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Kuliya ti La'Bi lo Kakwa

by Yuga Juma Onziga

116 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); foreign language; catalogue #06-2204; ISBN 1-4251-0447-9; US$30.43, C$35.00, EUR25.00, £17.50

This book strives to protect and cherish our cultural and natural heritage, and raise awareness, pride and action for heritage conservation, thereby enhancing the quality of our existence today and for future generations.

About the Book

Kuliya ti La'bi lo Kakwa is the first book on Kakwa traditional culture in the Kakwa language. The book opens with the author, Yuga Juma Onziga, in a typical Kakwa traditional cultural style, introducing himself and thanking all the Kakwa elders who responded to his written questions regarding their knowledge of the different aspects of Kakwa traditional culture. In the subsequent sections of the book, To'doko Stephen, one of the members of the Authentic Kakwa Language Academy members, in Ko'buko, asks the elders the questions on the different topics Yuga had sent:

• In Mata-ki ti Kakwa, amonye or elder Philip 'Banya of the Nyigo clan, who is also the Chairman of AKLA, talks about the selection, role, nursing and burials of traditional chiefs in Kakwa society;
• In Utu na unda-zi, amonye or elder Abdalla Awa of the Yoŋosu clan narrates the search for, and administration of, justice in Kakwa traditional cultural ways;
• In Gboza naga singa-singa amonye or elder Abdalla Awa of the Yoŋosu clan describes the special dance, singa-singa, held when a child's milk teeth of the lower jaw--kala ti ka--sprout before those of the upper jaw---kala ti ki;
• In ŋutu laga keni a bari amonye or elder Abdalla Awa of the Yoŋosu clan speaks of the qualities of a person with natural healing hands and his or her importance in the Kakwa society;
• In Laŋa na kizi-to, amonye or elder Sayiga Duku of the Godiya clan, shows the ritual of reconciliation between warring Kakwa clans;
• In 'Duko na rusugo amonye or elder Sayiga Duku of the Godiya clan reveals the role and importance of the mananye (mother's brother) in Kakwa society;
• In Kade laga a wini-ko, amonye or elder Lomo Rajab Awa of the clan of Lurujo, covers the names and types of traditional herbal medicines found in Kakwa society and the kinds of ailments they treat;
• In Sozu na ŋutu-lu ti 'bero na, amonye or elder Lomo Rajab Awa of the clan of Lurujo narrates the traditional costumes worn by the Kakwa people in the past;
• In Nyosu-to ti baŋe na rile, amonye or elder Lomo Rajab Awa of the clan of Lurujo, gives some of the names and types of foods consumed during dearth in Kakwa society;
• In Biro-to ti ŋaziŋa, amonye or elder Lomo Rajab Awa of the clan of Lurujo identifies some of the types of traditional children's games and likikiri-to (fables);
• In Rembi: ŋutu lika lo tobodo, lo to'bunu ku lo tobura, amonye or elder Lomo Rajab Awa of the clan of Lurujo, shows the origins and extraordinary powers of a man called Rembi and his unique role in challenging colonial authority in the emerging West Nile District.

  The book concludes with elders Lomo Rajab Awa and Philip 'Banya lamenting the influences of modern governments and religions on Kakwa's traditional culture, as well as words of advice to the Kakwa living overseas.

  The picture on the cover of the book is that of Mount Liru (the apex to the left) and Mount Lunya i (the bare apex to the right). Mount Liru is the centre of all Kakwa mythology and descent.

  Kakwa is an undocumented language, and it is referred to in Greensberg (1966), though no particulars of the language are given. It is also mentioned in Spagnola's Bari Grammar (1937) and in Tucker and Bryan's (1967) survey of the languages of the area, with reference to few particular (mostly incorrect) features of the language. No grammar of the language exists.

  Rough estimates suggest that there are approximately 300,000 speakers of Kakwa. However, the region in which Kakwa is spoken is rife with political unrest and upheaval. Until recently, there has been civil war in the southern Sudan and in the Congo, and these have been going since the 1960s. Although the Kakwa population has stabilized in recent years, the Kakwa people feel that there has been a significant decline in degree of speaker confidence due to pressures of war, illness, poverty, migration and political oppression. Currently, Kakwa children attending school are instructed, not in their own language, but in that of the other politically powerful neighboring languages.

  
  

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  About the Author

  

  The author, Yuga Juma Onziga, was born in 1956 to the Rugbuza clan of Ko'buko District, in the West Nile Province of Uganda. Like most Kakwa children at that time, Yuga received most of his informal education through observation and hands-on, which focused on learning traditional culture and heritage - education which revolves around the real world. From the moment of birth, Kakwa children learn to prepare themselves for adulthood by observing and doing what their parents and elder siblings do: till the land; look after cattle, goats and sheep; hunt and fish; build houses; play the drums, sing and dance; defend the society; bury the dead; respect the elders; or learn various ways of survival in the wilderness, etc. Adults and elders teach the children the skills they must know in order to participate fully in their society.

