Lotuko

Lotuko , also Lotuxo, Lotuho, Latuka; is an ethnic group in the south of South Sudan on the border with Uganda . The just over 100,000 people belong to the Nilots and live in the province of Eastern Equatoria . They speak Otuho, also Lotuko, which belongs to the Lotuho dialect group and is a Nilotic language .

location

The settlement area extends from the eastern slopes of the Imatong Mountains to the western half of the plain, in the middle of which is the small town of Ikotos and which is closed off in the east by the Dongotono Mountains. In the north the area extends to the end of the Lopit Mountains. The 590 to 650 meters high plain is surrounded by these mountains in a horseshoe shape. Its peaks are between 1,300 and 1,700 meters high. Isolated mountains rise 100 to 300 meters from the plain. The natural vegetation consists of bushland, in which acacias , doum palms and occasional tamarinds thrive . The different activities in the course of a year depend on the rainy season, which lasts from the end of March to mid-November or December.

Ikotos, which has been a separate administrative district since 2004, is located south of the main road connecting Juba and the Kenyan border town of Lokichoggio . The junction from this road is in Keyal, 40 kilometers east of the provincial capital Torit . After this place the name of Lotuko Olotorit is ("belonging to Torit").

society

The Lotuko are also surrounded by Nilotic peoples: in the west of Bari , who live in the plains along the White Nile and with whom there is close contact (some Lotuko on the western edge of their settlement area sometimes refer to themselves as Bari), in the south across the border Uganda's Acholi and Madi, to the east of Didinga (in the mountains of the same name), Longarim and Boya. There are also some subgroups of the Ugandan Lango , including the Dongotono and Imatong (assigned to the corresponding mountains). The Toposa in the northeast were respected and feared for their martial skills. There are occasional inter-ethnic marriages. The ethnic boundaries are based on language differences, cultural traditions and centuries-old hostilities.

Traditional economic forms

Lotuko practice agriculture in the hills and cattle breeding in the plains as far as Torit when there is plenty of rainfall. The main crops are the same as described by Emin Pascha in 1882 : sorghum , millet (local name omeiti) and peanuts (aful) . Millets and peanuts are grown in annual rotation. Add some finger millet and corn , sesame seeds, pumpkin, beans and okra . Tobacco and millet beer (ahuhu) are traditionally considered luxury goods . Only adult men are allowed to drink beer.

Cattle, sheep and goats are of greater importance as objects of value, exchange gifts and traditionally as ritual sacrifices than as food. The Lotuko's trade relations extend into the Kidapo Valley further east. There their herds of cattle can find pasture land and watering holes even in the dry season. The animals are kept in pens (abore) at night , which have more solid fencing than most farms. A construction made of bamboo posts or branches is stuffed with thorn bushes. The only low entrance is closed with wooden beams. The pens are usually located within the village.

Cattle (mostly short-horned zebus ) are the most valuable possession. As with the surrounding ethnic groups, the bride price is paid with cattle, but the relationship to cattle is far less ritualized than with the Dinka . Nevertheless, cattle are a necessary part of the bride price and cannot be replaced by other goods. The daily migration of cattle herds, which are only accompanied by initiated men, is six to eight kilometers, less in times of crisis. During the dry season the cows deliver one liter of milk a day, and during the rainy season two to three liters.

The fishing in the rivers, which is only practiced to a limited extent, and the gathering of wild plants is women's work. Groups of women use nets to drive the fish from the center to the edge in the shallow water. Large fish in deep water are caught with spears.

There are three forms of cooperative work: Eruai is voluntary help among close relatives, which is provided for every task and as needed. Older people are more likely to need help. At first there is no consideration, later beer and millet gruel are given to the helpers at their own discretion. Ahetai is organized within the family, neighborhood or age group. It's about a day of field work. The requesting household undertakes to later participate in the ahetai of the households providing assistance. Elulung is community work requested one day in advance by a household, which is organized within the age groups. In principle, all year round cooperative help can be requested for any work, mostly field work or house building. The group starts working in the fields at sunrise and has breakfast in the morning with millet beer, porridge and usually sheep or goat meat. At the end of work, girls collect the hoes (apuri) and carry them back to the homestead. The group determines the amount of meat and beer to be procured by the client. Elulation usually only takes place once a week.

Villages

There are settlements in the hills and in the northern flatlands. The round houses made of clay with grass cover (generally: tukul ) within a homestead are enclosed by a fence (eleyadi) which, apart from the access side, also forms the border to the neighboring homestead . Inside a round house with a diameter of five to six meters there is a long bench for visitors, a clay pot with drinking water (atobok hari) and other clay vessels for grain and peanuts. The entrance is on the west or east. The wooden construction of the walls is surrounded by clay, palm leaves or bundles of grass are layered over the bamboo poles of the conical roof. The farmsteads are arranged around a central dance area, at the side of which there is traditionally a meeting place on a bamboo platform ( obele , similar names among the surrounding peoples). The drums required for rituals are stored here. A village originally only consists of one quarter (amangat) . After enlargement, it is divided into several equal residential areas. Larger villages are clearly delineated into several sub-areas that form a spatial and social unit.

