Perhaps the most important task which ethnomusicology has set itself is the study and discovery of the role which music plays in each of man’s cultures past and present, and the knowledge of what music means to man.^[1]

This study of the music of the Anuak tribe is a study incorporating a social and cultural framework. Only with some understanding of the society in which a people’s music resides can one best understand the music of that people. When one begins to be aware of the cultural modes of life, then musical modes of expression lose their initially perceived “primitive” quality and take on subtlety and depth.

The music of the African is integrally linked to his daily existence. It is not some museum piece placed on a shelf to be taken down and dusted off and viewed on special occasions. For the African, and for the Anuak, music is a living and evolving form, rising out of, and intimately intertwined with the social and cultural activities of the people. To study the music alone gives only a partial picture. The picture comes clear when life experiences are also studied. Merriam states:

The simple recording of African songs as a collection of esoterica is not enough; the major contribution to be made through the study of African music lies in the broader view which recognizes the fact that this dynamic, creative aspect of culture can only be understood as it is related in time to itself and in culture to all other aspects…our understanding of African music in relationship to African culture is almost nonexistent.^[2]

The social and cultural characteristics of the Anuak tribe will be examined in this portion of the study. Basic social foundations such as living standards and life processes will be discussed, namely, the age set social structure which dominates Anuak social life and political life; the highly complex and, in many ways, sophisticated practices of courtship and marriage; the various interpersonal, intervillage, and intertribal relationships. All these are potent forces affecting the daily lives of the Anuak and influencing the musical expression heard in villages throughout the tribal region.

There is a variety of behaviors that are characteristic of Anuak culture that will be examined. The Anuak spends his time in certain pursuits and recreations. His folk tales, traditions and beliefs provide insights into the particular complexity of his seemingly simple life. This chapter will explore the Anuak ways of coping with life, approaching their God, and transmitting their culture. A variety of outside influences is attacking or modifying a culture that has maintained its same patterns for many years. Whether or not it can survive in a day of contemporary education, the influence of a variety of media, and other outside contacts, wanted and unwanted, remains to be seen. This chapter explores these influences and presents what I believe to be the fundamental and most important social and cultural characteristics of the Anuak tribe.

1. Social Characteristics of the Anuak Tribe

1.1. Living Standards and Routines

The values of the Anuak are vastly different compared with those of a Westerner or the highland Ethiopian. Things of importance to one may not have any value to the other. The Anuak has definite ideas of what it takes to satisfy him.

1.1.1. The Good Life

The good life for the Anuak certainly does not consist of material possessions. Because of the society, the Anuak cannot equip his home with anything in the way of niceties other than good skins on which to rest. If he acquires a chair, he is fined by the village and forced to give it up. If he gets more clothing than he needs, he soon is asked to give this away to help someone who has less. Money is having a growing impact and will be a factor in the change of community values in the future. But presently, the good life is very much associated with having a wife and enough to eat. Yilek states that, “…a man without a woman to cook for him is a pitiable thing. And so, he attaches himself to a group where there are women to cook for him.”^[3]

An Anuak informant stated, “If you have a wife and a field, you would feel comfortable. And also, keeping the laws, getting along with others without causing problems. Living a quiet life. I would need nothing more than a wife, field and a house. Just some skins for the floor and hunting and enough food.”^[4]

Another Anuak informant gives a clear description of what constitutes Anuak wealth and the good life.

The Anuak wants to have a wife. In the first place to be happy. Then he will make his good house and his good fence. Later on, when he has all of that, he will decide to get another wife so that he will be a rich man. When you have wives in the Anuak area, you will enjoy it a lot. They have the special days like the days to dance. Other people who have no wife aren’t really called for such occasions. They are not considered. If they are called to sing, they will get nothing. They will stay in their home because they have no wife who can make beer… Those who have no wives…they really have a hard life in the Anuak area.^[5]

I confirm the above comments. The only noticeable signs of wealth are the quality of the animal skins on which the men sit and the gourd full of mush at meal time.

1.1.2. Diet

One of the dominant scenes in the Anuak village is that of women rhythmically lifting a long and heavy pole and pounding it into a pestle. The sound and the sight of this goes on day after day as they prepare the grain for their meals. The corn, or durra, is pounded, put in water for three days, pounded again, soaked again and pounded a final time. The grain changes in color from brownish, adok, to lighter brown, akala, until the flour is white, awuya.^[6] After the grain has been properly prepared, the women spend all morning preparing the food, cooking it till about noon and serving it in the evening.

The Anuak eats this corn meal mush virtually every day of the year. It is eaten without sugar or milk. Rarely do they have salt to add to the mixture. When they eat, they like to feel stuffed. But they don’t need to feel stuffed more than once a day, and they do not have to be stuffed every day. The Anuak will eat two meals a day: breakfast at ten or eleven after returning from the fields, and supper as darkness begins settling over the village. The Anuak will eat out of a gourd, about the size of a large mixing bowl. One man can eat more than that alone and not consider himself well-fed.

While on our first trip into the area, I sat down and ate with the people. Field notes of June 13, 1972 describe this experience.

We were then invited to stay for lunch…. After about two hours of waiting… we were finally invited down to take our meal. We were brought to the cook house, a shelter enclosed on three sides. The top was blackened and seared with the smoke of numerous fires from the cooking hole in the mud floor. The wife was sitting there with a child at the breast. She pleasantly placed a pot of a brownish sandy-colored and textured corn concoction laced with the leaves of wild spinach before us. The utensils were shells which worked very well as spoons. We dipped from the common pot and tasted a very dry and tasteless mush, badly in need of salt. It was hard to try to decide whether to chew, or swallow as soon as possible. The Anuaks drank river water out of gourds. We drank from our canteen. After a noble attempt of eating and finishing a good deal of the mixture, we took our leave, retrieved our stuff from the chief’s house, and walked back to the boat.^[7]

On occasion, the people have beef or fish to add to this basic diet. Other foods grown in the area such as fruits, greens or vegetables, do not count in what the Anuak considers a proper meal. It must be corn porridge.

1.1.3. Eating Customs

It is the custom for the men to eat first. They sit in a circle around the gourd and wait for everybody who is going to eat before they start. Everyone lays his spoons (or shells) on top of the food. When they start to eat, they all start at once and there is little or no conversation during eating.

If you stop to talk, you would miss two or three spoonfuls. I made the mistake of talking while I was eating with a bunch of nursing mothers. They are incredible eaters…the amount of food that they put away! I stopped to answer a question, and I was completely left out of that meal. It was over. They don’t get up and leave before everybody does. They wait for each other at the beginning and end of the meal. They don’t drink until they are through eating and then they pass around a gourd of water.^[8]

After the men have finished eating, the women will clean the gourds and then they will start their meal. They also eat in groups.

This is the pattern when there is sufficient food. At times, there is not enough. During these times, the cultural practices of egalitarianism and sharing tend to cause great difficulty as far as food is concerned. A person who is lazy and has grown no grain can claim the grain raised by an ambitious person. The ambitious person is culturally bound to give the grain to him. In addition, the Anuak tends not to plan for the future. If there is a good crop, the tendency is to use a lot of the corn to make beer and to drink it continuously until it is used up. Otherwise, the relatives will lay claim to the extra grain.

If something unexpected happens, they are caught short and they will be hungry. Or, if the next crop is small, they tend to get just enough to live on. So, if something happens to make the crop less than they had depended on, there will be hunger. In Gok this last harvest season, a lot of grain was just left in the fields. They didn’t bother to harvest it. They still had grain left over from the former harvest. They didn’t need it too badly, so why harvest it? Someone would just come and eat it anyway. So, it was just left in the fields.^[9]

Just before the crop comes in, it is likely that the food remaining will not carry over and there will be hunger in the village. An Anuak informant summarizes clearly why these hunger seasons occur and how the people get themselves into this situation year after year.

Is there much hunger in the villages? … Last year it was really terrible. … Why was that?

Very few people cultivated so the corn was shared by many people. So, they consumed. The number of people who did not cultivate is greater than the number who do cultivate. The Anya Nyas were here last year and were sharing the corn with the villagers. They weren’t cultivating and there were quite a few of them. The number of lazy people in the village increased because of the Anya Nyas and some other people. Most of the people, three-fourths, didn’t cultivate. They didn’t because they thought they had a lot of corn. And also, the rain didn’t come at the right time. So, the rain never came and that made them lazy. They didn’t think it was time to start. So, they started too late and now the river is rising and it will flood before it is ready.^[10]

The Anuaks have no calendars and little concept of time. Their life cycle is dominated by the natural cycles of planting and harvest. When these cycles are interrupted, their lives are interrupted even to the extent of not planting in time. In my opinion, even the weather can become a scapegoat. The sitting around by the men in the village during planting and harvest time is indicative of the problem of not being concerned for a need that is not immediate.

1.2. Social Stratification: The Age Set

The Anuak is group conscious to the extent of making decisions together, eating together, and sleeping together. The good of the group and the consensus of the group are considerations that transcend an Anuak’s feeling for self. The age set is a dominant pattern of cultural and social importance in the Anuak society. It functions at virtually every age level and is an agency for education, a source of governance, a peer group for fellowship, a protective society, a power bloc for agitation and upset, and a means for maintaining the status quo. The Anuak sings and dances within the age set, eats and sleeps within the age set, fights, governs and dies within the age set.

The pattern of social development for a typical Anuak in the conservative Baro River area can be described as follows:

A child enters this life as mar, “a child who is green, not ripe” (whether a boy or a girl). When the child is weaned, he or she is known as nyineto. The little boy will eat with his mother until he is five. At six he begins to eat with the other boys of his age. The mothers provide the food, but the boys take it away to their own place and eat it together. They are not yet regarded as an age set but the process has begun and a new cohesion apart from the family has come into their lives. They have a specific work program, are sent on errands, carrying coals, water and food. A boy is an errand runner until about 12 years of age. The age group above them begins to order them around. Maybe the younger boys will dispute the authority of this and then they are told to go off and form a group of their own. Thus, they become a ben of the joloak (lwak) a subgroup of the age set. The ben is the skin in which the mother carries her infant, and in the terminology of social structure, it means the group of persons who were in the ben at the same time.^[11]

Growing together into an age set is a very informal process. They are recognizing that, “these are my buddies.” There is no ritual included in reaching a certain age as is done by formalized scarring among the Nuer. “The forming into the age set is not a formal forming they just seem to fall into it.”^[12]

An age span of five to ten years may occur in these age sets. The boys seek out an older and influential person in the community to act as an advisor to them and take a name for their group. Lienhardt describes the process.

When a group of youths of about the same age and in the same village are recognized to have grown to manhood, they select from the older and richer men of the village one whom they wish to make their leader, or more correctly, sponsor. This man is called their Kwai Lwak. The term Kwai may be translated as “owner” and may be related to Kwayo, “Ancestor” and Lwak is related to Lwaga, “cattle byre.” If the man they have chosen agrees and it is expected that he will be honored to do so, they settle at his homestead or spend much of the day there, feasting on beasts which he has slaughtered and beer which he provides. In return, they may help him to hoe his cultivations and decorate his homestead with one or two of the carved posts similar to those found in much larger numbers on the fences of the headman’s homestead. The Kawi Lwak, thereafter called the sponsor of this group of young men, gives them a name which is usually taken from some incident in the history of the village closely associated with their coming to maturity.^[13]

Names accorded various age sets effectively place them in an historical perspective.

Each ben has its own distinctive name, and its own meeting place, wimaich. The name may be taken from some event at the time it was formed. The group of boys are spoken of as “the people of the pencil” because they formed at the time the school was started. The next group is “the dust of the airplane” and dates to the time of the Italian bombing. Older still are “the people of gold” who formed at the time of the discovery of gold in the area.^[14]

Other names can be mentioned:

Gengliec: those who can block the passage of an elephant.^[15]

Thalwan: those who cannot agree what their father says.

Torajabo: they are like dust, as the dust of cattle being moved.

Poyamara: because of the influence of the Amhara, there is no war during this generation.^[16]

The age group, or set, sustains stronger bonds than any blood ties. “They dance together, they hunt together, they fish together…they do everything together, each in his age group. It’s really the division of their society.”^[17] But the system does not function in the same way with the girls. A girl’s role in society is segmented as well, but this is more in relation to the stages in a woman’s life, such as childbearing and maintaining a household.

The Anuak women do not have grades that pair off with those of the men but they see the life of the female in five stages: the infant, mar; the weaned child, nyineto, a term used until adolescence; an adolescent or marriageable girl, juri; a childbearing woman, akaidisher; and an old woman past her childbearing, shidier. This is a purely biological or functional classification and identifies the nature of the female role in the social life.^[18]

I saw two small Anuak boys having a fight in another place. The fighters were not of equal merit and one was giving the other a bad time. They came back at each other three times, each time with the same result and each getting angrier and angrier. Eventually, a boy of the higher age set broke up the fight, but he let them fight until he felt they had done each other enough damage, and then he asserted his right as a member of an older set.^[19]

The older group enjoys exerting its authority over the younger. If the younger set does not respond quickly to its request to run some errand, to show proper respect, to keep coals handy for the pipe, the older age set may fine the younger a chicken or a goat for its failure to obey them. The older boys will cause continual agitation by making demands upon the younger boys. If the punishment becomes excessive, the younger boys may rebel and openly fight, usually with sticks. “There is always tension between groups, but the older group usually comes out on top.”^[20] In any given village, there may be four or five different age sets. In the largest villages, there may be as many as 150 to 200 boys in a set.^[21] About 50 is probably more common.

Boys from ages twelve to eighteen are called the Jo Bong, the men of the field, the cattle herders. They are considered men and hunt, fish, and herd cattle. If there is fighting, they will do most of this as well. Above the Jo Bong is the Jo Wok, the men of the barn. The Jo Wok are next in line to the elders, the Jo Burra. The pattern of behavior between sets continues throughout. It is an antagonistic arrangement with fighting being the favorite sport between the sets. With the Jo Wok and Jo Burra, fighting is a matter of political importance as well as group pride. “The group in power at this point is the age group above the Jo Wok or the Jo Burra. The group in power will grab the youth and punish them for minor offenses so as to intimidate and rile this younger group up.”^[22]

McClure sets the scene:

They will never use spears under these circumstances, but they will have a club fight and the Jo Wok will try to take over the eldership and when the Jo Wok get into their twenties, they think they should become elders and begin planning and they usually go out in the forest and are gone for a month or two practicing club fights, living off the forest and toughening themselves up for this fight which they know has to come. Because the elders will never give up willingly until they are driven out.^[23]

When the Jo Wok feels strong enough, they will attack the Jo Burra with sticks and clubs.

They are quite clever at being able to hit people on heads and make huge wounds without serious injury. Killing is not acceptable in this type of fighting (although it occurs at times), just to beat people up. (The life expectancy of 35 to 40 years is affected somewhat by these inter-age set fights that take place. Among the men, the rate of life expectancy is lower than that of the women for violent reasons, usually because of intertribal or intervillage conflict rather than age set fighting.) Age set fighting is like a sport… in some cases, father against son will be found in warring age sets. It doesn’t seem to affect friendships. These fights are not regular. Some are planned in advance. Others are unpremeditated such as after a drinking bout.^[24]

If the Jo Wok successfully defeat the Jo Burra, they then become the leaders of the village. But if they lose, they are kicked out of the village and will have to remain out for two or three days and then pay to get back in. Though the Jo Burra be defeated, they may not be forced to leave the village or lose their property, but they will lose their power to govern. These battles usually occur when the group in control is in the 30-to-40-year range.^[25] Forms of government-change vary in other parts of the Anuak area. In the more enlightened areas, fighting may be a part of the process but specific terms of office may also be a factor. In the very conservative Baro River area, however, the process just described does occur. Fighting to win power is the mode, as clinic workers can attest. Templin summarizes the process along the Baro River.

Anuak village life is controlled by the council Jo Burra, whose titular head is the chief, Kwaro. The Jo Burra are all members of the same age group, lwak, and are the rulers of the village. A lwak may be, but does not necessarily have to be, a member of the same clan. In certain areas of the tribe, for instance, in the Gila (Gilo) River area, decision-making and village conflict-resolution are quite open and fluid, with younger members of the village (and thus a younger lwak) able to have a participatory role in village political and economic life. Members of a younger lwak play a somewhat subservient role to their elders, but they do have nonviolent avenues for recourse and redress of grievances. Along the Baro River, however, the lwak system is much more rigid and exclusive. Any lwak younger than the Jo Burra plays a subservient role to the dominant lwak, and has little voice in village politics or decision making.

