الجنجويد يسألون عن بيت العزبة .. ما هى المشكلة يا محمد عمر الفكى؟

Quote: 1. PROLOGUE Baggara are legendary nomadic people. Historically they inhabit the area known as sub-Saharan savannah of Africa between the White Nile and Lake Chad. Baggara people are superb cattle herders, impressive horse riders, and expert nature trekkers. Annually, they trek for more than 300 kilometers between their rainy herding season’s lands toward the north and dry grasslands grazing toward the south. They are great people with unmatched sense of humor, curiosity, charm, wit, culture, collectivism lifestyle and strong families and community ties. They are characterized by warm marriage traditions and customs with exceptionally warm celebrations and festivities. It is amazing to watch the joyful nature of Baggara people during marriage festivities – everyone: young, old, men or women are exuberantly joyful. The marriage is definitely one of the most interesting social gatherings in the Baggara communities. It is even more cultivating to see how the Baggara people turn around quiet, remotely isolated areas, which are deep in the jungles or far away from any urban centers, into vibrant places full of life and dynamic social interactions during marriages. In few days later after the marriage, when rains stop or water pools dry out, the Baggara saddles their animals and pack their belongings and move onto other places. They leave behind all their good memories and whenever a chance brings them through the same area they remember the wedding house and recall the good days and events of the marriage. Through their long history of living in the sub-Saharan Africa for the last five hundred years, Baggara have attached their happy memories to any location they pass through during their seasonal journeys. Being born and raised as Baggara, the author has lived and witnessed all the stages of the Baggara marriage customs and traditions. Among the vividly mesmerized wedding by the author, include his sisters’, brothers’ as well as many of his cousin’s weddings. The author recalls the singing, the energetic dance and deep-throated voices of the dancers. Baggara are enthusiastic dancers during wedding festivities, they dress in colorful exotic dresses, and they clearly enjoy the marriage occasion. Born late in 1963 or early in 1964, the author has witnessed Baggara marriages at a time when only a few Baggara had education if any. Among the early recollection of the author includes the wedding of his elder sister. Gisma, the elder sister of the author, was a beauty queen in the Baggara communities of Southern Kordofan State of Sudan and was elegant Nogara dancer. In general, elegance of Baggara dancers is well documented. The easy way to describe Baggara dancing is to imagine a person in a running contest such as hundred meters runs, where a runner collects his body and moves his limbs in the right direction with a right speed – the fast pitch and tempo are characteristic of Baggara dance. One can also imagine the elegance of a gazelle when it jumps or lands during a playful time. Baggara are best known for many types of dance, among them: a nogara dance (drumming), mardoum dance, and katim dance, but usually they dance many types of dance in the same marriage occasion. The nogara drums compose of three drums of different sizes each pitched with different stick’s size. The nogara drum is made of a cut and hallowed tree trunk; the hallow trunk is covered on both sides by a raw hide freshly obtained from slaughtered animals. The dancers dress in colorful clothing; tie vividly colorful ribbons around their head-s, waists, wrists, and stack towers of beautiful, tall ostriches’ feathers on their head-s. They carry flags and everything possible that make them stand out of the crowd. They start the dance slowly and when the pitch changes to dancing, then, the crowd elegantly jumps into dancing, vigorously shaking their bodies. The best dancers are the ones who pitch right with the rhythms. Gisma, the author’s elder sister, whenever she danced she were selected as the best dancer even at young age of around twelve years old. Baggara youth and elders noticed her beauty and elegance early in her life. Such an early notice made the crowd of Baggara spectators followed her moves wherever she went. Similar to Gisma, was the author’s cousin named Kowshi, she was older than Gisma, however, she was noticed for beauty, extravagant accessories and her restful lifestyle – she used to move quite slowly even when all others were rushing or hasting, and used to watch her steps, arranged her accessories or slowly turned her eyes brows to even a dire situation. Baggara nicknamed Kowshi as Kowshi al Kumala and they added “she is better than her father and his wealth”, translated in Arabic “akhir min Osman bah maala”. Uncle Osman, Kowhai’s father, was a great Baggara man, wealthy - he had more than one thousand head-s of cattle, pies Muslim - he had done Pilgrimage to Mecca early in his life, yet with all his great quality. Baggara nicknamed his daughter as Kowshi al Kumala and they added “she is better than her father and his wealth”, which gave Kowshi a great compliment. With Gisma and Kowshi as super stars, our camp was strained by many problems related to spectators, onlookers and opportunists who just roamed our camp to get a glimpse of Gisma or Kowshi doing their normal life. If ever one’s remember Princess Diana in front of an unstoppable stream of flashes, it was a kind of that sort for Gisma and Kowshi when dancing. Lines of spectators stood in front of them just enjoying the occasion. Cousins were always at their toes to conquer any intruder; they carried guns, spears, sticks and swards. Sometimes, spectators came across camps asking for the location of our camp. We were told by elder brothers and cousins to send such spectators away in the wrong direction. Since we were kids and we were always playing around the camp, whenever someone ask us about Gisma or Kowshi whereabouts we told them this was not their camp and wrongly we told them they were left the place to a new munzala – a new camping area. If they wished to see them there, they would walk for two to three hours before they could reach the destination and found nothing. We let them loose gazing at the blue, although we were never asking them why they were looking for them. Our camp had a large guard dogs, they bark night long and our cousins in many times rotate in guarding the camp. Our life in the camp was even got more stressed when Kowshi and Gisma were reaching their adulthood and were ready for marriages. Unwelcomed prospective husbands came from nowhere and no one in the camp knew anything about them, they came and asked if they could wed one of them promising to