When the North Winds Blow: A Note on Small Towns and Social Transformation in theNilotic SudanAuthor(s): John W. BurtonSource: African Studies Review, Vol. 31, No. 3, Small Towns in Africa Revisited (Dec., 1988),pp. 49-60Published by: African Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/524072 .Accessed: 19/10/2011 08:16

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WHEN THE NORTH WINDS BLOW: A NOTE ON SMALL TOWNS AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

IN THE NILOTIC SUDAN

John W. Burton

Over thirty years ago a Nuer said to me: 'We do not want what you Turks call progress. We are free men. All we want is to be left alone.' (Jackson, 1955: 150)

This brief essay sketches an outline of the social history of small towns and their role in transforming the social and physical environment of the pastoral Nilotes of the southern Sudan. In broad terms, it is a review of historical and ethnographic facts which have a wider currency in pre-colonial Black Africa. I am less concerned, however with the detailed peculiarities of this centuries-long Nilotic experience, than with an understanding of how unintended circumstances have, over time, engendered the many problems imposed upon local peoples in the contemporary world.

The increasingly common dependence on history for anthropology emerges clearly in the course of these remarks and observations. In the effort to highlight process rather than detail, the paper begins with some relevant observations written by 19th century travellers in the region, authorities in their own time who through their writings, invited and encouraged more intensive European occupation of these territories. Clearly, their ob- servations on the effects of alien exploitation in the southern Sudan were not intended to serve this end, yet the 19th century sources offer muted echoes of the more recent observa- tion by Southall (1979: 213) that "Most small towns [in Africa] appear as the lowest rung of systems for the oppression and exploitation of rural peoples." A corollary to this insight is the obvious fact that small towns have been a vital resource for those in a posi- tion to oppress and exploit.

SLAVERS AND ZERIBAS

By the middle of the last century an insidious form of market-oriented social and eco- nomic transaction had been implanted in the northern reaches of the Sudan in association with the Ottoman government centered around the confluence of the Blue and White Niles. While the unmapped regions of the upper Nile and its tributaries had attracted the

African Studies Review, Volume 31, Number 3, 1988, pp. 49-60.

50 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW

interests and imaginations of the ancients among others, the Turkish administration of the 19th century made the first determined efforts to "penetrate" Nilotic regions. A lowly lot of individuals of European and western Asian descent were at the same time usurping the White Nile trade from the control and expertise of indigenous traders, many of whom had within memory converted to the Islamic faith.

As in other regions of the continent, initial contacts with native peoples were largely aimed at dominating and controlling a variety of trade relations encountered on first con- tact. Unfortunately, there is little knowledge of the quality of long-standing relations of this sort which occurred between Nilotic peoples, such as the Shilluk, and Muslims from the north. It is more certain, on the other hand, that the various merchants who organized and outfitted voyages up the Nile from Khartoum in the middle of the last century, did so with immodest vigor and violence. The indigenous traders had long plied the banks of the upper Nile to capture slaves for sale in Khartoum markets. The ensuing process of map- ping, exploring and exploiting the same regions under the aegis of Turkish rule was fueled by more perverted strains of bigotry and greed.

Gray (1961: 31) sets the mood of the time as follows:

Each year when the north winds begin to blow at Khartoum, towards the middle of No- vember, an expedition of a dozen boats ascends the White Nile (see also Pedemonte, 1974: 65).

The infamous French trader de Malzac was among the more successful in this process of rape, which he learned from the resident Khartoumers. The riverine posts he esta- blished in the course of ivory and slave trading in the southern Sudan slowly emerged as the first permanent trading stations known in the history of the region. The embryonic loci of small towns in the southern Sudan were the zeribas or trading stations created by merchants. De Malzac's "accomplishments" in this effort had an especially significant role in this process. At the time, the possibility of inland travel in the southern Sudan was a difficult and time-consuming enterprise as it is, indeed, in the contemporary world. As a consequence, the first permanent trading stations were established along the banks of the White Nile and its tributaries, in easy access to the resources required by riverine expe- ditions. However, seasonal growth of water-born vegetation in the sudd region 1) was a perennial impediment to river travel 2) delayed and eventually brought about the demise of countless individuals trapped in this floating quicksand and 3) ultimately proved insuffi- cient as a barrier to insulate local peoples from slaving and trading expeditions.

