StapleUganda
Matoke
Green cooking bananas steamed in their own leaves until soft and yellow, then mashed. The staple of the Baganda and the food that defines central Uganda.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Ma'di
Central Sudanic farmers of the Nile's west bank at Nimule and Adjumani, whose chiefdoms sit exactly on the Uganda-South Sudan border, whose land now holds one of the largest refugee settlements on earth, and whose rain chiefs still open the hunting season.
Identity
Population: Estimated 500,000 to 600,000 across Uganda and South Sudan
Location: Adjumani and Moyo districts in north-western Uganda, and the Nimule and Pageri areas of Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan
Language: Ma'di, with distinct Ugandan and South Sudanese varieties
Language family: Nilo-Saharan → Central Sudanic → Moru-Ma'di
Traditional governance: Rain chiefs (opi) heading territorial chiefdoms, with clan elders beneath; Ugandan and South Sudanese local government alongside.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (4)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Ma'di of Adjumani
The largest Ugandan concentration, on the Nile's east and west banks.
Ma'di of Moyo
Western Ugandan Ma'di, with the Metu and Lefori chiefdoms.
Ma'di of Nimule and Pageri
The South Sudanese communities at the border and along the Nile.
Ma'di Okollo
A distinct community further west in Uganda's Madi-Okollo district.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; the rain chief's leopard skin and iron regalia; ceremonial ostrich feather headdresses in dance.
Food: Sorghum and cassava bread, sim sim paste, wild greens, Nile fish, goat at ceremony, and the sorghum beer central to every chiefly and funeral occasion.
Ceremonies: The rain chief's opening of the season and of the communal hunt; the ba'di funeral dances; harvest offerings at chiefdom shrines; the Ma'di cultural festivals now held in Adjumani.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous with bridewealth in cattle and goats; the chief's house historically married across chiefdoms to hold alliances.
Initiation rites: The removal of lower incisors was formerly general and has lapsed; entry into adulthood is marked by participation in the communal hunt and by household establishment.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Uganda and South Sudan, at national rather than community level — 21 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.
Uganda
12 dishes
StapleUganda
Katogo
also Matoke katogo, Breakfast stew
Green bananas cooked in one pot with offal, beans or groundnut sauce until they absorb everything. Uganda's breakfast, argued about endlessly for what should go in it.
Serves 4 · 50 minutes
StapleUganda
Kalo
also Millet bread, Atap
Finger millet flour worked into a dense dark brown loaf, often with cassava flour for body. The staple of eastern and northern Uganda, torn and dipped into sauce.
Serves 6 · 35 minutes
National dishUganda
Luwombo
Chicken, beef or groundnut sauce steamed inside a banana leaf parcel, invented in the 1880s by a cook to Kabaka Mwanga II. Opened at the table so the steam is released in front of the guest.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Street foodUganda
Rolex
An omelette rolled inside a chapati, whose name is a compression of rolled eggs. Sold from griddle stalls outside every campus and taxi park in Uganda.
Serves 2 · 30 minutes
Street foodUganda
Grilled Tilapia
also Ngege, Fish choma
Whole tilapia from Lake Victoria, scored, rubbed with garlic and lemon and grilled over charcoal at the landing sites. Eaten with the fingers and a heap of kachumbari.
Serves 4 · 45 minutes, plus 1 hour marinating
Street foodUganda
Gonja
also Roast plantain
Sweet plantain roasted whole over charcoal until the skin blackens and the flesh caramelises, sold at every Ugandan roadside and taxi stage.
Serves 4 · 25 minutes
Festival & feastUganda
Binyebwa
Groundnut sauce, sometimes with mushrooms or smoked fish, steamed or simmered and served over matoke. The sauce that goes with everything at a Ugandan celebration.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Festival & feastUganda
Muchomo
also Goat muchomo, Nyama choma ya mbuzi
Goat meat on sticks, salted and grilled slowly over charcoal, the fixture of every Ugandan celebration and the reason the town of Nakasongola is on the map.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 15 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating
Regional specialityUganda
Malewa
Smoked bamboo shoots stewed with groundnut, a Bagisu dish from the slopes of Mount Elgon. Prepared at imbalu circumcision ceremonies and sold dried in Mbale market.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus soaking
Regional specialityUganda
Eshabwe
also Ghee sauce, Ankole ghee sauce
Clarified butter whipped with rock salt and water until it turns white and thick, the ceremonial sauce of the Ankole and Toro pastoral kingdoms. Poured over millet bread or matoke.
