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Richard M. Kavuma reports on a once proud people whose children think the World Food Programme grows all food.
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| CULTURE Acholi girls performing a traditional dance. | You cannot imagine my pleasant surprise when I arrived at Gulu bus park on Wednesday October 1,2003. I was a little tensed up.
As a child growing up in southern Uganda in the early 1980s, my impression of Gulu, land of "northerners", was not that favourable.
At the time, the army looked like it was a preserve of the dominant ethnic groups, the Acholi and Langi.
Yet these soldiers and policemen, who spoke mainly Swahili, were associated with arresting, torturing and killing people.
When President Yoweri Museveni's army, the National Resistance Army (NRA) captured power in 1986, the defeated northerner-dominated Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) was dubbed the Anyanya.
That the Anyanya were accused of committing atrocities in the so-called Luwero Triangle, the arena of Museveni's five-year guerrilla war, did not give one a charitable impression of them.
Yet, as I stood at Gulu Bus Park with my travel bag slung over my shoulder, what was foremost on my mind was a colleague who was imprisoned by the UPDF in this town a year earlier.
I started walking - and lost my way.
I ended up at a fuel station, believing that The Monitor Gulu office was located there.
I was welcomed, given a seat, and told to wait, until some one could come to help me. When my host had greeted me, he called a subordinate to take me to The monitor office.
It struck me that that office was barely 15 metres away, literally next-door. He could simply have directed me to the shop.
That is how I began my 11-day exploration of Acholiland. Each day was emotionally draining as I listened to the sad tales of a people who feel desperately abandoned.
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| Men performing the Larakaraka (courtship) dance. | History
The Acholi are part of the Luo-speaking Nilotics peoples who moved into Uganda from southern Sudan between 1400-1800 AD.
Their kin include the Alur of Nebbi district and Jopadhola of Tororo in Uganda and the Luo of Kenya.
Moving in small clans, the Nilotics wandered around Uganda, trying to find pastures for their cattle and goats.
Oral legend holds that a conflict arose between the leader, Gipir and his brother Labongo over a bead eaten by a child.
Gipir moved west. His descendants include the Alur.
Labongo's group moved east of the Nile by AD 1500. It is from this group that the present day Acholi and Langi emerged.
Clan members lived in a homestead clamped around the compounds of their kin.
Traditionally the Acholi had round mud and wattle huts with sticks all around. Today there is increasing use of bricks - to overcome termites.
The surviving huts still have beautiful graduated grass roofs.
The compounds boasted of granaries filled with their storable staples like simsim, millet, peas, beans and groundnuts.
They also had cattle, sheep, goats and chicken and green fields of cassava and potatoes.
George Omona from Koc Goma in southwestern Gulu, recalls a time when the Acholi grew cotton for cash.
"The cotton ginneries are still seen but [cotton growing] has now faded out," he says.
Instead, people started growing food crops for cash, including upland rice.
Traditionally, Acholi were organised into clan groups led by a Rwot or Lord/chief. Some of the big clans had sub-clans and lower chiefs under the great chief.
Rwot Onen Achana II, the chairman of the Acholi Council of chiefs, is the chief of Payira, the largest clan.
He says the clan grew because it absorbed new people easily over time.
I met him at his home, a modern iron roofed house built by British colonialists next to Gulu's Senior Quarters.
On entering, you are struck by a framed black and white picture of Chief Awic, the great Payira chief, who fought the colonialists.
Colonialism has impacted the Acholi in other ways.
Originally the word Rwot meant Lord and translated to some sort of King, according to Rwot Achana.
At one time a message was sent to Acholi that the Queen's representative would visit Acholi.
It appears that the one who delivered the message said the Queen would be visiting.
When the rwots assembled, only the Governor turned up.
They refused to shake hands with him, reasoning that he was not at their level.
Humiliated, the governor decreed that they should all be called chiefs.
Then some chiefs were appointed by the colonialists. These were dubbed Rwodikalamu [Chiefs of the pen] to differentiate them from the traditional chiefs or Rwodimoo [Chiefs anointed with oil]
Acholi has about 50 chiefs.
"The Acholi people are very proud people who like living out of what their own toil," he says.
"In the past we had a communal system of work.
"If I had my garden I would invite my neighbours to dig make them a very good meal and serve them local brew [Kongo-kwete or Kongo-wiri] I would do the same with women at weeding time - and food would always be there," he says.
