Mystery in the Grassland: Apuk Giir’s War and Peace Legend – Part 2

By Thiik Mou Giir, Melbourne, Australia

The Arrival of a Stranger

Monday, August 03, 2020 (PW) — Long, long time ago, during peacetime, hundreds and hundreds of people of Apuk were in cattle camps.  It was a rainy season.  Apuk people: young boys and girls, men and women, who could stand the rough conditions of the rainy seasons, took their cattle to Toc (grassland).  The rest of the population stayed back to cultivate and to farm.  The presence of so many people at the grassland sometimes caused frictions, and frictions broke out into violence.

This was not the case when a Stranger arrived in the evening at one of Woud (cattle camps) long time ago.  Members of all nine sections of Apuk at the cattle camps were experiencing one of the best times of their coexistence in Toc (grassland), which was, and still is, known by other two names, Toc Rouk (metaphorically known as, two-kidneys grassland) and also known as Toc Jok Tong.  The weather conditions were favourable, and the cows were producing plenty of milk.  Just as it has been a cultural characteristic, not only of all the people of South Sudan, but also of the people of Africa, people at the cattle camps were hospitable to strangers.

When the Stranger arrived at one of the cattle camps, he was welcomed; he was given water and food; and he was shown a place where he could sleep.  When morning came, the time most travellers would leave, the Stranger was apparently not leaving.  He wanted to stay.  The people at the camp did not mind him staying.  He declared later that he would like to spend a few weeks with them because he liked them.

A member of the camp, who heard him saying that, went and told the camp Leader about the Stranger’s intentions.  The Leader came to the Stranger and said, “You are welcomed.”  He then introduced him to his assistants.  The Leader also asked him to take a tour with him so that he would learn about the surrounding areas.  The Stranger accepted the request and they both walked from a camp to a camp as the Leader introduced him to the leaders of all other camps and some other people.

He showed him a winding river through the grassland.  There were a few ponds and there were variety of birds all around.  There were trees, but they could not see more than three individual trees, standing in the vast area full of long, rich grass.  The air was fresh and sweet to the senses.  Smoke, from each camp billowed into the sky at a daybreak.  The feet of the Stranger and the Leader were covered with the morning dew as they walked back to their camp.

From a distance the Stranger saw people in the camp sitting around a pile of cow dung where the smoke was trailing off to the cloudy sky.  They were enjoying the heat that came out from a smouldering pile of cow dung.  Most people who sat there had white cow dung ashes rubbed all over their bodies in order to repel the insects and flies that bit them.

The Stranger thought about all the things he saw that day and about the people he met.  He felt content like the rest of the people.  He particularly felt happy at the thought that there were hundreds and hundreds of cows in each of the camps.  The Stranger was so impressed that he turned around and said to the Leader, “You have a beautiful land and you are quite rich.”  The Leader looked at the Stranger’s face and nodded.

A Mystery in Apuk’s Grassland

On the third day, after the arrival of the Stranger to the camp, people woke up in the morning and heard bad news.  A cow was missing.  It was later reported that it was eaten by what appeared to be a lion.  The place where the dead cow perished was just about two miles from the camp.  The owner of the cow, the Leader and a few other adults, including the Stranger, ran to the place and there they saw the remains of the cow.  They inspected the area and they concluded that whatever pressed the grass down was nothing but a beast, a lion.  The footprints on the grass were linear.  They traced them but they could not trace them further than about two hundred feet away from the remains of the dead cow.  They saw that as strange.  “Why did it happen this way?” they wondered.  “Why are the lion’s footprints not going further than only this far,” they asked.

The Stranger, all the while, appeared to have been very much concerned about what had happened.  He listened attentively to what the people were saying.  He even contributed in the conversation.  When he and others came back to the camp, he sought out the owner of the dead cow and had tried to give some comfort to him.  He learnt that the dead cow meant much to the owner.  The now-dead cow was given to him as his share from a dowry offered during the marriage of one of his nieces.  The only thing that the owner would do now was to look after a calf that the dead cow left at the cattle camp.

After two days, following the first incident, the cattle camp people and the Stranger heard similar news coming from the adjacent cattle camp.  The Leader, some of his assistants, and the Stranger, visited the people at the adjacent camp.  They were immediately told about what had happened.  They insisted that they be shown the place where the incident took place.  When they arrived there at the scene, they all realized that the nature of the incident was not much different from the first incident.  A lion had devoured the cows.  What they could not figure out was the fact that the lion’s footprints were untraceable after a few metres from the scene.  No one among all the people was able to come up with a logical explanation as to how it happened that way.  It was a puzzle, an insoluble puzzle as it seemed to everyone.  They would not be able to trace the culprit; they would not be able to find it; and they would not be able to kill it, and the cows will continue to die.

Following the first and the second incidents, more incidents had continued to occur almost the same way.  There was only a gap of two or three days and then another incident took place.  The number of cows lost to what they assumed was the lion, had reached fourteen cows.  Most of them were castrated bulls.  Of Apuk’s nine sections; that is, nine camps, there was no camp that was spared.  Every camp had, at least, a cow or two missing.  Frustration had reached its peak.  It became clear to everyone that, if they do not do something to find out what was killing the cows and then to stop it, more cows would likely continue to die the same way.

For a little more than a month, the Stranger has been with the people of Apuk at the camp.  The Stranger had visited all the camps of the people who had had their cows eaten by the so called-lion.  During the first visits, he was accompanied by the camp Leader and a few others, but as the time passes by, he felt he did not need to be accompanied by the Leader and others because he became known by the people at every cattle camp.  The visits gave him an opportunity to know the people and to learn about them.

People assumed that the reason that the Stranger was still not leaving yet, was that, he too, wanted to know the mysterious thing that was killing the cows.  They presumed that he wanted to stay so that he would participate in the killing of the lion, whenever the lion would be found.  People liked him for that and for all the other qualities he has so far demonstrated.

How to find the lion, was a question the Leader of the camp had been losing sleep over in order to arrive at an answer.  One of his ideas, among so many others, stood out; “Could there be a connection between what was killing the cows and the arrival of the Stranger at the camp?” he asked himself.  Without sharing what he thought with anyone else at the camp, he decided to investigate.

Thiik Mou Giir, Bachelor Degree in Education from the University of Alexandria, Egypt; Post Graduate Diploma, from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He can be reached via his email contact: thiik_giir@hotmail.com

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