Oral Tradition of Origin as a Remembered Memory and a Repeated Event:sorghum as a Gift in Jie and Turkana Historical Consciousness

Abstract

This article examines the implicit meaning of the well-known Jie and Turkana oral tradition of origin known as Nayeche, as a remembered memory and a repeated event. The images of the remembered messages of the past event contained in the Nayeche oral tradition are reproduced through storytellers'representations of them. These representations are not simple fixed historical messages that are expressed explicitly, but they are active and interconnected with present situations and thus are a part of the society's habitual actions. The memory of the journey of Nayeche and the gray bull Engiro from the Karamoja Plateau to the plains of Turkana is well remembered both among the Jie and among the Turkana people. The memory of this journey is symbolically embodied in the Jie and in the Turkana landscape, in the phases of the Jie marriage ceremonies as well as in the phases of the Jie harvest rituals. This article focuses on the relationship between the Jie people who live mainly along the banks of Longiro River and in the Nakapelimoru and Kotido area and the Turkana people who live on the upper Tarash River region.

Narrating the Memories ofErmeni Mezalimi

“…The Kurds and Turks, however, symbolize goodness and hospitality illustrated by their adherence to culturally-normative neighborly relationships 12 On this theme, see further K. Barber (1990), I could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women, and the Past in a Yoruba Town (Washington DC: Smithsonian Press); E. Basso (1995), The Last Cannibals: A South American Oral History (Austin: University of Texas Press); I. Hofmeyr (1993), 'We Spent Our Years as a Tale That is Told': Oral Historical Narrative in a South African Chiefdom (London: James Currey); S. Slyomovics (1998), The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press); M. Mirzeler (1999), Veiled Histories, and the Childhood Memories of a Jie Storyteller, PhD dissertation (Madison: University of Wisconsin, WI, USA); and H. Scheub (1996), The Tongue is Fire: South African Storytellers and Apartheid (Madison: University of Wisconsin). 13 See further H. Behrend (1999), Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda 1986Uganda -1997 (Oxford: James Currey).…”

Sorghum as a Gift of Self: the Jie Harvest Ritual Through Time

“…In this sense various metaphors of sorghum inform the Jie people's understanding of their sense of who they are and provide them with the necessary discourse to negotiate their relationships. As I have shown elsewhere (Mirzeler 2004), the major characterization of sorghum as the dominant metaphor of the Jie collective identity has been most vividly articulated in the interconnection of a well-known Jie and Turkana oral tradition of origin and the Jie harvest rituals. This tradition depicts the journey of Nayeche, a Jie woman, from the Karamoja Plateau to the plains of Turkana, following the footprints of an ancestral bull named Engiro.…”

“…I argue that sorghum, as the metaphor of the Jie collective self, evolved when the Jie people situated themselves in relation to their neighbors, the Turkana pastoralists, during the officiation of the harvest ritual by Orwakol. The symbolic importance of sorghum is deeply embedded in the phases of the Jie harvest ritual (Mirzeler 2004). Sorghum is not only the main staple of the Jie people, but it is also seen as a gift from their ancestors and their deities.…”

“…sorghum) denotes not only tasting and eating, but also refers to a sexual act. The Jie political system is informed by these representations (Mirzeler 1999). In this sense, the Jie are made in the granary and they flourish in the fields under the sun, metaphorically in Ohnuki-Tiemey's (1993:127-36) sense of the term.…”

“…The Jie traditional thought expressed in giving and receiving sorghum grain during the harvest rituals can be seen as a theoretical understanding of ethnicity, clan, and lineage politics between these two communities, and it is essentially comparable to Gulliver's sociological theorizing of "agnatic bond," achieved through the exchange of cattle and the sharing of grazing lands and water points among the Jie and Turkana men. The traditional dramas, such as the ones encapsulated in the Jie harvest ritual and the oral tradition of origin (Mirzeler 2004), are integrated into wider local causalities. In these local traditional dramas, while sharing food and resources between ethnic communities and clans who occupy different ecological zones unite people, refusal to share food fragments them through a push-and-pull type of causality, Unking or dispersing communities on the family model.…”