Karimojong People of Uganda

All you need to know about Karimojong People of Uganda and their Culture

Most of you who come to this page have never been to Karamoja and when i talk about Karimojong people, some of you may wonder where i get all this information about Uganda people and their culture.But the culture of Karimojong differs much from other people's culture. No wonder they are feared by most tribes in Uganda.

They are found in Kotido and Moroto districts in the northeastern part of Uganda. They are part of the Atekerin speaking people of Uganda.

- Their tribe speaks a Nilotic language and belongs, together with the Iteso and some other small tribes around them (Jopadhola, Sebei, Kumam), to the Atkerin group (Hamites). They settle in the northeastern part of Uganda in the Kotido and Moroto districts.

Here it rains only scarcely, and this is why there is performed mainly pastoralist economy. They conserve a distinct group with some elements of their cultural heritage.

The mode of living is based on traditional stock without intercultural adaptations. Most people supplement their pastoral economy with crop cultivation, which is mostly in the hands of the women.

After marriage wives live in their husbands' homestead. Each wife has a separate small house that serves as a kitchen. The house is built of mud and brushwood walls with a thatched roof.

The center of this construction is a cattle kraal, usually with only one opening to the outside. Some women also cultivate plots of ground. Millet is an important staple food, but many people also grow corn, peanuts and tobacco.

Cattle are of great symbolic and economic importance. Owning cows marks the step towards adulthood for men. If you do not own any cows, you are considered ill and sick (this is, without any status or rank).

Every Karimojong keeps a special ox among his herd. The oxen of invocation were named according to a list of clan names or on account of colour or the shape of the horns. These oxen were highly esteemed and were valued more than parents, wives or children.

If the representatives of the villages gathered on the occasion of ceremonies for local and inter-tribal feasts and dances, there was slaughtered such an ox. Leadership was vested in the elders, and the clan was the basic unit of administration.

The heads of the different clans constituted the council of elders which was responsible for administration, justice, settlement of disputes, maintenance of law and order, and punishment of law breakers. They also performed other important functions, such as those connected with rainmaking and, and they would guide other celebrations.

Before a boy could announce his intention to marry, he had to prove to the elders of the village that he was ready to become a man. In early times, the young man had to set out alone only with a spear and to hunt.

He had to present the animal‘s tail. Nowadays he has to search for cattle to pay the bridewealth. Upon his initiation of manhood, his father had to present him with a bull which was then slaughtered and the meat shared with his boyfriends. During the ritual the young man would smear himself all over with dung from the entrails of the bull.

His hair will be cut by one of his friend. In this moment he had attained the marriageable age, und with the permission granted by the elders he could wear ostrich feathers on his head. His father will instruct him, and he would have to look for a girl to get married. The young man would make his choice and inform the father who would have to pay the bridewealth.

As soon as the bride arrives in the groom’s home, the ceremony would start with a dance and people began to gather in the cattle kraal. The Karimojong were polygamous, with the number of wives only being restricted by the man’s possibility to pay the bridewealth.

Marriage between close relatives was prohibited. If there had been agreed on a divorce, the bride could return to her father’s home and the bridewealth would have to be returned, also including the bull.

Afterwards she was a free woman again. Sexual intercourse among unmarried men and women was frowned upon, and a pregnancy resulting from such an act was decried. A bridewealth has to be paid to the woman’s father, and the young man has to marry the girl.

The issue of adultery was in fact a family affair, not a personal one; and the property which was confiscated from the dulterer would be divided, as a kind of penalty, among the members of the affected family. When a woman was to give birth, her sisters would come to assist.

The women acted as midwives, they would wash the baby with cold water. On the day when the woman ended the days of confinement, a ritual ceremony would be performed.

Children were given the name of the ancestor, meaning that the first born gets the name of the grandfather, the second one that of the grandmother, the third of a great aunt or uncle and so on. This implied in effect that they did not have particular names for the different sexes (no particular names for girls or boys).

When a village member died, it was allowed to start weeping. The elder of the village was buried in the centre of the calf or sheep kraal, with his head pointing to the north, because they believe that they came from the north. The body was covered with cow dung, followed by soil and then stamped on.