Economic exploitation in the form of demands on the young men to provide animals for feasts is particularly grievous to the younger lwak members. Whereas in the Gila River area, village leadership changes tend to be nonviolent (i.e., at the time of the writing, the Piny Udo village area is getting ready to replace their old chief with a new appointment, and it is common knowledge in the area that these plans are being laid), village government changes along the Baro River are almost always bloody coups (agem), in which a younger lwak attempts to drive out the Jo Burra and wrest control of the village from them. Once in control, the new Jo Burra exercises as much exploitation on the younger lwak as they had previously suffered when they were not yet in power. When questioned about this, Jo Burra members have given the impression that they consider that they have an inherent right to exploit the others by virtue of their office. Thus, the exploitation and lack of development tends to be self-perpetuating.^[26]

Further comments will be made about the role of the Jo Burra in its role as a council to the chief. To conclude this discussion of the hierarchy of the age set system, mention must be made of the deposed Jo Burra. After they have been defeated in battle with the younger age group, it is seldom that they are able to regain control of the village. The younger are simply much stronger. Though these who have lost power may not be more than 40 years old, they are now considered the Jwok Bar (Jo Bar) which means “the useless ones” or the old men.^[27] They no longer rule and are considered too old to do anything. They don’t hunt, fish, or hoe. They just sit around and drink and smoke their pipes. Some of these men become elders and act as advisors to the chief and may be involved with the justice system. This varies from place to place in the tribal area. For many of them once they are “old men,” they assume that role and no longer are contributing members to the good of the village.

1.3. Courtship, Marriage, and Family

The courtship and marriage practices among the Anuak are of great interest because of several unique elements and because of the extensive musical activity associated with the courtship period. Many dancing and singing occasions occur and many songs deal with courtship and the experiences of love. The fundamental outline for this portion is derived from a monologue of an Anuak informant, Henry Akway, who discussed the ideal procedure for courtship and marriage as it occurs in the society.^[28] Other sources provide additional information and elaboration.

1.3.1. Courtship and Marriage

Henry Akway starts his account, saying: “First, when you want to engage a girl, you have to go to her, find out the way she is going to the river, walk with her, ask her, ‘Give me tobacco.’ Become acquainted with her.”^[29]

Informant Yilek has stated that the point of most of the dancing is courtship. “The men demonstrate their strength and bravery. The motions are suggestive and have hidden meanings.”^[30]

The dances serve as a means of becoming acquainted, of determining the kin and clan of the individual and of displaying prowess and interest. Paul Nyinyoni discusses the importance of mentioning animal names; certain sections mention his birthplace, a certain tree, the bulls of the grandfather and the father. “I’m the son of this kind of bull.” The reference to a bull is important. In the general dancing, everybody dances, the girls in a line, and the young men in a line. The girls come and choose the men they like. When they choose the boys they want to dance with, they mention in their singing their grandfather’s and father’s bulls. The boy will do the same to the girls, mentioning his grandfather’s and father’s bull, at the same time praising each other. These actions actually show if the individuals involved are from the same clan, to see if they are related. To make things enjoyable, they praise themselves and at the same time, come automatically to the knowledge of their relation by talking about the same family, they then stop dancing with each other. In the praising part of the dance, the lady would mention the same name as would Paul, so they would realize their relationship and not go together.^[31]

Akway continues:

After that, you will come and decide by yourself. After your decision, you will find a friend, a boy. You also talk with a girl as a friend, and tell the boy and girl the case. “I’m in love with such and such a girl.” Now you will send the girl or boy, either of them to the girl. She is brought to you and the four of you will discuss the whole problem.

The first day, she will refuse. Then you will leave her and go. She may refuse you the second day or for a week, a month. This is to test your mind whether or not you are really in love with her or not. After that, if she accepts you, she will do so in the presence of the two people that you have called. She will give a type of bracelet which you take. You will not wear it but the friend of yours (the boy) will have it. As you go on with her, whenever you need to converse with her or to just please you, you have to send either of them, and either she or he will bring her to you. This will continue.^[32]

McClure states:

Among the Anuak, the girl has little to say about who she is going to marry. She has a great deal to say about who she is going to have as a lover. Her father and her brothers or some member of the clan will determine what her marriage will be for her. They may marry her to some old man who has lots of cattle and lots of wealth as his twelfth or thirteenth or fourteenth wife. But in the meantime, she is always having an affair with a fellow who is her lover.^[33]

Akway continues:

If you really want to marry her, you will take a type of bead, a special bead. If you don’t have marriage in mind, you may yet escape. But if you take the bead, it’s certain that you are going to marry her.^[34]

In song 37A 10 200, the singer praises a certain girl telling her, “Please don’t try to prevent me that bead, okuer.” Once you love a girl and want to marry her, you take that bead from her. It assures her that you are going to marry her. It is worn around the middle, is green in color and very expensive. Actually, it is about 13 small strung beads and costs about twenty dollars.^[35]

Tippett elaborates on this:

The girl has a bead. If she gives this to the man, it is a sign of her intention to become his wife, but she would not give it to him unless he asked for it. The preliminary performance is hidden from the parents, but the clue to them is the bead. If a girl had not been given a bead and asked her father for one, he might suspect her motive but he does not know who the man is. Only the couple and the intermediaries known. If the man does not ask for the bead, the girl may push the matter through her intermediary. A man would not take her bead unless his intentions were honorable. The exchange of the bead is really the marriage act, even though the parental negotiations have not yet taken place. Sooner or later, her father discovers she no longer has the bead or perhaps she is pregnant, and he asks, “Who is your husband?” and then she will name him.^[36]

Akway continues his account:

When you need marriage, you will take the bead so the parents will see that the girl has a boy that is going with her. They will discuss it. Then the mother will try to move around and see who is really the husband of her daughter and the father is going to torture her. He asks her first and she will not tell him. She will be beaten and yet she will keep quiet. She will go to her friend, the girl whom you have been calling. That girl is the witness and will be sent to you. You will be informed, the two of you, you and your friend the boy. You will discuss it and refuse to go through with the marriage. The girls will go but return the second day. Now you may accept her, or on the third day you may accept her. Now they will go and she will say that, “Yes, I have a husband who is such and such.”

Now that you accept her, you and your friend must go to your father. Your friend will relate the whole thing to your father. Your father will refuse it. “What have you done? You are bringing problems to me. What did you do to me? What kind of work have you done to show your honesty? I will never accept that.” Through long talking with your father and the family circle, they will accept it.

The parents of the girl are going to come to your village where your father and relatives live. You will be called and seated on the skin. They will introduce the topic and say, “We have a problem here. We have come to be polite. Our daughter has said such and such a thing but we don’t know whether it is true or not. But now we are asking our son, and he can tell us whether she is lying or not. But we are not sure. Maybe this girl is trying to play a joke on your son. Please, would you tell us?”

Now, since you love her and have accepted her, you tell them, “Of course she is my wife.” That’s all. Then your parents will take a spear and a white bead that will be given. “Accept this bead, a symbol of peace between you that nothing is bad.” Then a spear will be given to them. They will accept it and take it. Now they will tell you, “You are the husband. We are talking to you. Try to prepare the dowry.” You will say, “I’m still looking,” and they will go.^[37]

McClure and Tippett agree on a variation of this process.

The intent seems to be the same: The boy chooses a friend who is called the jao bang or the man with the spear. This jao bang goes to the girl’s family or clan, and he will sit down with the elders of the clan, the brothers of this girl and her parents, if they know who the parents are. He’s come to talk business. He will present this spear. He will name his friend and name the girl and say, “Our friend, I’m representing him. He wants to buy this girl.” (There is no word for marriage in their language. It’s a transaction. He uses the same word as if they were buying a cow.) If they are willing to talk business, they will pluck (take) the spear. If they are not, they will refuse the spear and say, “No, she is promised to somebody else. We are going to marry her to somebody else; we don’t want this fellow; we know he’s poor; we know his clan is poor. They can’t pay the marriage price. We don’t want to have anything to do with him.” They will refuse the spear. But if they keep it then the palaver starts.^[38]

Tippett involves the husband directly with the relatives of the woman.

Now a play is enacted. Her relatives seize the husband, bind him and ask if she is his wife. He agrees that it is so and they beat him gently—symbolically—and make his father pay a fine of a cow for his release. His affirmation of their intention to be man and wife would be in the words, “Did I not take her bead?” They now tell him to gather things for the bride price. They may even release him without a penalty, but if he should deny the marriage, he will be badly beaten and still have to pay the penalty of the cow for not being serious in his relations with the girl.^[39]

Akway continues:

The process of finding the dowry begins. If you have a married sister or your father has some debts outside, or you have a small sister, it is now time to discuss these problems. If your father has some debts, your father has to go and claim these things. If you have a sister whose dowry has never been used, then these properties will go for your wife. If you have none of this, then your small sister has to be taken and given to an old man or a very small boy who has some properties. Then when the properties come, it has to be given to the father of the wife. When that is done, then she is your wife.^[40]

One can see the importance of building up financial obligations when a marriage situation arises. A major underpinning of the Anuak economic system is the accumulation of people in debt to you by loaning them money or doing deeds for them throughout the years. These debts fall due when a need presents itself. “In the provision of bounty,” according to Lienhardt, “it is the recipients and not the benefactor who are thought to render the greater honor. The prestige which a great man receives on account of his generosity is of more value to him than the material goods which he is bound lavishly to dispense in order to obtain it.”^[41]

The discussion of how much to demand for dowry is long, arduous, and sometimes bitter. The approximate expectations are known to all but the process goes on anyway and forms a major part of the conversation within the clan for an extended period of time. McClure has a good grasp of this process.

…the palaver starts. For as long as I’ve been there, the bride price has been 3 cows and about 100 spears. [Special marriage spear heads which you tie up in bundles of ten each. They are only used for marriage.] They require at least one string of demoui beads. [Other informants say four or five strings of beads.] They all know what this marriage price is. It has been set for generations but they sit down and they may palaver for weeks to come to some agreement. The fellow will say, “Well, we are willing to buy your daughter, but we know that she is worthless and she probably won’t have any children. She’s lazy and she won’t work, etc.” The Jao Bang goes through all of this, running down the girl as much as he can. They accept it, nobody gets mad at him. Pretty soon there will come the talk and they will begin to extol the girl and say what a wonderful girl she is. “She will probably have six or eight children. She works hard and she will have her little field, and she fishes and she can do this and this and this.” Eventually, they come down to the marriage price of three cows, thirty to forty sheep, and many spears and so many demoui beads. This is all a part of the game, of course.^[42]

The cost of all of these items for the bride price is in the range of eight hundred to a thousand dollars. The price for the daughter of a chief or a king is much more.^[43] The dowry always includes the demoui beads. One demoui is a string of 210 beads on a wire or hair and has a value of about one hundred twenty-five dollars. Some brides require five or six strings of demoui beads.^[44]

The demoui beads are of an opaque blue color varying in shade between a watery blue to a dark blue. They are very unevenly cut at the edges. The Anuak say they were made by their own people in the olden days. They are very scarce and none can be bought in any open market, but they are much in request and always form part of a marriage dowry.^[45]

The payment of the demoui, or dowry, is always very complicated.

When the fellow has paid the first bull, then the fellow is considered betrothed to the girl and she belongs to him. He has relations with her and probably will pay nothing more till she gets pregnant. (He is not going to buy a barren cow!) He wants to know if she will be able to have children before he pays anything more.^[46]

After this beginning, things become complex. One’s marriage dowry things may go from one couple to another in the extended family. And the payment is seldom ever finished.

Fellows travel all over the country for ten or twelve years hunting for demoui beads to complete the marriage, so that she really becomes a member of his clan. His in-laws, of course, are always after him to pay the demoui. They probably have some marriage plans too and need a demoui as well.^[47]

Further complications set in if a family breaks up.

The husband may want the stuff back. In the meantime, this stuff may have been used by the bride’s brothers to purchase a wife, and it may in turn have been passed on through several families. This means that the break up of one couple can start a chain reaction among the several succeeding couples who must give the stuff back.^[48]

The person wishing to get married or to complete his marriage frequently cannot get enough bride price. If that is the case, the fellow can make a younger sister marry someone who has money available then. “This results in a young girl marrying an older man. It is not a desirable thing, though it is something which is quite prevalent. She may run away and the man has to pay back, but it is a way for ready cash to be accumulated.”^[49]

Love songs are replete with references to the young men losing their loves to the rich man or to the old man.

When you have a daughter and she didn’t marry early [15 or 16], you will give her to someone who has the money. Because of that the singer said, “If I don’t praise my friend in my song, I will be blamed like the lady that has been given to the old man for her whole life.”^[50]

The rich man gets proud about his demoui and waiting for the beautiful girls, girls who can be given to him. If I’m a girl, I can agree to be given to a rich man if my brother forces me.^[51]

A rich man is just looking for a girl and he has a bald head. The poor boy, even though he pays less money, he paid in the way that he thinks. But the rich man always pays money without talking to the girl [Or not informing the girl that she is going to marry him]. [These modern love songs are against the rich men or the old men. The young boys are against the old men marrying the girls.]^[52]

Mentions about the girls who are given to the old men. They give the girl and the old men give money back. Among these girls, who are given to the old men, “who is going to live with the old men all their life?” [An old man is 36-40 or older].^[53]

To live with a rich man will give you worry and many difficulties. The rich man can beat the girl and try to chase her away. They can be happy with the girl if the behavior is right. If she works very hard. If she misbehaves, he will think that she is thinking of her lover. So, she will be beaten and mistreated. Olieng produced this song. He married three times. Because of his poorness, the parents of his wives refused to let him marry their daughters. The last girl he married loved him very much. In this song he was advising her not to refuse to live with a rich man.^[54]

Henry Akway concludes his account, saying:

When you finish all these things, immediately you run away with her, you and your friend, the boy and the girl. You leave and go to a village where some relatives live. After three days, your wife will return to the home of her parents. She will prepare a beer… a big beer… many pots. The relatives will come to your house. She will be brought back. She will dance, she will drink. You will have to pay for each pot of beer to make her relatives happy. You have to prepare something for the guests that come, food and beer. Now the wife has to remain with you.^[55]

Marriages tend to stay together although the relationship between husband and wife is very different than a Western marriage. Tippett reports:

My Anuak informants assured me that marriages that are properly paid for hold together. It is only when a man manipulates his sister’s marriage to pay for his own that marriages break up, and the Christians were outspoken against this practice as an unfortunate departure from tradition.^[56]

1.3.2. Family Relations

The Anuak does not marry within the clan because of incest taboos and because of the bitterness engendered over dowry talks. It has been mentioned that one of the functions of the dance is to determine eligible individuals for courtship and marriage. Intervillage dances are held to provide an opportunity not only for recreation but to provide a way of meeting eligible people from other clans. The praising sections of the songs provide the service of clarifying and alerting the people to the related and nonrelated individuals in the dancing lines.^[57]

During the years that the woman is being paid for and before the bride price has been completely paid, her loyalties are to her former clan.

Until she has been completely paid for, she is a better sister when she can steal from her husband and to send home to her own clan. She steals from her husband all the time. She will steal cloth, spears, and grain to give back to her own clan and family if possible. Her loyalty is always to that other clan until she has been completely paid for. That changes as soon as she has brought up her first female child and had her married. Then this woman’s loyalties come to her husband’s clan and her daughter will return things to them. When her daughter is married, the first marriage dowry has to go to pay for the woman and then she is completely paid for. She no longer has any connection with the old clan. She is broken from it completely when she is paid for and becomes a member of the husband’s clan.^[58]

In the meantime, the family grows. But during the early years of marriage, the husband and wife tend to live separately from each other. For the most part, the husband will continue to sleep with his age set in a sleeping hut in the village. They also eat at separate times and frequently in separate places. “It’s considered below a man’s dignity to eat with a woman. To sit down with his wife and children to eat is an unheard-of thing.”^[59]

The woman will have a child every three years or so. She will inevitably go to her mother’s village for the birth of the first child “No one but your own mother has the patience to teach you all the things you have to know about a new baby, such as nursing and sleeping with an infant without rolling over on him.”^[60]

The mother will start to her mother’s home only when she begins to have labor pains. And she may not make it home. She will go into a cattle barn and have the child there. She can’t go into somebody’s house unless she goes into a house of a member of her clan. The spirits in her clan are the same, but the spirits of another clan are not the same. Before she leaves her husband’s home, a sacrifice is made to the spirits of the cattle barns. She will go into a cattle barn or go out in the field and have her baby but not in another house. In the barn, they will take the hot ashes out of the fire. (They have a fire in there all the time. Day and night, they throw dried cow dung into it which causes smoke and keeps the flies out of the cattle barn.) The woman sits down in the warm ashes and that is where she has the baby. A child born under these circumstances is always called Memwela or Moowela, the little traveler, boy or girl.^[61]

The mother keeps the child with her until it is about three years of age at which time the child is weaned. The chief decides on the time for the child’s weaning.

During this whole period, the woman is not living with her husband at all, or anyone else. She has to be free to do as she pleases. She doesn’t have to work; her sole job is to take care of the child. She is traditionally free to travel, to visit others with the child on her back. No one will touch her as long as she is nursing the child.^[62]

To wean the child, he is sent to the grandmother so he won’t be able to nurse anymore. What the child had depended upon completely is now abruptly taken away. More of the children die at this time than at any other period in life. They are doing without mother who they were with for every minute of time up till then. They are taken away from the mother and taken to another village. The child never comes back again to that mother in the relationship of mother and child. This is a tremendous psychological shock. Taken away from its home and security and sent off to live with strangers, it has to live in another village until the mother is pregnant again or until her breast has dried up and she is not able to nurse. Then the child will come back to the village.^[63]

Because of the tribal taboo on sexual contact while the mother is nursing, children are born about every three years. The husband and wife don’t live together much until later life.

