Nuer Journeys, Nuer Lives

Sudanese Refugees in Minnesota

Jon D. Holtzman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317346036
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Anthropologie

This book examines contemporary migration to the United States through a surprising and compelling case study – the Nuer of Sudan, whose traditional life represents one of the most important case studies in the history of anthropology.
It provides an opportunity to examine issues of current importance within anthropology, such as social change, transnationalism, displacement, and diaspora in an easy to understand manner.

In understanding the experiences of the Nuer, students will not only gain insights into the world refugee problem and the role of immigration in the United States, they will also learn about the features of Nuer life which are considered a standard part of the anthropology curriculum.

The book juxtaposes elements of Nuer culture which are well-known within anthropology — and featured in most anthropology textbooks — with new developments arising from the immigration of many other Nuer to the U.S. in the 1990s as refugees from civil war in southern Sudan.

Consequently, this book will fit well within existing anthropology curricula, while providing an important update on descriptions of traditional life.

5

Gender, Generation,
and Family Change

The spread of food filled the living room as grocery bags were emptied indiscriminately. With their car broken down, shopping had been impossible for several days, and the family was hungry—not only Buol, Nyabuom, and their children, but also a distantly related woman and her teenage children who had recently arrived from Ethiopia and were temporarily staying at their home. When I showed up at their apartment, Buol and Nyabuom asked if I could take them shopping, and we went together to the nearest Cub Foods. There they filled two carts with a vast array of foods. When we returned home, children and adults alike sifted through the bags hungrily, grabbing fruit, precooked chicken wings, and macaroni and jello salads of various kinds. Buol went over to the VCR and popped in a tape which, he explained, his two-year-old daughter really enjoyed—“Barney’s Great Adventure.” As it played practically everyone joined in singing happy songs with the big, purple dinosaur.

This family scene is in many ways typical of both continuity and change from Nuer life in Sudan to Nuer life in Minnesota. While much of the context is radically different— jello salad and Barney, rather than milk or porridge with cows lowing in the background—the style of personal interaction is in many ways similar. In a sense this was a family meal, yet to an outsider it appeared as chaos, each person finding what they could and eating together but in no apparently organized way. There was no table, no serving of food, and—though in this instance the television became the center of shared attention—no group conversation per se. While the importance of the togetherness of the family was evident, it was expressed very differently than in an American home.

The family continues to be a centerpiece of Nuer life in the United States, as it is in Sudan. Relationships between men and women and young and old center on the family, which is the focus of both social and economic activity. (By family, I mean the nuclear (or in Sudan, polygynous) family, as opposed to the broader kinship network.) Yet new stresses now face Nuer families, and their forms of family life have been transformed in response to new needs and new constraints in Minnesota.

Nowhere is this more evident than in relations between men and women in Nuer marriages. Some of the changes are fairly superficial and are relatively easy to adjust to. That Buol and Nyabuom went together to buy food, for instance, differs markedly from the responsibilities of men and women in Sudan, where food provisioning is central to female roles and defined as wholly outside of male spheres. Other changes in gender roles have caused more problems, and there are new arenas for conflict and fewer ways to resolve family problems. Similarly, youth now face new challenges and experiences that were unknown to rural Africa.

NUER FAMILY LIFE IN SUDAN

A Nuer homestead is spread across an open area, within the general grouping of a village. The homestead’s center is a massive mud and grass structure, luak, which looks onto a thorn fence enclosure for the family’s cattle and is surrounded by smaller huts belonging to the women of the family. The physical layout of the Nuer homestead reflects some of the most important aspects of Nuer family relationships, defining the gender roles and relationships between husbands and wives as well as relationships between parents and their children (Evans-Pritchard 1951).

