A Working Guide to Graves in Lakes State.

This is a bit out there.  I am have a blossoming interesting in graves in and around Rumbek and I want to indulge it. This could just be morbid curiosity but think this came from a wider interest in the architecture and built environment of Rumbek. Grave stones, being solid stone, survive better than a lot of other things.

The graves of big men come in all shapes and sizes. Go to Maper in Rumbek North County and you can see the grave of Wol Athiang, a famous chief of the Pakkam subsection of Agar Dinka. There is no grave stone, it is a tree with posts where cattle had been tethered before being sacrificed. (See a photo). For something more flash, on Freedom Square in Rumbek, there is the grave of Gordon Muortat a prominent southern politician. This is a modern construction, large, painted white and with no cattle posts. Really impressive is the grave of Arol Kucuol in Cueibet, a Gok Dinka town in the west of Lakes State. He was an important chief from the time of the British up to his death in the 1980s. His enormous stone grave is literally surrounded by sacrificial posts and is still an important focal point for public and political events in Cuiebet.

The Grave of Arol Kucuol, Cueibet

But walking round Rumbek (and other smaller towns, like Pacong in Rumbek East County) you will find other graves. Some of them are for important local people, not paramount chiefs, but important enough to have a big grave stone. These are within family compounds, but since most compound are open (do not have walls) its easy enough to see them.

There are other graves, which seem almost entirely forgotten about. In Rumbek, for example, there are two on the road from the main market to the cattle auction, half sunk into the ground, they are walked over daily by thousands of uninterested feet. another I have seen one partially incorporated into the wall of a house, or on a small path through the old centre of town. For the large past the graves seem to be unmarked, or the marks have been eroded. Who is buried under them?

Actual ‘graveyards’ are not common in Rumbek. I don’t know if there is one that is currently functioning. I don’t know where people are usually buried. A few weeks ago, I discovered an old, overgrown graveyard on the road to Wau, a little bit out of town. One of the graves nearest the road has an inscription that survives, the name is  ‘Thamthom Pirepi”, he was born in 1955 and died at the age of 24. After a few enquiries I discovered that this is the area where an old greek family has ‘ancestral’ land – I now suspect it is an old Greek cemetery (there is a history of Greek traders in South Sudan).

That’s it for now…I'm still on the lookout for more graves

After Independence

It’s been almost two months since Independence day and The Government of the new Republic of South Sudan have made some very tangible changes in that time. What is life like (so far...) in the newly independent country?

One of the most noticeable changes has been the introduction of a completely new currency: the South Sudan Pound has replaced the old Sudan Pound. I got my first South Sudan 5 pound note on the 20^th July, a few days after it was introduced. We were initially going to be given 3 months to exchange all the old currency for new (at a rate of 1:1), then it was two months, and last week it was announced we had 1 day to change everything. Then on the 27^th August, Lakes State was declared free of the old currency

I was the first person in my family (with whom I am staying) to receive the new money. When I brought it home it was closely inspected and handled by everything. It was then washed in water as a test of its strength! Which was declared by all to be good. The transition has been remarkably quick and I haven’t heard any complaints – certainly seems much more successful than the last time a new currency was introduced and all the old money was taken from traders and ordinary citizens and burnt on Freedom Square!

The second major change has been a Presidential decree announcing a new set of ministries, ministers and assistant ministers. The espoused idea is to improve political representation in South Sudan by having a more ethnically/regionally balanced cabinet (there are various analyses of how successful/true to that goal the ministerial appointments are on sites like SouthSudanNation.com). The Government in Juba is also being ‘slimmed down’ and more decentralisation is happening. That means that the State Government of Lakes based in Rumbek is getting bigger and new ministries and positions are being created.

We also have a new dialling code, +211 The networks have not been functioning well in the last few weeks prompting rumours (mostly unfounded) that Khartoum has cut various network connections to the South.

However, for most people, the most pressing issue in the last few months has been the soaring prices of food and commodities in the market. Some, but not all, of the reasons for this are connected to Independence. South Sudan imports almost all of its food and commodities. Since before independence the border with the North has been closed and trucks have not been coming. The other traders, importing from Kenya and Uganda are facing exorbitant taxes (official and unofficial) on the road as well as inflated exchange rates of South Sudanese Currency and dollars/East African currency at the border. The cost of this is falling on the consumer and prices are sky rocketing – with good doubling and in some cased quadrupling in price over the past few weeks

Dancing in Freedom Square

The last few weeks in Rumbek have been up and down. The Independence celebrations lasted for about a week, schools and many offices where closed and there were events every evening on Freedom Square (dances, athletics and football competitions).

