Dinka

PRONUNCIATION: DEEN-kuh
LOCATION: Sudan
POPULATION: 500,000 to 1 million
LANGUAGE: Dinka
RELIGION: Monotheistic-worship of Nhialic
RELATED ARTICLES: Vol. 1: Nuer; Shilluk; Sudanese

INTRODUCTION

Numbering between 500,000 and l million people, the Dinka are one of the largest ethnic groups in the republic of Sudan. Their presence in this region of Africa was noted thousands of years ago by Egyptian and later Greek travelers and geographers. The Dinka belong to a larger group of historically related cultures that anthropologists have referred to as the Nilotic peoples of Africa—Dinka, Nuer, Atuot, Shilluk, and Anuak—all of whom live in the upper Nile region of southern Sudan. General observations about the Dinka and related Nilotic peoples figure in the narratives written by Arab slave traders who entered their country in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Perhaps their reputation as fierce warriors was earned during this period, as the Dinka successfully resisted Arab presence. In the middle of the last century (c. 1840–1880), the Dinka also resisted efforts on the part of a Turkish administration in the northern Sudan to administer, tax, and otherwise harass them. In 1898, a condominium (joint) form of government was created between Egypt and Great Britain, and from this time until the Sudan gained independence from Great Britain in 1956, the Dinka were only marginally affected by British colonial presence. In 1983, a civil war erupted in the Sudan, pitting the largely Arab and Muslim northern Sudan against the black African peoples of the south. Lasting into the 1990s, the war has had dire consequences for the Dinka and other Nilotic peoples. Tens of thousands of Dinka have died, and countless others have become refugees in either the northern Sudan or the many countries bordering the Sudan. Rebel groups and international human rights organizations have accused the Sudanese government of attempting genocide against the Dinka.

LOCATION AND HOMELAND

A careful census of the Dinka has not been attempted since the mid 1950s, at which time it was estimated that the Dinka numbered more than 1 million; in 2008 estimates place the Dinka population at somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million. Dinka country extends from 6° to 10°n latitude and from 26° to 32°e longitude. This vast region forms a seasonal swampland as the Nile floods from its high ground in Uganda into the flat, saucer-like geography of the southern Sudan. The extreme differences between the wet and dry seasons have a dramatic effect on many aspects of Dinka life. During the season of rains, human population densities increase as people are forced to settle in areas that are higher than the Nile floodwaters.

Because of civil war, large numbers of Dinka have migrated from southern Sudan to the northern Sudanese capital of Khartoum, as well as to Kenya, Uganda, Europe, and the United States. There are no precise data on the actual number of Dinka now living elsewhere. As of the mid-2000s, thousands of internally displaced Dinka were beginning to return to their home villages in southern Sudan.

LANGUAGE

Linguists classify Dinka as a major language family in the Nilotic category of African languages. Historically, it is most closely related to Nuer and Atuot, languages spoken by peoples living in close proximity to the Dinka. The Nuer and Atuot languages, however, are more closely related to each other than they are to Dinka.

The Dinka have a diverse lexicon with which to describe their world. It is estimated that the Dinka language has more than 400 words to refer to cattle alone—their movements, their diseases, and their variety in color and form. The Dinka's very perception of color, light, and shade in the world around them is in these ways inextricably connected with their recognition of the color configurations in their cattle. Without their cattle color vocabulary, they would have scarcely any way of describing visual experience in terms of color, light, and darkness.

FOLKLORE

The Dinka tradition of oral literature is extensive and a considerable amount has been recorded. In this tradition, two figures stand out prominently, a legendary figure known as Col Muong, and another known as Awiel Longar. Col Muong figures in many stories as a man who has an enormous appetite for all things in life. When he is hungry, he is said to eat an entire herd of cattle or an entire field of grain. Stories about him seem to indicate that people should do the best they can with what they have rather than focus on their own individual needs. Awiel Longar figures as the common ancestor of all Dinka peoples. Awiel is thought of as a culture hero who showed people how to live and, indeed, brought them life. Dinka folklore is also rich in “just so” stories about the origins of customs, the behavior of animals, and everyday life.

RELIGION

Dinka religious beliefs have been described and analyzed in detail by the late British anthropologist R. G. Lienhardt in his book, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka. The Dinka term Nhialic, Lienhardt suggests, is best translated as “creator” and in this regard Dinka religion may be regarded as monotheistic. Ultimately, Nhialic is thought to be the source of all life and death. Mediating this distant, though approachable, image are a series of lesser manifestations of the creator's power. These are known to the Dinka by a series of “refractions” or manifestations of divinity to which Dinka dedicate ritual sacrifices and libations. Rituals are performed at births, deaths, to cure disease, and in times of crises.

