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
Jur Chol (Luo of Bahr el Ghazal)
Luo-speaking farmers and ironworkers of Bahr el Ghazal, whose smiths supplied the spears and hoes of the Dinka among whom they live, whose name in Dinka means simply strangers, and whose language links them to communities as far away as Kenya.
Identity
Population: Estimated 100,000 to 200,000
Location: Wau, Jur River County and the surrounding areas of Western Bahr el Ghazal, South Sudan
Language: Luwo (Jur Chol), a Northern Luo language
Language family: Nilo-Saharan → Western Nilotic → Luo
Traditional governance: Chiefs and lineage elders, with the chiefs' courts active in land and family matters; South Sudanese state and 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.
Jur Chol of Jur River County
The main rural concentration.
Jur Chol of Wau
The urban community in Western Bahr el Ghazal's capital.
Jur Beli and Jur Manangeer
Distinct communities sharing the Jur label but Central Sudanic and Dinka in origin respectively.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; the smith's leather apron as the emblem of the older trade; ceremonial beadwork and hide.
Food: Sorghum and cassava bread, sim sim, groundnuts, greens, fish from the Jur river, milk in cattle-holding households, and the sorghum beer used at every negotiation.
Ceremonies: Ancestral offerings at lineage shrines; the smelting and forging observances of the older iron industry; funerals with extended mourning; harvest rites.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous with bridewealth in cattle and iron goods historically; intermarriage with Dinka neighbours is common.
Initiation rites: The removal of lower incisors was formerly general; entry into the smithing lineages was by descent and apprenticeship rather than by public rite.
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 Smiths Among the Cattle KeepersEconomic history
The Jur Chol smelted and forged iron in Bahr el Ghazal and supplied spears, hoes, fish-hooks and ornaments to the Dinka, who did not work iron themselves. The relationship gave a small farming community an indispensable position among a large and militarily dominant pastoral one, and it is the reason Jur Chol settlements sit interspersed among Dinka territory rather than in a block of their own. Imported iron ended the smelting; the smithing lineages continued forging into the twentieth century.
A Name Given by NeighboursNaming and identity
Jur is a Dinka word for foreigners or strangers, and it has been applied by outsiders to three unrelated communities in Bahr el Ghazal: the Luo-speaking Jur Chol, the Central Sudanic Jur Beli, and Dinka-origin groups called Jur Manangeer. The Jur Chol call themselves Luwo. The confusion runs through colonial records, mission accounts and modern administrative documents alike, and untangling it is a standing problem in South Sudanese ethnography.
WauContemporary history
Wau, the regional capital, sits on the Jur river in Jur Chol country and has been one of the most contested towns of the South Sudanese conflicts. Fighting in 2016 and 2017 killed civilians and emptied neighbourhoods, and displaced people gathered in the cathedral compound and the UN base in tens of thousands. The town's ethnic mix — Jur Chol, Balanda, Fertit communities, Dinka — has meant that national conflicts arrive in it as neighbourhood conflicts.
Proverbs
“The spear is praised and the smith is forgotten.”
On the position of the ironworkers.
“A name given by a stranger fits badly.”
On being called Jur.
“The river feeds the town and the town forgets the river.”
On Wau and its hinterland.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Jok, the divine power of Luo cosmology in its many named local forms; ancestral spirits at lineage shrines; smelting and forging surrounded by prohibition and observance.
Beliefs: Jok shrines at lineage level; ancestral offerings; divination; Catholic Christianity long established through the Wau diocese, now dominant, with the older practice continuing beneath it.
Ancestors: Lineage ancestors are addressed at homestead shrines; smithing lineages trace descent with particular care, the trade being inherited.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Jok
Divine power in named local forms, attached to lineages and to places
Ancestral spirits
Addressed at lineage shrines in illness and misfortune
Forge powers
The observances and prohibitions attaching to smelting and smithing
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of round thatched houses with granaries, dispersed among Dinka cattle country, with forges at fixed sites within or beside the settlement.
Building techniques: Wattle and daub with conical grass thatch; woven and mud-plastered granaries; clay smelting furnaces, now archaeological; forge hearths with bellows.
Village layout: Houses around a swept yard with granaries behind, the forge at a fixed point, and the shrine site at the settlement's edge.
Artifacts
Forged spears and hoes
Metalwork
Iron goods supplied to Dinka neighbours who did not work metal.
Smelting furnace remains
Industrial heritage
Clay furnace bases in Bahr el Ghazal, evidence of a substantial pre-colonial industry.
Woven granary
Craft
Wicker and mud store raised on stones against damp and rodents.
Wau cathedral compound
Heritage site
Mission centre and, in 2016 and 2017, refuge for tens of thousands of displaced people.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1700
Luo-speaking communities settle Bahr el Ghazal, interspersed among Dinka territory, and develop iron working.
1860s–1890s
Khartoum-based raiding devastates Bahr el Ghazal; the zariba trading forts are established.
1900s–1950s
Anglo-Egyptian administration; Wau develops as the regional centre; Catholic missions establish.
1955–2005
Sudan's civil wars; Bahr el Ghazal suffers famine and mass displacement, notably in 1988 and 1998.
2011–present
Independence; fighting in Wau in 2016 and 2017 displaces tens of thousands within the town.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Rift Valley Institute — Bahr el Ghazal researchRift Valley Institute
- Santandrea, A Tribal History of the Western Bahr el GhazalWorldCat
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: LuwoSIL International