On Saturday morning, the Bishop of Rumbek, Ceaser Mazzolari died while giving mass.  He has been in Rumbek since 1990 and was a big and popular figure. He opened the proceedings on Independence day and was very active in local events generally.  His passing has meant the schools are closed again while preparations for his burial and service are made. My Dinka language course has also been cancelled until next week.

In the mean time have been getting on with some of the more ‘fun’ aspects of my research. One of the things I have been interested in the archival records is the regulation of dances in the colonial period. There are quite a lot of references to the problems of dances as violent events that often got out of control and had to be more strictly managed by the chiefs and government authorities. I have written a short piece about it in this month’s issue of the UK Sudan Studies Journal.

I wanted to attend some dances here, and there have been many happening. The young men in the family I am staying with go every evening and they have been taking me along to see and meet people.

What happens is…groups of young men, wearing boxers, bits of tinsel (left over from the Independence celebrations) and smothered in dust parade into the centre of town. This is meant to give the appearance of people who live in the cattle camp (and it does, pretty well, do this). These groups of men, shouting, sweating a high on testosterone, produce an experience that is not dissimilar to watching a lad’s Friday night out in Newcastle. When they get to Freedom square they start a dance, mostly they are doing one that involves jumping round backwards in a circle, singing and shouting bull names, girls join in too.

After a bit of asking around I discovered that these dances are organised by local students, and they are supposed to be a celebration of Dinka ‘culture’.  It’s a kind of self-mimicry or self-representation. Many of the participants feel quite distant from the ‘cattle culture’ in town, but they find ways to display and venerate it. Even though most people I spoke to thought the technical abilities of the dancers left something to be desired…and they were apparently (though not to me) very obviously not the cattle keepers they were acting as.  A fascinating kind of cultural heritage production.

New Nation

While the world’s media attention has been on the celebrations in Juba, in Rumbek have also been bringing the new nation in in style, so I want to give a bit of run down of what has been going on

Celebrations here started on Friday night…at midnight there was a candlelit vigil on Freedom Square (the main square in town). At the house I am staying in, just before midnight the party atmosphere began properly, music went on and everyone started dancing and waving South Sudan flags in the air (amidst the sound of ululating and guns being fired into the air, apparently in celebration, all over town). We danced till dawn, because frankly, if you are not going to dance all night when your country becomes Independent, when are you?

After maybe an hours sleep, all the primary school children got up to join their schools marches, and the rest of us got ourselves dressed to head down to Freedom Square for about 9am

I arrived with one of the young men in the house and Freedom square was packed full of people. Students from Rumbek’s different school marched into the square. They packed it completely full of people, if you know Rumbek then you will know that Freedom Square is very big (really more of a field than a square). There were also marches from the army, the police, the churches and cattle keepers leading decorated bulls into the square

At about 1pm the flag raising began. For me, by this point the day had turned into half celebration, half heat endurance test.  We had managed to fight our way to near the front and were jammed in with other revellers. It was a very hot day on Saturday and everyone was desperate to see the flag of Sudan come down and the flag of South Sudan go up. When it was finally raised, there was a perfect moment when the wind caught the flag and it displayed perfectly. Huge cries from the crowd. It was an amazing moment.

Celebrations are still continuing. On Saturday and Sunday evening there was dancing and wrestling on freedom square. Cattle keepers also brought there song bulls into town and led them around Freedom Square singing songs and showing them off.

I want to share some pictures from the day. I conducted a small research experiment with these photos. I gave my two cameras to two young men in my house, aged 18 and 24 (nephews of my host) and asked them to capture images of the day. Both men were born and brought up in the war and I wanted to see how they would choose to photograph the Independence celebrations. So, all of these photos were taken by them. Some of them are nicely composed, see for yourself.

Independence minus 2 days

Independence day celebrations are upon us in Rumbek.

The national anthem of South Sudan is everywhere, on the radio when I wake up in the morning, on the breath of uniformed children on their way to school and set as the every other person’s ringtone.  I haven’t learnt the words yet, but the boys in the family I am staying with have been studying them dutifully for the last week so I think that base is covered. In the afternoon you cannot move in town for all the groups of school children.  