A large stone would be placed upright on the grave. Death and burial ceremonies tended to vary from clan to clan but generally all the mourning and weeping would proceed for a couple of days. All the relatives would come, and if the deceased had brothers, they would inherit his wives and part of the wealth. Some clan did not bury the body but rather left it for nature.

They do not worship for the sake of it. In times of troubles, sickness or misfortunes, the clans would gather together at the ancestor‘s grave with all their children and grandchildren. There they would milk the cow, bring up the tobacco and slaughter an ox.

The contents of the ox‘s stomach were smeared over the people and over the burial stones.If rain failed to come, elders would approach the emurron (medicine man) with a present of a calabash of milk and impress upon him the necessity of making rain.

Then the akirriket (rainmaking ceremony) started. All the elders would gather at the appointed spot. A man was then to kill the bull by spearing it in the side. The bull was slaughtered, and the meat would be roasted on the fire.

A devastating cattle plague swept the area in the late nineteenth century, a tragedy that showed the young to move to grazing areas in the highlands. Grazing areas are common ground outside the stockade, although milk cows sometimes stay near the homestead.

During the driest months, usually February and March, cattle are moved to seasonal camps some distance from the homestead. In these camps, men live almost entirely on milk and blood drawn from live cattle, and, occasionally, meat.

In the homestead, women, children and old people forage for food, including wild ducks, if stores of grain are depleted. Milk is reserved for children and calves, only then it would be consumed by adults.

Men living within a homestead are related by descent through male forebears. This group, the patrilineage, is augmented by wives and children, and occasionally by unmarried brothers of the lineage head.

A group of brothers usually shares the ownership of a herd of cattle; cattle are usually branded with clan markings, although a man normally knows each animal in his family herd. Only when the last surviving brother dies is the herd divided among the next generation, with each set of full brothers inheriting a small herd.

Two important sources of social solidarity link members of unrelated lineages to each other. Intermarriage forms bonds based on bridewealth, cattle which is given by a man's family to that of his bride, and children, who are important to their own lineage and to that of their mother.

Age-sets form bonds among groups of men close in age. (Clan leaders establish a new age-set (consisting of people of similar age) about every twentyfive years.) Members of an age-set are generally obligated to maintain ties of friendship and assist each other when in need.

Most Karimojong resisted government pressures to abandon their herding life-styles, but officials estimated that as many as 20 percent of the population may have died in the drought and famine that swept through much of the African Sahel in the early 1980s.

British control of the region was fairly ineffective well into the twentieth century, although successful trading centers had been established as early as 1890. Traders brought ivory and, occasionally, cattle to augment local herds, and received grain, spears, and other metal products in return.

Karimojong, Jie, and Dodoth oral historians have recounted their forebears' arrival in the region from the north. Several small ethnic groups live among the Karimojong peoples in the far northeast:

The Dodoth people were believed to have separated from the Karimojong proper in the mid-eighteenth century. They migrated northward into more mountainous territory. Dodoth homesteads were generally in valleys, with dry season pastures on nearby hillsides.

As a result, they did not practice the transhuman migration patterns that required other Karimojong peoples to establish dry-season cattle camps. The homesteads are larger than those of the Karimojong proper and more isolated from one another.

Surrounding the homestead, upright poles are thrust into the earth, intertwined with branches and packed with mud and cow dung, forming a sturdy wall with only one or two small openings to the outside.

As many as forty people often live in one homestead. Each wife has her own hut and hearth, and often keeps a small garden near her hut, but fields and pastures are outside the homestead. Adolescent girls often build huts of their own next to their mothers' huts.

Adolescent boys also build a larger "men's house," where they live before marriage. People keep cattle and other animals inside the fortified wall at night. The Oropom clan, who were forced to move southward, live among tribes like the Karimojong as an apparent remnant of this society.

The Jie people, patrilineages maintaining the belief that they are distantly related, often keep homesteads near one another, but this practice is less common among other Karimojong.

