THE DINKA CULTUREFROM SUDAN

By: Juan Carlos Guerrerosantos, Gaby Romero and Jenny Kim

Location and Facts

Repeat Gaby Location data.

Of the tallest people in the world

Food and Cattle Meaning

produced all the material resources they need to sustain their livelihood

By practicing horticulture (gardening) with pastoralism (nomadic herding)

Fish

Hunt

Main Food

Depending on the season, it is supplemented with cow milk, fish, meat, beans, tomatoes, or rice.

Cattle

Every morning hundreds of animals are taken out to graze. White is the Dinkas' favorite color for cattle, but they recognize a myriad of other colors with subtle distinctions and spend hours discussing them.

They are their economy

In ceremonies and important holidays, they sacrifice.

Living Conditions

Traditional homes were made of mud walls with thatched conical roofs,

last about 20 years.

Only women and children sleep inside the house, while the men sleep in mud-roofed cattle pens.

The homesteads were located to access grass and water.

Permanent villages are now built on higher ground above the flood plane of the Nile.

The Nile provide water for good land.

Song and dance play an important role in Dinka culture.

A set of drums is found in every Dinka settlement. Artistic expression is associated with cattle, which they often imitate in songs and dances.

There are also battle songs, songs of initiation, and songs celebrating the tribe's ancestors.

Initiation

These facial scars are performed as part of an initiation rite marking the passage of a boy into adulthood and his transition into a Dinka warrior.

Courage, aggressiveness, and violence are some of the most important Dinka values and are key to initiation.

This is what makes each man an adult, a warrior

Warrior is now able to marry

Boy receives an Oxen “Song Oxen and its is most precious posession”

Sports

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

Social Problems

Since the civil war that began in the 1980s, numerous Dinka villages have been destroyed by burning or bombing. Thousands of Dinka women have been raped and their husbands castrated in their presence. 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.