South Sudan: Mundari Tribe – Cattle Returning to Camp
Most tourists coming to South Sudan head to see the Mundari tribe, herders of giant horn-cattle. They used to be quite a long drive from Juba, but now migrated to pastures just 40 min outside the capital (for now at least, they are constantly moving). To truly see the culture and traditions of this cattle-herding tribe, one needs to spend the night in the camp, to see the cattle returning in the evening, the evening cattle dusting, and then various morning ceremonies. Mundari use cattle as primary store of value, the large-horn cattle is never slaughtered and is only used for milk (and it’s hardly a milk producing breed), plus urine for washing, and cow dung for fuel and other things. But the entire life of the tribe revolves around the cattle. Arriving to the Mundari camp in late afternoon, we watched how the cattle was returning back, first just a trickle and then in hundreds – massive bulls with humongous, almost surreal, horns.