According to Gray (1961: 47) even as early as de Malzac's time it was near "impossible to penetrate [the upper reaches of the Nile] without armed force." De Malzac was among the first to break through local ecological and human resistance so that by the end of 1856 he had created, and had been able to defend, a "flourishing station eight days march [from Shambe on the White Nile] into the interior" (1961: 47). The same author- ity continues, "...his success was achieved only by deeds of wide-spread cruelty and injus- tice." The inland island zeriba he established later became known as Rumbek, now district headquarters in Lakes Province in the modern Sudan (see also Gessi, 1892: 213). As far as can be certain, local peoples who were more or less permanently settled along the banks of the Nile were thus the first to encounter and suffer the immediate effects of

Small Towns in the Nilotic Sudan 51

such incursions. In other words, peoples such as the Shilluk, sections of the Dinka and Bari were forced to react to this presence years before the more transhumant and pastoral Nilotes living further inland (see also Gray, 1961: 33). Thus, Fashoda, Lado and Godo- koro were among the first permanent trading stations created by the Khartoumers and each was a regular port of call to the adventuresome traveller of the period. Fashoda marked the northern boundary of the sudd swamps, and Gondokoro became the port from which travellers journeyed south since only a short distance upstream from this point, the Nile is broken by a long series of rocky outcrops and rapids. By 1865 Fashoda served as a base for the Khedive's police force in the southern Sudan (see Collins, 1968: 14).

In the same decade some distance west of the main channel of the Nile in Dinka country, Meshra-el-Rek became a regular point to put ashore. Here, the seasonal Jur river, as well as smaller streams draining the toic lands of the region, form a western trib- utary of the White Nile. At the time, the Jur river could not be navigated by sail with any success since the floating islands of sudd were often an even greater impediment to travel than on the White Nile. Thus, at the juncture of the Jur and Bahr-el-Ghazal rivers, traders and merchants put ashore and headed inland with their caravans.

Literally translated, Meshra-el-Rek suggests "landing place" (Ar. meshra) in the coun- try of the Rek Dinka, one of the larger sections or traditional "sub-tribes" of this people. Though many traders first stepped ashore in the southern Sudan at Meshra-el-Rek, local peoples did not suffer greatly from their presence. Unlike the settled populations along the banks of the Nile, resident Dinka pastoralists possessed a degree of mobility that in effect protected them from slaving expeditions. (One might recall in passing that this free- dom of movement, necessitated in part by their pastoral interests, frustrated British efforts to "pacify" such peoples for many years.) Meshra-el-Rek became an important zeriba, however, because it came to serve as a staging point from which merchants were guaran- teed success in their rape of human resources further south and east. As Collins (1971: 67) has noted,

...between the Dinka and the Azande lay a belt of weak tribes who were defenseless against the predatory bands of the slave traders. Here on the edge of the ironstone pla- teau were concentrated more than 80 stations from which armed raiders roamed the countryside.

From Meshra-el-Rek the trail of caravans turned south and west to arrive at Wau, ini- tially a small port, that grew over time to the south where the French slaver Vayssiere had earlier built a zeriba. Approximately 100 miles south and east of Wau, Petherick es- tablished a zeriba in Luo country, c. 1854. According to Gray (1961: 56) Petherick's camp

...was typical of these early settlements: a square of more than a hundred paces enclos- ing twenty-two huts, the magazine and stores, surrounded by a large Luo village. Two sentries were posted each night; no armed tribesmen were allowed inside, and the mar- ket for ivory and provisions was conducted in the village. The local chief was required to provide all the needs of the station in return for the trader's support.