The blacksmith's workshops (okwore) consist of roofs supported by four to six posts without side walls and are always outside the villages, where they become the regular gathering place for the men.

Social organization

The members of a society are divided into age groups. The result is a social age of each person (regardless of biological age), which defines their social obligations in detail. The influence that the assignment to an age group has on daily life exceeds that of one's own relatives. The Lotuko differentiate between six age groups: toddlers up to 3 years of age belong to the eitole class ; the child up to 13 years to eito (plural aduri); a male adolescent aged 13 to 18 is called eito horwong, a female adolescent aged 12 to 16 is called odwoti (plural: odwo); the 18 to 60-year-old man belongs to the monyemiji age group (plural: monyomiji); the married woman from 14 years to angorwoi. The 40 to 70-year-old man belongs to the class amarwani (plural: amarwak) .

According to tradition, the members of the oldest clans in the settlement area play a dominant role. Marriages usually take place outside of the clan, they are exogamous . The sub-divided subclans generally marry exogamously. The bride (age group odwoti) is around 14 years old at the time of marriage, the man marries after initiation at 18 to 22 years. As long as the bride price has not been paid in full, the bride remains in her parents' homestead. She visits her husband, cooks for him and entertains the guests. In return, the man does work for the in-laws' household. After about a year a separate household is set up.

The Monyomiji members, the "group of old men", form a kind of brotherhood. Your fields that you cultivate in the plain are mostly adjacent. The men carry out activities such as cultivating fields, hunting or dancing together. You are responsible for defending the village. Each part of the village has its own dances and songs accompanied by drums. There is a separate drum house (hadufa) at the men's meeting place. Rivalries within these groups should not be carried out with spears, but should be expressed in wrestling matches.

The initiation of the boys, who thereby become monyemiji , happens individually. The ritual requires that a goat by three adults and a village chief be slashed open with a spear. With the bowels, a circle is formed on the floor in which the initiator must step. Later four parts of the meat are roasted on stones and eaten. The initiator spends the night at the fireplace. The next morning he returns to his homestead to wash off his previous status as eito. Every five to six years, the men initiated during this time are introduced into a subclass of their age group in a further ceremony.

The central social structuring takes place through a ritual that takes place every 20 years, in which the Monyomiji take over their power from the previous generation. This is the third and final initiation in adult life. During the ritual, the members of the old and new age groups face each other. Between them lies the largest drum in the village, which is rolled from one side to the other, symbolizing the transfer of authority.

The ritual power over the inhabitants of the village, the fields and animals is exercised by village heads ( amonya, also aboloni ), who descended from the first clans to settle in the region. The office is inherited from the father to the eldest son of his first wife. Should the son not yet be initiated or otherwise unqualified when the father dies, his mother or, alternatively, a younger brother can take over the office. In the gerontocracy, the elders are responsible for the land and must protect the population. Depending on the size of the village, there are several village heads who perform different, defined tasks. An amonya must give permission before setting up a field or going out to hunt.

Independently of the village heads, the rainmaker ( hobu, feminine form: nobu, plural: hobwok ) has a similar area of ​​responsibility. All are responsible for welfare and should influence the world beyond. The rain maker is measured by success; whether he succeeds in bringing about rain through appropriate rituals. He is the spiritual contact and determines the rites at the beginning of the field cultivation and after the harvest. The power of the hobu is respected and feared. The marriage of a rainmaker to a rainmaker from another clan creates a lasting relationship between the two clans.

religion

The opportunity to get into the remote area, which has only been halfway accessible since the end of the South Sudanese civil war in 2005, is understood as an invitation to proselytize. Lotuko are less than 10 percent Christian.

Your African religion has a main god, the creator god Ajok. He is the symbol of the other, other world. Ajok is omnipotent; he does not use his power for the benefit or disadvantage of people. There is (presumably a term for the negative aspect of Ajok) an ominous and invisible power, Naijok , that brings sickness and death. Anything that is not understood can also be “naijok”. Since the 1920s, due to a possible influence of the Christian mission, the earlier idea of ​​ajok can no longer be clearly determined. In the early 1960s the missionary efforts of the Catholic Church were particularly successful. Between 1960 and 1964, the number of Christians in the districts of Torit and Isoke rose from 38,000 to 90,000.

There is still a clear idea that as long as ancestors are present in the memory, they exert an influence and belong to the village and the surrounding wilderness. The dead ritual is therefore carried out very carefully and lasts three days. Another goat has to be slaughtered because its entrails are needed for the ritual. As usual, the relatives have to bring beer and a calabash with flour for the festival . After about four weeks, the last farewell takes place, where every visitor receives beer. After a year or more, the bones are exhumed and kept in a clay pot that is placed under a specific tree in the wild. The ancestral soul feels more comfortable outside the grave.

