A study on Dinka of Southern Sudan

A study on Dinka of Southern Sudan
A Cross Cultural Study Traditional Lifestyle Traditionally cattle herders living on the vast savanna of the southern Sudan in Africa, the Dinka were split into twenty or more tribal groups which were further divided into sub-tribes, each occupying a tract of land large enough to provide adequate water and pasture for their herds. Still today, the Dinka lifestyle centres on their cattle: the people's roles within the groups, their belief systems and the rituals they practice, all reflect this. Cattle give milk (butter and ghee), urine is used in washing, to dye hair and in tanning hides. Dung fuels fires from which ash is used to keep the cattle clean and free from blood-sucking ticks, to decorate the Dinka themselves (body art), and as a paste to clean teeth. While cattle are not killed for meat, if one dies or is sacrificed, the meat is eaten and the hide cured. Skins are used for mats and drum skins, and belts, ropes and halters are also made from it. Horns and bones are used for a range of practical and aesthetic items. During the wet season, the Dinka live in homesteads consisting of small groups of grassroofed, mud-walled houses set among scattered palms and thorn bushes. During the dry season, everyone except the aged, the ill and nursing mothers take the herds to the camps by the river. They don't return to the homesteads until the rains come. The rains make the riverside camps uninhabitable, turning the grasslands into swamps. Their homeland is very important to the Dinka: their whole existence focuses on their rivers and pasture, in the spirits they believe inhabit the grassland, and in their cattle. There is no overarching hierarchical authority structure among the Dinka, although the Sudanese government has attempted to formalise the position of influential (and often quite wealthy) elders. While each sub-tribe now elects a chief, who has official status in the Sudanese Provincial Government in the Southern region, he is merely influential (rather than wielding authority) in everyday life. Each chief does, however, listen to local disputes and attempt to settle them fairly. These "courts" are very informal, open air affairs, involving much talk from all interested parties, and are very public. They allow disputants to have their say and feel that they have been heard fairly. Chiefs, and other tribal elders, are treated with respect and some deference by the Dinka. Kinship structures are extremely important to the Dinka: family members provide an essential support network. In the riverside camps, each family group lives in its own cluster of grass and sapling huts, placed around a communal cooking hearth. The family's cattle is tethered around its own site. Blood links extend out to clan members (all the descendants of a single ancestor) and there is the sense that blood relatives will unquestioningly support each other - the closer the blood link, the more automatic and total the support. The Dinka need to know their ancestry because clan members living in the same region are forbidden to marry. Ancestry (direct lineage) also plays an important role in the initiation of boys to warriors. Marriage is associated with the acquisition of cattle - the bridegroom's family give cattle to the wife's family. This is the principal way by which wealth is acquired (wealth is traditionally measured in terms of cattle). Clans are traced patrilinearly (in the male line), thus it is extremely important that each man marries and produces male offspring to maintain the lineage link from past, through the present, to the future. If a man does not produce a son, he will not become an ancestor, therefore he will face oblivion with death. The Dinka have devised ways of dealing with, and thus preventing, this awful scenario. If a boy dies, a brother or near relative will take a wife in the dead boy's name and all children born will be 'his' children. If a man dies before his wife has children, a brother or close relative will take the widow as wife and children born to this union will have the dead man's name. The birth of a girl baby is also celebrated as she brings her family wealth upon her marriage. The cattle her father receives from her husband's family is used to cement alliances and reaffirm kinship rights and obligations. Nevertheless, a girl baby will not preserve the lineage - her children will be brought up in her husband's clan. A boy baby is given his own name and then the name of his father, grandfather, etc. A man can trace his ancestry through to twenty generations or so, by name. Rites of Passage - Initiation Initiation marks a young man's passage from boyhood to adulthood. An initiate is called a parapool - "one who has stopped milking". Initiation means he no longer does a boy's work of milking, tethering the cattle, and carting dung. Initiation is marked by mutilation - tribal marks of several parallel lines or V-shaped marks - are scarified onto the youth's forehead. The pattern of scars may change over time but the parapuol is always easily recognisable as belonging to a particular tribe. This scarification takes place at any age from ten to sixteen. Initiates are warriors, guardians of the camp against predators - lions, hyenas - and against enemy raiders. Some stay with the cattle all year round. All of them stay with the cattle during the dry months but most return to the villages to help cultivate the crops during the wet season. Even in this duty, the parapuol have the role of warrior protectors. The cattle, protected by the parapuol who remain with them, are kept in camps on the plains at the base of the foothills for the entire wet season. Initiation occurs around harvest time. The night before the ceremony the boys come together to sing the songs of their clans. Their ######### have already been shaved in preparation for the initiation ritual itself. At dawn, they are collected by their parents and taken to where the ceremony will take place. After receiving a blessing, the boys take their places in a row, sitting cross-legged, the rising sun behind their backs. As the initiator comes to each boy in turn, he calls out the names of his ancestors. The initiator clasps the crown of the boy's head firmly and spins it past the blade of an extremely sharp knife. After the first cut, the initiator makes the second and third, etc., whatever the clan pattern of scars might be. The cuts are deep, in fact skulls have been found that have the scars visible on the bony forehead. The initiate, psyched up by a night of clan song-singing, looks straight ahead and continues to recite the names of his ancestors. This is the moment he has been waiting for; when he joins the ranks of the warriors and puts aside the lowly status of boyhood and the demeaning chores it represents, and takes on the status of warrior, with all the privileges and honour this brings. His initiation scars declare him to be a warrior and a man, and therefore brave and proud. To flinch or scream during the initiation ritual would be to deny his own courage and therefore to disgrace his family and his ancestors. A kink in his initiation scars would brand him a coward, visible for all to see. When all initiates have been ritually scarred, their fathers wipe the blood from their sons' eyes and mouths, then wrap a broad leaf around their foreheads. Initiation scars mean that a man is able to marry - the parapuol may now begin to court eligible girls. The boys are presented with a spear, a club and a shield - necessary accoutrements of a warrior. There is great rejoicing within the group, with singing and dancing going on for several days. After his initiation, a parapuol is given an oxen, his "song oxen". It is his most precious possession and he will lavish care on it, even to the extent of delicately training its horns into unusual, often asymmetrical, shapes. In recent years there has been some breakdown in the traditional patterns of life for the Dinka. For example, many parapuol now see the value of going to the city to earn the money to buy cattle so that they can marry sooner. This has disrupted the traditional redistribution of wealth among the clans and has led to jealousies and hostilities. Modern clothes and modern tools have been introduced. Nevertheless, the Dinka appear to value highly their traditional ways. Boys still choose to go through the initiation ritual and girls still say they prefer the look of a warrior who bears the scars of the parapuol. Reference list Gluckman, M.: Custom and Conflict In Africa Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1965. Mair, L.: Primitive Government Penguin Books, Great Britain, 1964. Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. & Forde, D. (eds.): African Systems Of Kinship and Marriage Oxford University Press, 1970. Ryle, J.: Warriors Of The White Nile Time-Life Books, Amsterdam, 1982.

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