The family (gol) is often polygynous, with Nuer men marrying several wives. The polygynous family is the center of Nuer economic life; the herding of cattle and the raising of crops are organized within the domestic group. Each wife has her own house (dwil) and her own cooking fire (mac) to which she and her children belong (Evans-Pritchard 1951). As such, traditional Nuer families are composed of a number of female-centered families nested within a broader family group. While the Nuer consider it very important to maintain the unity of the family underneath the father, tensions inevitably arise among members of different houses. Jealousy is the norm between co-wives, based not so much in romantic competition for their shared husband but in resources, work responsibilities, and other forms of possible favoritism (Hutchinson 1996). Similarly, the sons of different wives are in a position of competition for the family’s cattle, which they will eventually inherit, and need to start families of their own.

Among the most important aspects of traditional Nuer family life is the process of marriage. The Nuer marriage serves to unite two extended families as much as it serves to unite a single couple. A wide kinship network is involved in the process of marrying and continues to have considerable influence over the couple long after the marriage is completed. The most important aspect of the involvement of the kinship network is the payment of bridewealth cattle—usually 25 to 40 animals—from the family of the groom to the family of the bride. These animals are drawn not only from the herd of the groom’s father, but from a variety of uncles and cousins within the kinship network. The bridewealth cattle go not only to the bride’s nuclear family, but also to many other members of her extended kin group. The main purpose of the bridewealth payment is to transfer membership of the bride from her father’s family to the family of the groom, and to make any children resulting from the marriage legitimate members of the groom’s family (Evans-Pritchard 1951; Hutchinson 1996).

Despite the important involvements of the kinship network in marriage, Nuer marriages are not typically “arranged” in the sense found in many societies where the groom, and particularly the bride, have little choice in selecting their partners. Sometimes the couple may be friends or lovers before marriage, although real affection is more often something which develops in the course of their long lives together (Duany 1992). The consent of both, however, is considered necessary for the success of the marriage. At the same time, tension and conflict within marriage are considered normal, rather than deviant and harmful. The Nuer characterize the couple as “two people who can’t agree on anything” (Hutchinson 1996, p. 229), and marriage is characterized by a jostling of the wills of the two parties.

According to Nuer masculine ideals, the man should be the ruler of the home, and his wife should unquestioningly act according to his will. Nuer women often see things differently. Conflict frequently arises over a variety of different issues, often centering on the care of the home, the treatment of guests, perceived inequalities in the treatment of co-wives, or alleged female adultery. Within these conflicts, male recourse to physical violence is considered normal and is a frequent occurrence. Women, in contrast, often exert considerable influence over their husbands by withholding food or by returning to their families of birth and possibly seeking divorce. Divorce is becoming an increasingly common feature in rural Nuer life. In 1936, Evans-Pritchard estimated that only six percent of Leek Nuer women had ever been divorced, compared to 36 percent found by Hutchinson in 1983 (Hutchinson 1990, 1996). Much of this stems from ongoing changes in Nuer social relationships derived from the imposition of courts and external government rule beginning in the 1930s. The extended kin network, however, continues to exert considerable influence over the marital couple. Kin seek to keep the couple together both for the sake of the marriage and for the messy consequences for both families in the event of divorce, due to the necessity of returning the bridewealth cattle.

Children are raised to respect and obey their parents, with corporal punishment the most common form of discipline. Even into adulthood, it is expected that children will continue to follow the will of their parents (and their father in particular) out of respect and affection, as well as the threat of disinheritance and the fear of parental curses. At the same time, Nuer parents value physical strength and strength of will, and proudly cultivate these attributes in their children. This is illustrated in an incident observed by Hutchinson (1996), in which a young Nuer boy threw a broken brick at his mother in the course of an argument. Rather than becoming angry, the mother said with pride: “Did you see my little boy throw a brick at me?” Far from being angry or disturbed at this show of disrespect, his mother found his strength of will to be admirable.

REFUGEE FLIGHT AND THE NUER FAMILY

The disruption of their life in Sudan, and flight from the civil war in Sudan, brought many changes to the family lives of Nuer refugees. The war itself broke up many families. Some members were killed in fighting or died from disease or starvation; others fled to live with relatives in areas where the fighting was not as intense; others left for refugee camps in Ethiopia; and others took their chances and stayed behind. It was unusual for whole families to reach the camps intact, and rarer still for whole families to eventually reach the United States. Particularly because most of the Nuer in Minnesota are relatively young, only a handful of Nuer were married in Sudan prior to experiencing the chaos of war.