The rainmaker relates to ( Ajok and) the ancestors and asks for rain. In the myth of origin there is a first rainmaker named Ibon who came to earth as rainwater, took the form of a man, fathered an offspring with a woman and left behind some rain stones important for the ritual. These pebbles symbolize raindrops, they may only be touched by a certain assistant of the rainmaker. A special feature of the Lokuto was a special meeting place for men made of stone slabs.

Political situation

Conflicts with neighboring ethnic groups were traditionally fought with spears. It was and still is about cattle theft and grazing rights. The hostility to the Imotong comes from a hero of the Lotuko who was killed by the Imotong in an indefinite past. To the annoyance of the Lotuko, the Imotong still sing a victory song dedicated to this deed. If there are disputes, 40 percent alcohol (guu), which is mostly sourced from Uganda , can also play a role.

Cattle theft has developed itself dynamically into culturally anchored feuds. Taking revenge became a necessity and a social demand. The disputes are primarily between Lotuko, Buya and Didinga. All together carry out feuds across borders with Lango groups, which in turn are enemies with Karamojong . Lotuko were also blamed for looting fields in the Kitum district of Uganda . A meeting of the respective rainmakers organized in 1985 did not bring about a settlement of the old conflicts. Since then there have been several shootings.

There was relatively little fighting in the mountain area during the civil war. The area around Torit on the main road was held by government troops, the mountains around Ikotos were occupied by the SPLA . There were fights in the plains around Ikotos and especially Torit, which was captured by the SPLA in 2002. As a result, individual population groups had to flee to neighboring areas and submit to the rulers. When individual fractions of the liberation movement, the majority of which were recruited from Dinka and Nuer , began to split off at the beginning of the 1990s, the ethnic groups living in the mountains were also included in the disputes, armed by the respective cadres and sometimes played off against each other. The availability of weapons has since turned revenge for cattle theft into a bloodbath. In 1998 there were 25 deaths at a cattle market organized by Lotuko and Didinga near Ikotos. The SPLA government has been accused of being hesitant or partisan.

In 2002 the civil war between the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government army (UDPF) was also fought in the border area on the Sudanese side. The Lotuko are countering the ongoing problem of raids by the LRA with looting and kidnapping of children by self-arming.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Othuho. Ethnologue.com About language. - The first dictionary of the Lotuko language was edited by FitzRoy Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan, a scholar who served in the British Army in South Sudan from 1913-1918, cf. the English Wikipedia article .
2. ↑ Andreas Grüb, pp. 23–41.
3. ↑ Andreas Grüb, p. 71.
4. ↑ Andreas Grüb, p. 129.
5. ↑ Andreas Grüb, pp. 135-137.
6. ↑ Simon Simonse: Kings of Disasters. Dualism, Centralism and the Scapegoat King in Southeastern Sudan. EJ Brill, Leiden 1992, p. 71.
7. ↑ Nilotic People Group Tree. Major Peoples with High Percentages of Christians. Orville Jenkins, 2002
8. ↑ Andreas Grüb, p. 121.
9. ^ Karl-Johan Lundström, p. 191.
10. ↑ Andreas Grüb, p. 149.
11. ↑ Harold Scheub: A Dictionary of African Mythology. The Mythmaker as Storyteller. Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 8f.
12. ^ Lotuko men's meeting enclosure. Pitt Rivers Museum: Southern Sudan. Photo from 1922 of a men's meeting place.
13. ↑ Clement Ochan, p. 35.
14. ^ LRA Conflict in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan, 2002. Human Rights Watch
15. ^ Clement Ochan: Responding to Violence in Ikotos County, South Sudan: Government and Local Efforts to Restore Order. Feinstein International Center, December 2007, p. 7f.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Enter "Lotuko" in the search mask at the top right, then click on the first of the two pdf-links)  

literature

• Andreas Grüb: The Lotuho of the Southern Sudan. (= Studies in cultural studies. 102). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-515-05452-9 .
• JH Driberg : Lotuko Dialects. In: American Anthropologist. 34, 1932, pp. 601-609.
• Karl-Johan Lundstrom: The Lotuho and the Verona fathers. A case study of communication in development. International Tryck AB, Uppsala 1990.
• H. Hoogstraal: The Lotuko. National Geographic Magazine, 1953, pp. 249-272.
• Carlo Muratori: English-Bari-Lotuxo-Acoli Vocabulary. Catholic Printing Press, Okar 1948.
• George Rodger , Chris Steele-Perkins, Aaron Schuman: Nuba & Latuka. The Color Photographs . Prestel, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-7913-8322-4 .
• Charles Gabriel Seligman, Brenda Zara Seligman: The Social Organization of the Lotuko. In: Sudan Notes Rec. 8, 1932, pp. 1-45.
• FitzRoy Richard Somerset: The Lotuko. In: Sudan Notes and Records. 1, 1918, pp. 153-159.