The clan comprises related lineages, often numbering over 100 people. Jie clans are exogamous, meaning that two people of the same clan cannot marry one another. In addition, men generally avoid marriage with a woman of their mother's clan or that of her close relatives.

Jie clan members share some symbolic recognition of their common identity, such as jewelry, but they do not observe the ritual taboos of animals or foods that are characteristic of many other African clan.

The Labwor people, who live on the border between Acholi and Karamoja land, are historically and linguistically related to the Karimojong but have adopted much of the lifestyle of the Acholi.

The Labwor region is also a center of trade between cultivators to the west and pastoralists to the east. The local economy centers on crops – chiefly sorghum, eleusine, maize, gourds, sweet potatoes, beans, and peanuts – but people also raise cattle and goats.

A small number of men from Labwor have achieved substantial wealth as itinerant traders in northeastern Uganda. Labwor society is organized into homesteads centered on the core of patrilineally related men and their wives and children. In addition, age-sets are important stabilizing factors, forming crosscutting ties among lineages.

The Teuso people who relied on hunting and cattle-raiding for much of their subsistence; but some have also gained a reputation as spies and informers in the local system of raiding and warfare.

One such group was moved from their homeland in the 1960s to clear land for Kidepo National Park. Most of their Karimojong neighbors despised the Teuso so much so that people were willing to see them starve rather than allow them to join nearby villages.

Some Teuso died, and others left the area to become low-wage earners in nearby towns. The social system that developed in response to depopulation and deprivation emphasized individual survival at the expense of other people.

The Tepeth people lived among the Karimojong, although they were usually classified as a separate Eastern Nilotic-speaking group. Oral histories relate that they were forced by government edict to vacate their homes in caves high in the mountains in northeastern Uganda.

The move increased their vulnerability to be attacked by people and disease, and an influx of refugees from Sudan further disrupted life. Warfare and conflict increased, and the Tepeth developed a variety of religious cults and rituals to maintain their cultural integrity in the face of Karimojong and Sudanese influence.

The origins of Karimojong people

The origins of these people are quite uncertain but a legend from Teso and Karamoja people itself asserts that the two names Karimoja people and Iteso were derived during their migrations within Uganda.

In their early migration, the Atekerin peoples are said to have come by way of Karamoja.

Those who remained where the Karimoja live today came to be known as the Karimojong people.

The term is said to have been derived form the phrase akarima ajong; meaning “ the old men have got tired”; because the Karimojong people did not manage to proceed as far as the other peoples of their stock.

Although the Karimojong peole have common origins with the Langi and Iteso, some elements of their culture differ greatly from the Langi because the Langi became more prone to foreign influences during their migratory cycle. Even among the Karimojong people of today, the customs which depicted the mode of life of the traditional stock have slightly, if not greatly, been affected by the forces of change such as intercultural adaptations.

None the less, the Karimojong people still stand as a distinct group with some elements of their cultural heritage intact.

Traditional Marriage among the Karimojong people

Before a boy could announce his intention to marry, he had to prove to the elders of the village that he was already a man.

In the early times, when lions and elephants still teemed across the southern Karamoja plains, the boy had to set out alone armed only with a spear and hunt and kill single handed one of the lions or elephants that roamed the plains.

The boy would prove the achievement by reporting to elders at a formal meeting called a baraza. HE would show the blood on his spear and also present the animal’s tail. The remaining problem now would be to find sufficient cattle to pay the bride wealth.

Upon proving his manhood, the boy would be given a bull by his father. The Bull was then killed and shared among the boy’s male friends and relatives.

Besides, the boy would smear himself all over with dung from the entrails of the bull.The boy’s hair would then be cut by one of his adult male friends, leaving a tuft at the back known as input to which a short string would be tied.

From then on, he was considered to have attained marriageable age and with permission of the elders he could begin to wear ostrich feathers.

The boy’s father would then instruct him to look for a girl to marry. No compulsion was brought to bear on either party in a marriage but the father could reject the boy’s choice if he deemed the choice unsatisfactory.

Sexual contact was a usual prerequisite for the actual marriage and cases were few in which bride wealth was paid before such a contact had taken place.