A dominating factor in the mother’s life is the desire to bring a child to maturity. A woman has no status until this occurs. A barren woman is rejected by the community and a woman who has had many children but they have died, will be blamed and her status would be the same as if she were barren. The Anuak always likes the first child to be a boy. But they also find girls very valuable because of the work they can do and because of the bride price that she can bring in.^[64]

The Anuak are polygamous to a degree but probably the great majority have only one wife. A chief may have more than one wife and he finds this very useful because of the large amount of entertaining that is demanded of him.^[65]

1.3.3. Childhood

After the child has been returned to the mother after being with the grandmother, he will start running around with other children of his own age. Virtually all activities for the boys occur within the forming age set. They live a rather undisciplined and carefree childhood, though they are expected to help with the cows and the goats and stand guard over the fields of growing grain. Other than that, the young boy has considerable freedom until he begins to be ordered about by the age set above him. Then much of his time is spent in caring for the whims of the age set, running errands and being available.

There is little of the same activity for the girls who usually stay at home. At times, girls will play typical children’s games with children their own age. But most of the time she has certain jobs to do at home. From the age of six, she is a baby sitter. She will have a small pounding stick by the age of ten and will begin to make a real contribution to the economic life of the family in preparing the grain.

As has been mentioned, women do not develop age sets like those of the men, but they see life in five stages, connected with biological or functional classifications. When the girl becomes capable of bearing a child, she will go into a courtship period which allows her a greater degree of freedom for a time. Upon marriage, a woman’s freedom becomes extremely limited and her life then becomes centered around preparing the food and raising the children.^[66]

1.3.4. Naming

The Anuak method of naming a child is tied into certain specifics in the life of the individual. The first name indicates what child he was in the line, the second name is identification. Then, at initiation time, the boys take a bull name. The girls do not. Usually, they are named by this bull name until they are an elder and then it changes again.^[67]

To indicate what child he is in line, the first born is Omot or Amot, boy or girl; the second born is Ojula or Ajula, boy or girl; the third born is Ochalla or Achalla, boy or girl. The second name will describe some particular circumstance surrounding the birth of the child. When nurses began cutting the umbilical cord with scissors, babies were given the name Magast, the word for scissors. The baby born in the barn would be called Memwela or Moowela, the little traveler.^[68]

Above and beyond these names are those that are mentioned in the songs, the important bull or animal names. In phrase after phrase of the songs, the informant would state that the singer was praising the people  after their animals. Because of the character of the first and second names, it would be difficult to distinguish one person from another, especially for the vital information about clan relationship. But by using bull names, a person can be exactly identified. Good explanations of this process were a result of discussions during song translations.

People are called after their bull. A bull is special. People take the characteristics of the bull.^[69]

If you are known in the village, the king will give you an animal name. He will give a cow and the different colors of the cow will give you many ways to appreciate the king. You will praise the king using the colors of the cow he gave you. It doesn’t make any difference if the individual wants to kill the animal named for him.^[70]

Even a son can be expressed by an animal that the parent is named after. In the village, they are divided into many places with clans and lineage. In your clan there may be a big tree or an old tree. The children of the village can be expressed through the name of the tree. Every citizen of the village or from the same clan can be expressed through the tree.^[71]

The singing dancer is praising his bull. The bull has eyes that are bright by night and he is comparing the colors of the bull with the colors of other animals. He is actually praising himself with the dancing and the singing. Certain sections mention his birthplace, mention a certain tree, and the bulls of the grandfather, and father. I’m the son of this kind of bull.^[72]

Names of the people are mentioned according to their animals. Sometimes they mention names according to the generation where the mother is from. If there is a permanent large tree in the village, everybody from that clan or that village will be admired to the big tree. (It may be another type of permanent object, such as a large stone.) If I’m or my mother is from that village, I will be named after that tree also. The animals which you are named after cannot be mentioned exactly but they will be mentioned indirectly as a proverb. The lady was named after the turtle. If I want to call her, I would not call her as a turtle, but will say, “An animal which carries house and bed sheets together.” They have three or four types of names. The first is named after your animal, the second after your mother or a big tree in your mother’s village; the third after your grandfather and grandmother; the fourth after your uncle. If these people have different animals, you will be named after them so to admire a person in all directions. The lady who sang this song said, her animal passed from Juba and if translated, means an airplane. Her animal is an airplane. She has mentioned, “When ants build an ant hill, she moves slowly around the ant hill. When it sees a person, it will put its head in.” Again, she is mentioning the turtle.^[73]

The men and boys have their own animals. The ladies do not but they take the name of their husband’s.^[74]

1.4. Community

1.4.1. Councils: The Jo Burra

The Jo Burra is actively involved with the chief in the day-to-day ruling and leadership of the typical Anuak village. They advise and assist the chief in making legal judgments. By consensus, they agree on matters of justice that come before them. As has been established to be the pattern of the age set, the men of the Jo Burra spend most of their time together, close to the residence of the chief. They frequently sleep together in a sleeping hut (where the drums are also stored). Some are assigned day by day to guard the chief.

The area in which these activities occur is called the Burra. Initial impressions of the Burra were recorded in the Field Notes: “We arrive… and stop under the meeting place of the men. Here we wait. This place is so important to the men of Anuak villages that as each pass by, he puts his right arm behind his back, grasping it with his left. This is a sign of respect for the place, usually under a large tree where the skins are set out and the men sit or lie and talk.^[75] Lienhardt describes the Burra:

Most important is the exterior hearth of the headman’s homestead, the Wic Mac of ordinary men, which in the case of the headmen becomes a place of reception, or court, for villagers and guests. It is called Burra, which may be connected with the Bur or Jobur meaning, “The people who traditionally own the village.” It is partly surrounded by a fence like those of the courtyards of ordinary homesteads, but better constructed and decorated with carved posts. On one side, it leads directly into the headman’s own courtyard, from which it is divided by a fence and screen, and it opens on to the main dancing ground of the village. Although partly open to the public places of the village, it is not treated as a thoroughfare and, unless they are visiting the headman, villagers do not pass through it in the course of daily movement to and from the gardens. The partial screening of the headman’s court is so arranged that people may pass the court behind a screen, and avoid the ceremonial stooping which is necessary when passing the line of vision of the headman.^[76]

1.4.2. Advisors

As with most affairs of the Anuak, there are not strict methods of doing things from one village to another. The variations from village to village include the functions of government. In many places, rule is very much in the control of the Jo Burra. In other places, the chief and older advisors may dominate. It is an informal situation, difficult to generalize.

Older advisors, not of the Jo Burra, will live together with the chief and act as council. “These are older men who are helping in the leadership of the village. If it is an easy problem, the chief and these two will solve it. If it is a difficult problem, it will be settled with the chief and the Jo Burra together.”^[77] Terminology varies for the same office in different parts of the Anuak area. Those living in one area may call an advisor Karawong, whereas they may call him Nyibur in another. This study will use only one set of terms and rely on the writing of Lienhardt to clarify these functions of older leaders who serve the chief.

Headmen appoint deputies who handle guests in the absence of the chief and to whom minor problems of village life may be taken, not for decision but for discussion. The headman’s representative is Nyikugu, and he may come from any lineage. Almost any person who is regularly with the headman, and to whom the affairs may be referred to, in that temporary context, as Nyikugu, though in some villages the office is more highly formalized than in others and is often passed from father to son. The person who is Nyikugu may also sometimes fill another office, that of Nyibur. The difference between these two offices, in principle, is that the Nyikugu is the personal representative of the headman, while the Nyibur is the headman’s representative in relation to a particular territorial area. The Nyibur, then, is a person in any village who represents the traditional owners of the village as a social and territorial unit, and his major duties are connected with the proper entertainment of guests in the headman’s absence.^[78]

A characteristic of the Anuak village is the independence each one displays. These separate governing units join together only grudgingly. Even in war against a common cause, the Anuak villages have great difficulty in uniting. The village chiefs are most concerned with the internal affairs of their own village and have no authority of any kind over another village.

1.4.3. Song Leaders and Composers

Other than the chief and those close to him in the Jo Burra, it is hard to find anyone in the village who has any more influence than that of the song leader-composer. These two functions are hyphenated because the song leader and the composer are frequently one and the same. There are men who are composers who do not have voices that carry well enough in the village singing situation who will teach another person to sing their songs. And there are singers in the villages who sing the songs of the village but do not compose their own. But it would seem that the strong and dynamic leaders that I have observed were men who were able to lead the village with loud, resonant, carrying voices in song composed by themselves.

From observation, it seems that in large village situations, the song leaders are men. A variety of young men have been observed, some as young as twelve or thirteen, but no women have been seen leading in the village. In other situations, such as the church service, Mary Akela has led the congregation but not from the front. She sang from where she was sitting and the rest of the audience would join in. It is possible that in small gatherings of children or young people, girls may take some lead but this seems doubtful. Natural, culturally induced shyness would mitigate against this occurring. The song leader is usually a man. Composers may be either men or women.

Well-known singers like Odiel are popular with the villages as a whole and are in considerable demand. He travels extensively from village to village and provides music for several places. Frequent traveling allows greater chance of financial return as the singer prepares songs for the various chiefs in the area, carefully remembering the people and village events in the songs. Some singers show great style in singing, strutting and moving and gesturing as they sing. They assume a position in the dance of standing by the drums and with the dancing revolving around them at times. The singer is very much the center of attention and controls much of the action of the village dance.

Singers seem to have a remarkable memory. Anuak songs tend to be long and contain many words. To be able to remember the songs of the various villages is quite remarkable. Song leaders tend to specialize. Some will sing and compose Agwagas only. Others specialize in Oberos. Odiel sings Dudbuls, Oberos, and modern songs, but he doesn’t sing Agwagas.

Singers seem to spend a considerable amount of time asking for some gifts to be given them. The very good singer-composers tend to limit their requests for gifts. But the lesser singers will fill their songs with insults and talk continually about their poorness. “One who doesn’t sing well doesn’t get anything.”^[79]

But even the well-known singers seem to spend a considerable part of their songs asking gifts from the people. I asked on one occasion, “Don’t people get tired of hearing, ‘Give me something, give me something?’” “The singer considers his songs as the important ones in the village. He may be the best singer in the village. So, if the people get tired of hearing his songs, who then is going to be the singer?”^[80]

Because singers do not live in one place, they do not seem to maintain close family or kinship ties and find it difficult to raise sufficient bride wealth, the mark of richness among the Anuak. They may receive portions of this wealth from the chiefs for singing, but usually they are poor. They find their life difficult for other reasons as well. People have a tendency to fear the singer. Because they have the power of song, villagers tend to shy away from the singer, fearing his ability to put their names in his songs. Villagers would just as well avoid contact so they would not be remembered or criticized. Therefore, the singer will at times find difficulty in finding a circle friendly enough for him to join to eat his meals. The singer is also the target of jealous reaction. There is considerable jealousy among singers since they may be competing for the attention of the same chief. “The singers are against each other always. He mentions those who are moving from place to place. They are not the real singers, but they are liars. They can insult each other in the song. They share prizes from the chief or the kings. A singer said, “When he realized the rumors of his cruelness, he didn’t sleep at all.”^[81]

It seems, as with drummers, singers and composers sing and compose because they are able to. The young man with the clear voice and the good memory for songs will be accepted in the village dance and lead the singing. He is encouraged if he succeeds. One informant stated that they learn the old songs from grandparents. “A fellow will sing for his group something new. If they like it, he will continue. first with short songs and then with ones of greater length. They will encourage him to continue.” The two song leaders at Ebago used an approach that was typical.

The children who had been listening to the discussion now became a most enthusiastic and well singing chorus with a very strong and quite excellent leader. After singing one song, the leader sat back assuming he was finished. I then replayed the tape for him which entranced him. He then immediately asked if we would like another, and another.… A second man then volunteered to lead a short song, which he did. This war song was accompanied with mock attack by several men on the periphery of the surrounding group.… As seems to be characteristic of their singing, they sing with great power, full voice, intense and rhythmically, wearing themselves out, giving all they have.^[82]

1.4.4. Kings and Chiefs

One may find chiefs and kings ruling in the Gila area of the Anuak area. One does not find kings in the Baro River area. There are some differences in the offices. The concept of king is not one of grandeur. There may be many kings. But a king holds authority over a wider area than one village. The chief is generally over one village and may be responsible to a king in those areas where kings are found. The king rules until he dies, no matter how bad he may be. The chief rules with consensus and may be deposed.^[83] Murdock describes the king’s role and clarifies differences between chiefs and kings.

The whole system is based on prestige alone. The king is not a ruler; there is no central government; neither king nor nobles engage in judicial or other government functions; there is no administration of the area where the system prevails; there is not even joint military enterprise or any restraint on the intervillage warfare. There is not even a capital, as the king ordinarily moves from village to village each being honored to support him for a time.^[84]

Anuak folklore states that kings originate from the river. They are not born.^[85] A custom of determining the true king is related by Seligman.

When a king is crowned a special chair is used. It is a three-legged stool, one leg being very weak. If the king elect was able to balance on this stool without falling, he was recognized as a true son of the king and rightful heir to the throne; if he fell over, he was held an impostor and would be killed. If he succeeded, a certain necklace made of large red beads, with one much larger ivory bead in the center would of its own accord come crawling like a snake upon the ground and encircle him.^[86]

Informants relate a story that is very similar. He sits on the special chair and they put beads on him. And the special ones are called ocwok. If you are not really from the king, the people say, if you sit on that chair you fall down. And you will be killed by the people who are bodyguards who watch that chair. If you are the son of the king, that chair will move with you around.^[87]

Murdock provides information on the lineage of the chief: “Each village is associated with a particular patrilineage so that it tends to be a Patri-local clan-community…Even in mixed communities…one lineage is dominant and always provides the headman.”^[88] McClure assumes the lineage relation with those of the Jo Burra, and comments:

If he is unsatisfactory or dies, then someone else in that same line is found. The elders will choose the chief from among their own number. It is nearly always a man with several wives because the chief has to feed those men too, the Jo Burra. Every time they have a meeting, he has to furnish the beer for them. He has to have a number of wives to make the beer.^[89]

The length of time that chief will remain in power depends on his skills of consensus leadership. “The chiefs change from time to time. If the chief doesn’t act like a chief, they will kick him out.”^[90] Anuak informants discuss the length of rule of the chief.

If everybody loves the chief, he can rule for more than twenty years. If the chief does not rule acceptably, they can chase away the chief. If the chief rules satisfactorily, the village will hope that his son will lead like his father also. So, they will select his son to be the chief. Even though he is still young, he can be selected. (He need not be in the same age group as the Jo Burra. He can be even younger than the Jo Burra.) If he does not rule well, he can be expelled anytime.^[91]

“Rarely is a deposed headman killed. He is usually expelled from the village in a bloodless revolution, usually taking up his residence thereafter in the village of his mother’s siblings, whence, of course, he may be recalled to rule again.”^[92]

Consensus rule withstanding, the chief is accorded certain honor and privilege: “Within the songs, the chief is described as the root of the tree. The common people are the branches.”^[93] When the chief walks down a path he is often preceded by drummers and a special drum beat. If a village has a bugle in its possession, this will be blown to signal the approach of the chief. Songs and dances praising the chief are composed. Of course, this is a reciprocal arrangement and the chief is expected to respond with gifts to the composer and to the participants of the dance. Compliments and praise require a response. The chief is the only individual in the village to be allowed a chair. It may be a chair made out of crude wood slats, but no one else in the village has the honor of sitting so high. The Field Report of July 24, 1972 describes this custom in the village of Illea.

“Action is very slow and so Paul says, ‘We came the first time and you said to come back and you would be ready. We came the second time and you were not ready. Now we come the third time, and still, you are not ready. What’s the matter with you fellows?’ At that, the chief gets up and goes to his house and soon a man brings out his chair. This is placed in the center of the area facing us. The men immediately move to the sides at a very respectful distance. Then the drums are brought out and then the children and women began to appear.”^[94]

Other acts of deference include allowing no one other than the chief to wear shoes in the village. Infractions of this rule results in the fining of the person involved. The Burra is accorded special honor. I saw men and women pass the Burra bowing or on their knees. One of the most memorable occasions was the sight of women dropping down and crawling on their knees toward the chief after performing an Agwaga dance for him. In this case, a financial motivation was involved. They expected a reward for their performance, but were not at all sure that they were going to receive it. It seems to me that these acts of deference are practiced mostly by the older men and women and more out of custom or reward than out of fear.