52 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW

Still further to the east, on the west bank of the Nile, traders and slavers put ashore at Shambe, which by 1853 served as a regular port to refuel and restock provisions. Here merchants sailed across a small lake on the west bank of the Nile and debarked in a papyr- us swamp, following a trail approximately two miles west to higher ground (In 1977 one continued to follow the same path). In response to Gordon's directives in 1875, the sta- tion at Shambe was established on a more permanent basis as a number of wood frame structures were built atop pylons sunk into the permanently muddy pools of the village (see Gessi, 1892: 203). From Shambe, merchants and slavers headed west, south of the vast inland toic surrounding Lake Nyibor, toward the town of Rumbek, de Malzac's crea- tion some eight days distant, with an estimated population of 2,500 in the late 1880s (see Santi and Hill, 1980: 124). In 1854 a short distance south of Shambe, Fr. Mozgan of Corinthia founded the mission station called Holy Cross on the eastern frings of Ceic Dinka country (Kaufmann, 1974: 153).

Thus in the space of a decade, throughout Bahr-el-Ghazal Province and along the banks of the White Nile as far south as Gondokoro, merchants, traders and missionaries had created an embryonic network of settlements from which alien forms of dominance and exploitation took root. According to Collins (1968: 14), by the 1870s, local mer- chants "were the virtual rulers of the districts in which they traded." Schweinfurth (1874: 47) provided a general outline of the system as it had emerged:

The merchants of Khartoum...maintain a great number of settlements in the districts as near as possible to the present ivory countries, and amid peaceful races devoted to agri- culture. They have apportioned the territory amongst themselves, and have brought the natives to a condition of vassalage. Under the protection of an armed guard procured from Khartoum, they have established various depots.... These depots for ivory, ammu- nition, barter-goods, and means of subsistence, are villages surrounded by palisades.... Every Khartoum merchant, in the different districts where he maintains his settlements, is represented by a superintendent and a number of subordinate agents. These agents command the armed men of the country, determine what products the subject natives must pay by way of impost to support the guards, as well as the number of bearers they must furnish for the distant exploring expeditions.

In retrospect, Schweinfurth seems to have depicted an incipient form of colonialism. One might also consider his more subjective assessment of the peoples involved in the ivory and slave trade: in his view, the governers of the zeribas and the leaders of the Khartoum expeditions could be divided into two types: "... of these the one are hypocriti- cal cowards, always saying their prayers, and yet always tyrannical to their subordinates; the others were avowed robbers" (1874: 185).

Collins (1971: 65) remarks,

The organization and technical superiority of the traders was combined with robbery and pillage to achieve maximum profits. In alliance with local tribes or frequently on their own, the traders would carry out systematic raids to collect ivory from supposedly hos- tile tribes. As one locality was cleared of ivory, the spiral of violence penetrated deeper and deeper into Central Africa until the whole of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Equatoria were being plundered by the marauders.

Small Towns in the Nilotic Sudan 53

The immediate effects of these activities on local Nilotic communities varied consid- erably. On the one hand, as Kelly (1985: 265) has argued, "...the establishment of per- manent trading stations altered the indigenous distribution of power between the parties involved in local feud or warfare." This observation may well characterize relations be- tween neighboring groups in the Bahr-el-Ghazal region, particularly between Nuer and Dinka in the environs of Lake Nyibor. Conversely, the majority of trading stations esta- blished in the Nilotic regions were located west of the Nile on the fringe of the ironstone plateau. With few exceptions, in other words, "no trading stations were established in the eastern area" where the so-called eastern Nuer now reside (Kelly, 1985: 269). This author speculates that the initial experience of the Nilotic-speaking Atuot a century ago was probably most like that of the Nuer since no zeribas were built in territories they then oc- cupied. As Akutei Muokjok, an Atuot elder widely known and respected for his broad knowledge (and now, sadly, deceased) told this author his ancestors had successfully fought off traders who made the effort to enter Atuot country from the north. As he ex- plained, long-lived hostilities among certain Atuot sections (notably the Luac and Jilek) and Ceic Dinka predated merchant forays, and in the majority of cases, Atuot warriors were successful in their goals. Thus, when merchants arriving at Shambe enlisted the Ceic as porters, they habitually refused to march into Atuot country to the south. They made their way instead by a more arduous route toward Rumbek through the swampland south of Lake Nyibor. As Akutei put it, "It was the Ceic who carried the foreigners here." A zeriba was built in Lau, in the center of Ceic territory, from where caravans made their way to de Malzac's Rumbek, thereby skirting Atuot country. As Gessi (1892: 213) observed, "...a tribe called Atuot...is till now independent and its presence renders

travelling dangerous. The government has not yet succeeded in subjugating it." To effect change in the situation he "sent three hundred men armed with guns to make a simple demonstration, but my people were obliged to retreat on finding that they were facing thousands of Atuot."

