Kampala
IT TOOK Colin Turnbull three weeks to write The Mountain People. In
just 21 days, the celebrated anthropologist had demonised one African tribe as
the epitome of all that was degraded and evil. Turnball鈥檚 account of the Ika
people of Uganda tells of a sick society heading towards extinction. He intended
the work as a grim warning about the ultimate fate of humanity.
But despite his sombre predictions, the Ika are very much alive鈥攁nd
bitterly angry about how they have been stigmatised by the Ugandan government
and by readers of Turnbull鈥檚 book. They say Turnbull failed to appreciate the
impact on their society of the severe famine that struck during his study period
in the mid-1960s, and that he misunderstood local culture and used inadequate
anthropological methods. Worse still, he foisted his own personal
disappointments and moods onto those he was studying.
Advertisement
Dirt eaters
When The Mountain People was published in 1972 it created a storm of
controversy. Turnbull described seeing food snatched from the mouths of elderly
people, children eating dirt and stones, Ika mothers abandoning their babies,
listless people stuffing their mouths with grass and others following vultures
to scavenge rotting carcasses. People would defecate on each other鈥檚 doorsteps,
including Turnbull鈥檚. He said that sex for Ika men was simply a way for them to
dispose of semen. He dubbed them the 鈥渓oveless people鈥� and likened Ika society
to the squalor of Nazi death camps during the Second World War. The Ika people
are, he wrote 鈥渁s unfriendly, uncharitable, inhospitable and generally mean as
any people can be鈥�.
Turnbull won many plaudits. In 1974, the book earned the Annual Award of the
National and American Academies of Arts and Letters 鈥渇or bringing together both
art and science鈥�. A stage adaptation, directed by Peter Brook, toured several
European cities including Paris, London, Vienna and Venice, and in 1976
travelled to the US as a gift from the government of France to America for its
bicentennial celebrations. Even today, anthropology lecturers recommend The
Mountain People to students as a study of how society disintegrates under
stress.
When the Ika first heard about Turnbull鈥檚 book from local Catholic
missionaries, they talked of suing the author for defamation, but failed to get
outside help to pursue the case. A quarter of a century later, the humiliation
caused by the publication of The Mountain People remains with them.
I first travelled to the land of the Ika in April 1994, the year Turnbull
died, following up my interest in Joseph Towles, the late black American
anthropologist who had been Turnbull鈥檚 field assistant in 1965. There I met
several elders who remembered Turnbull with disgust. 鈥淭his was an abuse, and the
Ika people are not happy about it,鈥� said Philip Asroui, an Ika truck driver.
Others told me that if Turnbull were to return to their land they would 鈥渂ury
him alive鈥�. Such strength of feeling persuaded me to look again at Turnbull鈥檚
portrayal.
The Ika, or Teuso, as they are more widely known by their neighbours, inhabit
the mountainous southern edge of the Kidepo Valley National Park in the far
northeast of Uganda. Linguists attempting to trace their origins, and those of
related mountain people the So and Nyang鈥檌-Napore, have largely failed,
and the history of this ethnic group, known
collectively as the Kuliak community, remains one of the most mysterious in East
Africa.
The life of the Ika is harsh. A serious drought strikes every five years or
so. When Turnbull arrived in 1965 the region was suffering the most severe
famine of the decade. That year, the Kotido district鈥攐f which the Ika
occupy the extreme northeast corner鈥攈ad just 17 rainy days. The drought
began to take its toll almost immediately, partly because three years earlier
the British colonial government had commandeered land in Kidepo Valley to create
a national park, so robbing the Ika of a choice hunting ground and rich source
of wild vegetables, fruit and roots. According to a report sent by Turnbull to
his friend and boss Harry L. Shapiro, an anthropologist at the American Museum
of Natural History in New York, some 600 out of an estimated population of 2000
Ika died from starvation and hunger-related diseases. In total, around 80 000
people in Karamoja district were affected.
