Super User 15 July 2023

Best Travel Guide To Mundari Cattle Camps In South Sudan

The Mundari Cattle camps of South Sudan offer an unbeatable connection between the Mundari people and their cattle herds. While the men lead cows out for grazing on sunrise, women are obliged to clean and prepare food for the family and the dusk offers joy and happiness to individuals in the camp as they venture into dancing to music that is played with horns floating off their cattle. Their entire lifestyle is geared around caring for their prized livestock, the Ankole-Watusi, a horned breed known as “the cattle of kings.”

Who are the Mundari People?

The Mundari are one of the ethnic groups indigenous to the Nile Valley (Nilotic). Their main homeland is approximately 75 kilometers north of Juba, the capital of South Sudan. Their lands are bounded on the east by the White Nile, an important source of water for livestock. But incredibly, they never eat their flesh and their diet consists mainly of milk and yogurt. The Mundari people do not see the difference between man and cow. They eat, sleep, and walk together. The cows are everything to them - currency, food, and pride.

The Mundari, like other Nilotic tribes, are very cattle-oriented; cattle serve as a form of currency and a mark of status. The prospective groom offering cattle to the bride’s family arranges marriages and husbands may take as many wives as they can support.

The Mundari engage in perennial cattle-raiding wars with the Bor Dinka during the dry season. Mundari men will squat under streams of cow urine, both as an antiseptic and as an aesthetic choice – the ammonia in the urine colors the Mundari’s hair orange. The Mundari also cultivate sorghum and catch fish using nets and spears.

In common with other Nilotic tribes in Sudan, the Mundari practice ritual scarification as a rite of passage into adulthood for young men. The typical Mundari scar pattern consists of two sets of three parallel lines, each on either side of the forehead, extending in a downward slope and unconnected in the middle.

The Mundari cattle are among the world’s most pampered. Mundari massage their animals twice a day. The ash from dung fires, as fine as talcum powder, is rubbed into the cattle’s skin and used as bedding, while ornamental tassels swat flies from the eyes of the herd’s most prestigious beasts. The Mundari sleep among their cattle, “literally two feet away from their favorites”, and guard them at the point of a gun. It’s not unreasonable for the tribe to go to these lengths.

The Mundari youth waiting for transition collectively have three months away from the community with a village elder to perform and go through initiation rituals before rendered men. While in this isolation, they live side by side with nature to the extent that they don’t even have any clothes on, as this might be a barrier to the wonders of the environment around them. The climax of this initiation period is a cow sacrifice that confirms passage to adulthood for these individuals.

Besides cattle keeping, the Mundari are also known for fishing where they predominantly use spears and nets while catching fish. Being agro-pastoralists, Mundari grows crops ranging from simsim, groundnuts, maize, and sorghum.

The cattle culture is endemic to most indigenous tribes of South Sudan, Mundari also has a deep connection with their cattle where every life occurrence has a connection to their herds, ranging from giving birth, marriage, and transition from childhood to adulthood among other events that occur in their communities.

They treasure their herds to the extent that nothing from the animals goes to waste that is why they use the cow dung by burning it into ash and smearing it all over their bodies to act as a sunscreen from the blazing heat during grazing and keeping insects away from them. Tinted hair looks gorgeous on the skin of dark and bright melanin of a Mundari, that’s why they wash their hair with cow urine to change it from black coiled knots to orange.

With technology sweeping away most of the traditional traits of cultures, an itinerary to Mundari will grant tourists an opportunity to sight and be up close with one of the tribes that are still having their ways of life traditionally before they are also swept away by technology advancements.

Watching a herd of about 850 cows moving side by side and sleeping with humans is fascinating and breath-taking scenery that comes from the massive long horns of their cattle which are one of the prestigious types due to their hair-rising scars.

Arrange with Ultimate Wild Safaris for this memorable expedition in South Sudan.

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