In Rumbek, preparations for the celebrations on Saturday are in full swing. A bandstand it frantically being constructed on Freedom Square, the roof went on yesterday, it still needs to be finished and painted but it will probably be done just in the nick of time. The trees lining the streets are being painted white at the bottom. School children and church groups are practicing their marching. I even saw a large troop of Dinka scouts marching this morning.

The  celebrations will start tomorrow, where Church groups will lead a candlelit vigil on Freedom square. On Saturday the flag will be raised, there will be speeches, dances and sports competitions. Bulls will be sacrificed and it will be a big party.  

There is currently insecurity around Rumbek with cattle raids between Gok from Rumbek West/Cuiebet and people from Rumbek central. A Beny Bith (spiritual leader) from Warrap wrote to the Govenor of Lakes State to say which colour bulls should be sacrificed in order to ensure peace in the new country – these were Marial and Mabor. I am waiting to see if this advice will be taken or ignored.

About to give up on the prospects of getting any work done till next week…more (and photos) soon

Update: Rumbek

I have been in Rumbek for one week now,  I will be here for the next three months, returning next year and hopefully in South Sudan for 1 year in total.

A proper entry coming soon, but time is short and only 3 more days to learn the South Sudan national anthem

Who was this for?

Durham University has an amazing collection of resources on Sudan, probably the best in the world. The library has virtually every book published, there is the Sudan Archive and the Middle East Documentation Centre has a huge quantity of recent grey literature and government documents.

On a search for Dinka language material in the catalogue (of which there is quite a lot) I discovered a curious pamphlet from the Sudan Political Service…

It is called “Two Hundred Vital words” and it is crib of basic vocab in 11 Southern Sudanese languages;  Acholi, Bari, Dinka (Bor and Rek), Kresh, Lotuko, Madi, Moro, Nuer, Shilluk and Zande. It also has a key of the English words and a curious list of English words in phonetics (I’ll come back to this).

I first presumed it was issued to Sudan Political Service (SPS) officers and administrators – to help them with the local languages. But, after a bit more inspection, I was not so sure.

Some basic facts first, these words were selected by N.B Hunter. He was  in the education department of the SPS, serving in El Fasher (Darfur) and the Nuba Mountains before he took up is last position as Resident Inspector of Southern Education in Wau and Lalyo. His wife, Ysabel’s diaries and photos from their time in Sudan are in the Durham Archive The pamphlet was presented by a relative of JGS Macphail, who had a long career in the SPS, including serving as the District Commissioner of Upper Nile between 1933 and 1939. (He has also left his papers to the Sudan Archive in Durham).

The pamphlet itself was published in 1931. This struck me as being rather early, only 2 years after the last patrol against Ariandit, the time when ‘pacification’ in Dinka areas is nominally counted as having given way to regular civil administration. 

The pamphlet is fun and quite useful if you are interested in languages in Southern Sudan. Hunter has attempted to give the same 200 words in each language.  Here is a snippet of the Nuer page

It is very interesting which words he was/was not able to find in the 11 languages. For example, word no. 30 was ‘rainmaker’, in Kresh and Shilluk, he found no word for rainmaker. In Dinka Bor he listed the word for rainmaker as “Tiet” but in Dinka Rek it is listed as “Beny Bith” (with a question mark). My understanding is the “Tiet” in Dinka Rek and Agar means a kind of technical specialist, quite different from Beny Bith, I am not sure what the meaning is in Dinka Bor. In any case, a better translation of Beny Bith is ‘master/chief of the fishing spear’ (Beny = master/chief, Bith = fishing spear). In Nuer, he is also uncertain of the word and offers a tentative “Kwäär” for rainmaker. There appears to have been no word for ‘banana’ in Dinka Rek, Madi, Moro, Nuer, Lotuko or Acholi (although this could have been due to a disinterest in bananas on Mr Hunters side).

The really curious thing about the pamphlet is a list of English words at the back which are spelt out phonetically. 

To me, this implies that the pamphlet could have been intended for someone who did not speak English, because why else would you need to be told how to pronounce English words? However, whoever this was intended for would need to be literate in order to read the words and understand their meaning. You would think that someone in Southern Sudan at this time (1931) who could read English, would also be able to speak English…it is a bit of a mystery. Was it meant for a clerk? An administrative assistant? A Northerner or a Southerner?

It came to Durham via a District Commissioner, but we can’t know why he had it or if he ever used it. Perhaps this was just the education department having a bit of fun, but I’d like to know more, if anyone has ever come across anything like this, I’d love to know about it!