These new prophetic seizures and ecstatic activities often highlighted the anxieties of the new Southern Sudan government officials, especially at a local level. The prophets were not legible in that they were subject to random, unpredictable displays of divine power and possession. Plus, they were also militarily powerful as they often had the support of large numbers of armed youths. They challenged local government authority as they were repeatedly willing to challenge hakuma impunity.
In their anxiety about the prophetic proliferation, local governments responded in different ways. The commissioner at the start of 2013 asserted that he was an educated Christian man and could not believe the claims of Nyachol. He contested her power, and sought to demonstrate militarily the superior power of the government. However, first, it sought to negotiate with her. Only a week before my first visit, the government commissioner had demanded that a group of senior chiefs visit Nyachol to negotiate with her.
1 Interview with the Commissioner of Mayendit County, 2013. She had made it clear that she would only meet them after displays of their submission to her authority. She insisted on them taking their clothes off; they did not refuse. She insisted that they bring her gifts of bulls. When some that were brought were too small, she rejected them. Caught between the demands of the commissioner and Nyachol, the chiefs complied and brought larger bulls. At the same time, they felt humiliated.
2 Ibid.; interview with chief who had visited Nyachol, Mayendit County, 2013; discussion with Nyachol, Mayendit County, 2013.The chiefs’ visit had warned me of her opposition to the hakuma and the likelihood of nakedness. On that first visit, at the boundary to the space of her luak, I was instructed to leave my flip-flops. We then walked to a tree where we waited for the prophetess’s permission to meet her. When permission was granted, we would leave our other clothes beneath that tree. It was already the heat of the day and the strong sun had quickly heated the black earth. Walking shoeless the fifty metres to the tree itself felt like a test of endurance and itself an ordeal of submission to the prophetess.
We were ushered to a grass mat beneath two small trees that offered a little shade. We waited there for a few hours, growing in our speculations about what was to happen. We had been warned that a significant legal case about clan feud had been brought to the prophetess that morning and that she was still busy arbitrating between the parties. No certainty was given that she would agree to meet us. We would only be considered when it was our turn.
As we waited, the space seemed quiet and almost empty. A few women prepared sorghum and a couple of men stood nearby talking, yet there was not much movement in the landscape or near the large luak. We felt quite alone and I imagined the luak was as other luaks I had visited – a large empty space with the host in one corner of this thatched roofed atrium. It did not seem that any other visitors were likely to be there in significant number.
I was asked to undress.
3 There was no indication that Nyachol or those with her knew of the pictures taken by Evans-Pritchard among the Nuer. Many of his photos of the Nuer at the time include a lack of clothes and have been heavily criticised for these dehumanising portrayals. Her asking me to undress was not, but could have been, a comical reversal of power relations through my state of undress. I was grateful that she prohibited cameras. As I had been warned, I had borrowed some boxer shorts from a colleague and worn extra layers. I was grateful that I had. My travelling companion ended up in just boxer shorts. I took off my skirt but remained in boxers and bra. The requests to remove clothing were not universal. When asked why our clothes were to be removed, the prophetess answered that they were signs of
hakuma so she did not want them on her compound. As one elder explained, this was to demonstrate that ‘you didn’t know the
hakuma’.
4 Interview with elder, Miirnyal Market (Mayendit County), April 2013 (in Nuer). Their removal was a ritual submission and the performance of a large political vision. The lack of clothes also had the advantage of making it impossible to conceal weapons.
Nyachol’s husband then came to talk to us. He was dressed in a replica Arsenal football kit. The outfit was so worn, the football club could hardly be identified. I had seen similar football outfits on sale in the Ler market. The traders had brought them from northern Sudan in large ‘Khartoum’ lorries – lorries mechanically altered in Khartoum to give them the strength to trek along the roads of Sudan.
A tall, older man then led us to the
luak. Without shoes on, the sun-heated sand burnt my feet and it was hard to focus on anything but the pain. I was relieved to be brought in front of the shade of a small neem tree on the far side of the clearing from the
luak. The man lined us up and sprinkled water from a gourd over us. Then he led us towards the
luak and paused at the large pile of cattle dung ashes (
pou) beneath a woven grass platform. He took a little dust and smeared it on each of us. A few girls sat adjacent to this ash pile. Evans-Pritchard pondered whether the importance of cattle dung ash (as opposed to wood ash) was because of
pou’s association with the cattle.
