and consistency that makes for “rounder, smoother and sweeter” cappuccinos, lattes and flat whites — and better coffee art.
“Theirs is the best. I’ll argue with anyone about that,” Whiteford said.
Anyone who splashes out to buy a Mossgiel coffee, though, will be getting the same cup other Coffee Cartel customers can purchase for 3.10 pounds. But Cunningham says there will be a taste of virtue with every posh cup.