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

Celebrations take place in the autumn, when the whole tribe is together. Religious sacrifices may be made on special occasions. To honor their traditional spiritual and political leaders—called “masters of the fishing spear”—the Dinka enacted day-long ceremonies marked by large public gatherings and the sacrifice of many cattle. By ritually “killing” these men, Dinka collectively asserted their power to control the spiritual powers governing human life.

RITES OF PASSAGE

Like other cattle-keeping people of southern Sudan and eastern Africa, the Dinka mark significant life-passage events with informal but significant ritual occasions. Thus, birth, marriage, and death are all marked by standardized customs involving public ceremonies, and are typically accompanied by animal sacrifice. In the passage to adult status, young men, rather more than young women, are publicly recognized. Adult males decorate initiates' heads with a series of deep gashes that form scars that last a lifetime, publicly proclaiming their newly attained adult status.

LNTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

When men become adults, they no longer refer to themselves by their birth names, but instead adopt “ox-names”—derived from characteristics of their favorite cattle, typically with complex metaphorical reference. Thus, a man may be known as Thiecdeng (“club of divinity”) or Acinbaai (“a man who never leaves his herd of cattle”). Children's names are often chosen to reflect circumstances of their birth. Thus, one may be called Kueric (“born in the middle of a path in the forest”), Amoum (“the one who survives his dead brothers”), or Ayumpuo (“the one who cools the heart”).

Meals are generally eaten in an informal manner. The only explicit strictures involving eating are that unmarried people of similar age who have no close kinship cannot eat in each other's company.

LIVING CONDITIONS

Round huts, approximately 4.5 m (15 ft) in diameter, were formed with clay, with 1.5- to 2-m (5- to 6-ft) walls, covered with conical thatched roofs. Homesteads such as these were typically surrounded by a garden and separated one from another by an open expanse of savannah forest. Garden soil would typically maintain its fertility for 10 to 12 years. Following this, the area would be set afire and a new homestead erected nearby, in a manner anthropologists call “slash and burn” horticulture.

Because the Dinka population is fairly dispersed (though less so in the season of rains), communicable diseases have traditionally been uncommon. On the other hand, given its subtropical location, Dinkaland is subject to a fair number of endemic diseases, including malaria, dysentery, and other waterborne diseases.

FAMILY LIFE

Polygamy (the practice of marrying more than one person) is common among the Dinka, although many marriages are monogamous. Men of high social standing may have as many as 50 to 100 wives. In polygamous marriages, wives cooperate in performing household duties, although each is responsible for rearing her own children. Upon marriage, a man pays his wife's family a certain number of cattle, usually between 30 and 40. The Dinka consider it extremely important to have children, which they regard as assuring their immortality.

Traditionally, following marriage a man established a homestead near his father. Around her homestead, a woman would cultivate a garden in a plot ranging from one to two acres, raising sufficient food to feed her family throughout the year. Cash was not a factor in traditional food production, so kinship relations provided a means to assure that if some relatives' gardens failed in a particular year, food could be shared by all.

Even though much of Dinka public life is dominated by men (e.g., ritual and political leaders are male; sacrifices are always led by men), women play a very significant and even powerful role in local life. Many important myths and rituals have powerful feminine symbolism.

CLOTHING

The Dinka wear very little clothing and no shoes. The men go naked, and the women may wear goatskin skirts. Both men and women wear strings of beads around their necks. Women also wear bangles on their arms and legs, and they may also wear elaborate jewelry in their ears.

FOOD

In the rainy season, milk from cows is plentiful, and this supplements the horticultural diet based primarily on millet. During the dry season, Dinka subsist mainly on fish and other freshwater resources, supplemented by reserves of millet.

Dinka have traditionally produced all the material resources needed to sustain their livelihood via a mode of production that combined horticulture with pastoralism, fishing and occasional hunting. The staple horticultural crop was millet. Ground nuts were introduced in the 1930s and added an additional source of protein to the Dinka diet. Women usually provide a morning meal of millet, sometimes mixed with milk or beef broth. A second meal is prepared as evening approaches. Depending on the season, the millet staple will be supplemented with fish, meat, or other domesticated crops such as beans, tomatoes or rice (now purchased from small rural markets). Cooking oil is produced by crushing the nuts of shea trees and pounding the pulp into oil. A number of species of chili peppers provide condiments. Women cook all meals with the help of their daughters. Women grow a variety of gourds to make containers for cooking and preparing food, and they also use earthenware pots for storing and boiling water.

On ritual occasions, cattle were sacrificed and slaughtered, although cattle (cows) were kept mostly for their milk rather than meat. In the dry season, cattle were occasionally bled by tying a cord around the animal's neck, pulling it tight, then piercing a vein in the animal's neck. The blood was collected in a gourd, mixed with milk, and then boiled, producing a high-protein “pudding.” When milk was plentiful, particularly in the rainy season, it was also preserved in a cheese form by mixing a quantity of fresh milk with a smaller portion of hot cow urine. Milk prepared in this form could be stored for as long as three months.