5 Edward Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion (Oxford University Press, 1956), page 262. It was the same ash that was later smeared on the sacrificial bull.
As my feet burnt beneath me, as soon as I was allowed, I rushed to the luak eager to get inside away from the burning sun. I often interviewed people inside their luaks. They were a routine place of meeting in the villages, where people would gather to negotiate and decide family matters. Their tall, coned roofs made them incredibly cool compared to the blazing heat outside. They were built to contain many dozens of cattle. So, in the daytime, when the cattle were out grazing, they contained ample space for small groups of people to gather.
As I stepped inside, my eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness. At my feet and stretching out in front of me to every edge of the luak’s floor, was a densely packed sea of seated bodies. Like us, the young men that filled the luak had taken most of their clothes off. These young men were the audience. Scattered at the sides and the back were also a few dozen girls and older women. To the right of the small door, elders were sitting. They were the elders of families who had come to Nyachol for legal settlement of their feud. They were more eclectic in age and sat with less ease. Yet, they pushed themselves further back to make space for me to sit in front of them. To the left of the door, Nyachol sat with her back to the wall, facing the young men. Her eight disciples sat to her left, creating a line along the wall.
Nyachol was dressed in just a grass skirt with a leopard skin hung over her small, fragile-looking frame. Our entrance into the luak appeared to go unnoticed as she did not look up. She was focused on a small pipe in her hands and was trying to stuff the tobacco into it and then light it from a small fire to her left. In wearing a grass skirt and leopard skin, she invoked references to the kuaar muon (priestly) authority. Nyaruac was remembered as wearing grass skirts. Nyachol visibly performed in her clothing both the claim that her authority rested on the continuity, not rupture, of religious idioms, as well as the prophetic re-crafting and capturing of these priestly powers.
I glimpsed back at the young men, who all seemed to be looking at us. I tried to count the rows and the columns. I estimated that about eighty were there. I was too afraid to really turn and stare and count. One of the young men introduced a chant and the rest of the crowd burst into a sung response. Nyachol still did not flinch. They sang of war with the Dinka and called the Nuer men to war.
Eventually Nyachol and I talked as this audience behind us went quiet and listened. We would talk repeatedly over the next few months. Over time, she demanded less that I undress. She always asked me to take something off as a symbolic expression of my intention. All cameras and phones were left far away, as were the cars or motorbikes.
Making peace with me
As we talked, she explained that her initial reluctance to talk to me was because I was an outsider. As a white person, I was a foreigner. I must have come from hakuma. Yet, MAANI moved her enough to let us talk. I told her that a minor prophet in Ganyliel had named me Nyaluak. She named me ‘Made by God’. She said, ‘Your father is Riek Machar’. Her political alliances were not concealed. Despite her rejection of hakuma, she accepted him. Even though I was hakuma, like Riek, she could also reconcile our meeting by associating me with Riek. She said she was perplexed by her affinity to me, but she was glad that we were at peace. She called me to sit in front of her, and my translator ushered me forward. She placed around my wrist a brass bracelet. They forged this by melting down the shells from bullets. I had bought similar bracelets made by the blacksmiths on the edge of Rumbek town.
As discussed, when families were feuding, after peace was agreed and compensation paid, the new relationship of peace would be confirmed through the sacrifice of a bull. This was carried out by a kuaar muon, but also now by the prophets. Nyachol decided that she needed to make peace with me. If I represented a part of government, I could be mistaken for being in a feud with her. A bull would be sacrificed to restore our relationship and make peace.
The luak emptied to the area outside her luak. As I followed everyone outside, my feet quickly began to burn from its heat. Someone took pity on me and I was given a goat’s skin to sit on. I had not brought water and felt close to fainting. The first bull that was sacrificed was to reconcile the feuding families that had come to her luak before us. The second bull was to reconcile Nyachol and me. Each time Nyachol led the final invocations over the bull, and other elders carried out the act of killing the bull. Many times, after visits, I would carry home (tied to the back of the motorbike) parts from a slaughtered bull. They were gifts of peace from Nyachol.