Headmen never appear barefoot, for the removal of sandals is a sign of inferiority in status, and they do not observe the customs of ceremonial respect for various categories of affinal relatives which are followed by ordinary men. Most striking at the headman’s court is the ceremonial low bowing posture, almost a crouch, adopted when approaching the headman or crossing his line of vision. Where men bow low, women proceed on their knees; and men also approach the headman in his court on their knees.^[95]

Bacon describes “the real respect and fear”^[96] displayed by the people toward their king. However, all this may not be what it seems. Only as long as the chief maintains the people’s approval will they continue to accord these acts of subservience and honor.

Some of the governing duties of the chief have been mentioned. He also has a role in deciding when a group of boys is ready to formally become an age set. He dispenses the spoils of war: “He will take the children, ladies, guns, animals and will choose to whom these things will be given.”^[97] He has the authority to give out farming land to an individual. He also has the power to confiscate the field as punishment. The chief does not own the land but the office of chiefdom has control over it. He has no personal rights to the land beyond his tenure.^[98]

The chief has certain legal and judicial roles to play.

In the case of not quite sure guilt, the chief must make a decision of what the consensus of the group is. He must read it right. The group that makes the decision is the Jo Burra. Might makes right but he must know what the might is. If there is a split in the group, then there are problems. Therefore, much talk occurs so that consensus is reached. The chief cannot be bribed. He gets a fee for having handled the case. The chief and the Jo Burra have to take the credit and the rap for having settled the case.^[99]

The headman is responsible for the village and all the activities within it. “The headman’s permission is required for a dance, and he will not allow small groups of young men to take out the drums and play them unless he judges that the village as a whole is anxious for a dance.”^[100] In the eyes of the Ethiopian government, the chief is responsible for the village. The government works through the chief and holds him accountable for any misdeeds in the village as well as the collection of taxes and other intergovernmental functions. Field Notes state: “Today we wait quite a while and very little seems to be happening. Eventually the chief comes out. He is the young man I met several weeks ago on our first visit into this area. He has just come back from being in detention for several weeks to get more taxes out of the village. Villagers had paid four dollars apiece earlier, but because there is no place for these people to keep such receipts, as they have no boxes in the village, they are at the mercy of the government to extract more taxes whether previously paid or not. So, this time, they got three dollars more per head.”^[101]

What is most necessary in a successful headman, after great generosity, is a quality they call atiedi, which might be translated as composure. It means, however, more than this. A person who is tiedi is one who appears to have reserves of strength, who keeps his head, who has the manner and habit of authority. He is the sort of person to whom people will listen. Such is the character of the ideal headman and in fact, people judge him according to their pursuit of their own interests….^[102]

It is a tenuous reign, that of a chief. Yet the system continues in the Anuak tribe, and for the most part, it works.

1.4.5. Justice

One of the functions of the Jo Burra, advisors, and chief is to mete out justice in cases that come before them. The people conceive their society to be within the confines of the village. In the minds of the Anuak, there is no higher court, no greater governance than that of the chief and the village leaders. The government of Ethiopia and its courts are far off, little understood, and because of previous experiences, little trusted.

If you and Paul had a dispute, would you go to the chief to settle the problem? What would you do?

If you have a dispute, first of all go to the people living in the same place. The old men for example, would settle their own cases before going to the chief. If it is very difficult for them to settle, they can go to the chief. The chief and the Jo Burra will get together and discuss what is the problem and settle it. But they wouldn’t go to the Ethiopian court except for killing. If I kill a person, I can go to the Ethiopian court, but the easy problems can be settled in the village.^[103]

In the village, justice is swift and generally good. Injustice may come down upon the age set below the ruling age set, but generally justice is fair.^[104] If the case is clear cut, the chief will make a decision quickly. If the decision is a difficult one, the chief must make a decision of what the consensus of the group is, and try to accurately interpret that consensus. It is the questionable cases that draw a crowd and put the chief on the spot. The Anuak tend to see justice in black and white. There is a need to fix blame and innocence.

One thing we have learned from trying to hold courts here on the compound, with the group of elders and men who live here, is that they don’t like to accuse both parties. If two people have been fighting, the one who started the fight should be the one who gets the judgment. Maybe the other one who had been provoked might have cursed the guy or something so he was at fault too. But you can’t judge both of them. You have to judge one and exonerate the other. The can’t both have some fault. We used to say, this one picked up the stick so he should be fined this much and this one cursed, so he should be fined this much. But they say that this method is not fair. You can’t fine them both.^[105]

A new force in the society of the Anuak is the presence of the Anya Nya, the freedom fighters originating in the South Sudan. They have come into the communities and are providing another step in litigation, beyond that of the village chief. The Anuak would rather go to an influential Anya Nya member than to the Amhara court.

If it’s a simple case, they can go to the chief, but if it is a hard case, they can go to the Anya Nya. They are fair. If they can help it, they won’t go to the government. If the government hears that there has been a killing, the government can come and ask. The chief will say, “this man killed.” If the government doesn’t come, they will settle the case.^[106]

If possible, the Anuak seeks to avoid relations with the Amhara courts. Court procedures in Ethiopia are long and tedious and frequently require a bribe for any kind of settlement.

You would rather not go to the Ethiopian court? It takes an awful long time.

Yes. It takes many weeks and they need a bribe also. Pay ten dollars today and come another day. They make appointments. In the village, there is no bribe. It’s quick and no bribe. Quite a bit different than the Amhara court.^[107]

Templin summarizes the Anuak attitude toward justice and toward their relations with each other. “The people here are afraid of explosions and when something begins to build up, they air it immediately instead of letting it fester on. If a problem can’t be negotiated there is danger of violence ensuing. Try to negotiate first…an excellent aspect of their culture. If there is a problem, they are not afraid to bring it out. They have great courage on this point.^[108]

1.5. Political Behavior

1.5.1. Intervillage Relations

A major category of songs in the Anuak culture is the Agwaga which is frequently a war song. Each village has its own collection of Agwagas that are sung on occasions of celebration and dance. These songs have come from experiences in the past, near past, and in some cases, the present. They commemorate battles with another village, recording the deeds of the warriors, their bravery, skill and valor. Nyinyoni describes the nature of the occasion for these songs.

After fighting a village, when you return to your own village, a song is formed according to the activities. Ebago (the other village) will also make a song. Fighting may have been strong on both sides and there would have been courageous men on both sides, though one side would have lost. Either side would have been happy to kill courageous men on the other side, therefore reducing the strength of the opposing village and so these strong courageous men will be mentioned in the song of either side. If a lesser man is killed, he would not be mentioned but a brave man would gain recognition.^[109]

When they fight, they make songs against the people they are fighting and include the names of the people killed, listing them in the song. So, they laugh when they come to the names. This particular battle occurred in this area about the time of the Second World War.^[110]

The Anuak seem to have enough material to continue composing war songs. They do not seem to cultivate warm relations between villages. Each separate village is a political unit and may be dominated by one clan. A local village may be of another clan and encourage disagreement by purposeful agitation. Conflict can easily break out particularly because of the aggressive activity of an age set. A girl in a village may be the victim of rape and cause for revenge. Generally, a revenge motive escalates into something far out of proportion to what was the original infraction.

In the villages, they have this sort of Hatfield and McCoy feuding goin’ on. And there are some villages that a man wouldn’t dare walk through because village A has been fighting with village B. Village A has killed three of B’s; B comes back in retribution and kills four of theirs. So, A is still one up and it goes on and on and on. This is the sort of thing that very strict British administration stopped in the Sudan. There hasn’t been anything to stop it here yet. I think the police are really afraid to move into one of these things. They don’t have enough strength to stop it yet.^[111]

Hostility seems to be natural to the Anuak when one considers the age set arrangements. Nyinyoni comments on fighting that may occur inside and outside the village.

…even now there is some fighting between villages…revenge motives from previous conflicts. But there is not as much fighting as before. If village fights village, the clans within the village will join together and the whole village will be involved. Arms will be used. If the disagreement is between clans within the village, arms will not be used, but rather sticks will be employed. The chief will call a general meeting and the problem will be solved. The individual will be beaten or things will be taken from him depending on what his misdeed was.^[112]

It is true that the villages have other than aggressive relations with each other. Intercommunity dances attest to that. But songs are not composed to commemorate peace. Because of the nature of the Agwaga, the hostile side of intercommunity life has the greater focus in this study.

1.5.2. Intertribal Relations

If one can report continuing tension between clan, within village, and tension and revengeful fighting from village to village, it is not surprising that the Anuak have a similar reputation of animosity and conflict with neighboring tribes. There is limited contact between the Anuak and the local tribes of Masengo and Nuer. The Masengo refuse to have the Anuak as teachers though the Anuak are beyond them in education. They say, “The Anuak must stay in their area and we in ours.”^[113] The relation between Anuak and Nuer is cautious. They tend to mind their individual interests.

Nuers fear Anuaks sometimes. By this time, the Anuaks allow them to come with their cattle where the Anuak live. A long time ago they didn’t allow them to come; they fought them. The Nuers feared them because the Anuaks had guns. They have the guns and Nuers have the spears. But now they have guns also.^[114]

The serious conflicts are those that occur between the Anuak and the Galla, i.e., the Amhara governors from the highlands. The governmental attitude is outlined by Hess.

…two forms of government, the modern state and the traditional local government coexist in Ethiopia. The regional governments have yielded to government pressure from the center, but modernization of the state apparatus has yet to percolate down to the local level. The governors at these lower levels are often appointed by the Emperor from among the ranks of a traditional ruling family or tribal chieftainship of the given area.

The farther removed from the central government the more the local political pattern asserts itself. On the village level, men still hold office by virtue of local traditions. Where this older pattern prevails, the government frequently finds difficulty in collecting its full share of taxes or land dues. In the past fifteen years the government has made some effort to use the traditional local headman to enforce government policies, but the degree of success is debatable. Among the Somali, the Danakil, and the Negroid tribes, the Ethiopian government deals with the people only indirectly through their traditional tribal representatives.^[115]

Hess’s point of view seems objective. But the policies of the central government at the time of this study and previous to it, have ranged from neglectful to outrightly aggressive.

Racial prejudice is a serious problem In Ethiopia and as everywhere else in the world, it dies hard. A fair skin is often admired but discrimination is based much less on color or even provincialism, than on features and hair texture. School children have to be discouraged from jibbing at those of their fellows who possess more marked Negroid features and what in this context is called slave hair. The terms, Shankall and Baria are used in a derogatory sense and are much resented because if their historic association with slavery. ^[116]

Relations with the Galla and Amhara in the not-too-distant past has been in a slave context. “There are a number of Anuaks living in Galla country that have been taken as slaves when they were children.”^[117] The emperor officially prohibited slavery after he returned following the Italian war, but in the Anuak area, slavery continued past that time.

The Anuaks are very unfriendly to other tribes. They are unfriendly to the Nuers because they have been stomped on by them. They are unfriendly to the Gallas because until just recently they have been slave raided by them. I’m quite sure there are Anuaks still living in the highlands who were raided as children. I met one once who was obviously an Anuak, but she dressed like a Galla woman. I spoke to her in Anuak. She told the missionary that, “I understand what she is saying but I was stolen as a little girl and I didn’t know what I was and so I have just stayed here.” So, she has been assimilated. Slave raiding went on that recently.^[118]

Continued racial prejudice is shown in the experience of a local boy in nurses training at Lekempte. He has had to take a lot of talk from the Amhara people who have come into the hospital. They will ask him, “What do you think you are doing up here? Why don’t you stay down there in your own country where you belong?” So, there is a lot of discrimination. The boys in Addis they stick it out, but they take a lot of guff like that.^[119]

Relations with the highland peoples continues and expands. The chief is responsible for taxes from the villages and there are contacts in the event of legal matters in the court. Some Anuaks are employed in those villages where both cultures meet. Further contact can be noted in the school curriculum, the required use of Amharic in the schools and government offices, and the spread of Amhara customs throughout the empire by officials, soldiers, settlers, and teachers. Greenfield comments:

Today dissatisfaction begins to stem from the nature rather than the location of the central government. It is quite untrue to speak, as newspapers often do, of Amhara or Abyssinian domination of the Ethiopian Empire as if that constitutes the only problem. The problem is rather one of social injustice manifested in a multitude of ways. It is true that the system of taxation, the sitting and distribution of new roads, industries and schools and the recruitment of students and government employees leaves much to be desired; it is true that different provinces are treated differently and that corrupt governors can and do end up owning vast areas of their provinces—nevertheless, there are downtrodden peasants or herdsmen enough in every religious and racial grouping and in every province.^[120]

I have documented situations that existed at the time of the study. Since that time, the Empire has gone through major and fundamental change with the deposing of the Emperor, the discontinuance of the Regime, and the institution of a military rule that at the time of this writing is capricious and murderous. There are stepped-up programs to bring the provinces into line with current ideological thinking geared chiefly toward the communist bloc. These changes have no doubt altered many, if not all of the political and social forces that affect the Anuak tribe.

1.6. Social Problems

As with any society, there is a variety of social problems that concern the Anuak village. These are more or less recognized by the people themselves, but are more obvious to those who study the culture. These problems tend to disrupt the community, are causes of friction, and have certain debilitating effects on the health of the people or on the economy.

1.6.1. Poorness

One need not listen to more than two or three songs before he hears some reference to the poorness of the singer in the words of the song. Poorness and allusions to poorness is a major theme. Poorness is usually associated with the need for a dowry to give for a wife.

It is not the case of land. It is always a case of a wife. Though he has land or a home, without a wife, people consider him as a poor man. To have a wife in our area, you must have sisters. If the father is alive and you are all boys, your father can try his best to remember the money borrowed from him before, saying, “this man has borrowed demoui from me. You go and collect it.” If the boy doesn’t have a father, all the problems will be on him and there will be no way to look for money.^[121]

People within an age set and among their kin do not generally worry about material things because everyone is at the same level. Poorness is tied up with the inability to get sufficient bride wealth for marriage.

1.6.2. Hunger and Starvation

It has been stated that there is usually hunger in the village one or two weeks before the next crop is ready. The people either have not planted enough, have failed to harvest, or have converted too much of the grain into beer. And so, they must get by with very little to eat. This is a time of great discomfort and in some cases, starvation and death. …” There are many periods when the Anuak don’t have all the food they want. Very rarely do we hear of anyone, except old people, actually dying of starvation. Tuberculosis patients are hastened to their end by insufficient food.”^[122]

If you were an Anuak you would really fill up because it may be two or three days before you get another meal. There is no reason really…this area is potentially productive. There never need be hunger. But there is. They tend not to plan for the future…if there is a good crop, the tendency is to use a lot of the corn or durra to make a lot into beer and have a continual beer drink till it’s pretty well used up. Then if something unexpected happens, they are caught short, and they will be hungry. Or, if the next crop is a short crop, they tend to live to try to get just enough to live on. And so, if something happens to make the crop less than they had depended on, then there will be hunger. ^[123]

1.6.3. Flooding and Sickness

The Anuaks build their homes on the banks of the river. As the river rises, their crop lands and frequently their homesteads are flooded. Water runs between the houses and there is dampness throughout. It is a rather miserable existence.

During the floods, with water running between the houses, this must make it very bad to live?

Very bad to live.

Why don’t they move to a place that is higher?

They are thinking, if they move to a higher place like that, they will be far from their home. It would be difficult to get corn also. So, they would rather be wet for a while than to be far from home.

There is much sickness in the villages. Especially when the river goes down, many children will die at that time because of bad conditions in the villages. As the waters go back down, flies and dirty water and coldness also…it’s very cold at that time.^[124]

1.6.4. Laziness

Because of the culture’s emphasis on egalitarianism, there is a strong tendency for some to take advantage of the goodness and industriousness of others. Informants Alemo and Abulla state that, “If a person doesn’t work, then nobody likes him. People will say, ‘Why don’t you work for yourself?’”^[125] But the system fosters the idea of only growing enough for immediate family needs. They put in just as much time as is necessary to plant the minimal field. But this is the old leveling thing. If you get one industrious man, he loses his enthusiasm for industry because his relatives will just come and gobble it up.^[126]

Yilek gives a good synopsis of the lazy person in the village.

There are many men who are just parasites who live off the work of others. This has been especially bad since the trouble in the South Sudan. It’s been very exaggerated by that, by people drifting around like that. And then there was a period when the United Nations was doing a lot of work in this area and hiring a lot of people who liked to work for money but then they wanted to buy grain. And not enough people had hoed grain.^[127]

1.6.5. Dances

It may be rather strange to note dancing as a social problem in a study dealing with music and the dancing that accompanies musical performance. But there are aspects of the Anuak dance that can be construed as a social problem. Village participation in dances is a very basic device for socialization. Much of the courtship practice is tied up in the dancing and post-dancing activity. Attendant practices are not constructive. Most of the time, a large quantity of beer is consumed at the time of a dance. Guns are frequently used and shot off as an expression of happiness and exhilaration. There is a real danger of harm and fighting. The import of a dance may go beyond aesthetic and musical value.

