StapleSouth Sudan
Kisra
Thin fermented sorghum flatbread spread on a hot plate and peeled off in sheets, the base of every meal in the north of the country.
Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus 2 days fermenting
Didinga
Herders and terrace farmers of the Didinga hills above Chukudum, close kin of the Murle whose ancestors parted from them centuries ago, whose rainmakers still open the season and whose hills gave the SPLA one of its safest bases.
Identity
Population: Estimated 60,000 to 100,000
Location: The Didinga hills of Budi County, Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan, near the Ugandan and Kenyan borders
Language: Didinga, closely related to Murle
Language family: Nilo-Saharan → Surmic → South-West Surmic
Traditional governance: Rainmakers and hereditary ritual leaders, clan elders, and an age-set system; South Sudanese county administration.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Didinga of Chukudum
The central communities around the county town.
Didinga of Nagishot
High-altitude communities on the range's eastern side.
Didinga of Lauro and Kimotong
Communities on the lower slopes toward the plain.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; beadwork and hide ornament in ceremony; the ostrich-feather headdresses and body decoration of the dance repertoire.
Food: Sorghum and maize from terraced plots, milk and blood from the herds, honey from the hill forests, wild greens, and meat at ceremony.
Ceremonies: The rainmaker's opening of the season; age-set promotions with dance; harvest observances; funerals with dance and cattle slaughter.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous with bridewealth in cattle, which is high and closely tied to raiding; polygyny common.
Initiation rites: Boys enter age-sets which advance together; the age-set names and their sequence are the community's chronology.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for South Sudan, at national rather than community level — 9 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
StapleSouth Sudan
Mulukhiyah
also Jute leaf stew, Khudra
Jute mallow leaves cooked to a thick green sauce with garlic and dried fish, poured over asida. Simple, cheap and eaten across the whole of South Sudan.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes
National dishSouth Sudan
Asida with Kudra
Sorghum porridge with a green sauce of okra or greens, the everyday meal across South Sudan. Turned out as a dome and eaten from the shared dish.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
National dishSouth Sudan
Combo
also Okra and greens stew
Fresh okra and wild greens cooked down with sesame paste into a thick, deliberately slippery stew, eaten with asida. The South Sudanese household dish.
Serves 6 · 50 minutes
Street foodSouth Sudan
Kajaik
Dried Nile fish stewed with onion and groundnut into a thick sauce, eaten with asida. The Nile's fish is dried in quantity and traded far inland.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Festival & feastSouth Sudan
Roast Goat for a Feast
A goat or bull killed and roasted whole for a wedding, a homecoming or the settlement of a dispute. In cattle-keeping societies the animal is the message.
Serves 12 or more · 4 hours
Festival & feastSouth Sudan
Fatta
also Bread and meat platter
Torn flatbread layered with meat broth, yoghurt and fried onion, assembled in a great tray at Eid and at weddings and eaten communally.
Serves 8 · 2 hours
Regional specialitySouth Sudan
Wala Wala
Sorghum or maize porridge with a simple bean or greens relish, eaten in the Equatorias. Plain food, and what most of the country eats most days.
Serves 6 · 50 minutes
Drink & sweetSouth Sudan
Merissa
Sorghum beer brewed and sold by women, drunk from calabashes at markets and gatherings. It is thick, sour and cloudy, and doubles as food.
Serves Makes about 5 litres · 4 days
Stories & Oral Literature
The Split with the MurleMigration tradition
Didinga and Murle traditions both describe a common origin and a parting: one group stayed in the hills and became the Didinga, the other moved north-west into the Boma plateau and eventually onto the Pibor plains to become the Murle. The languages remain close enough to be mutually intelligible in part. The Murle became known across the region for cattle raiding and child abduction; the Didinga stayed in the hills, terraced them and are known for very little outside South Sudan — the same starting point producing very different histories.
The Hills That Sheltered an ArmyMilitary history
The Didinga hills — high, forested, close to the Kenyan and Ugandan borders and hard to reach — made Chukudum one of the SPLA's more secure bases during the second civil war, and it hosted the movement's 1994 national convention. The presence brought the community protection, supplies and schooling of a kind, and also occupation, requisition and the deaths that came with being an army's rear area. Didinga opinion about that period is divided and is not always safely expressed.
Terraces on the RangeAgricultural tradition
The Didinga farm hand-built terraces on steep hillsides, growing sorghum and maize above the tsetse line while grazing cattle on the plains below, moving stock seasonally between them. The system is what allows a substantial population in a small hill range, and it is unusual in South Sudan, where most communities are either cultivators or herders rather than both at different altitudes.
Proverbs
“The hill keeps the cattle that the plain would lose.”
On the two-altitude system.
“Two brothers left the same house and one took the cattle.”
On the parting with the Murle.
“An army that eats in your village is not a guest.”
A saying from the war years.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A high god associated with rain and the sky; rainmakers as intermediaries with hereditary responsibility; the hills, springs and named rocks carrying prohibitions.
Beliefs: Rainmaking as the central religious institution; ancestral offerings; divination before raids and journeys; Catholic missions established at Chukudum, now widespread alongside the older practice.
Ancestors: The dead are buried near the homestead; rainmaking descent is recorded carefully, the office being hereditary and its legitimacy genealogical.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
The high god of rain
Addressed through the rainmaker at the season's opening
Ancestral spirits
Addressed at homestead and clan sites
Hill and spring powers
Presences of the range's named features
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages on the hillsides among terraced plots, with round thatched houses and granaries within fenced compounds and cattle camps on the plains below.
Building techniques: Dry-stone terracing; round pole-and-mud houses with conical thatch; raised granaries; thorn cattle enclosures at the seasonal camps.
Village layout: Compounds along a slope with terraces above and below, the cattle camps separate and lower, and the dance ground at a fixed clearing.
Artifacts
Hillside terraces
Agricultural heritage
Hand-built stone terracing supporting sorghum and maize on steep ground.
Rainmaker's apparatus
Regalia
Inherited stones and vessels of the hereditary rainmaking office.
Age-set dance regalia
Regalia
Feather headdresses and ornament marking an age-set and its grade.
Chukudum mission and convention site
Heritage site
Catholic mission town and the location of the SPLA's 1994 national convention.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1700
Surmic-speaking communities occupy the Didinga hills; the ancestors of the Murle move north-west.
1800s
Raiding and trading relations develop with Toposa, Boya and Karamojong neighbours.
1920s–1950s
Anglo-Egyptian administration reaches the hills; Catholic missions establish; a Didinga rising is suppressed in 1940.
1983–2005
The second civil war; Chukudum becomes an SPLA base and hosts the 1994 convention.
2011–present
Independence; cattle raiding with neighbouring communities continues; the hills remain comparatively isolated.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Rift Valley Institute — Eastern Equatoria researchRift Valley Institute
- Driberg, People of the Small ArrowWorldCat
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: DidingaSIL International