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
Murle
The cattle people of the Pibor — an age-set society of eastern South Sudan whose young men's age regiments, cattle raiding and the abduction of children have made them both a byword in the country's conflicts and among its most misrepresented communities.
Murle people
Murle migration.webp · Wikimedia Commons
Identity
Population: Estimated 150,000–200,000
Location: The Pibor and Boma plateau area of Greater Pibor, eastern South Sudan, with related communities in Ethiopia
Language: Murle
Language family: Nilo-Saharan → Eastern Sudanic → Surmic
Traditional governance: Age-set organisation with named generations holding collective authority; the red chiefs (drumship) as ritual leaders; the Greater Pibor Administrative Area within South Sudan.
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.
Lotilla (Lango)
One of the principal territorial divisions.
Kelenko and Ngaarotti
Further divisions of the Pibor plains.
Boma highlanders
Communities of the Boma plateau, with a partly different economy.
Gallery
1 images
Culture
Clothing: Beadwork and ochre historically, with cloth adopted through the twentieth century; age-set insignia; extensive scarification marking generation.
Food: Milk, blood and meat from cattle, sorghum where cultivation is possible, wild foods and fish in the swamps.
Ceremonies: Age-set initiations and the handover of authority between generations; cattle songs composed for individual beasts; the drum chief's rites for rain and fertility.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth in cattle at very high levels, which is directly connected to the raiding economy; age-set membership governs marriage eligibility.
Initiation rites: Initiation into a named age set, which then holds collective identity, authority and responsibility for life; the transfer of power between sets is the society's central political event.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for South Sudan and Ethiopia, at national rather than community level — 20 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.
South Sudan
9 dishes
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
Ethiopia
11 dishes
StapleEthiopia
Injera
Fermented teff pancake, at once the plate, the utensil and the bread. Teff is native to the Ethiopian highlands and grows almost nowhere else.
Serves Makes 8 · 45 minutes, plus 3 days fermenting
StapleEthiopia
Misir Wat
also Red lentil stew, Misir wot
Red lentils cooked down with onion and berbere into a deep red stew. The backbone of the Ethiopian fasting table, eaten on the roughly 180 days a year the Orthodox calendar sets aside.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
National dishEthiopia
Doro Wat
Chicken stewed for hours in berbere and an enormous quantity of onions cooked down without fat. Ethiopia's national dish, served at Christmas and Easter and to any guest worth the trouble.
Serves 8 · 3 hours
National dishEthiopia
Tibs
also Zilzil tibs, Sautéed meat
Beef or lamb cut in strips and seared fast with onion, rosemary, chilli and spiced butter, often brought to the table still sizzling on a clay brazier.
Serves 4 · 40 minutes
Street foodEthiopia
Sambusa
Lentil or minced beef pastries fried crisp, sold on Addis street corners and eaten to break the fast in Ramadan and during Orthodox fasting periods in their vegan form.
Serves Makes 24 · 1 hour
Festival & feastEthiopia
Kitfo
Raw minced beef warmed in spiced butter with mitmita and served with ayib cheese and kocho. A Gurage dish that became a national delicacy, ordered leb leb or fully raw.
Serves 4 · 30 minutes
Regional specialityEthiopia
Shiro Wat
Ground chickpea flour cooked into a smooth spiced purée, the daily food of most Ethiopians and the mainstay of the 200-odd fasting days in the Orthodox year.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
Regional specialityEthiopia
Gomen
also Collard greens, Ye'abesha gomen
Collard greens braised long and slow with onion, garlic and ginger until sweet and silky. The green on every Ethiopian platter and one of the fasting dishes.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Regional specialityEthiopia
Kocho
also Enset bread, False banana bread
Bread made from fermented enset — the false banana — scraped, buried in a lined pit for months and then baked flat. The staple of the Gurage, Sidama, Hadiya and Kambaata highlands, and Ethiopia's insurance against famine.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes, from prepared kocho dough
Drink & sweetEthiopia
Tej
Honey wine fermented with gesho, a buckthorn twig used as a bittering agent, and drunk from a round-bottomed berele flask. Served in dedicated tej bets across the country.
Serves Makes 3 litres · 3 to 4 weeks
Drink & sweetEthiopia
Tella
also Talla, Ethiopian home beer
Home-brewed beer of barley and gesho, the buckthorn leaf that stands in for hops. Cloudy, sour and low in alcohol, brewed for every wedding, funeral and saint's day.
Serves Makes about 5 litres · 1 hour active, plus 5 to 8 days fermenting
Stories & Oral Literature
The Age Sets and the GunsSocial analysis
Murle society is organised by age sets rather than by chiefs, and young men's sets have historically raided cattle to build the herds needed for marriage. The introduction of automatic weapons turned a survivable pattern into a lethal one, and the collapse of authority during and after the civil wars removed the elders' capacity to restrain it.
Abduction and InfertilityContemporary account
Murle raiders have abducted children from neighbouring Nuer and Dinka communities, and analysts have linked this to unusually high infertility, possibly from untreated sexually transmitted infection, in a society where descendants are the measure of a life. The explanation is contested and does not excuse the practice; the pattern of retaliatory mass violence against Murle civilians is equally documented.
Proverbs
“The set that receives the drum carries the country.”
Generational authority.
“A herd without sons is a herd without a future.”
Cattle and descendants as one thing.
“Cattle taken are cattle that will be taken back.”
The raiding cycle stated plainly.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A high creator (Tammu) associated with the sky and rain; the drum chiefs mediate for rain and fertility; ancestors present in cattle lines.
Beliefs: Sky god and rain-making through the drumship; ancestor presence; Christianity introduced by missions and now significant; diviners treating illness and misfortune.
Ancestors: Descent is reckoned through named cattle lines as much as through people; the age set is a form of collective ancestry for its members.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Tammu
The sky creator associated with rain
The drumship
Ritual chiefship holding responsibility for rain and fertility
Ancestors
Present in the herd and in the age-set line
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Cattle camps of temporary shelters and dung fires on the seasonal grazing; permanent villages of round houses near the rivers.
Building techniques: Grass and pole construction; cattle byres and dung-fire smudges against insects; grain stores where cultivation permits.
Village layout: Cattle camp arranged around the herd with the young men's sleeping area beside it; village houses around a shared space.
Artifacts
Beadwork and age-set insignia
Craft
Ornament marking generation and status.
Cattle songs
Oral literature
Compositions praising individual animals and their lines.
Drum of the red chief
Regalia
Ritual object of the rain and fertility office.
Boma plateau
Heritage site
Highland landscape with major wildlife migrations in Murle territory.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
Murle communities move into the Pibor region; age-set organisation consolidates.
1900s–1950s
British administration attempts to impose chiefs on an acephalous society.
1983–2005
Sudan's second civil war; the region is heavily armed and repeatedly raided.
2011–2013
Mass violence between Murle and Lou Nuer forces; tens of thousands displaced.
2014–present
The Greater Pibor Administrative Area is created; cycles of raiding and retaliation continue.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Small Arms Survey: Sudan and South SudanSmall Arms Survey
- Rift Valley Institute: South Sudan researchRift Valley Institute
- Britannica: South Sudan — peopleEncyclopaedia Britannica
Premium & scholarly sources