It’s very interesting as well that in the village the married women are not allowed to participate at all. They sit around the edges and watch. The young girls are dancing. If you see an older woman dancing. She is a bad woman. They are unmarried. That’s an indication of what the dances are like. The Christians have begun abstaining. I’ve heard other Christian men who get together before the dance and pray so that they wouldn’t fight over anyone.^[128]

1.6.6. Outcasts

There are certain individuals in the Anuak society who are excluded from village social life. A chief who has been removed from office and has gone to live in another village has nothing to say about the government functions in that village. He may be accepted to the extent that he sits with the men around the fire, but his opinions are not sought and he does not offer them. Virtually all women are married. Those that are not are rare and are on the outside of the society. The Anuak woman has no function outside of marriage. If an individual has been captured from another tribe and bears tribal markings or in some way looks different, he will never be considered an Anuak nor fully accepted.

The people of Deger were considered as a Nuer tribe rather than Anuak. But they were not Nuer. This was a kind of insult. A difficulty in the area and common in Africa as well is that they practice tribalism and mark the face. In Anuak area, if your grandmother or grandfather was captured from the war from the other tribe, people will never forget. “He was from a tribe. He may consider himself as an Anuak. But, he’s really not because of the marks he wears.”^[129]

An incorrigible thief will be thrown out of a village and will become a wanderer going from village to village. In the case of a murderer, the system is quite effective.

If one has committed murder, he will have to leave the tribe if he has not paid the blood price of ten head of cattle (more than the marriage price). Or else one must take his own son or someone from the clan and send him to that clan to take the place of the man that was killed. If an Anuak kills someone from another clan, they are either going to come and kill someone in that clan or a blood price will be required. Usually they pay up. If one kills someone in his clan, there is nothing to be done. They are driven out and become an outcast. They will go to the Nuer tribe and settle down, learn Nuer, take a Nuer woman. This happens fairly often. ^[130]

While recording in Pokwo, I heard the singing of a girl with leprosy. Though she had been considerably deformed and was severely crippled, she was not ostracized. She moved about freely, sang with people around and close to her, and was seemingly accepted for what she was rather than rejected for what she had. This was a refreshing contrast to what I have seen in other parts of the country. There, individuals with leprosy were seen only within the context of begging and were considered to be at the very lowest rung of the social ladder.

1.6.7. Drinking

One cause for heavy village drinking is the added money in the economy. This encourages the women to make more beer than they as a family need and offer it for sale. “This kind of drinking is on the increase in the tribe and you hear the older people shaking their heads about it. Drinking is on the increase and it’s causing food shortages.”^[131] Informants Alemo and Abulla discuss the changes occurring in the drinking habits of the Anuak.

For ten years (ten years ago) they were not selling beer or alcohol. Now they’re selling beer and alcohol. So, they drink day by day. Before that, they were preparing the beer only for themselves, not to be sold. So now if you have money, you can go and drink anytime you like.^[132]

The traditional village beer drinks are also cause for concern among those that observe the society. Though it is a practice that is tied into their celebrations it is nevertheless a matter for concern.

2. Cultural Characteristics of the Anuak Tribe

2.1. Behavior Processes and Personality

There are certain qualities that are unique to a culture which act as a glue to bind that culture together. There are certain qualities displayed by an Anuak that sets him apart as an Anuak. One is not an Anuak only by being born into the tribe. One displays cultural qualities that can be identified as those that a good Anuak would exercise. For the sake of a better term, these qualities are those belonging to the person displaying Anuakness.

2.1.1. Reciprocity

In my first contacts with the Anuak tribe, I felt it would be sufficient reward for the people we recorded that they hear themselves played back on the tape recorder. I thought they would enter into the spirit of the occasion and be willing to share their culture for free. During the very first taping session, I learned that they expected something in return. When I refused to honor their requests, they become quite incensed with me and with my informant. I had to find some way of paying the participants. We had to reciprocate their services with money.

Their requests were consistent with their culture. When the singer in the Anuak culture sings the praises of a person, he fully expects to beg some gift—money, a goat or a cow– so that he can have a feast with his friends. If one has nothing to give, then he better stop the singer from praising him, because by accepting that singer’s song he is obligated in return.

Reciprocity is a relationship in which a person does something to make another person indebted. It is a form of manipulation. In the Anuak culture, loans are very important, and an individual will purposely and carefully prepare a network of loans that he will collect at some time in the future. These loans are particularly important during marriage negotiations, especially among the kin. The Anuak have a way of collecting when they need to.

“An individual is not allowed to forget this indebtedness to his lineage and is made aware of how important they are for his well being in all aspects of his life. It is expected that he will be available to help when other relatives are in need, and he becomes subservient to the lineage through this pressure.”^[133] Mr. Templin relates a personal experience to show how this system works.

I went to a church meeting while living at Gilo in 1965 or 1966. Along the way, I became exhausted after a two-day hard walk. I had misjudged in terms of my own energy. After resting for a couple of days in a village, I prepared to leave and went to the chief to thank him for the hospitality. The chief said, “You can’t go till you have something to eat.” He gave me chicken and mush. I usually leave a gift after being in a place after making it clear that I am not paying for the food though I am actually clearing the bill. But this chief refused the gift. The chief said, “No, I won’t accept anything from you. Today you were in need and I helped you. I will someday be in need and will come to you and you can help me.” Carl states, “And I’ve been dreading that day ever since, because he won’t need a chicken…he will need a cow at least.”^[134]

2.1.2. Egalitarianism

The word, Anuak or Nuak, means to eat together, to share, to be united, to do things in a united and not a separated way. The Anuak community is united in its egalitarianism as well. They are egalitarian to the extreme. The egalitarianism practiced among the Anuak brings everyone down to the lowest level rather than trying to raise everyone up to the highest level possible. The tribe operates at a subsistence level and when a person tries to get above subsistence, he has a great deal of difficulty doing so. If a person is known to have any extra money, the people living with him will take note of it. They will know how much he is making and how much it takes to live and what he has in excess. They will reason that he really doesn’t need all that extra. So, they will approach the individual and ask for their share. The fellow making the extra money will agree with them and say, “I’m an Anuak and I must use it in the Anuak way….” He will give the extra to his kin. This is his form of social security.^[135]

Egalitarianism has other implications. If a person wants to build a house larger or better than anyone else’s, he will get into trouble. No one is allowed to build a better house than the chief without finding difficulty.

Nobody can build a better house than the chief. If the chief has an old tumbledown shack you will find all the houses in the village to be tumble down. Sometimes they get together and build the chief a better house, and then they can all build better houses. But nobody would dare to have a better house than the chief. They would say, “Who do you think you are, building a house better than our chief?” They might tear it down; they might burn it down.^[136]

Egalitarianism affects the Anuak’s attitude toward foreigners and other visitors. The highland Amhara will bow low before a dignitary or anyone above them on the social ladder. The Anuak knows nothing of this. “The Anuak language has no honorific pronominal forms like Amharic and there is little rigidity or stratification on the society in terms of communications.”^[137]

One and a half years ago, two doctors came down from Addis Ababa. They were American doctors from the South. They got out of the plane and the missionaries picked up their own bags. The doctors were quite miffed that the boys did not pick up their bags. They felt this was their due. (The doctors had had contact with other parts of Ethiopia where the boys will pick up the bags and stumble all over you)” It wasn’t the boy’s bag. Why would they want to pick them up? The doctors carried their own bags and the missionaries carried theirs. The boys can’t see the point of someone just getting out of an airplane needing any help.^[138]

Egalitarianism extends to feast giving. If one gives a feast, everyone will come whether they have been invited or not. To turn someone away is asking for a fight. Egalitarianism extends to grade giving. “In the early days of the school, when reports were handed out, there was a threat of a riot because some of the students failed. ‘Nobody ought to fail He finished the year and he ought to go on.’ Now that the precedent has been set there is less tension at grading time now.”^[139]

2.1.3. Sharing

It has been stated that the meaning of Anuak, Nwak, is “to share, to eat together, to be united.” The Anuak are proud of being known as the people who share. To be selfish is very immoral. One who is generous and gives what he has is a good person. The implications of this in the Anuak society are far reaching.

What if you have two shirts and your friend doesn’t have any shirt?

I will give one to him. Before he comes to me, I can give him if I know he doesn’t have anything to wear.

If you come to a village after being away for a while and have five or six shirts?

I will give what I have to my relatives.

This then would soon result in you having no more than anyone else?

I think the idea is to make everybody equal.^[140]

Sharing extends to every aspect of the Anuak social and cultural life. They always eat in their groups. The age set will not begin while others are not present. If it is known that a member of the group is in the village, they will wait for that person to arrive before beginning to eat. It is up to the individual to inform the others if he will be away and not available for the meal. Otherwise, they will become quite unhappy with the person.^[141]

If a man needs to build a house, he can claim the services of every other man in the village. The men will go out and get the sticks. It’s their job to get the sticks and mix the mud. The women have to carry the water for the mud but the men mix it and plaster the house and put the thatch on the roof and then the women decorate the inside.^[142]

Sharing involves all age groups. The children in Pokwo village enjoyed playing with the missionary’s son because he had a lot of toys. He, of course, was expected to share them feely, as far as they were concerned. In the village, if a child is in an age group, he is entitled to be doing what the others in that age group are doing. The child will retaliate if he is not allowed to do so.

Everything is held in common. “No man says this is mine. This is my child, this is my spear, this is my boat, this is my cow. The clan owns.”^[143] A person who has lost his spear may go into another individual’s house and take one without asking. He may lose it and not return it but no explanations are necessary. McClure states:

It isn’t a question of stealing. You just take what you want. You can’t accumulate because someone will take it. But on the other hand, it makes you very selfish in trying to hide away or conceal from the people the things you do have. People who live on this subsistence level usually are very selfish and self-centered. They have to be thinking about how to survive all the time. The system destroys initiative.^[144]

2.1.4. Self-Esteem

Seligman has stated:

Temperamentally, the Nilotes stand apart from all other peoples in the Sudan. They are essentially proud, aloof, tenacious of their old beliefs and ideas, intensely religious, and by far the most introvert of the peoples of the Sudan, desiring nothing from the white man except to be left alone…. Although these characteristics are common to the Nilotes, they are not held by all in the same degree.^[145]

It is indeed true that the Anuak keep to themselves and maintain their beliefs and ideas with little change over the years. I did not find the Anuak to be intensely religious. He does give an appearance of wanting to be left alone. At least he can get along quite well by himself.

The authorities in the Pokwo area paint quite a different picture of Anuak self-esteem. Templin believes that they downgrade themselves about their skills. Phrases such as, “We can’t do that. This is impossible for us. How do I know—am I not an Anuak? Can Anuaks learn things like that?” Or, “Aren’t we Anuaks different from other people?” These comments may be ploys to evade responsibility, or they may be indications about their beliefs about their own capabilities.^[146]

There are also indications that the Anuaks regularly try to transfer responsibility. The characteristic answer to a question is an evasion. The emphasis of such a response, “Do I know?” implies a belittling of oneself with this form of answer, but with an attempt to compensate for the self-humiliation by implication that the questioner was to blame for having been thoughtless enough to ask a difficult or unanswerable question.^[147]

This evasiveness can be seen in a discussion that Templin had with a school boy who was sitting outside of a classroom following the breakfast break at Pokwo school. The student had obviously arrived late.

Templin: What are you doing outside of class?

Student: Didn’t the teacher prevent me from entering?

Templin: Did you arrive before the final bell?

Student: Wasn’t I at the river washing?

Templin: Didn’t you finish eating breakfast on time?

Student: Wasn’t the cook late in preparing it?

Templin: Why are you the only student who is outside of school?

Student: Didn’t my relative call to me as I was running to class?^[148]

If Templin is right in these assumptions, one may say that the Anuak indeed has a rather low self-concept and additionally tries to transfer blame or responsibly on to others. These may be indicative of the power of the group over the individual. They really can’t do it alone. The Anuak must depend on others for success in just about anything that is attempted.

There are other qualities that the Anuak possess:

Loyalty. They are very loyal to their family group and to their tribe. They are very group-dependent and seek to maintain this relationship.

Honesty. Very few are dishonest. Stealing is certainly practiced but it is not considered acceptable behavior. If a person borrows something, he is expected to bring it back.

Courage. To hear them talk, they are more courageous than anybody else. They especially like to compare themselves with the Nuers. This may or may not be true.

Temperance. They are not noted for their temperance. When they have it, they will eat and drink it. Life is too uncertain for any other approach.

Generosity. This is the most respected trait. “A person with a little heart (a little liver) is a stingy man and this is very, very bad.”^[149]

Industriousness. They are industrious at times but not overwhelmingly so. “I go into the village. Most of the time there are men sitting, talking or lying down under a tree. It doesn’t seem to me that they are working very hard.”^[150]

I think that the women are highly industrious and the men are as lazy as thieves. During the hoeing season, they could put in more time than they do. They just put in as much time as is necessary to plant the minimum field. If you get one industrious man, he loses his enthusiasm for industry because his relatives will just come and gobble it up. So, there may be industry in their blood but it just gets squashed.^[151]

2.2. Customs

There ae many customs practiced by a culture that are unique to that culture. These may or may not add richness and meaning to the life of the people.

2.2.1. Tooth Removal

The neighboring Nuer tribe goes through a ritual painful and bloody process of initiation. The face is scarred with long knife marks cut across the forehead. From then on, a Nuer man can be easily identified as such. Informants state that the Anuak have no such initiation rites and they practice no scarring. They do, however, practice a painful activity which, they assure me, is in no way connected with any ritual or tie of passage.

…in commoners the canines are destroyed early in infancy and the four lower unerupted permanent incisors removed at about ten…the Anuak do not scar the forehead…^[152]

This practice seems to be present in other related tribes. The Ju-Luo pull out the incisors in the lower jaw.^[153] Deng reports the same process among the Dinka: after the second teeth have grown fully, children undergo another operation by which the lower four front teeth are extracted. The Dinkas give only aesthetic reasons for the extraction of teeth. To be seen with unextracted teeth is to lack the dignity of a Dinka gentleman or lad.^[154]

Yilek relates the process among the Anuak.

It is not an age thing and not a rite. As you say, it’s just done. Years ago, I can remember some little girl objecting not wanting it done. Her peers would say to her, well who is going to marry you with a mouth full of teeth? It’s a conforming thing. And now the pattern is changing, and the conforming pattern is not to knock the teeth out. Something coming in and I’m pleased. It’s awful. They knock out infant teeth because they say there are little snakes under them, little worms. Of course, the little worms are the nerve ends. When they pull the teeth out, that’s what the are seeing. They think they are unhealthy; and so, they pull out the infant teeth. They also do it to distinguish themselves from another tribe that is a cannibal tribe that sharpens the teeth. This was over in the Sudan, one of the Uganda or Kenya tribes.^[155]

2.2.2. Greetings

Unlike the Amhara, the Anuak do not go through an involved process of greeting each other. They do not kiss, nor formally inquire into the health of the individual and his relatives, his family and his cattle. They are quite straightforward. Certain patterns are used that show deference and make for smooth relations.

The general greeting is doti jot, how are you, as they pass by. They may shake hands with this greeting or they may raise their right hand. “They carry the spear in their right hand and shift it to the left and greet you with their right hand. I think that has a nonhostile connotation.”^[156]

They like to be told that they have gotten fat. Not very fat… but filled out. If you have been on a journey to an unpleasant place, the standard greeting is, “Oh, you are thin.” (Implying, how you have suffered.) When you return, it’s nice to be told that you have filled out.^[157]

If a woman meets her husband coming down the path, they won’t talk to each other. They will go right on by as if they were complete strangers. If a woman meets relatives of her husband, she will move quickly to the side into the bush and hide her face, turning her back. “That is a certain kind of respect. When you get married, you will tell your wife, you will respect all my friends and relatives.”^[158]

For an important person, greetings are more formalized. The people carefully observe these patterns.

The Anuak does not shake the hand of the king. We have to kneel down and rub his feet. That is for respect for the king but not for a chief. For a chief, you bow down and place your hands flat on the ground. Then you just stand up.^[159]

Yilek adds:

They sort of make a hand washing motion and spit on their hands then lay their hands flat down on the ground in front of the chief. This is particularly to show respect, and partially to show that you don’t have a knife in your hands.^[160]

Spitting is more than a greeting. It is also a sign of blessing. A woman will spit all over a child when it is presented to her. An old grandmother when they bring the grandchild home will spit everywhere and that’s a sign of affection and blessing.^[161]

They also do this when a person is sick. When Don McClure was burned so badly, the old women would come in to visit him and they would want to spit all over his legs. A good thing we had him all bandaged up.^[162]

Nyinyoni summarizes:

Your grandfather, or your grandmother, or if you are a really good man within your tribe, somebody whose deeds are known, can be greeted that way. That is a blessing, saying “You are our son and nobody is against you. We think that you should live more years because of your work and your kindness.”^[163]

2.2.3. Visiting and Courtesy to Strangers

The Anuak have patterns of behavior for entering a village and for meeting with the officials of the village that effectively alert people that a stranger is in town and allows them to make provision for his welfare while he is visiting. Lustad states:

They do have polite ways of doing things. When you come into a village, you don’t just stand there. You sit down. There are a number of polite ways and things that they do which, as I have learned to know them, has made me quite impressed as to what a kind of genteel people they are in their way.^[164]

Anuak informants disagree with some of the reports of antagonistic treatment given the neighboring tribes by the Anuak. At least, in dealing with one person at a time, they are hospitable.