When Sir Samuel Baker was enlisted with the task of eradicating the slave trade in the Sudan, and when his successor Gordon inherited the same task (see e.g. Watson, 1913: 57) the blatant rape of the resources of the southern Sudan abated, though the in- roads made by the Khartoum merchants had already been etched in stone, and more certain- ly in the memories of local peoples.

COLONISTS AND SMALL TOWNS

Demonstrating a bemusing and parochial view of history, the British polity that "recaptured" the Sudan from the Mahdist regime in 1898 transformed the former slaving stations into headquarters for military and civil administration. At the start of 1900 Brit- ish officers in command of Nubian and other northern Sudanese troops set forth to estab- lish a network of posts in the southern Sudan. The perennial problem of sudd vegetation on the Nile remined 1 though locally conscripted laborers were soon chest deep in the swamps to open channels for riverine navigation. By 1902 military posts were esta- blished at the former zeribas and slaving centers at Wau, Tonj, Rumbek and Shambe (see Santandrea, 1977). In 1904, Wau had a permanent population of some 1,000 people

54 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW

(1977: 35). The ironstone brick buildings erected under British directives continued to house government offices at present. Departing from Meshra-el-Rek in 1901, a British regiment "raised the British and Egyptian flags at Jur Ghatas, a former slave zeriba" ap- proximately 170 miles south and then "passed on to Tonj where the headquarters of the expedition were temporarily established" (Collins, 1971: 80-81).

Throughout the spring of 1901 numerous Sudanese patrols explored the marshy plains between Meshra-el-Rek and the ironstone plateau in order to show the flag and to con- struct government stations at strategic locations, usually on the site of a former slave trader's zeriba or Egyptian government post [as if there was a difference].... By the summer of [1901] Wau, Tonj, Shambe, Meshra-el-Rek, and Rumbek had been occupied by Sudanese troops under British officers, and the administrative headquarters moved to Wau (Collins, 1971: 81).

Of special import is Collins' remark (1971: 81) that, "Except for the pathetic refu- gees who clustered around Wau seeking safety and hoping for food, the southern Sudanese studiously avoided the occupiers." One might recall here that the first two decades of Brit- ish administration in the Nilotic Sudan consisted more often than not of punitive expedi- tions into diferent pastoral communities, so that in a number of ways it would have been a moot point to distinguish between British administrators and slave traders. There were, in other words, any number of good reasons to avoid the outposts that were erected by, and served, the British command.

From these re-occupied zeribas the British began a process of entrenchment by forc- ing local peoples, through the imaginary powers of "chiefs," to clear forests along the ir- onstone plateau for road building. By 1916 "roads capable of wheeled traffic stretched from Shambe to Yambio and from Wau to Tambura. A passable road also connected Wau, Rumbek and Shambe" (Collins, 1971: 240). Next followed a telegraph wire, link- ing principal administrative headquaters in a web from Khartoum to Fashoda, to Bor, Meshra-el-Rek, Wau and Rumbel. Stations were then built in Nuer country at Kongor, Duk Faiwil and Duk Fadiat "as much to protect the telegraph line as to control the Zeraf valley" (Collins, 1971: 214). Oozing networks of domination had thus grown from slaving zeribas into small towns in the span of a few decades, in a region of Africa where "towns" were an utterly novel phenomenon. From these rural outposts, the first genera- tion of bog barons governed in their eccentric fashion, in a mode not unlike that of the earlier Egyptian governors, since they had only occasional direct contact with higher au- thorities, and thereby governed their districts in a manner that reflected personal style and interest. Local officials sometimes complained about the many responsibilities of the of- fice, of how directives issued from Khartoum were difficult to realize in their district, about how heroic their efforts were. But it was not all hard times for the bog barons in the southern Sudan. 2

