Political Joke about South Sudan
5 min readBy mach-kuol
My friend has recently set up a web shop on internet called “Western Equatoria spectacles”
The frames of the spectacles all look the same but only the glasses differ according to the different tribal users
The glasses themselves, colourless, come in 3 strengths: normal, medium, heavy
His business plan on the website states that every tribesman or woman above 18 should wear his tribal spectacles in Western Equatoria
Zande should wear Zande spectacles, Avokaya should wear Avokaya spectacles etc. It was useless being a Zande wearing Avokaya spectacles because you would not see anything. This applies to any tribe in Western Equatoria
Buying glasses for a tribe different than your own was useless and a waste of money, this was clearly stated on the website
This principle applied to all the tribes of Western Equatoria
Once ordered on line the spectacles were delivered by messenger at the address you gave, anywhere in Western Equatoria !
Although having visited his website many times, it was nowhere stated WHY every tribe should wear his own tribal glasses
So I paid him a visit and sitting under a mango tree we started drinking suku suku, this of course after he gulped down the first cup, an old hand like me only trusts family members and even then ……
So I asked him WHY should every tribe wear his own tribal spectacles
According to my friend (himself a Zande): if you are for example a Zande, and wearing Zande spectacles, you can recognise easily other Zande just by looking at them, even not talking!!! If you look at a group of people you directly identify the Zande and other tribes present a blurred image. This had enormous advantages in activities as doing business, shopping, looking for a woman if you want to marry, going for a drink in a bar etc etc.
You are always better of with your own tribesman or woman because you cannot really trust other tribes and by wearing your tribal glasses you avoid a lot of problems. Many customers had e-mailed him praising him and had themselves convinced their own tribesman and woman of buying his glasses and in fact when I drove from the airport in Yambio to his house I was surprised by the number of people with his glasses
The same principle applies for other tribes and their respective glasses in Western Equatoria. That was the rationale in setting up his webshop selling this type of spectacles he said
Why then, I asked him, does he proposes 3 strengths, normal, mean and heavy ?
Well he said, quite some people went into exile during “the troubles” and some of them got a bit “contaminated” by living among other tribal communities, so if somebody thinks he is not anymore a “true” tribesman or otherwise said, if his cultural heritage had become a bit diluted, he can choose the categories “medium” or “heavy” which gave you a clearer picture of your own tribesman or woman. He went on quite a bit about the relation between what your eyes see and the cultural upbringing and most importantly what your brain thinks but I will not dwell about this philosophical thoughts of my friend, only this one; he claimed that some “pure” (not contaminated) tribes only like fat woman because of their upbringing, other tribes only like skinny woman above 1m80
If a tribesman or woman does not have any problems he can buy normal lenses: the price was the same for the 3 strenghts
The suku suku stirred up some more questions from my side
Then I asked him if there was a relation between the result of recognising your own tribe by wearing the appropriate spectacles and wearing them in the tribal homeland.
What do you mean he said.
Because I had extensively looked on his webshop for Avungara glasses but I did not find any, and to my knowledge the Avungara’s tribal homeland originated from outside Western Equatoria but know they claim to be Zande. I wondered what would happen if a Avungara bought Zande spectacles. He answered me that he had never registered complaints from this people.
Still my friend looked a bit puzzled and then he said: in fact we have remarked statistically significant differences between areas in the tribal homeland of the Zande although there seemed to be some border disputes; in for example Source Yubu almost all spectacles sold to Zande who had remained there during “the troubles” had “normal “glasses”, to the contrary, Zande in Maridi and further east had to buy proportionally more “mean” and “heavy” glasses; the same phenomenon appeared once you had passed Tembura
What happens, I asked him, if somebody, for example, a Belanda Mviri, a descendant from a mixed marriage Belanda Mviri and Zande, buys Zande glasses
Well he said, that is a difficult question. Scientific studies conducted were inconclusive, The sex of the Belande Mviri of mixed mariage, male or female seemed to have an influence but not always. Some male Belanda Mviri with Zande glasses could only recognise Belanda Mviri and not Zande, others recognised only Zande without any problem
His scientific laboratory was still refining the production processes for the category of the Belanda Mviri glasses
I do not know what happened but the suku suku made me remember something very crucial: when my friend took me to the mango tree to sit down I forgot to relocate my chair a bit
After I ordered a third bottle of suku suku I finally dared to fire of my last question: why doesn’t he sell SPLA spectacles ??? (because I had heard rumours about this newly discovered tribe in Southern Sudan)
He looked at me, took his chair a bit closer to mine, looked around and whispered to me: when I started my business, I only sold SPLA spectacles but the people who bought them encountered a lot of mental problems after a while, so I stopped the production of this type of glasses
When the bottle of suku suku arrived, he seemed relieved to change the subject
The next day when I woke up, I felt a lot wiser and left my friend
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