He is sad that that culture of fending for oneself is being replaced by one of dependency.
"Even the children growing up today think that food is provided by [World Food Programme] WFP," he says.
He is referring to 90 percent of the Acholi who have been displaced from their homes by the 18-year rebellion led by Joseph Kony rebellion.
Most of them live in squalid Internally Displaced Persons camps.
Reconciliation?
The Kony war has shaken Acholi culture from its very foundations.
"The Acholi are very peace loving, hard-working people but in the absence of injustice," says Emmanuel Lutukmoi, a social worker in Gulu.
"They hate subjugation."
Forgiveness and reconciliation are embedded in Acholi culture.
From time immemorial, says Rwot Achana, the Acholi leaders outlawed the death sentence.
Even for killers, they developed a system of justice that is based on reconciling the clan of the culprit and the victim's family.
One of the sacred laws Omona learnt while growing up was that "you should not be the first to offend in life in general but especially in war because it affects the whole clan."
He tells a story:
In 1922, a girl eloped with some boys from Omona's clan. Following disagreements later, the boys killed the girl and threw the body away.
Seventy-eight years later, clan members collected money to pay traditional fines to the surviving relatives of the girl's family to appease the spirit of the dead.
The clan elders reasoned that a spate of misfortunes, including mysterious deaths of babies, was linked to the incident.
"The clan leaders came to us, including me who was not there at the time - I was born in 1965."
The clan bought cows and goats, which were offered in compensation. This is the Mato-oput.
If one kills a person, the clan of the killer approaches the clan of the victim for reconciliatory justice.
Traditionally each clan reserved two girls for Anyira kwo - to compensate for any misfortune that may befall the clan.
If the two girls were not given, eight cows were given in place of each.
One cow is slaughtered for the grave, one cow for the mother of the victim in the form of ritual cleansing.
Then follows the ritual of Mato- oput or reconciliation.
Oput is the name of a blinding-bitter tree. Sap is squeezed out of the roots and the two parties drink it, swearing that they have forgiven each other.
Embedded in this Mato-oput is the ideal that there shall not be justice without reconciliation - to repair the broken relationship.
Acholi culture treasures reconciliation first, then justice.
Yet culturally, the Acholi do not tolerate being subjugated or humiliated.
Omona recalls that as boys they were socialised to be "strong and hardworking men - even aggressive not to take defeat lying down."
A man is supposed to defend oneself, family and clan.
Acord and other NGOs are currently researching the impact of the 18-yearlong rebellion on the Mato-oput.
But Omona says the Mato-oput did not envisage monstrous crimes against a community, like killings of hundreds of people by Kony rebels.
While Acholi elders are confident that if the rebels surrendered and apologise, Acholi would forgive them, there is concern about the attitude of victims of the conflict - victims of landmines, rape and those orphaned to the government amnesty.
"There is already concern that government seems to care more for those who have surrendered than those who have suffered," says Omona.
Acholi were also brought up to be truthful, open and honest.
"May be too honest," says Omona.
The women - though strong, hardworking and courageous - were generally trained to be submissive, caring wives, making sure the family ate enough quality food.
Women and children were always protected in Acholi.
Even during war, children, women and mad or disabled people were not targeted because "there is no ritual for it".
But now, laments Rwot Achana, the rebels are targeting children and raping women.
The question of war itself was a contentious issue. Each clan tried not to be the first to attack. When attack became inevitable, it was subjected to ample consultation.
"The Acholi never fought a war without justification or what the Acholi call the Lapii," said Tiberio Okeny in Kitgum.
Levi Arweny, 75, hardly differs: "I was born and brought up when Acholi was at its climax so I know what Acholi is. We don't fight without a cause.
And we love other people more than our brothers. But do not irritate us, especially when we know the truth."
If anything is bound to overwhelm a stranger in Acholi, it is the warmth of the people.
As I left Gulu on a hot October Saturday, I carried in my mind images of naked, hungry children smiling at me in the camps. But more sadly, images of seven year-old children sleeping on the bare cement on the streets of Gulu town - to escape Kony.
On the taxi, I shared the front seat with Denis, a student in a technical institute in Gulu.
On the way Denis bought a roasted piece of Cassava. Before he ate, he offered me the piece to break off for myself.
I did not want to eat Cassava but I accepted his offer, as a toast to the friendship, courtesy, and warmth of the Acholi people.
Article submitted by acholifoundation
| http://www.acholifoundation.org |
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