Turnbull set up camp at Pirre near the Kenyan border. Today this is an
uninhabited no-man鈥檚-land, but then it boasted the only police post in Ika
territory. Ugandan officials were keen that Turnbull had
protection鈥攊ntertribal skirmishes were common. But Pirre is on the
periphery of Ika territory and was home to other ethnic groups including Dodos,
Diding鈥檃, Toposa and Turkana. Ika elders maintain that Pirre was the wrong place
from which to observe their society. 鈥淚f Dr Colin had gone to Tultul (Timu) he
would have met only Ika people there,鈥� says Pilipino Long鈥檕li, who in 1965 was
the Ika鈥檚 government-appointed chief or mkungu. Timu, a forest area of
some 70 square kilometres on the East African escarpment, is at the heart of Ika
territory and is a cultural centre鈥攁ll agricultural rituals, for example,
begin in Timu and then spread out across the region.
Not only was Turnbull on the edge of Ika territory, he also used non-Ika
informants. Faustino Loype, Pirre headman or mnyampara in 1965, says
Turnbull relied heavily on A. E. Abwatu, a police sergeant stationed at Pirre.
The anthropologist would ask Abwatu a question in English. He in turn would
speak in Akarimojong to Atum, Turnbull鈥檚 chief informant, and relay the answer
back in English. Icet鈥檕d, the Ika language, was never spoken.
Turnbull hardly ventured out of his hut or Land-rover, says Long鈥檕li. He
remained aloof. 鈥淚 could not see the view, of course, then neither could I see
the Ika,鈥� he wrote in The Mountain People, 鈥渁nd even though they were
the people I was meant to be studying and I had been there only three months or
less, the privacy gave me intense pleasure.鈥� Abwatu came from outside Karamoja
province and so, say the Ika elders I spoke to, it is hardly surprising that
Turnbull missed and misinterpreted vital aspects of their culture.
Worst of times
Alison Lochhead, a researcher working for Oxfam who conducted a gender and
development study in northern Karamoja in 1990, says that during times of food
shortages 鈥減eople tend to become more individualistic and there is a breakdown
of any shared work and social order鈥�. But Turnbull believed that he was watching
not the behaviour of a people during a bad year, but rather the end of several
decades of decline. And while such behaviour seemed extreme to his Western eyes,
in the context of Karamoja during a famine year it was nothing out of the
ordinary. During better years, their society would bounce back.
To the Ika, his mistake is doubly hurtful. Not only did he assume their
society was permanently full of selfish behaviour, but he singled out the Ika as
uniquely vile and degenerate, even though similar famine behaviour is common in
other peoples living in Karamoja.
Another misunderstanding arose from ascribing normal cultural practices to
the so-called 鈥渄egeneration鈥�. Turnbull was outraged that the Ika seemed to
simply throw their dead into a bush and forget them. However, throughout
Karamoja, corpses are traditionally left at the foot of a tree or in a thorn
bush covered with grass and leaves by relatives who then return to their village
in silence. Anthropologists Charles and Elizabeth Laughlin observed this
behaviour in the So鈥攁nother member of the Kuliak community鈥攄uring
the 1960s and early 1970s. 鈥淭he So do not bury children, young men and women,鈥�
they wrote. 鈥淎 young person is taken into the bush by a close relative where his
ornaments are removed and he is gently placed into a sitting position under an
appropriate tree.鈥�
Anthropologists who have spent time in Karamoja note that during severe
famines it is common for parents either to abandon their young children or
exchange them for money or food. Turnbull believed that the practice was unique
to the Ika and saw it as another sign of their degradation. He was also appalled
by the way he believed the Ika behaved normally towards the elderly. He
described how one emaciated old Ika man who had fallen down 鈥渉ad to cuff the son
to make him help鈥�. Joseph Lopuka, a former police officer who was stationed at
Pirre during the mid-1960s confirms Turnbull鈥檚 observations. 鈥淭his is the
character of the Teuso,鈥� he says. But it is also the character of their
neighbours the Dodos, says the American author Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, who
lived among them in the early 1960s. 鈥淚 was always troubled by Turnbull鈥檚 report
because he makes the Ika sound unusually mean when in fact they were only doing
what others around them were doing,鈥� she says. During better years, when ritual
life is possible, elders are honoured (see 鈥淪eeds of hope鈥�).
Even Turnbull鈥檚 basic ethnography was flawed. He was convinced he was
studying pure hunter-gatherers. However, research by Bernd Heine from the
University of Cologne, reveals a long tradition of farming. Heine estimates,
from his analysis of Kuliak language, that the Ika words for sorghum, finger
millet and beans, as well as for agricultural tools, are at least 3000 years
old. The strongest evidence for an agricultural origin, however, comes from Ika
rituals. As in most mature agricultural societies, the cycle of events
surrounding sowing and harvesting is vested with religious significance. The Ika
have a small but vital number of agricultural rituals including
it贸w茅-茅s, the blessing of seeds. Turnbull fails to
mention any of these in his book.