The boy would make his choice and instruct the father to pay bride wealth and this marked the beginning of negotiations between the girl’s and the boy’s families.

The first journey of the boy’s parents to the girl’s home could not be under taken at the period of the new moon.

Among the karimojong people,when the bride wealth arrangements were finalized, the bride would be brought along with the delegation that came to collect the cows and she would be left at her new home.

A delegation from the boy’s family would accompany the dowry and on reaching the girl’s home, they wee received outside the girl’s mother’s hut.

She would spread out hides for all to sit down on whilst she lit a pipe which was handed around and puffed by all in turn, the elders first.

Thereafter, the delegation would return home.When they reached home, the boy would remove the leopard’s skin and the ostrich feathers he had been wearing.

He would not sleep with his bride that night. On the following morning the boy’s mother would take a calabash of cooking butter to the door of the bride’s apartment and call her.

She would then put a necklace and a piece of emuria grass on the bride and smear the butter all over her except the legs. She would then remove all the girl’s ornaments and dress her like a married woman.

The exact attire consisted of a goat’s skin hung down from the waist, the hairy side outward and a calf skin slung from the shoulders and reaching the knees.

The goat’s skin had to be well shaped otherwise it would cause shame to the bride among her fellow women when walking or dancing.

After being dressed, the bride and three other girls would go and cut a load of firewood each to give to the boy’s mother.

That same night, the boy would sleep with his wife and they would continue to do so in that hut until a child was born.

After that, the husband would build a separate hut for that particular wife.

The Karimojong people were polygamous. The number of wives a man could marry was only limited by bride wealth obligations.

No marriage between relatives was allowed, no matter how remote the degree of consanguinity. Customarily, on arrival at the home of her husband to be, the girl was taken through the large kraal entrance and led to her own house.

Donning his leopard- skin cloak, his knee bells, he address and zebra tail, the groom would circle the entire village pretending to be a brave animal, tossing his head and swishing his tail.

Finally, people would gather in the cattle kraal and the ceremony would be rounded off with a dance.

Karimojong people and divorce

Normally, if divorce had been agreed upon, the woman would go down on her hands before the husband and he would pour cold water on her back.

There after, she could return to her father and the father would repay bride wealth.

When this had been done, the man would return a bull the woman’s father.

This bull was killed and all the relatives would join in eating it; even the former husband would take part in the eating.

The woman’s father and his people would smear the woman with the dung of the entrails to let those concerned understand that she was there and then a free woman.

If she had not given birth, she would revert to the dressing style of unmarried girls which consisted of a goat-skin covering her buttocks and reaching from the waist to the back of the knees and a pad of cowries covering the front.

If however she had already given birth, she would maintain the dress of a married woman. She could also wear any ornament she liked. A divorced woman could by custom freely marry.

How the Karimojong people took adultry

In the older Karimojong people customs, sexual intercourse between unmarried persons was allowed but pregnancy resulting form such an act was decried.

Such a misconduct was atoned for by payment of thirty goats to the girl’s father unless bride wealth was paid and the boy married the girl.

But adultery was regarded as the most serious offense rendering the man involved liable to death at the hands of the aggrieved husband.

If the adulterer was lucky the offended man could just confiscate all his stock.

This penalty was extended to include any stock which the adulterer might come to possess in future until it was felt that the honor of the affected man had been restored.

The issue of adultery was in fact a family affair, not a personal one; and the property which was confiscated from the adulterer would be divided up amongst the members of the affected family.

Karimojong people and their culture on birth

When a woman was about to give birth, her female relatives would come to assist.

The woman who acted as a midwife would crouch in front and receive the baby.

She would wash the baby at once with cold water. The Umbilical cord was cut and buried in the cattle enclosure.

If the baby was a boy, the cord was cut with emal (an arrow used for bleeding cattle); and if a girl, it would be cut with a normal knife.

On the day of birth, the mother and her attendants were given food consisting of choroko (small peas or beans ground up).

They were also given meat and blood from a bull and heifer. The men could share in the meal but under no circumstances could they enter the hut in which the baby had been born.