If I go for a long journey with one boy not of my tribe, when we arrive in the village, people will give him water first before me. After that, then they will give to me. A person from another tribe must be treated nicely. If my mother doesn’t have anything to eat, this man will be taken by another person in the village to eat there. The Anuak will serve the guest first.^[165]

The visitor in a village comes to a certain place in the village open entry, which is usually near the Burra. Those sitting there will call someone in the village and ask him to entertain the guest. This person will be served and provided a place to stay. If he stays another day, he is welcome to join a group that is eating together. When he leaves the village, he will report again to the place he first arrived at and bid farewell and leave.^[166]

It is considered an honor to be visited and to be thought of as so well off that you can afford to feed and entertain a guest. This is in accordance with the practice of accumulating obligations which can be called for later when the one visited has a need.

In the provision of bounty, it is the recipients and not the benefactor who are thought to render the greater honor. The prestige which a great man receives on account of his generosity is of more value to him than the material goods which he is bound lavishly to dispense in order to obtain it.^[167]

Some visitors may stay for a long time if they prove themselves a good guest. A good guest is one who works and helps in building the house or building the fence or hoeing the garden. “He can be accommodated for a length of time… for a year.”^[168] The Anuak is very careful about not telling a person to leave.

They would never tell a person to go. That would be the height of awfulness. If our servant has done something very bad or has come in drunk, we have to say it some other way. If you say, “Go home,” or “Go,” he says, “Alright, you have thrown me out forever. I’m dismissed.” You don’t use that phrase.^[169]

In numerous visits in the villages, I was received with friendliness and politeness. A threatening atmosphere was present early in the study before a suitable recompense arrangement had been worked out. After that had been settled, people acknowledged the party’s presence in a friendly way and generally allowed free movement in the village. When sitting with the Jo Burra in Illea for the first time, I was given the largest, softest skin. On all visits to the area villages, skins were always provided. In addition, my companions and I were invited to eat with the people on at least three occasions. It was a privilege to share freely with them, dipping into the common bowl with the rest.

2.3. Recreation

2.3.1. Activities

Lienhardt has said that, “The Anuak are excellent and lively conversationalists, and their quick appreciation of wit and argument are part of a more general interest in the arts of life…”^[170] This assessment is correct. Talking within the age group or within the kin membership is of great importance to the Anuak and amounts to one of their major sources and means of recreation.

What do the people like to do when they have time?

What do they like to do when they’re not working?

They like to sit and converse under the tree.

That’s their favorite thing to do?

Yes. With something to eat and something to drink. They will sit and talk for a long time.^[171]

Yilek reports that, “There is someone talking in the village all night long. The village is never entirely quiet. Anytime you wake up, you can hear somebody talking somewhere. If you sit on the hard ground, you will wake up and smoke a little and then go out and find someone else that is awake so you will go out and talk. This is within the age group or among blood relatives but mainly within the age group.”^[172] Templin states that, “The Anuak are tremendous in conversation. It is one of the real focuses of their life and is needful for maintaining interpersonal relations.”^[173]

What do they talk about? Informants state:

They will usually talk about the problems of the village or what to eat tonight and tomorrow or what to drink today or tomorrow. If there is a war between two villages, they can discuss that. They can talk about marriage or if two boys fight and then they discuss that.^[174]

The conversation is based on many points. They can discuss something like their marriage or the dowries or anything they feel like. Wherever we go in the Anuak village, we will find them mentioning something like the demoui. Demoui is what they really discuss.^[175]

They spend most of their time rehashing. “They have a very limited amount to talk about and they ask things over and over again.”^[176] Though their topics are limited in number they are nevertheless very good at conversation and have refined these skills. Templin says that they are “great at getting another person in a corner. Conceptually, they are different from our approach. Often, they talk in the form of a question. You are expected to make a response. They really listen. The line of questioning leads to critical analysis of the other guy’s argument.”^[177]

Other activities are available in the village besides talking. Just about everyone smokes a water pipe which is usually passed around from person to person in the circle. Children play children’s games much the same as they do the world over. (Refer to children’s songs for a description of some of these games.) The universal African game of placing pebbles in holes (hollowed out of the ground) and moving the pebbles from hole to hole is played very expertly by many Anuaks. Some play a game in which a round nut is set in the center of a circle and nuts are thrown at it as in bowling or in marbles. Drinking bouts could be classified as recreation, as there is a great deal of this. A group of men will go to another village because the women in that village have prepared a large amount of beer. They may do the same in their own village. They will spend perhaps two or three days in a village primarily for drinking beer.

Outside of conversation and these other activities, the main recreation is dancing. Entire villages participate. In addition, inter-village dances will be held and the entire village or a group of villages will be invited to dancing at another village. Dancing and music are inseparable and are major recreational and social activities.

2.3.2. Holidays

Holidays among the Anuak are not dictated by the calendar because there is no calendar in the culture. The traditional legal holidays of the Westerner and the highland Ethiopian are noted only because some people take the day off. They have little meaning for the Anuak.

When there is a legal holiday in this area and we don’t work and the clinic staff doesn’t work, they call it a “religious holiday of the Amharas.” Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s Haile Selassie’s birthday and sometimes it’s Maskal and they don’t know the difference unless we tell them. We have latched on to the religious holidays that have teaching value.^[178]

Christmas is observed because of Sudanese influence where it is a big and important holiday. The Christians consider it a big and important day but a lot of the others know it as a big day but they don’t know why.^[179]

Anuak holidays are more associated with celebrations within the culture. If an age set has killed an elephant, a party will take place. Song 26B 2 describes such an occasion.

We better send a message to the older people to tell them we have done our party nicely and happily.^[180]

Such a party would include marching (dancing) starting at eight in the morning and continuing till midday. “Then they will bring beer, drink and eat food the whole day, marching and eating. In the evening, there will be dancing, modern dancing in the evening. And cultural dancing the next day.”^[181]

Informant Nyinyoni relates an interesting custom of putting a new chief to the test in a holiday situation. After being in command for four or five months a special day will occur.

The village will inform itself to do something. On a certain day, the village will make an Agwaga for the chief. It is just like a test. When they make Agwaga, then he will be dancing and then he will be supposed to give something out. Something like demoui or cows to the people. When this (the gift giving) is finished, this will be the time for him to receive his Agwaga. So, these Agwagas are special days for the new chief. They will not stand a long time without making something. The chief will prepare it in his home. Then all of these livestock will be brought there. When they finish, they will go to enjoy themselves.^[182]

Another informal holiday is described by Templin.

When the chief gives the order, all the men go out and hoe his field. Then there will be a beer drink later on. He will give it to them as a reward for having hoed his field. Again, when they harvest the field, there will be a beer drink for having harvested the field.^[183]

Therefore, symbolic holidays as the West knows them do not exist among the Anuak. Holidays are informal, impromptu, and tied into the events that are important in the culture.

2.4. Folk Tales

The old men pass stories around at night and tell them to the young people. “The old men can tell the stories that they have remembered from before to the children. They only remember what has been told to them by their fathers. We can say that they memorize everything. They memorize quickly.”^[184] There are many stories like Aesop’s fables which are passed on from child to child, and there are short stories that are told by the older child to the young while babysitting. The more substantial stories are told by the men. The most interesting deal with the creation story. Though the Anuak consider these stories as myth or myth-fact, they reveal much about the concept of God.

2.4.1. The Story of the Creation of Man

There is no story for the beginning of beginnings. The earth is already made and God is living in an Anuak type house alone with a dog, his constant companion. God keeps on having creative accidents: “Oh a frog, Oh a cow… Oh something….” One day, one of these accidents, a girl and a boy child were created. They were messed up with after-birth and were not attractive to look at. God did not like this thing that he had made, so he asked the dog to get rid of them. The dog’s heart “fell down” and so he hid them in a hollow tree. As the dog milked the cows, he would take milk to the children and he raised them. God did not know this was going on.

When the children had grown into teenage, God saw them in the forest and he was surprised. God said, “Those things I told you to throw out, they’ve grown up.” The dog pretended not to know. God was upset. He recognized something superior in these humans and felt a threat. So, he decided to get rid of them. He decided to make spears to give to all the animals to fight and destroy the humans. He informed the dog to tell the animals to come one evening.

That evening, the dog was very careless in the preparing of the meal. Being deliberately careless, he had to throw the meal out and start over. Darkness fell before the spear distribution came about. Each of the animals came to the house and God threw the spears out. The Lion came. The Horse came. The elephant came, etc. etc.

Then the Lion came and asked for his spears. God said, “I have already given them to the animals. The other animals came in turn asking for their spears. “Where are our spears?” A big clamor arose outside. All the animals were there, but no spears. (The dog had warned man, so he had come and imitated the voices of all the animals, so their spears had been thrown out.)” So human beings acquired all the spears. Because of that, God equipped in some way all the animals to fight against the human beings… horns, claws, teeth, etc. He caught on that the dog is the one who spilled the beans. So, God said, “If you like the humans so much, you will go and live with them.” He chased the dog out of his village. The people acquired the dog who has been their friend and barks at night to warn of the approach of the animals. And God in righteous indignation left the earth and went up to heaven, leaving the warring of people and animals and the earth to the dominion of evil spirits.^[185]

2.4.2. The Story of the Creation of the Horse (Donkey)

Many years ago, God created the world and the heaven. And he created the trees, animals and some other things. After making these, he named them. He gave each animal and each tree a name. But there is an animal called the horse. The horse came in last. So, when he went back home, he forgot his name. So, he came back to the court and said, “I forgot my name.” And God said, “Your name is horse.” And when he went again, he forgot his name. And he came back to God, “I forgot my name again.” And God said, “Your name is horse.” Again, he went, and when he reached the distance of five kilometers, he came back to God again. Then God picked up his ears and said, “your name is horse, horse, horse.” And his ears became very long like that.^[186]

2.4.3. The Anuak and the Cow

When God created the world, He gave a cow to the Nuer, a cow to the Dinka, a cow to the Shilluk, and a cow to the Anuak.

The Anuak ate his….^[187]

2.4.4. The Sun and the Stars

The Anuaks believe that the sun comes up and during the daytime travels under the ceiling that is over the earth. At night the sun travels above the ceiling and back to the starting point. The ceiling has holes in it. Those are the stars that one sees at night.^[188]

2.4.5. The Earth is Flat

No one believes that the earth is round. It’s not round here. It’s just flat everywhere you go.^[189]

2.5. Religion: Belief and Practice

2.5.1. Ethiopia Perspective

Ethiopia has a historical background unique to Africa. It can trace its political foundations back through traditional history and its religious heritage back to New Testament days. But this tradition is only a part of a broader picture of religious practice in the country.

A circle drawn around the western highlands would, for the most part, delimit the Christian heartland of Ethiopia. The eastern plateau, the Rift Valley and its extension into the Danakil plains, and western Eritrea are solidly Muslim. Along the southern and western borders, there are large pagan populations.

No official religious census has ever been taken in Ethiopia. Four percent Christian (Coptic) is probably the closest approximation (Lipsky). It is quite possible that the Muslim population ranges from forty-five to fifty-five percent. Yet Ethiopia has a distinctly Christian history, and religion has played a special role in its past.^[190]

Hess comments on the activity of the Christian missionary groups that have been active in Ethiopia. Some groups are omitted, but he provides an effective picture of missionary work in the country.

A number of Christian missionary groups have been active in Ethiopia, but they have not met with much success. The government forbids any foreign groups to proselytize in Ethiopian Orthodox areas, where missionary work is limited to medication stations and schools. Among the Muslims little headway has been made, either by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church or the European and American religious groups. Among pagan elements, the Sudan Interior Mission, and United Presbyterians’ mission, two Swedish groups, an American Lutheran Mission, and a Seventh-Day Adventist Mission are active.^[191]

Herskovits indicates the influences from outside the Ethiopian borders and their impact.

This relatively narrow pagan strip in the southern part of the area may be regarded as an extension of the line of demarcation in religion that moves in a great arc from Sierra Leone northeast to Chad, and thence easterly until it reaches the Ethiopian border. North of this line, everywhere in Africa, Islam prevails; to the south of it, aboriginal religions have maintained themselves, to meet the missionary efforts of the Christian churches which came with European control.^[192]

Ullendorff continues, “Paganism in Ethiopia is now mainly confined to the lowland areas of the west and south.”^[193] The Anuak tribe is included in this pagan element.

2.5.2. Traditional Beliefs of the Anuak

Traditional religious practices among the Anuak are not highly formalized or well structured. Religious ritual and ceremony are little observed. However, many beliefs, particularly animistic, have a great influence in the life of the Anuak and provide reasons for some of their activities and customs. Herskovits provides a geographic perspective.

…the theologies of east Africa have received relatively little attention from trained anthropologists. In these systems of thought, the universe is conceived as having been created by a major deity, though even here there are exceptions, as in the case of the Lovedu, who conceive of an act of creation without showing interest in its mode or instrumentality. The extent to which this deity is thought to intervene in the affairs of man varies. In some cases, he is considered remote, and one to be disregarded; elsewhere, as among the Banyarwanda, a being such as Imana, the Creator, is a figure constantly to be taken into account. In some societies, the Creator is believed to delegate power to inferior beings, who are directly responsible for what happens to man.^[194]

The great God of the Anuak is considered remote, but he is not one to be disregarded. Lesser gods exist to whom power is delegated. The Anuak believe in one great God who is named Jwok. This is similar to the Shilluk belief: “Jwok appears… to play a part among the Shilluk but prayer is usually offered direct….”^[195] “Jwok is considered to be a God who had a part in bringing man into being but who soon got tired of him and wanted to get rid of him. He is a God who is unreachable and unloving.”^[196] This may be inferred from the Anuak creation story. God, after creating boy and girl then leaves them in righteous indignation on earth and goes up to heaven. “He leaves the warring of people and animals and the world to the dominion of evil spirits.”^[197] But one must exercise caution in inferring major concepts from a story.

It is a situation in which God is a lot of different things. He can be an it and he can be an he. He can be evil; he can be helpful. We get into trouble if we try to be too definite in trying to describe their concept of him because he is different for different people at different times. He is very many different things.^[198]

A remote great God seems to be a part of their culture; however, McClure summarizes this concept of the great God.

They believe God is a great spirit who created the world, peopled it with people and peopled it with these evil spirits. God then withdrew from life and is sitting way off someplace. Just sitting back and enjoying the struggle between the people and the evil spirits. Laughing about the predicaments that people get into.^[199]

The concept of one great God is augmented by what Tippett describes as a “philosophical dualism of good and bad.”^[200] The Anuak believe in a God who blesses and a God who curses. He will frequently call on one or the other. Various songs allude to this.

I will give myself to the god who cursed people. Because of my poorness I am not fit to live.^[201]

I am giving myself to God, saying, “God will help me. The God who blesses.”^[202]

I’m asking God with my ten fingers. It will be my decision to ask God who curses people. Not the one who blesses but the one who curses. He is going to ask the God who curses to kill him or to take him. It is common in our area if a person faces many problems, he will go to a river and say, “Why doesn’t a crocodile come and eat me and why don’t I die. If I will know the place where God lives, I would have asked him where he put my father. What can I do of my bad luck? I may be rich sometime to ask God about it. Now what can I do? I would like to ask God to come and kill me with my ten fingers.” [Possible meanings: one, come and kill me; two, come and kill me; three, come… etc., or, the ten fingers can be on the hands in a prayer position; please come and kill me.]^[203]

Tippett summarizes:

I worked with a number of Anuak informants in the vicinity of Pokwo and found the following theological concepts: the great God is Dwak Ningolabua and the evil god is Dwak Nodungu. The great God is good, creator, provider, one who blesses. The evil god is the one who kills people. The good and evil in lives, which seem to have no obvious explanation but that God was the cause, is thus explained by making a dualism out of deity. When a person dies, friends and relatives will ask the evil God what they have done to deserve this affliction. In the Anuak New Testament, Satan has been translated as Anako—the killer, the crazy one. As to whether or not Dwak Nodungu would have been a better term for Satan is a neat lexical problem.^[204]

Below this level is a system of beliefs of evil spirits and lesser gods. The Anuaks say that the lesser deities are importations from the Nuer. They blame the Nuers for the idea of lesser deities: “We just worshipped God until the Nuers came and bothered us and the Nuers will say, we just worshipped God until the Dinkas came and bothered us. It’s a complicated problem to explain lesser deities. They probably came from the Nuers.”^[205] Informant Nyinyoni stated, “They really have no special gods like other tribes. They always copied these from other tribes. They will know that before there was God. But we don’t know how to worship God.”^[206] Whether or not these secondary spirits come from another tribe or not, “the main concern of the religious life is on the level of fetishism, exorcism, sorcery and the worship of local deities through their vehicles at some village sacred place or tree.”^[207]

There is little ritual associated with the animistic beliefs of the people. This does not imply any less religious activity. The Nilotic is animistic. He believes his world is inhabited by spirits of every kind. These are as real to him as hands and feet. They must be reckoned with, manipulated for his own good and appeased. He is religious and materialistic. He knows that God exists, but for all practical purposes, the creator has abandoned his creation. The only reality is the spirits, hence the sacrifices, the shrines, and the witch doctors.^[208]

The Anuak belief may be characterized by the phrase, “spiritual animists.” McClure graphically relates the implications of such a belief.

