The Man from another Planet: Why it is important to study my culture

By Thokgor Reech, Bor, South Sudan

Wednesday, 15 May 2024 (PW) — As a man from another planet, I am deeply interested in understanding my African roots. This research aims to foster thoughtfulness in learning about our brothers and sisters living across various African countries. It is founded on the historical bases of the Nilotic or River-lake Nilotic people, an innovative academic endeavor long ago. There has been a movement of people within Africa, connecting us through community backgrounds or intermarriage. The term River-Lake Nilotic refers to certain groups of people in Sudan, Uganda, and extensions in Ethiopia, Zaire, Kenya, and Tanzania who share closely connected ethnic appearances and cultural connectivity.

The following Nilotic peoples are observed, with ethnic appearances including the Shilluk, Joluo, Dinka, Nuer, Alur, Acholi, Lango, Luo, and Anuak. The goal of researching this Nilotic group is to end tribalism and corruption among themselves in 2023, as it has been a long-standing struggle. According to me, there is no gain in this. I prefer to see development rather than fighting one another.

From my understanding, we are all brothers and sisters from different mothers and fathers in this world, regardless of our colors and appearances. No one has truly supported South Sudanese cultures, values, and beliefs. As a result, South Sudanese sons and daughters are the right people to document their cultures, moral values, and beliefs accurately.

There are four types of love: familial love between siblings and parents’ love for their children, the Living God’s love for humankind, the natural love between a boy and girl, and the love shared among friends who care for one another despite not being blood relatives. As the saying goes, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” Love is built on trustworthiness, faith, realities, unconditional love, respect, kindness, and cultural awareness between people.

It is believed that Jieng is a fairer culture. Nowadays, people have equal rights to get married like others due to Jieng culture’s inheritance fairness for all of us. Even though there are slight differences between boys’ and girls’ responsibilities, they are regarded as equal and deserving of equal treatment in their lives. According to my understanding, there is no universal culture in the real world.

What are Dinka’s concerns about girls’ education? Dinka or Jieng’s beliefs are that girls are vulnerable members of our society, making it challenging for them to receive the same education as boys due to their natural attraction to other men when away from relatives. This was a concern for girls’ education in the past. Nowadays, education is for everyone since there are more schools in rural areas, and there will be upgrades towards girls’ education. Girls are now allowed to attend school during school hours and return to their relatives in the evening.

However, there were many barriers to girls’ education due to their exposure to boys by natural surroundings. Girls cannot live on their own without a close relative staying with them, as boys can easily take advantage of their situation. This was a huge reason many girls were kept at home during the Sudan civil war and the lack of school availability in many areas. However, this has changed in recent years as Dinkas realized that a girl’s education helps both her new family she is married into and her parents’ family, since marriage is a connection between two families to support one another year in and year out.

Boys are family defenders or protectors in many cases more than girls, while girls are family supporters in many things, such as cooking, fetching water, collecting firewood, foraging for wild food, and taking care of children as part of their responsibilities in the past. There is a Dinka cultural improvement nowadays. I’m more proud of our culture than any other in the world. According to my understanding, Dinka cultural improvement is important for both boys and girls so that it will enable us to integrate with our girls. Farming responsibilities for both boys and girls include agriculture, cattle keeping, and fencing for money in urban areas, mainly for boys or men, animal hunting, and hunting for money or cattle to pay a dowry for their marriage.

My parents were born in the same village in the Makuach area. They were connected to living things and non-things, such as humanity, love, care, and respect for one another. For example, they were very social, had excellent oral communication skills, and were good at storytelling. However, children were always the priority in anything, such as feeding, protection from sharp objects or wild animals, and human predators from other communities.

I am happy with my parents due to their dedication to us since Sudanese lifestyles have depended on livestock and farming products, with no industrialization over the years. They did their best to feed us within their capacity. They engaged in many activities, including teamwork, problem-solving skills, decision-making, critical reasoning, and self-motivation, and also taught us about a better future and optimism for life improvement.

They managed to feed us and taught us how to manage ourselves in the present and the future. What I learned from my parents is that they were truthful to us, loved others unconditionally, had freedom of interaction with people from different tribes, were open to learning by sharing knowledge with others, were generous in sharing their food with friends, and had responsibilities.

Furthermore, my parents were kind to us and others. However, I spent most of my younger years with my father at a cattle camp taking care of livestock. In Sudanese culture, children inherit their parents’ properties, such as livestock, farming land, or anything else.

My parents taught me many things, including duties of care to handle my problems confidently and management. Furthermore, I learned many things from my parents, including positive thinking, innovation, creativity, focusing on the right things in my life, being self-directed, keeping moving, and keeping it real from negative people, bravery to pursue my success, encouragement, and self-conviction to reach both short-term and long-term goals. My dream is to grasp my wants and needs by inspiring my interior and self-improvement about my future direction.

Why is it important to study my culture? Culture is a combined whole that includes knowledge, faith, art, ethics, law, customs, and other capabilities acquired by a person as a member of society (Edward Tylor, 1870s). Culture is also defined as the collective encoding of the mind that separates the members of one human group from another. Furthermore, culture includes systems of values, and values are among the building blocks of culture. Culture is a system of values and norms shared among a group of people that, when taken together, establish a design for living (Hofstede, Namenwith, and Weber).

The South Sudanese tend to feel more cultural association and loyalty to their tribal and ethnic groups rather than a commitment to the nation (South Sudan website, 2023). Values create the foundation of a culture. They provide the context within which a society’s norms are established and accepted. They may include a society’s attitudes toward concepts such as individual freedom, democracy, truth, justice, honesty, loyalty, social obligations, and collective responsibility (Hofstede, Namenwith, and Weber). The role of the person, love, gender, and marriage.

Values are not just intellectual concepts; they are invested with considerable emotional significance. People debate, fight, and even die over values such as freedom. Values are also often echoed in the political and economic structures of society. Norms are the social rules that govern people’s actions toward one another. We have understood that a society is a group of people that share a common set of values and norms bound together by a common culture.

A group is an association of two or more individuals who have a shared sense of identity and who interact with each other in structured ways based on a common set of expectations about each other’s behaviors. Human social life is group life. Individuals are involved in families, work groups, social groups, and recreational groups. I understood that culture is everything. If we lose our culture, we lose our identity, and the forthcoming generation in our society will be a confusing generation.

Individualism is more than just an intellectual political idea. In many Western societies, the individual is the simple building block of social organization. This is reflected not just in the political and economic organization of society but also in how people perceive themselves and relate to each other in social and business settings. The values systems of many Western societies, for example, highlight individual achievement.

Since culture is essential to studying the past, present, and future, it is guidance and principle for me and my community. If you lose your culture, you lose your identity and direction in real life. I love my culture, and I am proud of it now and in the future. Cultural awareness can protect us from getting lost in society. In modern times, most cultures have lost their ground due to generational loss among different cultures.

For example, Sudanese or South Sudanese are facing many challenges due to four cultures that have recently entered the country: Western, Traditional African, Arab, and Eastern African. All these different cultures have brought confusion to our society nowadays. So I am interested in writing about my culture that will lead to a better understanding of myself and the next generation.

It is necessary to study more about my own culture than to live in a culture of confusion. I don’t know much about Sudanese.

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