Discovering the S.Sudanese

SUDANESE COMMUNITY: Uganda has become a second home to them, but even then they are trying to hold onto their culture.

However, even as the marks stand out on his cylindrical face, Gai concedes some aspects of the Sudanese culture may in the near future suffer a blow. The face marks, called Gar in his mother tongue, he reveals, were not initially part of Sudanese culture.

“They were introduced by the colonialists to separate and identify Sudanese and our great grannies picked it up,” he says. Just like circumcision among Uganda’s Bagisu, gar are a pivotal induction of a boy into adulthood. At about 14 years of age, a boy’s face is ritually prepared for the cuttings that cross the face, only done by an expert. To cry is to bring shame to self and family. However, the advent of HIV/Aids, coupled with Westernisation, has dealt a blow to this norm so much so that even back home in Sudan, only pockets of traditionalists still cling to it. In Uganda however, as Gai notes, it is unheard of for a family to practice the culture of face marks, or plucking off teeth from a child.

A land of different tribes
Valentino Okwero, a student at St. Lawrence University in Kampala and also the community leader of the Luo community came to Uganda five years ago. With a typical West Nile like accent uniquely different from majority of Sudanese, Okwero speaks with passion about Uganda and Sudan. “There is no home like Uganda for me. The South Sudan- Uganda relations are historical right from the days of the Anyanya 1 rebellion of 1955,” he explains with clarity of his voice and polished articulation compelling me to inquire twice, if he is purely Sudanese.

The Luo in Sudan, he says, are not so different from those in Uganda just like the Iteso, Bagisu and Basamia in Kenya and Uganda. “The SPLA, which liberated us, was conceived in Ethiopia, born in Kenya and fathered and nurtured in Uganda. Uganda is actually the father of South Sudan. In our culture, if a girl was up for marriage, Uganda would be the first priority,” Okwero asserts, emphasising over and over again, how much he feels at home and heaping praise on the Ugandan people for being warm and receptive.

As a community leader who organises cultural events for his members, he stresses that Ugandan culture is not any different from that of Sudan, again, another reason for many Sudanese to view Uganda as home away from home. For example, the Acholi traditional dance, the Lararaka, women kneeling while greeting is only but part of a host of cultural practices that Uganda and Sudan share.

At the mercy of modernisation
He notes however, that the Sudanese are losing grip of some aspects of their culture, either succumbing to the storm of modernisation or socio-economic influence in the Ugandan set up. Maliong, with conspicuous sadness in his face cites the ajugo, a piece of cloth tied on the waist and accompanied with beads on the forehead, which Sudanese in Uganda proudly wore, but is slowly but surely fading in Uganda. It appears to him as if the only mark of a Sudanese in Uganda is the accent, face marks for the Dinka and Nuer that have them and the dark skin colour.

Another case in point is the traditional dances that usually get displayed only during official community functions. The fadhla, for instance, where one dances while moving their legs forward and the dany, in which ladies vigorously shake their buttoms while holding fingers in unison in the air. These, Okwero and Maliong agree, ought to be re-vived passionately. They are not as common place as they were a few decades ago.
“May be that is because Idi Amin had a soft spot for Sudanese and promoted their interests. I don’t know but we need to do something,” the old man notes.

Ironically, Okwero and Gai say, even at Hi-Table, a popular bar in the heart of the city, which usually hosts theme nights for different nationalities, the Sudanese night was scrapped off.

Taking pride in food
Arek Majak, a woman in her 30s, insists Sudanese still have their culture intact though the visibility remains debatable. When Life visited her home in Rubaga, the sight of dried meat in sizeable pieces tied on window panes could never be more eye catching.

This, the team was enlightened, is called kombo. Rather than dry meat by smoking using a charcoal stove or hang it in the roof of a sooty and hot kitchen as the Iteso of Eastern Uganda do, the Sudanese slice the meat into pieces, add salt and like small pieces of cloth, tie it on the window frames. “After two days, it will have dried enough and be ready for cooking with any flavours like okra,” Majak explained. In a number of restaurants in town, she observes, Sudanese are proud to eat food they easily associate with.

For instance, meals like their staple food, kisira (maize or wheat flour mixed with water into chappati like meal), kumunia and tajalia are available at Hi-Table restaurant and bar and Ebony in Nsambya. Ngor Lual, a student at St. Joseph Technical Institute Kisubi and a member of the family believes “it is a question of modernity. I would have loved to wear my traditional clothes from Sudan, but I cannot because I will feel out of place- blame it on modernity not being in Uganda.”

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