Everything is animated with spirits. This table has a spirit. Animate and inanimate things have their own spirits and that’s the reason that no two things in the world are alike. The leaf on every tree, every blade of grass has its own spirit. That’s what makes it what it is. It is different than anything else. It’s not hard to prove that this table has a spirit (knocks on table). You hear it. You hear the voice of the table. Everything you touch has a little different response because it has its own spirit. These spirits all have power to destroy you. These chairs you are sitting on, if you would fall off the chair, it’s because of the spirit of the chair. It wanted you to fall off. To appease it, usually before you sat down on the chair, you would have spat on the chair. Your spirit is going out to the spirit of the chair. This is sensible. A man has a spear and he throws it. After it leaves the tip of his fingers, what controls it to hit the target? The spirit of motion and momentum and force and the fact that the spear when it leaves your fingers, will still go to the garget indicates that it has a spirit. So, you spit on the end of the spear. And if you want to go out and hunt some big animal, then you will want to dip that spear in blood because blood has a stronger power to appease the spirit than beer or spittle.^[209]

Spirits reside in trees and other objects as well, and one needs to be aware of this when in a village. On one occasion, I recorded the singing of a village that was dominated by three large trees. The villagers were surly and did not respond to our requests. The song leader’s absence played a large part for their lack of response. However, attitudes and atmosphere made one believe that other forces were frustrating events. I later learned that those three trees were suspected as being spirit trees and were thought to be worshipped by the community and possibly dominated the thinking of the community.^[210]

Certain trees, both in the bush and in or near villages, are objects of reverence, credited with supernormal power having some connection with childbirth and the naming of children. Formerly regular offerings of food and tobacco were made to these trees, but nowadays the custom seems to be observed only by the older men; and the young men are content to put a few beads on the ground at their roots. Anyone damaging the trees would die, and their children also would suffer.^[211]

“People may swear to the truth of a thing on the name of Dwill. This may be an object, a tree or an animal, or there may be more than one. These are communal spirits and attend to the ‘things of the lineage.’”^[212] It is possible that the mentioning of trees in certain songs may have some spirit connotation. Again, they may merely be the place where the clan or age set assembles.

Tippett mentions Obudula, a god of the rock; Akiti, another god of the rock; Kiro, a spirit associated with an island and a whirlpool.^[213] Informant Yilek relates an experience with these practices in one of her visits to the villages.

I was invited to place my tent in a nice area which had been used as the place for the Jo Burra. It seems that their chief had died and the second chief they appointed died also almost immediately. I suspect that the witch doctor, probably a Nuer, had come and said that this place was unhealthy. The Jo Burra should select a new spot. So, they gave it to me.^[214]

Anuak beliefs can be found in the songs that have been studied.

Odoro: thunder without rain. Then all the kings become suspicious. “Am I going to die?”^[215]

There is an evil spirit in the area. If that person sees you, you will get sick. He mentions it was my bad luck that when I was very small the evil eye person saw me and I fell in the fire. Also, evil eye saw me again and I was to be eaten by a crocodile. I’m leading to bad luck. So, I am going to leave Anuak area.^[216]

A person with bad eyes, when he sees a child, looks on a child and will make him sick. The song says that the Peno people killed a person with the evil eye. Still claiming that they did not kill the best people in the village. They killed the son of the chief. And they killed a person with the evil eye.^[217]

2.5.3. The Influence of the Missionary

The Anuak tribe has been actively evangelized by the missionaries of the Presbyterian church for over twenty-five years. The missionaries are centered in Pokwo and function as teachers, evangelists, doctors, nurses, agriculturalists, and linguists. These activities have touched the lives of the people significantly. Approximately ten percent of the tribe have been converted to Christianity. The mission has intentionally tried to work as much as possible within the folkways of the people.

Many Christian teachings are very understandable to the Anuak because the concepts are imbedded in their traditional lifestyle. It has been stated that the Anuak woman may give birth in a barn if she is not successful in reaching her mother’s home in time. The baby is born on the warm ashes of the fire located in the center of the barn. The Anuak sees nothing strange in the story of the birth of Christ.

If Jesus had been born in an Anuak village, he would have been born in a cattle barn in an area called the gorup. The New Testament is translated, “Jesus was born in a cattle barn and laid in a gorup. The gorup is the navel of the barn (a big circle in the center of the barn).^[218]

McClure describes another basic Christian belief that is very closely related to the Anuak’s traditional life.

Every tribe in Africa uses blood as the final sacrifice to protect them against the evil spirits. If you are sick, you have a blood sacrifice. If you are going out to fight or hunt a dangerous animal, you want to dip your spear in blood. Put some blood on your own body. When the missionary says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins, blood is so essential, that is the reason Christ had to come.” The people comprehend and accept this doctrine.^[219]

Templin describes the approach made by the mission so as not to interfere with the basic culture of the people. The philosophy of the mission can be seen in the issue of clothing. Does getting dressed necessarily follow the arrival of the missionary?

This is why the Anuak project was unique and drew me into it. You don’t go in and impose. You did insert the variable of the Gospel message and then after that train people so they could read and handle it and be able to teach others. And then you just allowed the Gospel to work after that. I suppose we wear our better clothes on Sundays and work clothes on other days and most of these people get dressed up for Sunday. They learn that from us. I don’t know what’s done in a village when they have their service, if people get dressed up for it or not. In Gambela they would do it.

People going to school would try to have clothes to get dressed up with. But it’s not specifically from our teaching because we haven’t emphasized it at all. But it’s more or less that the other people on the earth are wearing clothes and we are not, and we don’t want to be different.^[220]

2.6. Education

2.6.1. Ethiopian Educational Practice

Before the 1974 coup, education in Ethiopia was entrusted to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, various missionary agencies and the government. Where the church had influence, it was considered desirable for boys to have three years of study at the local church school. Frequently, this did not begin until the child was over ten years of age because the child was needed in the family home economy up until that time. Classes were usually held under the trees of the church yard. Emphasis was on the rote learning of the language and Geez liturgy, stressing the Gospel of John. Beginning basic arithmetic was taught as well as rudimental reading skills. The traditional school education gave a student the equivalent of a second-grade education in elementary school. Only in the past decade have some of the church schools accepted the curriculum established by the Ministry of Education. The number of church schools in Ethiopia is unknown. Traditionally, every church is supposed to instruct the young in the fundamentals of the Geez liturgy. Estimates of the number of students enrolled in all church schools have run from 100,000 to 600,000.^[221]

Government school education includes an eight-year elementary curriculum, the first four years in Amharic and the second four years in English. Though there is a scarcity of materials and teachers, a standard curriculum is expected to be followed. The elementary program culminates in a general exam for which the students prepare and are tested on Amharic, English, mathematics, science, and social studies. The student must pass the exams successfully to continue in school.^[222]

The eighth-grade exam certificate is considered to be a ticket to the future and must be obtained at all costs. Not only must one do well on the exam, but there must also be openings available for the student to continue in school. If few openings exist, then the tests are scaled accordingly and the numbers accepted are adjusted to the openings available. Sixty percent or more of the students taking the leaving exams fail. Failure in the exams means that the student moves to the margin of Ethiopian society. He cannot go on further in school but contemplates a future as a beggar, or continually looking for work, working as a houseboy, a shoeshine boy, or a peddler of merchandise on the street. Only a tiny fraction of one percent of the population ever reaches secondary school.^[223]

Today’s government schools are the main means of effective education. Estimates of enrollment for 1968-1969 amount to approximately 514,000. Less than 10% of the seven through twelve age group attend school. The enrollment in the thirteen- and fourteen-year-old age group is only 2.5% while that in the age group fifteen to nineteen is only 1.5%. Long range plans by the Ministry of Education call for the enrollment of 82% of the primary school age population by 1980.

The dropout rate in Ethiopian primary schools is discouragingly high. Although the number of elementary school children has increased annually the percentage of primary school students who complete eight years of education is still small. While the Ministry of Education plans for the secondary education of 19.2% of the school age population in 1980, only 9% of the primary students have been continuing their education.

Thus, Ethiopia has a long and difficult road to travel, for an infinitesimally small portion of the population has completed a primary education and all told not more than 10,000 to 15,000 Ethiopians have completed their secondary or higher education.^[224]

It has been claimed by certain Anuak informants that not only must they compete for the leaving exams, but they must also fall within a quota figure to be chosen for continuing in school. They claim that the Amhara receives preferential treatment for educational opportunity compared with any one else. At the time of this study, the Amhara culture dominated the country from the Emperor on down even though the Amhara proportion of the population was only twenty-five to thirty percent. The Amhara people provided the vast bulk of government officials and leaders throughout the country. According to Levine, the claims by the Anuak informants are quite accurate.

An Ethiopian secondary level educational program includes a wide variety of offerings. These include theological studies, academic courses, elementary teacher training, handicraft teacher training, commercial, technical, agricultural, and nurses training. Admission is the responsibility of directors who consider student’s preferences when feasible. Students must complete secondary school leaving exams before being eligible for college.^[225] Hess has stated:

The emperor regards education not only as the means to economic development but also as one of the keys to greater political unity through a common school curriculum and through a more highly educated cadre of administrators in the central government. There has been therefore, a policy of promoting the teaching of Amharic in all schools as an instrument of national unity. In 1963, the government required that all schools in all areas henceforth employ Amharic, not the local vernacular, as the means of instruction at the primary level.^[226]

Other countries require education in the dominant language of the country. But for tribal areas, it is very difficult to learn subject matter while simultaneously having to learn a second and a third language, Amharic and English. This policy almost automatically gives the Amhara a head start. The Sudan makes certain concessions to tribal areas and allows teaching in the vernacular of the people. If the school is in an Anuak area, the teaching is done in Anuak. If a student finishes the elementary level, he may move into the intermediate and secondary levels by examination. Two opportunities are given to pass at each level. The Anuak young people who have attended Sudan schools seem to have a higher degree of education than those trained in the Ethiopian schools.

2.6.2. Traditional Anuak Education

The unique character of child raising among the Anuak has a significant effect on the education of the child and determines his teachers. A child’s early education comes from the mother. Until the child is weaned at about two or three, all that he learns is from his mother. Anuak women believe that they cannot learn anything except from their mother. If a missionary asks an unsettling question of an Anuak woman, she will reply, “How do you expect me to know? My mother didn’t know.”^[227]

After the child is weaned, he is sent to live with the grandmother who then assumes the role of teacher. The culture does not recognize a woman as a teacher or give her any status for that matter, until she has brought a child to maturity and in effect becomes a grandmother. “The real teachers of the Anuak tribe are the grandmothers.”^[228]

After living with the grandmother, the child returns to the mother and to the wider community of children his own age in the developing age set. The other continues to be the teacher for both sexes until the boy is absorbed into his own age set by age eight, nine, or ten. The girl continues to be instructed by her mother.^[229] The father assists the boy.

When he gets past that period and is back with his own mother again, he begins to be in the age group. Many things he learns in the age group from sitting around as a child and hearing things that the older men will say, makes impressions on his life. A boy will learn certain things from his father, certain skills such as hoeing and learning how to paddle a canoe. It’s a very informal educational system.^[230]

Throughout this informal process of learning and growing, the dominant method of teaching is through imitation. Little other method is used. The child sees and mimics the activity of his peers and parents.^[231] The child’s world grows to include other influences. He sits around with the older men and listens to them talk.

There is a tremendous amount of talk in the village. The kids are not excluded. Kids are made aware of the totality of the culture from the time they are very small. If sitting quietly, ordinarily the kids are allowed to remain. They are sent out for coals or tobacco, and to run errands. And they hear talk about fights or disputes, problems over corn, bride wealth and other problems.

Wherever a man sits down, a great number of kids come around. If it is a king or a chief, small children will gather on the ground in a semicircle in front of him. He lectures and they ask questions in a sort of give and take. When they get older, they ask more questions and become more vocal and start to dispute. But there are no formal education classes. Most of the learning comes from sitting around and talking. The establishing of formalized schools is rather against the culture for this reason.^[232]

Traditional education continues among the Anuak tribe. It remains the accepted way of learning those practices that are important to the tribe and is still the way for passing on the culture of the people. Mission and government schools do not have time to teach the traditional Anuak culture nor would they be able to. But contemporary skills and other information that schools teach are being recognized as important by the Anuak if they are to advance in this world, if they are going to be able to communicate, to become employed and to become competitive in a different culture. Anuak youth are realizing that there is more than the Anuak life within the village and along the river.

I suppose in the future because of this change, education is going to be more and more in schools than by these traditional methods. That will take a long time. It won’t happen overnight. The older methods are still important. There are going to be surface changes but the deep continuing underlying forces in the lives of people is still these older traditional things.^[233]

2.6.3. Formal Anuak Education

In addition to the public school system, there are now more than 260 mission schools. Mission schools are limited to those areas where they are not in competition with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.^[234] The mission schools are having an effect and are being accepted by the Anuak adults as important for their children. The child no longer has to run away to go to school. The parents are encouraging their children to go.

Very few girls are able to succeed in school and rarely will one go to school. Because of their culture, the girls are intensely shy and they are not able to cope with the male teacher. Many never get out of the first grade.^[235]

Methods of teaching are built around the abilities the students bring from their culture. The Ethiopian educational process requires much repeating of phrases and memorization with little in the way of deduction. This is also the way tradition is passed on in the Anuak culture. The Anuak are extremely adept at memorization.

The Anuak culture depends on immediate rewards. The worker is paid every day for his work (unless farming for himself). He doesn’t want to wait until the end of the week. The culture is very task-oriented and not bound by a clock. They will do a task in as much time as it takes, be it two hours or five and when it is done, they are finished for the day. Programmed instruction fits these concepts of tasks and rewards, and forms a major part of the methods used in the Pokwo school.

Programming fits in with experience-oriented people. Come to a level, achieve, rewarded, move on to a new level. This is the most logical way of making the most lasting effect. People like this way the best too. Kids enjoy very much to get a high mark on the test. This is the kind of reward that appeals to them. Programming fits in with their concept of time.^[236]

The impact of this educational process is yet to be felt in the Anuak communities. In the past, if a young person tried to plant a fruit tree, an older person would come and pull it out of the ground because a young person was not thought to know anything. Now more and more, young people are being listened to and their new knowledge is being heeded. New ideas are coming into the communities because of education, but it is very slow process.

2.6.4. Literacy

Although Ethiopia is the one sub-Saharan land where a literate culture has thrived for some two thousand years, today it has one of the lowest literacy rates in the while continent. According to the United Nations survey of African education in 1963, the continent as a whole had a literacy rate of about 15%. Highest rate, Malagasy, 30-35%; Eastern Africa’s rate of 9-14% was still considerably higher than that of Ethiopia where not more than five to six percent of the population was then literate. The Ethiopian government now claims that only 0-10% of the population is literate. There has been some progress, but no spectacular development has occurred. As the third most populous country in Africa, Ethiopia still faces the tremendous task of eradicating illiteracy among its millions.^[237]

The Anuak use the English script from the Sudan and the Amhara script from Ethiopia in which to write Anuak. But the development of these skills has limited value because of the stress of Amharic and English in the schools. “There are not many boys who are learning how to read and write Anuak.”^[238] The literacy percentage in the Anuak area is probably less than five percent although the percentage is increasing.^[239]

The kids are coming to school now but the literacy they are picking up is Amharic, not their own. There was a while when we taught Anuak literacy in first grade, because it was the Amharic letters and then went into Amharic afterward. But the government forbade us to do it anymore. There was a chance that maybe there would have been more widespread literacy in their own language. You have a person from time to time that teaches another person how to read, but it’s on a fairly unstructured and low level. The status languages are Amharic and English.^[240]

2.7. Culture Change

The procedure portion in chapter one of this study presented five specific delimiting factors that were considered in choosing the culture for examination. Point five states: “Acculturation should be minimal. For the sake of clarity and for control of as many variables as possible during analysis, the tribe studied should be one in which little change has occurred. This implies a tribe that is fairly remote and/or whose culture is predisposed against change.”^[241]

Relatively speaking, change is slow among the Anuak tribe. They have not gone through anything resembling the overthrow of ideas and ideals which has occurred in many African countries as colonial rule has given way to indigenous control. The Anuak tribe has not been overly affected by struggles with landowners and aggressive despotism. Lienhardt comments:

The Anuak are certainly among the least administered people of the Southern Sudan, and as far as I could gather, they are equally free from the control of any central government in Ethiopia. Even the administrative centre of Akobo, on the Sudan side, cannot exercise such control as might be expected over nearby Anuak villages, since dissident individuals and factions can with ease withdraw across the river into Ethiopia.^[242]

Change comes slowly because of the type of local government which leads the independent and individualistic villages. The chief rules, but only at the consent of those whom he must please. Decisions and policies made by the chief are usually made in concert with the ruling advisory board. If the chief strays far from the consensus, consensus permission takes time and insures very gradual change.