Indigenous images of the local District Commissioner (DC) or his assistant com- bined past experience with novel expectations. Since the traders and slavers had played off or created alliances between neighboring local peoples, many among the pastoral popula- tions imagined that the British could be dealt with on similar terms. In other words, the taxes they paid in the form of cattle or forced labor were considered to be payments for

Small Towns in the Nilotic Sudan 55

protection. In one instance in Atuot country, this expectation met with unmitigated con- sequences. As Akutei Muokjok related,

There was a big fight between the people of Luac Atuot and the Ceic Dinka and many were killed. Mabor Deng (one of the first "chiefs" the British created among the Atuot) went to the government at Gnop [in Jur country] and asked them to come here. When he spoke to the British he took a handful of sand and said to them 'my people are as many as this sand.'

An older woman, a child at the time of the scene she recalled, said that when troops eventually arrived at the shore of Lake Yirol,

The government tied many people around the neck and killed them all at once. People were tied up and collected from our cattle camps and brought to Ayirol. Mabor Deng told the soldiers to untie the people but they beat him on the head and threw him down into the bottom of a well.

At the hint of any mood of resistance toward them, the British command seemed to have been 'ready, fire, aim.' In the early 1920s one British advance inland from the Nile into Aliab Dinka country was met by some 1,000 local peoples (as estimated by the Brit- ish) armed for offense. In the course of the fray that ensued, C.H. Stigand, a charmed of- ficial, met his death along with twenty-four of his subordinates. The following spring nearly 1,000 northern Sudanese troops and Equatorial soldiers "...brought fire and sword to those thousand square miles of Aliabland, supported by gun boats on the Nile and equipped with artillery and the ubiquitous machine guns." At the end of the 'Aliab Upris- ing', as the British termed it, over four hundred Aliab, Atuot and Mandari had been killed, seven thousand cattle seized, and every village razed to the ground with durra stores de- stroyed. Peace and famine settled over the Aliab country." (Collins, 1983: 10-11).

Though the scope and impact of this particular incidence of racism and massacre may not have been typical (common though it was), decidedly hostile relations pertained be- tween pastoral Nilotes and the British administration for a number of decades. Indeed, one thinks sometimes that in order to administer them, the British had to create 'the Nuer' in order to rule over them. In the early 1920s the Governor of Bahr-el-Ghazal Province as- serted,

The Luac Atuot are a wild folk and I have come to the conclusion that a post is neces- sary in their country. The site is a good one and building materials are near at hand. It should be noted that [the Atuot] and the Aliab are in close contact with one another and assist each other in evading government activities by looking after one another's cattle. A post at Yirol will greatly interfere with this mutual agreement.

A small administrative center was then built close to the southern shore of Lake Yirol in 1924, to advance the interests of military domination and "in order to keep the road from Rumbek to Shambe open" (Millais, 1924: 161).

56 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW

SOME SMALL TOWNS IN THE 1970s

In 1976 Yirol has a population of approximately 3,000 individuals. Due to the poor condition of the dirt track leading from Yirol to Rumbek, and in the other direction from Yirol to Shambe, the town could easily become isolated in the rainy season. When this author lived near the town, it possessed an appearance that must have been close to its original British form (cf. Simpson, 1985). The small market was defined by a row of parallel shops owned and run by northern Sudanese. The largest series of buildings in the town served as a garrison for the army. About a quarter of a mile from the shops one found the police station and an open court. Several dispersed ironstone brick buildings comprised the local hospital. The local executive officer's home as well as that for the local inspector of government stood about a half mile from the south shore of the lake. At the time of research the town buildings also included an office to house postal and tele- graph services. The other government services represented in Yirol included an elemen- tary and secondary school, the office of the local rural council, a prison and a home for the perpetually absent veterinary and medical doctors. The Muslim merchants had built a small mosque near the shops.