Serves 6 as a sauce · 30 minutes
Drink & sweetUganda
Bushera
Sorghum or millet flour fermented into a thin sour drink, served fresh to children and left longer to turn alcoholic for adults. A Bakiga and Banyankole staple.
Serves 6 · 20 minutes, plus 1 to 3 days fermenting
South Sudan
9 dishes
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
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 Rain Chief and the HuntPolitical and ritual tradition
A Ma'di opi held rainstones and the authority to open the season. Nothing could be planted before he had performed the rite, and the great communal hunt that cleared the grass at the season's end could not begin without him. The office combined ritual, ecological management and law: the hunt was also where disputes were aired and where a young man's standing was established. Missionaries and colonial officials treated the opi as a chief in the administrative sense, which fitted badly, and the institution has survived in a diminished but recognisable form on both sides of the border.
Nimule, and the Line Through the ChiefdomBorder history
In 1914 the Uganda-Sudan boundary was redrawn and Nimule, with a large Ma'di population, was transferred to Sudan. The community has been divided ever since between two states with different languages of administration, different school systems and, since 1955, recurrent war on the northern side. Ma'di on both sides regard the border as an administrative fact rather than a national one, and cross it for funerals, marriages and land as a matter of course.
A District That Became a SettlementContemporary history
Adjumani district, Ma'di land, has hosted South Sudanese refugees since the 1980s and, after the South Sudanese civil war began in 2013, at a scale that made the refugee population larger than the host population. The Ugandan settlement policy gives refugees land plots, which comes from Ma'di customary land. The result is a community praised internationally for hospitality and, at the same time, in a sustained argument with its own government about who agreed to what.
Proverbs
“The rainstone is heavy in a dry year.”
Authority is weighed when it fails.
“The hunt shows a man before the marriage does.”
Character is displayed in collective work.
“A guest who stays becomes a neighbour, and neighbours need boundaries.”
A contemporary Ma'di saying about the settlements.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Rabanga (Ori) as the high god, remote; the rain and the land mediated by the chief and by clan shrines; particular hills, rapids and trees carrying prohibitions.
Beliefs: Rainstones and chiefdom shrines; ancestral spirits addressed at homestead altars; divination by chicken and by casting; Catholic missions from the early twentieth century, now dominant, with Ma'di ritual continuing beneath.
Ancestors: The dead are buried within the compound and addressed at a small altar; chiefly ancestors underwrite the rain authority and are named in the installation rites.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Rabanga / Ori
The high god, distant and approached indirectly
Ancestral spirits (ori of the dead)
Present in family affairs, addressed at homestead altars
Rainstones
The chiefdom's inherited instruments of rain, held by the opi
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Compact villages of round thatched houses with granaries, sited on rises above the Nile flood plain, with the chief's compound distinguished by its shrine and drum house.
Building techniques: Wattle and daub with conical grass thatch; raised granaries of woven wicker plastered with mud; iron working, historically significant for hoes and spears.
Village layout: Houses around a swept central yard, granaries behind, the ancestral altar at a fixed point, and the chiefdom's assembly ground under a named tree.
Artifacts
Chiefdom rainstones
Regalia
Inherited stones through which the opi opens the season.
Ba'di funeral drums
Instrument
Drums sounded through the night at funerals, with dances specific to the occasion.
Wicker granary
Craft
Woven and mud-plastered store raised on stones, a distinctive feature of Ma'di homesteads.
Fula rapids and Nimule gorge
Natural heritage
The Nile's rapids at the border, a fishing site and a place of prohibition.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1700
Central Sudanic-speaking communities settle the Nile's banks around present-day Nimule and Adjumani.
1860s–1890s
Ivory and slave raiding out of Khartoum devastates the region; Emin Pasha's administration operates from Wadelai.
1914
The Uganda-Sudan boundary is redrawn; Nimule and its Ma'di population are transferred to Sudan.
1955–2005
Sudan's civil wars displace Ma'di repeatedly across the border into Ugandan Ma'di districts.
2013–present
South Sudan's war brings refugee numbers in Adjumani above the host population; land pressure becomes the central local issue.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- UNHCR — Uganda refugee response, AdjumaniUNHCR
- Uganda Bureau of Statistics — census reportsGovernment of Uganda
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: Ma'diSIL International