The reason change comes so slow here is because there must be consensus permission to make any changes at all. If you have a great majority of conservative people, you just don’t make a change. It would be possible now for some people to build a house with a metal roof. Now they might not want it… they might think it’s too hot. But nobody can because this would make you different than anybody else. That’s the thing that is felt most keenly. This person is putting on airs. He’s prouding… that’s a good word isn’t it!

… The pastor over at Gila had been through some courses here and had learned something about medical help. He went to the chief in his village and said, “In my training, I have learned that you can get disease through your feet. I’m not trying to be proud, but I request permission to wear shoes.” He was turned down. But this was the proper way to go about it, and I hardly ever see him wear shoes because he doesn’t want to get the connotation that he’s proud.^[243]

Another major reason that predisposes the Anuak culture against change is the highly structured age set society that is so basic to Anuak social and political life. It affects the acceptance of any ideas that may be new, particularly from the young. More and more young people are becoming educated, graduating from local schools or from schools in Addis Ababa. They return with ideas of new ways to deal with the land, to cope with the seasons, and the myriad perceived ills of the society. They have been instructed in ways beyond the understanding of their elders, particularly those who are in the age set in power. Since students are generally not as yet a part of the ruling classes, they are quite ineffective in suggesting better ways of doing things. Until they become a part of the dominating age set, they will not be listened to.

There will be gradual changes due to education, and change will come as more and more students are spread throughout the area. “There are many villages and few students.”^[244] But change is slow. Traditions change slowly in an age set society.

2.7.1. Causes of Culture Change

Several dominant causes point toward growing change in the Anuak society.

2.7.1.1. Education

To allow a son to go to school causes great difficulty for the Anuak family because the son is a vital member of the economic system. His duty of standing guard over the fields of grain during the growing season is of vital importance for a successful crop. In the past, the men of the village have not allowed their children to attend school, feeling that the crops were much more important. The only boys in school were those who had run away. A significant change has occurred.

…the change from the time when no older man wanted his son to go to school to the place that they are very eager for them to go to school, that is a very significant change that has taken place in the last ten years. There was a time when we first opened the school here when every student without exception was a boy who had run away from home in order to go to school. And now we are at a place where all the students in school are there because their parents want them there. This is quite a sacrifice for a parent to make. This is a significant change.^[245]

Going to school is a first step. Added knowledge does not necessarily result in willing and open minds. The older generations are not very open to the knowledge of the school boy. The older methods are still important and the traditional ways will continue for a long time yet. But in some areas, there are now younger educated men in the Jo Burra and some new ideas will begin to be heard. Some chiefs have had an education. The chief of the village of Illea had a fourth-grade education before he was called back to his village by the elders to become chief. In another town down the Baro river, the chief has had a fifth-grade education. This education, balanced by the rule of consensus of the elders, will result in change… but it will be tempered by conservatism.

Education causes other than economic changes. Education directs the student’s attention outside his village for the first time in his life. Instead of being centered in the clan and in the age set, he now is presented with the necessity of having to learn two foreign languages, English and Amharic. It was felt important to learn Amharic in the past because the Anuak had to deal with the highland officials during tax time and at other times of altercation. Now the value of learning Amharic is seen for other reasons and has turned the student’s attention toward the highlands and the culture of the Amhara.

It hasn’t been too many years that we have had the regular Ethiopian curriculum in our school here. Before Amharic got started here, people didn’t think too much of the Ethiopian way of life. Any part it. And there weren’t so many radios around then either. But it has been since the school has introduced Ethiopia and Amharic and that culture here that people have gotten more oriented toward that.^[246]

Education at times will make a student uncomfortable and unsatisfied and there are indications that the Anuak young person is unsatisfied with his own culture. The young boys want to copy those things that have an appeal. “The young generation don’t like the old culture. They want to catch up with civilization’s way. I think that education (is the cause of this) even though they are not educated.”^[247]

Comparing one’s culture with another’s has often been a difficult and unsettling experience for peoples of the world. Americans compared themselves with Europeans. Africans compare themselves with everyone else. The new enlightened Anuak compares himself with the cultures he reads and hears about in school. He is like Herskovits’ graphic portrayal of the African stereotype.

For many years after the penetration of Africa by the colonial powers, expressions of African artistic talent were described in terms that ranged from childlike and grotesque, to suave and bestial. In mission or lay schools, in the reaction of the European officials who came into contact with African life, it was impressed on the Africans that their way was crude, their tales naïve, their music cacophonous, their dances lascivious. For the Africans who went abroad, this evaluation was confirmed when they saw their carvings and other forms of art exhibited only in ethnographic collections as items of the material culture of their people, and not in art museums. Sometimes the appraisal was made explicit in discussion and criticism, at times it was reflected in the unspoken attitudes of Europeans, but it was rarely absent. It is understandable, then, why those Africans who did not reject their heritage were placed on the defensive, apologizing for their won pleasure in their arts where they did not conceal it.^[248]

Finally, education is a cause and will continue to be a cause of cultural change because of the growing number of Anuak young men who have completed enough education and who have a concern for their people to want to come back to teach in their communities. One informant said, “A teacher has a tremendous responsibility because the people imitate you. I try my best.”^[249] Whether teaching in a government school, a mission school, or a traditional village school, the trained and educated Anuak will have a continuing influence on change in the culture.

What would you do if you came back to teach in this area?

The first problem I’m going to talk about is to talk to the chief to let the children go to school. After tending that, I’ll tell them how to cultivate, and how they are to care for the land also. Maybe I myself will be teaching in the village to help them understand how to be an educated person. They will listen to me.^[250]

2.7.1.2. Media

Merriam has said that, “It is probably the phonograph and radio which are at present most influential in the processes of change.”^[251] He was speaking chiefly of the Congo, but this can also be applied to the Anuak culture. As one travels around the villages of the Anuak, instead of hearing the traditional sounds of the thom (mbira) being played, it has become common to hear a transistor radio announcing the arrival of a tall young Anuak. Through radio, the Anuak has tuned to the West and the outside world, a world he didn’t know existed a very few years ago.

The Ethiopian culture, perhaps as much so as by education has made inroads into the Anuak area. I suppose the radio has done more than anything else. I should say the radio and the school system…to orient the people in this area toward the Ethiopian culture. Not too many years ago, not anyone was interested at all in learning Amharic. And now everyone wants to learn. They appreciate the Ethiopian music and that type of thing. They hear it on the radio all the time. They wouldn’t listen to it if they didn’t like it somewhat, I guess.^[252]

Much of what the Anuak listens to comes from the Sudan which actively beam programs in the Anuak language as well as in languages of other tribes in the country. Ethiopian radio is also developing this field but has not as yet exerted as much influence as it very well may in the future.

Radio Addis Ababa does not yet reach the whole country, which has approximately 100,000 radios. Programs are broadcast in Amharic, English, Swahili, and occasionally Somali, but the schedule of the press, the radio is a useful means of disseminating official information and one can easily foresee the same kind of transistor-inspired revolution in communications in Ethiopia that has taken place in other once remote parts of Africa…. In communications, as in other areas, Ethiopia has been gradually introduced to the one element after another of modern technologically oriented societies. It remains to be seen at what point the cumulative effect of government sponsored change will cause basic irreversible changes in the structure of society and in the balance between the traditional and the modern sectors of the economy. When that happens, change will not be limited to society and economy, but will also manifest itself on the political scene.^[253]

2.7.1.3. Contact with the Outside World…the Desire for Upward Mobility

The outside world to the non-educated Anuak is anyplace outside the villages where he and his kin reside. He knows little beyond his parcel of land and the struggle for survival. To the educated Anuak, the outside world may encompass the Arab world, the world of the highland Ethiopian, or the world of the West. Educated or not, the Anuak is affected by the contacts that come his way.

The impact of Islamic and Arabic cultures had a far-reaching influence on many of the cultures of all these areas, and particularly on those of the savannah belt of West Africa, the coastal belt of Eastern Africa and Sudan.^[254]

Arabic contact has had a definite impact on the music and the culture of the area. Because of the free transversal of the government border, the influx of Sudanese culture continues freely. Contact with the Sudan has increased with the recent fighting in the South Sudan. The pressure of the freedom fighters, the Anya Nya in their efforts to free the Christian south from the Arabic North Sudan, has caused vast numbers of refugees to move in search of safety. Many of the Anuaks have settled on the Ethiopian side among relatives or, contrary to culture, have settled where no relatives are found. Because they receive a monthly settlement allowance, they have brought money into the local economy. Because of a long history of British colonial education in the Sudan, they have brought a superior education. The Anya Nya themselves, with their own systems of justice and law, supersede and bypass the traditional functions of the headman in the village. These factors have unsettled the extreme conservatism of the villages along the Baro River.

The Anuak has a continuing contact with the highland culture. The capital sends out its representatives in the form of police, the military or other administrators. They bring their own education, their own outlook and standards. In some cases, they are a modernizing force; in other cases, a force for agitation, but it is a highland influence. The Anuak considers it a compliment to be called an Amhara. There is a tendency for the people to imitate the Amhara, what they teach, how they dance, what music they like, and the clothes they wear. “Something that is new in Addis Ababa reaches Gambela quickly.”^[255]

The culture of the West is available to the Anuak. Planes are visible overhead. There are hospitals, schools, experts in building and experts in agriculture. The music of America comes in loud and clear over the radio. Informant Nyinyoni states, “Usually they fight off learning new things. But these dances of young men are not the natural (ethnic) dancing.”^[256] There is the James Brown influence: “I feel good” can be heard in any village. The influence of western science on a people who still believe the earth is flat can be seen in this conversation Carl Templin had with an Anuak gentleman.

In Gilo, when Borman made his flight to the moon, on a full moon evening, Mr. Templin said:

Templin: See the moon up there?

Anuak: Yup.

Templin: Today, some people from my country went there.

Anuak: Good.

Templin: (a week later) You know those people who went to the moon the other day?

Anuak: Ya.

Templin: They came back.

Anuak: Very good.^[257]

Whether or not the old gentleman believed Templin, the schools now have moon models and the teachers explained what was happening. One of the students asked: “Why did they go?”

2.7.1.4. The Mission

One area in which the Anuak has had contact for over twenty-five years has been with the mission in Pokwo. The Presbyterian mission has been active in working among the people in schooling, agricultural development, women’s work in the villages, providing clinic services, and church-related activity. Because of the mission, the village of Pokwo is not a typical Anuak village. The big houses of the missionary compound dominate the town. However, the surrounding towns of Pokwomo and Tierlul are quite typical, are ruled by a chief, have usual settlement patterns, and operate quite independently of the mission station. The missionary has taken care not to upset the cultural patterns of the people but has sought to work within these patterns.

Nevertheless, the presence of the school, the agricultural help programs, the efforts to help the people construct better houses that will be above water when it floods… these efforts do affect cultural change.

2.7.1.5. Contact with Neighboring Tribes

Nettl has stated:

Among the many things which cause musical styles to change is the contact among peoples and cultures and the movement of populations which is one cause of such contact. It is probable that most documented cases of changing repertoires are due to culture contacts. People living side by side influence each other and where there is movement of population the greater number of contacts increases the possibility of musical change.^[258]

The Anuak do have contact with the tribes that surround their borders. They are bordered by the Nuer on the West; the Koma (two hundred of them) on the North; the Termas to the South; the Masengos to the East; and the Gallas are on the escarpment.^[259]

Most contact is with the Nuers and the Anuak’s greatest fears are from the Nuers. They have a similarity in basic outlook. The Nuer are cattle people and the Anuak are known as being pretty good agriculturalists. Therefore, they maintain a rather distinct identity and there is not much borrowing of ideas or practices.

The Nuers consider themselves the best people in the world. The idea of learning something from the Anuaks would be pretty much foreign. “What do they have to teach us?” The Anuaks resent the Nuers because of their wealth in cattle.^[260]

Nuerisms do creep in especially in religion. The witch doctor beliefs are said to have come from the Nuer. There is some intermarriage, but very little. A possible problem with intermarriage is the dowries. The Nuers pay in cattle and the Anuak pay in beads.

Though tribal contacts may be quite frequent the adaptations of customs and practices seem to be quite limited. There is a variety of practices that are shared among several tribes, but this is probably due to a common cultural heritage and a very gradual interchange of ideas rather than an active cultural borrowing. The Anuak does not seem to actively seek to imitate or add cultural or social patterns from its neighboring tribes.

2.7.2. Cultural Change as Reflected in Anuak Music

The major causes for culture change among the Anuak have been discussed as being education, the media, contact with the outside world and the subsequent desire for upward mobility, the mission, and contact with the neighboring tribes. Perhaps the most sensitive indicator of culture change is the music of a people. I believe that music will reflect a development or change in a culture sooner than the literature, architecture or mode of overt behavior.

The traditional music of the Anuak, the Obero and Agwaga dancing and singing remains quite unchanged and stable. But there are subtle influences coming in from the cultures around the tribe. The Arabic influence can be heard. Odiel, a soloist and composer who sang frequently in the villages, mixes Arabic and Somali words in the songs he sings. His voice production and mannerisms of delivery and ornamentation imply an Arabic influence. Nketia describes some of these influences.

Apart from instrumental resources, it was generally only the more superficial aspects of Arabic music style that seemed to have attracted those societies in contact with Islam who did not give up their traditional music. These traits include features of vocal technique identified with Islamic cantillation—such as voice projection and its accompanying mannerism of cupping the ear with the palm of the hand, or a slight degree of ornamentation—and facilitated by the traditional emphasis on Islamized areas of Africa on monodic singing.^[261]

The influence of the Ethiopian highland styles of singing and dancing are also evident. Schooling has introduced Amharic cultural patterns and the young people are becoming more oriented toward these qualities. The student returning to his village after living in Addis Ababa brings back the influences of the city. Words from one of the songs relates: “Surprising, because your young boys learn the dancing of Addis Ababa and what a surprising thing. What a gladness and surprising thing.”^[262]

The music and dancing of the young people reflect the culture heard on the radio and seen in Western movies or television. On several occasions, I observed dances that were later identified as “James Brown dances.” In describing one dance, the informant stated, “This is a James Brown dance. Beating on a tin drum. Different than other beats, modern beat. People are praising their animals that they are named after.”^[263] A mixture of the new with the old: praising themselves and others through the use of animal names is a traditional practice, but it is done within the context of a contemporary dance to the extent that some students were wearing dark sunglasses and contemporary dress.

It is possible for individual compositions, e.g., songs, to move from one culture to another and to change in the process, and it is also possible for stylistic features—types of form, scale, and rhythm—to move from one culture to another and be superimposed on songs already in existence.^[264]

The Anuak are expert at mimicry. They can imitate those things that catch their fancy and they do it well. In a variety of recording sessions, one could hear the influence of another culture in the music that was taped. One flute solo was not an Anuak song, but an imitation of Ethiopian playing of flute from the radio.^[265] Other patterns of music are freely disseminated and inculcated. European and Black American rock are found in the dances and the music of these people so seemingly removed from the twentieth century.

Finally, music reflects culture change in the fact that the pressures of modern schooling are causing the young people to lose their heritage of songs. “Now the younger generation has no time to learn the old songs because they are in school. In school they don’t learn these songs at all, so they are being forgotten. Everything is changing now because of the school. Old men are unhappy about this. This is the biggest change in the culture of the people.”^[266] Through the forgetting of the old and the importation of the new, superimposed on old patterns, change is occurring. It is happening slowly, but it is happening.

3. Summary

This chapter has presented a look at what I perceive to be the fundamental, social and cultural characteristics of the Anuak tribe. Social forces include the age set structure with its attendant communal and antagonistic implications; courtship and marriage practices which involve a great deal of the Anuak’s attention and cause the complex interlocking of society through the marriage agreement and continuing relationship. This chapter described the important role of the mother and grandmother in the rearing and educating of the child. Also described was the political structure of village life, dominated by the chief and the age set in power, providing a workable governmental framework for the self-contained and self-sufficient Anuak villages.

This chapter explored the unique and clearly identifiable Anuak culture. The people have a clear concept of what they perceive to be proper Anuak behavior characterized by the idealized practices of reciprocity, egalitarianism, and sharing. The limited horizons of Anuak cultural life are brightened somewhat by their forms of recreation dominated by talking, singing, and dancing. Their folk tales and modes of worship give insight into their concept of God and how they perceive their roles in life. Traditional education practices continue to teach those things that the tribe believes important., while formal schooling teaches those things that the Ethiopian government and the outside world consider to be important. This chapter has explored how more and more, the Anuak is agreeing with contemporary influences and adapting to a culturally changing world and society.