  Yuga's formal education began with Islamic studies known as garaya, at Parikile-Oka, in the present-day Kakwa County of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here, he was living with his grandparents from the mother's side. Later, he graduated for advanced Koranic studies which took him to Kaya, a town just off the Uganda-Congo-Sudan border on the Sudan side. At that time, he was living with one of his uncles at Ora'ba, a Trading Centre overlooking Kaya, on the Uganda side of the border. When the Anyanya rebellion engulfed the whole of the Southern Sudan in the 1960s, Yuga was forced to abandon his Islamic studies at Kaya and he relocated to Nurunu village to stay with his mother*s younger sister in Uganda. While at Nurunu, he entered to elementary school at Nyarilo Muslim Primary School, which is located within the Headquarters of the Ko'buko District, Nyarilo. After a brief study at Nyarilo, he rejoined his parents at the village of Rugbuza, to start his more serious and stable formal education at Padombu Village School in Grades One and Two. In 1965, he joined Lobule Primary School for Grade Three, and in 1966, he joined Nyaŋiliya Primary School where he completed his Primary Four to Six education. All these different schools were located over six kilometers away from his Rugbuza village, and he had to walk or run to and from school every schooling day. In the evenings, weekends and holidays, he helped his parents in the fields and looked after the livestock.

  On January 25, 1971, Yuga left his home District of Ko'buko and joined Sir Samuel Baker Secondary School (later renamed Po dwo o Secondary School), at Gulu, some 200 kilometers away from Ko'buko District. After six years, he completed both his Ordinary and Advanced Level studies. In 1977, he joined Makerere University for a program in Forestry. When the civil war in Uganda reached its climax in early 1979, Yuga abandoned the University and joined the thousands of the Ugandan Refugees who crossed into neighbouring Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and into the Southern Sudan. He, along with his siblings, settled with his parents at Parikile-Oka, the clan where his mother hailed from. In September 1979, he crossed into the Yei River District (now Yei County) of the Southern Sudan and eventually settled to work as an Inspector of Commerce in the Bari city of Juba, some 200 kilometers away from Parikile-Oka.

  This exposure to different regional areas enabled Yuga to be multilingual in Swahili, Arabic and six other African languages.

  In 1983, Yuga was accepted by the Canadian Government as a Conventional Refugee, and he along with his wife, and a five-year old daughter, landed in Toronto, Ontario in January on January 26, 1984. In 1986, he joined the University of Guelph, Ontario, to resume his interrupted University studies. This time, he chose the program of Agriculture and specialized in Environmental Sciences. He graduated in 1990. However, getting work in his fields of studies proved an uphill battle.

  Unperturbed, Yuga saw an opportunity where he could draw upon his traditional African upbringing, formal education, and Canadian experience to engage in environmental activism. He began by volunteering with a number of environmental, health and social groups in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). He lead conservation initiatives and awareness campaigns that soon spurred volunteers to begin composting, recycling, gardening community plots, cleaning garbage from river valleys and planting native trees and wildflowers. It dawned upon him that people of colour were visibly absent in the environmental movement sweeping North America. Consequently, in November, 1993, he established his own charitable environmental organization known as ECENECA-Environmental Centre for New Canadians, www.eceneca.ca. ECENECA is the only organization of its kind in Canada which encourages new immigrants, Refugees, Visible Minorities and marginalized to actively participate in protecting, enhancing and restoring Canada's natural environment. It also assists new immigrants and Refugees by offering referral services, free computer education, workshops on crime prevention, health and safety issues, etc.

  In recognition of his diligent work on the environment, Yuga received a Gold Award along side Dr. David Suzuki, from the bilingual Canadian Environmental Awards 2005, on June 6, 2005, in the category of Environmental Health. The gala event was held in Toronto, and in attendance were Stephan Dion (then Federal Minister of the Environment, and now leader of the National Liberal Party), Toronto's Deputy Mayor, heads of major corporations and representatives of a number of other Canadian environmental groups. ECENECA's influence has also reached the Division of Early Warning Awareness (DEWA) of the United Nation Environment Programme which, from September 10-16, 2005, held an international conference on Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) in Bangkok, Thailand, designed to assess global environmental scenarios to 2050. Yuga was one of the 10-member North American delegation to the conference.

  Yuga has been working on documenting the Kakwa language and traditional culture since 1984. In 1997, he became a visiting scholar to the Linguistics Department of the University of Toronto, whereupon he began work on a descriptive grammar of Kakwa which is now a little over 1,600 pages long. He has also been working on a bilingual Kakwa-English Dictionary, which the Kakwa elders say should be called Ko' dote (meaning unearthing hidden things). This dictionary is over 20,000 pages long!

  In an effort to involve the entire Kakwa people in the documentation and appreciation of their language, Yuga has established an organization called Authentic Kakwa Language Academy (AKLA) in Ko'buko District, Uganda. Members of AKLA include elders, youth and women, all of whom have taken a keen interest in the ongoing work being completed in Canada. Accordingly, materials from the Dictionary, grammar and different works on Kakwa have been sent to Ko'buko, and letters and tapes have been returned. What began as a grammar and dictionary project in Canada, has now become a full-blown community project in Ko'buko and amongst the Kakwa everywhere.

  The materials exchanged with the AKLA members are meant to:

  • solicit blessings from the Kakwa elders;
  • seek help from the Kakwa elders in order to edit and proofread the entries already placed in the dictionary;
  • request the Kakwa elders to come up with an authentic Kakwa orthography and alphabet system;
  • encourage the youth to appreciate their traditional culture;
  • find out any entries the author might have missed.

  Some of the works Yuga is working on include: Kakwa Proper Names and their Meanings; a children's Alphabetical and Numbering book in Kakwa; the Fauna and Flora of the Kakwa Territories; Kakwa Historical Present (a chronicle of places, people and events which have had directly or indirectly affected the Kakwa people and their territories over the decades); Kakwa People, Land and History; the Calendar in Kakwa, etc. A website on Kakwa*s cultural and natural heritage is also up and running at www.kakwa.org.

  
  

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  Excerpts

  
  
  
  
  

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