Like every other small town in southern Sudan, permament residential quarters were reserved for government officials, and beyond the fringes of these modest buildings, peo- ple from the countryside who had migrated to the town built more traditional mud and thatch dwellings. Directly behind their shops, the northern merchants lived in homes fa- shioned by their particular cultural standards, with the courtyard of each house surrounded by eight-foot high stone walls. The general form briefly sketched here is, as noted, typi- cal of small towns throughout the south. Ahmed and Rahman (1979: 266) have offered a similar description of Kongor, in Nuer country, which "emerged as a center after 1919 with the recognition of tribal units as bases of administration. It had its court and market in 1922, dispensary in 1935, tube well and rest house after 1949, but no government school until 1953, since education until then had been in the hands of missionaries" (cf. Burton, 1985). According to the ethnographers of Kingir, local peoples made their way to the small town primarily to pursue court cases and purchase goods. Further to the south and east at Pibor, an administrative post of similar scope was built in Murle coun- try. In 1981, Pibor consisted of a population in the area of 3,000 persons. The major of- fices and buildings of the administration consisted of army and police stations, a prison, rural government and education offices, a secondary school, a market and a neighborhood of Murle compounds (Andretta, 1986). According to Andretta,

Communication with the outside is poor and roads are impassable during the wet season. The dirt road leading to Bor only extends a few miles and then there is unbroken savan-

nah...Pibor town is located on one side of the Pibor river.... The river is no longer na- vigable due to the presence of water hyacinth.

Yirol, Kongor and Pibor stand as representative of many other small towns in the southern Sudan. They are alike in their manner of origin and with regard to the adminis- trative functions they serve, though there is a deeper commonality. In the contemporary Sudan, the small southern town has become a microcosm of a caste-like system, involv-

Small Towns in the Nilotic Sudan 57

ing elite educated government officials, a varying population of itinerant northern Suda- nese merchants and a lower status population drawn from the rural countryside, who seek some kind of satisfaction unavailable in the traditional context. Towns were effectively "accepted" by local peoples beginning in the 1940s when it became clear that in order to protect their own political and economic interests, it was essential to participate in town- oriented affairs more directly. Lienhardt (1982: 86) has recently commented on this pro- cess for the Dinka, who

...saw that they needed enough of their own people capable of thinking in foreign ways, of meeting foreigners on their own ground while remaining Dinka in their loyalties, to understand and circumvent encroachments on their autonomy.

From the missionary classroom ('Dinkachester' as one large school in Tonj was dubbed by the local British official), a first generation of Nilotic peoples was drawn into a wider process of social transformation, defined in an important manner by a cash-based economy and the codification of traditional law. As noted, even in the small towns such as Yirol and Pibor, the more prominent buildings are the police station, the army head- quarters and the prison. A former British official who worked in Nuerland remarked a dec- ade ago that these people "took kindly to a system which enabled them to raise disputes which in the past would have had little or no chance of settlement, at any rate, without violence" (Howell, cited in Burton, 1985: 363). In retrospect, such a view conveys greater praise than is necessarily merited and is, at any rate, naive to the powerful force of standardizing customary usage. Johnson has recently argued, contra the former official's stance, that

British administrators sought and failed to find a set of regular institutions which guaran- teed the swift settlement of disputes and enforced judgments. They failed to find it be- cause the Nuer did not see their judicial procedure in these terms. Their procedure was not designed to pronounce on guilt and innocence, nor to enforce deterrent punishment. It was instead a system of arbitrations (1986: 59).

As cryptically represented in the remark of an Atuot friend, the writing of the govern- ment does not go away. Consequently, as formal education becomes more commonplace, ignorance of the law is no excuse (cf. Levi-Strauss, 1955: 299, "...the primary function of written communication is to facilitate slavery").

Since their inception in this century small towns in the southern Sudan have served as the basis for rural exploitation and control. To the casual observer in the southern Sudan this is readily apparent in the quality of socal relations between merchants and local peoples. With few exceptions, northern Sudanese merchants in Yirol delighted in the physical and verbal abuse of Dinka and Atuot. As many Atuot (and one would want to generalize, other Nilotic communities as well) regard the mercantile world with contempt, they have no recourse in the market, dealing with individuals who continue to refer to them in public as abiid or "slaves." Whereas a good number of northern merchants take Nilotic women as second or third wives the inverse pattern is virtually nonexistent. In the slow evolution of slaver's zeribas into shops owned by northern Sudanese, a parallel

58 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW

process of rural class divisions has emerged. Francis Deng (1984: 9) comments upon a common experience throughout Black Africa:

Before independence brought a more intensive relationship with the outside world...leaving the tribe was viewed as reckless self-exile, while migrating into town was a shameful act that invited slanderous songs against the person leaving.