Most of the Nuer who reached the United States came to the refugee camps on their own, or accompanied by siblings or cousins, though some were accompanied by parents. As the opportunity arose to seek asylum in the United States, it was almost exclusively the younger generation who undertook the arduous journey from Ethiopia to Kenya to apply for resettlement.

Most marriages of Nuer in Minnesota were formed somewhere within this process of flight and resettlement— some in camps in Ethiopia, others in Kenya just prior to resettlement, and a few after having resettled in the United States. I was surprised one day to receive an invitation to Buol Tang’s wedding, since I knew his wife and his three children quite well. Although they were living as husband and wife, I learned that they had never actually managed to get officially married. Having met during the disruption caused by the civil war in Ethiopia, their life together was spent moving from place to place, and they never had the resources to wed. More than five years after the fact, they married in a church wedding in Minnesota.

Usually it was difficult for couples to get married while in flight, and a traditional Nuer wedding ceremony was out of the question. In contemporary war-ravaged Sudan, it has been difficult to raise the 25 cows considered the minimum for appropriate Nuer bridewealth, as Nuer herds have been looted to feed both government and rebel forces. Those living in refugee camps generally have no livestock available to them, and they usually live apart from relatives who could provide them with additional livestock. Most of the bride’s kin who would normally be involved in marriage are also absent. Sometimes money is substituted for cattle in marriages formed in Ethiopia, Kenya, or the United States, either as a direct payment or (particularly in the case of money remitted from Minnesota) to purchase livestock to be paid as bridewealth. While the use of money as a marriage payment was regarded until recently as inappropriate—because money lacks the social significance of cattle—the Nuer have come to accept it because of the disruption of civil war.

The fact is that the marriages of many couples living in the United States are highly questionable by Nuer standards. Many have not paid bridewealth and have performed neither traditional Nuer or Christian marriage ceremonies. While they are recognized as husband and wife, because they live together and state their intention of completing a marriage ceremony, they are not truly married.

An important change in Nuer marriage brought about by refugee flight is that the married couple has become an isolated social unit, rather than one embedded within a wide kinship network. In part, this relates to the widespread absence of bridewealth; the kinship network was not brought into the process of marriage formation and has little tangible stake in its outcome. More important is the absence of a wider kinship network in Minnesota. While many of the Nuer have a few brothers, sisters, or cousins scattered around Minnesota or other parts of the United States, there is no cohesive kinship group to play a daily role in assisting a couple in their relationship. Nuer couples are in many ways very much alone in facing the new struggles that they have encountered in Minnesota.

One additional factor to note in examining differences in gender relations among the Nuer in Minnesota and Sudan is that most couples are quite young. In Sudan, it is only when Nuer women move into middle age that they have more equal relationships with their husbands. Few Nuer women in Minnesota have reached that age.

Nuer marriages, in Minnesota as in Sudan, typically involve an age gap between husbands and wives. In Sudan, Nuer women typically marry between the ages of 15 to 17, while their husbands might be in their mid-twenties. While the husband is considered a man, entering into the prime of life, the wife is still considered a girl until she has given birth to a child. Only when her children start to mature does she start to gain power and authority in relation to her husband. This may be attributed to a variety of factors: her own increased maturity and self-confidence; social norms concerning the behavior of older and younger women; and the influence gained by her closer relationship with her children, who are now themselves forging a place in the community. Among older couples the power balance can actually shift in favor of the wife. When a woman has a son who has been initiated, or a daughter who has married, she may talk back to, swear at, or even hit her husband (Hutchinson 1996: 183).