All the prepared food had to be eaten there and then but no sick person or any infected with sores could join the eating.

The same day the husband would send his wife the skin of a gazelle to be tied by the fore legs behind her back and the hind legs behind her waist in such a fashion as to conceal her breasts.

The husband would not enter the mother’s house for about twenty days.

But he could from time to time peer into the hut to inquire about the health of the mother and the child.

On the day when the woman ended the days of confinement, a ritual ceremony was performed.

A ram was slaughtered and its skin was prepared for tying the child on the mother’s back.The village elder would receive the tongue, a shoulder and the ribs of the ram leaving the reminder to be eaten by the women and the children.

A bull or a barren cow would also be killed for the villagers. A few months later, a beer party would be organized.

Among the Karimojong people, it was considered lucky for a woman to give birth to twins but it was believed that if both of them grew up, either the father or the mother would sicken and die.

Naming of the new born among the Karimojong people

Children were given the names of their ancestors. In fact, to be more exact, the eldest child would get the name of the grandfather.

The next would get the name of the grandmother, the third was named after a great aunt or uncle; and so on.

This implied that the Karimojong people did not have particular names for particular sexes.

Children could also be given other names by the midwives who assisted in their births on account of the conditions prevailing during birth.

For instance, a child could be named Lopero if it was born at night. However, such were more often than not, tentatively conferred and acceptance or refusal was said to be demonstrated by the child sucking contentedly or crying.

If the mother did not have enough milk to feed the baby, it would be given goats milk administered from a small gourd shaped like feeding bottle.

What is the Karimojong people traditional thinking of death

When a village member died, there was un restrained weeping.

If a woman lost a child through any cause, she would often attempt suicide.

Women were known to keep a special cord in their grain baskets for this purpose.

It was unusual for a man in Karamoja to attempt suicide; but it was common for women in the event of loss or failure of crops.

Near Latome, there is a stream called “the stream of hanging”. By the banks of this stream, it is said that bodies were constantly found hanging from trees.

Traditional way of burial among the Karimojong people

The elder of the village was buried in the center of the calf or sheep kraal.

He was buried wit his head pointing in the north because the Karimojong people believe that they came from the north.

The body was covered with cow dung and soil and then stamped on. Then a large stone would be placed upright on the grave.

If an elder died away from the village, his body would be carried home,

usually on a donkey. Death and burial ceremonies tended to vary from clan to clan but generally, mourning and weeping would proceed for a couple of days.

Among the Karimojong people, the Ng’inga’aricum clan did not bury their dead.

The dead body was usually left outside, preferably at a place where the harvester ants had carried off the seeds and left a bare patch on the ground.

The corpse was laid on its side with its head upon a stone, and left there to rot and dry. There were no burials for the lepers and suicide victims.

After burial, the male members would shave the front of their heads while the women would shave off all their hair.

All neck ornaments were taken off and the widow would, in addition, remove her earrings.

Children and women would also replace their skins with old and tattered ones.

In some clans, the widow would wear a long skin extending from the chest to the feet she would also put on her late husband’s sandals

which she would not take off even if the gourd was muddy and even at night when she lay down to sleep.

She would also carry her late husband’s stick and gourd form which the spout would have been knocked off as a matter of custom.

When their hair had grown again but was still short, mourners would rub themselves all over with dust to rid themselves of the contamination of the dead.

The dead man’s contemporaries would then kill his favorite ox and eat it.

There were no supplications offered at this ceremony. The dead man’s relatives would come and if he had brothers, they would inherit his wives and part of the wealth.

But it was not usual among the Karimojong people to discuss inheritance until after quite some time.

If the man had no brothers, the eldest son would inherit the young wives but it would take several months before the formal distribution would be done.

Whenever a chief died, he would be buried in the center of the kraal. The wives and members of the family were usually buried round the sides near the entrance of the kraal.

Though they tended to have some elements of similarity with the Turkana of Kenya, the Karimojong people would not leave the village after someone had died like the Turkana did.

Traditional religion of Karimojong people

The Karimojong people would not worship for the sake of it. In times of trouble, sickness or misfortune, the clans would gather at the ancestor’s grave with all their children and grand-children and there they would milk the cows, bring out the tobacco and kill an ox.

