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Concept
Bongo people (South Sudan)
Summary
The Bongo are a Central Sudanic speaking ethnic group, living at the eastern side of the Albert Nile River in northwestern Uganda and in neighbouring South Sudan in small, scattered settlements south and east of Wau. They speak the Bongo language, one of the Bongo-Baka languages. In the early 1990s, their number was estimated at 200.000 people, with 40% Muslims. Unlike the Dinka and other Nilotic ethnic groups, the Bongo are not a cattle herding people and do not use cows for bride price. Subsistence farming and hunting is the primary source of food, though money is obtained by working in forestry, building, selling honey, and other various means. Before imported metalwork became available, they were known for their traditional production of iron tools.
Since the 1970s, large size wooden Bongo funerary sculptures of male figures have been collected in Europe and described as important examples of African tribal art.
Georg August Schweinfurth, a German explorer, who lived two years among the Bongo around 1865, reported that before the advent of the slave-raiders, 1850, they numbered at least 300,000. Slave-raiders, and later the Mahdist followers from northern Sudan greatly reduced their numbers, and it was not until the establishment of effective control by the colonial Sudan government during 1904 and up to 1906 that recuperation of the population was possible.
Before the 20th century, Bongo men wore only a loin-cloth, and many dozen iron rings on the arms (arranged to form a sort of armour), while the women had simply a girdle, to which was attached a tuft of grass. Both sexes now largely use cotton cloths as dresses. The tribal ornaments consisted of nails or plugs, which were passed through the lower lip. The women often wore a disk several inches in diameter in this fashion, together with a ring or a bit of straw in the upper lip, straws in the alae of the nostrils, and a ring in the septum. The Bongo, unlike other inhabitants of the upper Nile, are not mainly cattle-breeders, but employ their time in agriculture.
Official source
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