Disenchantment
鈥淩ather than being a study of the Ika,鈥� wrote anthropologist Thomas Beidelman
in his 1973 review of The Mountain People, 鈥渢his is an autobiographical
portrait of the author utilising the Ika as counters for expressing his personal
feelings and experiences in the field鈥�. Turnbull was not unique in suffering
from ethnographer discontent. Bronislaw Malinowski, for example, griped about
the physical and psychological deprivations that accompany all fieldwork and
described a particularly miserable time spent with the Trobriand Islanders of
Melanesia. And most anthropologists admit to favouring some tribes while
disliking others.
But why was Turnbull so disenchanted with the Ika? False expectations seem to
lie at the root of his discontent. It seems he had hoped to encounter a society
like that of the Ituri pygmies which he studied during the 1950s in what is now
the Democratic Republic of Congo. These forest-dwelling hunter-gathers and their
carefree lifestyle appealed to Turnbull. Shortly before his death in 1994, he
admitted that The Mountain People was largely inspired by the
realisation that Ituri society might one day go the way of the Ika. Indeed,
The Mountain People and The Forest People, Turnbull鈥檚 book about
the Ituri pygmies, he saw as twin volumes describing humanity鈥檚 capacity for
good and evil.
Turnbull鈥檚 apocalyptic predictions for the Ika proved unfounded. A generation
after he wrote that 鈥渢hese people are finished as a society鈥�, the tribe is
thriving. Numbers are increasing by around 2.7 per cent a year, the average for
Uganda as a whole. The most recent census, taken by Oxfam in 1994, recorded 5027
Ika in 791 households. Turnbull records a population of between 1300 and 2000.
Western medicine can take much of the credit for this upturn in fortunes. The
Ika have replaced traditional remedies with basic Western medicine, including
antibiotics and oral rehydration, and life expectancy has risen
dramatically.
Other imports have not fared so well. Although Ika territory is now home to
several schools, illiteracy runs at 99 per cent. The people have no aspiration
for formal education, which they consider irrelevant to their lives as
mountain-dwelling farmers.
Ika culture has changed little in recent decades. This is partly due to the
reclusive nature of the tribe. In fact, the name Teuso, given to them by their
neighbours, means 鈥渢he shy people鈥�. Conditions continue to make their lives
difficult. Food shortages are common. Drought, overgrazing and deforestation all
decrease the productivity of their land. And wild game, a vital supplementary
food, has been dramatically depleted by illegal hunting.
The Ugandan government is unsympathetic to the Ika鈥檚 plight. Slick
bureaucrats and city-dwellers treat the peoples of Karamoja as primitive, and
care little about their survival. Turnbull鈥檚 legacy lives on.
* * *
Seeds of hope
IN February 1997 I witnessed the it贸w茅-茅s
celebration, the blessing of seeds, perhaps the most important of Ika rituals.
It usually takes place around new year, but last year was delayed because of
food shortages.
The celebration begins with a new moon. On the eve of the ceremony, male
elders cut a branch from a special tree called ibet. They plant the
branch at the men鈥檚 sitting place or diwa, water it and then wrap it in
leaves. In the evening, the seeds to be sown that year are placed around the
branch in gourds and calabashes and then blessed.
The following morning, the elders return to their diwa. There they
sit in a semicircle awaiting a procession of women who approach bearing beer and
singing joyful songs for rain. The women are dressed in traditional ceremonial
costumes鈥攁nkle-length goatskin skirts, arm whisks made from zebra and
giraffe tails and leg bells. The most senior elder is the first to taste the
beer, which is brewed from several types of grain including maize, millet and
sorghum. The beer is then passed among the elders in order of their age.
Boys, girls and other women arrive and gather into age-based groups. Dancing
begins with the adolescents performing traditional favourites such as the
ubiquitous edonga, the jumping dance of Karamoja. This is a sign that
the year has ended and the new one is approaching. All able-bodied people take
their turn to dance. When all are exhausted they sit, drink beer and chat into
the night.