pay large head-s of cattle. Usually the range of dowry payment was about fifteen or less head-s, but the intruders promised thirty five or more. Our elders had nice way of sending them away by saying the girls were already reserved for their cousins. The intruders would leave the camp content with whatever answers they received. Our cousins themselves were divided about who would marry Kowshi or Gisma. Some of them who felt unjustly excluded left the camp for long time or never came back again unless were paid cattle head-s equal to the number paid for the marriage. Once Gisma and Kowshi were married and moved into their husbands’ custody, our camp deserted by spectators and we had a great relief from troubles. One of the aching issues remained with us for so long after Gisma and Kowshi left, was the Baggara spectators named our camp as Gisma camp or Kowshi camp – saying “nas Gisma camp” or “nas Kowshi camp”. Our camp was named Awlad Adam camp or Haj Osman camp, and now it was more of an insult to name our camp by our fathers’ daughter’s names. But we had to live with the inevitable. The essence of Gisma and Kowshi life stories shows how Baggara girls’ upbringing and protection are community wide efforts rather than a family endeavor. Since Baggara have collectivism lifestyle, their marriages are communal – anyone, known to them or unknown, can come and participate on the dance. They slaughter bulls to honor their guests and award money to the dancers from wherever they come. During marriage dancing people loudly cheer and sometimes the situation gets chaotic with dust overwhelm the spectators and cutting their breath short – kids run away and the elderly cover their noses with their sleeves or toubes. Sometimes dancers get into clown sort of amusement – with animals’ tails dangling from their pants or long feathers like nightjars wings waving from their head-s or caps. For many days, marriage occasion becomes people tale. The people remember many of the dancers who made special effects or stood out for certain acts. Usually the best dancers and the worst dancers are among those who are mesmerized. People also remember those who bring large life animals such as one or two oxen for slaughter during the occasion, or those who contribute large sum of money. For good or bad, Baggara marriage also becomes part of Baggara history, they refer to other events in relation to the year of someone got married, such as someone is born two years after someone marriage. Baggara marriages are great times for socialization. The young Baggara men are able to eye-ball their targets. They can send gifts and letters to their loved ones. Baggara marriages also are good times to uncover plots and affairs- hence fighting are always a possibility during marriages. Baggara are polygamous nation – sometimes they marry up to four co-wives at a time. However, the passionate marriage celebration always happens for the first time marriage. Among the many names of marriage steps recorded in the Baggara customs and traditions are: the night party (gaidouma), the mid-day party (mageela), the marriage shelter (sarif), the wedding day (dukhla), the deflowering night (dukhla night). The deflowering is the hardest night ever for the bride, for the reason that Baggara brides are circumcised and it is so hard for the groom to deflower the bride without having a friend called minister (wazir) to help him de-circumcise the bride – a painful process throughout the Baggara communities. For seven days, the groom and the brides stay in the newly build wedding house, which will be on the east side of the groom’s family camp. During this time, the wedding house becomes social gathering place for poets, male singers (hadayiin), female singers (hakamat), chats, tales tellers, and meeting place for the great Baramka social gathering. The Baramka Social System is an honorable system among Baggara tribes and its members. The Baramka constitute a lunatic constellation of men and women from different Baggara clans forming associations or clubs for ceremonial tea drinking, singing praising songs in honor of a gentleman or a woman who has done noble deeds, singing disapproval songs for demonizing an unworthy man. The epic of Baramka social system is tea tradition, where they have strong abiding rules for how to drink tea, how to handle it and how to cook it – any abuse of tea is punishable. In their traditions, society is divided into two groups: the good, benevolent, giving and caring group and the other group: the evil ones who do not drink tea or honor tea traditions; they are cheap, mischievous and cowardly. The first group composes of Baramka - the gentles (in their vocabulary called hourafa, sing. harif). The other group is the Kamakla (sing. Kamkali) group – these are the dishonorable thugs. Baramka social system is an informal social group, within which Baramka (sing. Barmaki or harif) forms informal courts which rules on affairs that matter to them. Their ruling is only abiding to Baramka members, yet they have their own way of forcing anyone of Baggara people to abide by its ruling. Kamakla – the thugs rarely attend the Baramka court, and for most of the times, they do not allow them to attend – for reasons that Kamakla are dishonorable and cannot be honored by attending Baramka tea drinking gatherings. During marriages, Baramka gather for tea ceremonies and for teaching the youngster the Baramka social system or holding court in request for their members. The gregarious Baramka’s behavior promotes good morality in the wedding house, righteousness in behavior, comedy and preserves the Baggara way of life from degradation during marriages. The wedding place turns into huge social gathering place. To finance such social activities in the wedding house, the ingenuity of our ancestors has come with elegant solutions. The house is built with two main pillars, which have certain rules if violated by anyone he has to be a fine – the pillars are called the right wing and left wing pillars or sometimes the southern and northern pillars. The northern pillar is located on the women side where the bride stays but the fine of this pillar goes to men finance and in reciprocity the fines for the pillar on men side goes to the women bucket. The pillars are obtained from trees that grow vegetative in order to be a sign for the location of the wedding in the years ahead and whenever the camps pass by the same area they locate the wedding house place by the trees that grow from the pillars. This book, Baggara of Sudan: Marriage Customs and Traditions, delves right into the Baggara marriage customs, culture, traditions and way of life. This is a genuine narrative of Baggara culture and their way of life. Bir Adam – Reston, Virginia USA 09/29/2013