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Chapter Six:
Beauty
Of Women
Nake could be the beauty queen of Karamoja. You can see it in the fine scars around her eyes, the brilliant whiteness of her teeth, and the ebony darkness of her skin that, like her jewellery, gleams in Karamoja’s sunlight. Nake has soft brown eyes, and she always holds high her well-rounded cheeks and face, which are further supported by the many steel rings wound around her thin neck.
Just as she beautifies herself, Nake always takes good care of her ornaments. She tends to her heavy earrings, which have elongated her lobes over the years, and arranges the leather bits that hang from her necklets down to her chest. The leather comes from animals sacrificed to cleanse Nake from evil spirits. Every morning, she dips her hand in a bucket of ghee, a butter churned from sour milk, applying it in the nooks between her skin and the necklets and bracelets. Besides reducing friction, the oily ghee makes her coiling necklets shine, and she stands out even more stunningly in a crowd.
She is not burdened by the many kilograms of steel dangling from her. They make her feel tops, respected and, above all else, a true woman. Not long ago, Nake first donned the coiling necklets the day her parents received her cattle dowry from her husband, Lomer. Her extended family members exalted the newlywed Nake on that day as her dowry brought many cows and bulls into the family.
As she walks into town to go to market, Nake sings light-hearted songs and remembers her youth. Today she wears bright red cloths common among many pastoral peoples throughout East Africa, and her hair is short and without styling. She once often wore fine skirts of many colours that swayed backed forth as she walked or danced at ceremonies. Her hair she oiled and curled with the aid of red-hot clay pots.
During her marriage, she shaved her hair to a thin layer, later tying it into knots for the ceremonies. At such events, different clans and territorial groups emphasize their particular hairstyles and symbols. Many territorial groups of Karimojong have animal or natural element totems and corresponding ceremonial symbols. Nake came from the Bokora, whose totem is the zebra. When she was a girl, she spread dark ash over her forehead during some ceremonies to represent that black-and-white-striped wild horse. Now married, however, she has joined the family of her husband, Lomer.
At the market, Nake buys beads for necklaces and cloth, and she walks along the lines of fruit and food sellers. The open-air market is held only once a month in a large dirt square just outside of town. Sellers sit in long lines over blue tarps with their many goods. Action and noise burst from everywhere: women haggle over the prices of onions and millet; rumbling lorries full of cheap Chinese-made containers and tools come and go; salesman stand over heaps of second-hand clothes from Europe and the United States, shouting their pitches and prices to the surrounding crowds; on one end of the square stand hundreds of cows and bulls alongside their owners who are engaged in their own dealmaking. People travel more than 100 kilometres to sell or to buy at the market. Here you find not only Karimojong but Dodoth, Teso, Ik, Jie and even people from Sudan and Kenya. But no matter the tribe, any man or woman can appreciate Nake's beauty.
In the late afternoon, Nake brings her sack of maize from the market into town to the local miller, who will grind it into posho flour. As she waits in line at the miller, others notice her shining necklets, earning their instant respect. They know that she is the young wife of a brave and wealthy man — one who was able to wage a successful war to capture cattle. Until her husband dies, she will not part her rings and wedding ornaments from her skin.
In the balmy afternoon, the ghee on her rings and skin melts and it gives off a scent as pleasing as fine perfume for the Karimojong. The buttery scent makes Nake smile, revealing the trench of her missing lower incisors. That gap is an even greater beauty mark than healthy teeth. Their removal earns a lady a passport to a big smile and makes her feel quite elegant. It also gives space for the cork-like wooden and metal lip plugs worn by both sexes but most often and proudly by women.
Carrying the flour sack over her head, Nake returns towards home and to singing. She can belt out the local songs with all the more bravado, revealing that gap in her mouth and her magnificent smile.
Of Men
Over his back, shoulder and chest, Lokiru has the beauty marks of a man cut into his skin. The thick scars are spaced less than a centimetre apart in neat rows. Other tattoos come in dots and decorative patterns over his body—some he received in glorification of being a warrior, others in penitence for killing an enemy.
Lokiru has travelled far and seen many styles of tattoo scarring among the Karimojong, most of whom have such beauty marks. In some clans, women have as many scars as men. Like beads, the dots run across their faces in concentric semi-circles around the eyes.
Tall and stately, Lokiru takes great pride in his own markings. He is diligent in cleansing and grooming himself, and keeps his hair short above the forehead and in a heaping bun in back. Lokiru does wear assorted jewellery: beaded necklaces, a bangle on his arm, a ring stretching his earlobe. During festivals, he also dresses in smarter cloths and may wear ostrich feathers in his hair. But above all, it is Lokiru’s scars that reflect his strongest features.
Lokiru’s sons and wives all appreciate his handsome stature, especially his firstborn son by his second wife. Now a herd boy, Remi remembers once when he once touched the scars on his father’s right shoulder. Their softness astonished him, and he wondered if he would ever have such markings himself.
One day, Remi comes home after tending the herds, and his father is taken aback by what he sees. His son, who is only 8, has made scratches over his face, chest, and arms. The open wounds have attracted flies that seem to move with the young boy wherever he goes, forcing him to constantly swat at them. He did not wash his face properly and pus has surrounded the raw markings. His eyes also have swelled with mucus piled like dry honey wax around them. Lokiru has an idea of what happened, but he still asks Remi how he came to be this way.
Remi explains that he had been taking care of the herd and telling stories with the other herd boys underneath the sparse shade of an acacia tree. One boy had a sharpened stick, and he kept poking at his arm with it. Remi then had an idea: he would cut markings into his skin just like the ones he has seen on his father. As the other boys started to carve and cut him, he grew eager — despite the pain — over the thought of showing his father and family that he is growing into a man.
Now the herd boy is an infected mess. Making it worse, that morning, he also had covered his twiggy limbs and his entire body with ghee, and he didn’t wash the wounds because to clean off the ghee would mean to waste animal food, something, Remi knew, no Karimojong should ever do.
Lokiru sternly directs his son to the hut of the boy’s mother, but he does not scold him. He knows the wounds will heal, and no one would raise an eyebrow over the boy damaging those parts of his skin. As Remi leaves, showing his back full of scabs and markings, Lokiru even cracks a smile, heartened by his son’s determination to be a man years before his time.