EDUCATION

The Dinka lacked any formal system of education until literacy was introduced via mission schools beginning in the late 1930s. Even today, most Dinka lack literacy skills. Indeed, to some, writing is suspected to be a form of political control, and thus many people have never sought to become literate. During the Colonial period in the southern Sudan, English was the only acknowledged language of mission education and administration. During the course of the first civil war in Sudan, in 1964 the government expelled missionaries from the southern Sudan and declared Arabic to be the national language. Regional dialects of Arabic have since emerged in Dinka country. At the time of this writing, very few Dinka have received a formal education because the educational system, along with the majority of social services, has disappeared due to war.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

Like many other semi-nomadic peoples throughout the world, the Dinka do not have a substantial heritage of plastic arts; song and dance, however, play an important role in their culture. A set of drums for dancing is found in every Dinka settlement. Like many other aspects of Dinka life, artistic expression is associated with cattle, which they often imitate in their songs and dances. Because the Dinka identify so closely with their herds, when a tribesman sings a song praising his cattle, he is, in effect, praising himself. Songs serve many other functions as well. There are battle songs, songs of initiation, and songs celebrating the tribe's ancestors. In symbolic “song battles,” singing can also defuse tensions and avert bloodshed among this highly volatile people.

Following is a typical Dinka song:

    O Creator who created me in my mother's womb
    Do not confront me with a bad thing
    Show me the place of cattle,
    So that I may grow my crops
    And keep my herd.

WORK

Tending herds of cattle and growing millet form the basis of the livelihood and economy of the Dinka. As the main channel and hundreds of tributaries of the Nile begin to flood during the season of rains (roughly April to September), people move with their herds of cattle to higher ground. Here, during the season of rains, the millet and other crops are planted. With the coming of the dry season and abating flood waters, people drive their herds back toward rivers and tributaries where the cattle are pastured. Labor among the Dinka is clearly divided along gender lines, with men in their 20s and 30s devoting their time to cattle-herding. Women are responsible for growing crops (although men perform the heavy work of clearing new fields for planting). Women also cook and draw water from wells and rivers. Each homestead normally plants two millet crops every year, as well as okra, sesame, pumpkins, and cassava. One of the ways that Dinka boys are prepared for adulthood is by being given a small flock of sheep and goats to tend.

Although many Dinka want to preserve their traditional way of life, they find that, because of the consequences of civil war and the need to participate in “modern” as well as “traditional” society, the past they once knew may be gone forever.

SPORTS

Dinka men engage in mock sparring, using spears or sticks and shields, in order to develop their fighting skills.

ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION

Because much of the Dinka population disperses to follow the herds during the dry season, important social events such as marriages are more common during the rainy season. People live in more compact settlements at that time, and milk and millet are plentiful. Seasons during which there are droughts or unusually heavy rains likewise have a dramatic impact on local social life. Dinka social life is also closely tied to religion.

FOLK ART, CRAFTS, AND HOBBIES

Dinka men make spears and fishing hooks. The women make cooking pots using coils of clay, which are formed into the desired shape and then smoothed over. Sharp tools are used to etch patterns in the clay, and color is applied with a stone, after which the pot is fired in a hole in the ground that is covered with burning straw and dung. Besides making pots, which are also essential for carrying water, Dinka women weave baskets and sleeping mats.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Since the civil war that began in the 1980s pitting the northern and southern regions of Sudan against each other, numerous Dinka villages have been destroyed by burning or bombing. Thousands of Dinka women have been raped and their husbands castrated in their presence. Young girls have been found brutally murdered. Many Dinka have been abducted and sold as slaves in the northern Sudan. Violence against the Dinka is now on a level that has no precedent in their remembered past.

GENDER ISSUES

As the late Godfrey Lienhardt noted in an article he wrote on the relations between the sexes among the Dinka, vis-à-vis many other African cultures, Dinka women and men have equivalent status. Indeed, early on in their socialization, young boys recognize their utter dependence on their sisters and mothers, who provide for their basic subsistence. As adults, men likewise recognize that their aspirations to become founders of lineages are entirely dependent on the birth careers of their wives. In the contemporary world and in the aftermath of two civil wars and immigration to a wide variety of countries, much has changed in all of Dinka culture, including gender relations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beswick, Stephanie. Sudan's Blood Memory: the Legacy of War, Ethnicity, and Slavery in early South Sudan. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004.

Burton, John W. “Dinka.” Encyclopedia of World Cultures. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1992.

Deng, Francis Mading. Dinka Cosmology. London: Ithaca Press, 1980.

———. Dinka Folktales: African Stories from Sudan. New York: Africana Publishing, 1974.

———. The Dinka and Their Songs. London: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Lienhardt, R. G. Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.

Ryle, John. Warriors of the White Nile. Amsterdam: Time-Life Books, 1982.

—by J. W. Burton