He continues (1984: 13):

Once he goes into the city, he is among the lowest of the urban low and his tribal em- phasis on respect and dignity is sharply confronted with dehumanizing realities. But once he experiences the town life, it is difficult to settle back into the tribe, and, indeed, the logic of the system leaves nothing to be desired in the village. He begins to move to and fro between the tribe and the town, unable to integrate meaningfully into either.

Akutei Muokjok, to make one final reference to his insights, once remarked:

...no fighting is done like it was in the past. This [government] is the end of our fight- ing, and children will now have to make their way with the government. People and generations will come. The government has become deep rooted, with its own spear and clubs.

SUMMARY

The few observations I have submitted on the small town of Yirol must be phrased in the past tense since according to reports in the world press as well as more reliable sources, the hospital, domestic residences, government buildings and schools have been destroyed in recent conflicts between government troops and guerilla forces in Sudan's sec- ond civil war. Somewhat paradoxically, the leading southern voices in the war seek to es- tablish sole political and military sovereignity in the small towns that once functioned as outposts of alien and distant domination. From one perspective, the major obstacle they face in this effort is no longer a central government but rather the long arm of so-called super-power rivalry in the form of ideological war in the countryside of nations they seek to dominate, or in more polite terms, develop. In that vision, success can only be meas- ured by assessing the degree to which local communities have been destroyed. In the light of recent accounts, these efforts have been, unfortunately, all too successful.

From a slightly different perspective what one sees now is the eclipse of the small town, as thousands of people have fled the countryside in the vain hope of shelter and food in the larger towns in the south and in Khartoum as well. Thus, within the time- span of only a few decades, one sees also a radical transformation of indigenous societies as they are denied the resources and security once promised in their homelands.

Small Towns in the Nilotic Sudan 59

NOTES

An abbreviated version of this paper was read at the 29th annual meeting of the African Stud- ies Association in Madison, Wisconsin, in a session titled "Small Urban Centers Revisited: The place of Small Towns in the General Urbanization of Africa." I am grateful for comments on the paper offered by Professor Michael McNulty. I also wish to thank Professor Aidan Southall for the opportunity to present these observations at Madison as well as for his valuable commentary.

An initial period of residence in Yirol and in neighboring Atuot communities (1976-1977) was made possible with grants provided by the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner- Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Additional support from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities has facilitated the publication of some data col- lected in the course of field research.

1. The sudd accumulations were probably one of the most important factors in assuring the continuity of Nilotic cultures since their initial appearance in this region of Africa. Since virtually all inroads into the southern Sudan began and were determined by the course of local rivers and streams, control of the river effectively meant control of the hinterlands. Collins (1971: 27), for example, suggests, "For seven years [after 1885] the Mahdists were able to supply and support their forces in Equatoria by a fleet of river steamers plying between Omdurman and Rejaf. When the Bahr-el-Jebel became hopelessly blocked [by sudd] again in 1895, the Mahdist position in Eq- uatoria soon collapsed. See also Collins, 1966.

2. H. C. Jackson (1955: 126) recalled that during one tour of a southern province "...we had with us about 50 porters and, after travelling twelve days, sometimes on bicycles, but more often on foot, approached the end of the first stage of our journey.... The sun was setting behind some tall mahogany trees.... Our porters, stimulated by the thought of a few days rest in the settlement, had arrived before us, having covered 25 miles from our last camp at Tembura in less than 10 hours, despite the 60 pound loads on their heads. On arrival we found our luggage neatly stacked upon the verrandah of the thatched rest house that was to be our home.... Our canvas baths were filled with water. A shamadan (a candlestick with a glass globe to prevent the wind from blowing the candle out) on a little camp table shed friendly light upon a bottle of whiskey and lime juice and sparklet soda siphon, carefully aligned by our servants beside three tumblers."

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