Ganwar and Nyapen were one of the few older Nuer couples in Minnesota—each being in their mid-thirties to early forties—and indeed the nature of their relationship was notably different from that of most husbands and wives. She openly laid down rules against his drinking, but also would relax these as a reward for good behavior. One day while interviewing Ganwar, I asked about Nuer husbands hitting their wives during quarrels. Nyapen, hearing this from across the room, shouted out, “Sometimes women hit their husbands,” and everyone laughed. Her confidence, and the relative equality of their relationship, was striking. At the same time, this in no way diminished the status of Ganwar. Quite the opposite, Ganwar was one of the most respected men in the community, known for his fairness and excellent manner in dealing with others.

CHANGING GENDER RELATIONS IN MINNESOTA

The ways that anthropologists understand gender relations has changed considerably in recent years. Until the past few decades, women’s lives usually received little attention in anthropological accounts. The 1970s, however, saw a blossoming of an “anthropology of women” and a focus on the significance of women in a broad range of cultural contexts (Reiter 1975; Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). These first waves of anthropological studies of women have been criticized by scholars for viewing women as a separate category for study, rather than an integral component of cultural groups (indeed, half or more of any population!). Increasingly, scholars seek to understand gender—including the full range of male and female identities and the relationships between men and women—as a pervasive part of all social and cultural activity (e.g., Collier 1988; Strathern 1988). Because of the significance of gender in defining social roles and relationships, any activity is necessarily closely intertwined with a culture’s gender roles. Economic activities, for instance, cannot be fully understood without appreciating the sexual division of labor defined through the gender roles of men and women, or without taking into account household decision-making roles of husbands and wives.

Migration can be a particularly important context for redefining gender relations. Broad-ranging changes in daily life can bring major transformations not only in how men and women relate to each other, but also in how they see themselves. Among Korean immigrants for instance, economic life in the United States has drawn women into the outside labor force, in contrast to life in Korea where most stayed at home in a domestic role. As Korean women assume a more important economic role—and their husbands’ economic status has frequently declined—significant marital tension and conflict often results (Min 1998). Similarly, Southeast Asian women who have gone to work in meat packing plants in Kansas have found that access to an independent income can give them greater autonomy. This has resulted in women’s greater assertiveness, but also higher rates of divorce, as well (Benson 1994).

How have Nuer gender roles and relationships been transformed in the United States? In Sudan, Nuer women and men have well-defined cultural roles that are integral to their daily life. The Nuer learn from childhood the particular tasks associated with their gender, as well as how men and women are expected to behave. Nuer children start to help around the home from an early age, and their work quickly becomes differentiated into male and female tasks. Boys learn that being a man means becoming responsible for herding cattle, and they gradually play a greater role in the care of livestock. Girls learn about cooking, milking, and taking care of the home, and see the importance of showing deference to men.

Male initiation is a key moment in instilling masculine ideals, as well as in emphasizing the culturally prescribed relationship between men and women. When a youth starts to show physical maturity and to leave childish behavior behind him, his parents will allow him to undergo initiation. Initiation usually takes place together with other boys, who as a group form an age set—ric—which will remain the most important peer group for their entire lives. Six incisions are made ear to ear across a boy’s forehead, creating the scars of gaar which will mark his manhood.

Facing the knife without fear is considered by the Nuer to be their quintessential moment of self-mastery, which both defines their own manhood and differentiates them from Nuer women. This self-mastery comes to be expressed by many aspects of the behavior of a Nuer man—most importantly in regard to eating prohibitions. His relation to cattle should no longer be one in which he views livestock as a source of food, but rather one in which he has a paternalistic responsibility to oversee their well-being, to manage them for the good of the family, and to perform necessary cattle sacrifices. His relationship to cattle as food may only be mediated by the cooking of his food by a female relative. No matter how hungry, a man must not take food from an unrelated woman, nor prepare food for himself. He must not chew on both sides of his mouth, nor lick clean the sides of his bowl, lest he be subjected to public and private ridicule. To fail to adhere to these rules shows a lack of self-control, a lack of manliness (Hutchinson 1996).

With gaar a man gains the right to take part in cattle raids, but also the responsibility to protect the ...