The contents of the ox’s stomach were smeared over the people and over the burial stones chanted as follows: “our Father help us; what shall we do? Are our cattle to die? Are our children to die? We have never disobeyed you: oh father, hear us, give us life.

Rain making among the Karimojong people

If rain failed to come at the expected time or when at any moment rain was badly needed, two or three elders would approach the emurron (medicine man with a present of a calabash of milk and impress upon him the necessity of making rain.

The emurron would direct them to present a bull of a specified colour, usually black, and then appoint a day for akirriket (the rain making ceremony).

The elders would then look for an appropriate bull, and its owner, as a matter of course, would have to agree to give it away.

On the day of the ceremony, all the elders would gather to an appointed spot. The elders’ would sit in a semi-circle with the bull in the center.

The other men would group themselves at the opening the circle where fire was made. Grass was then spread I in front of each elder and near the bull.

A man was then selected to kill the bull by spearing it in thee side. For such a privilege conferred upon him, he had to give the owner of the bull a heifer.

The bull was slaughtered on the grass and the meat would be roasted. The roasted meat was brought before the assembly but it was not distributed immediately.

The Emurron would stand in the center facing outward and, sticking his naked spear upright in the ground, he would call upon rain to come. It is said that rain would fall instantly or at least after a few days.

The roasted meat was then distributed by two attendants to the elders. The elders’ would eat and give some bites of meat to the men around.

For his service, the Emurron would get a hind leg for himself. He would then cut and divide the other hind leg and distribute it to the elders.

Thereafter, all the elders’ would disperse to their homes.

Learn about the ox of invocation among the Karimojong people

Customarily, each Karimojong man would keep a special Ox among his herd.

Each man should simulate acts of bravery by invoking the aid of his special ox. He would do this by calling out the name of the ox while brandishing his spear.

If a man killed an enemy or a fierce animal having invoked the aid of his ox, he was entitled to slit the ox’s ears.

It was believed and feared that an ox might despise a master who had failed to slit its ears.

The Oxen of invocation were named according to a list of clan names or on account of color or the shape of he horns.

These oxen were highly esteemed and were valued more than parents, wives, children or other possessions.

It was considered very unfortunate for an ox to die before its master. Should it do so, the owner to take off his ornaments and observe many days of mourning.

If the master died before the ox, it would be killed to accompany him.Often, a man would decide to kill his special ox if he realized that it was growing very old.

However, only men belonging to his two elder groups, the Ng’itukoi and Ng’imoru could be allowed to do such a thing.

Such a man would announce his intention to kill the ox. The representatives of the villages would gather on the ceremonial ground for local and inter-tribal feasts and dances.

Customarily, the elders would sit behind the circle of leaves prepared for the occasion. The sticks on which the hind legs of the animal would be placed were laid in the center before the elders.

Therefore the ox was slaughtered while its owner stood by. He would be dressed in the ceremonial dress of ostrich feathers form head to toe. He would watch but could not himself participate in the slaughter of the ox.

Then there would follow dancing and invocation of oxen but as the youths recounted their heroic deeds done in the names of their different oxen, the elders would remain seated.

After this, there would follow a ceremonial dance which was accompanied by a series of mimed interludes performed by almost every one present.As the dancing would be going on, the elders would be given the best pieces of meat. The delegates from the different villages would not go home that day.

They would be lodged in the village of the clan to which the owner of the ox belonged. At the end of the celebrations, the reveling and feasts could continue for several days.

The owner of he ox would take on new ox in the hope that it would stimulate him to fresh deeds of bravery.

Traditional economy of Karimojong people

The Karimojong people were pastoralists by nature and their love for cattle was intense. Cows were regarded as a means of livelihood and for paying bridewealth.

Among the Karimojong, the bridewealth ranged form fifty to one hundred heads of cattle. It was due to this and the custom of spear blooding that the Karimojong people usually resorted to cattle keeping.

To most of them, spear blooding was necessary when the young boy had passed through what was known as the initiate stage and desired to get married.