Last week, on another of my jags (don't remember how I got on it, which is typical) I saw some photos taken by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher of this African tribe. I was enthralled (but so was I with Stuart's dead people) and sent them to the (2nd Unfortunate Mrs.-) Harris and our girl child. They were enthralled. With that validation that I was just not on a jag I share with yinz peoplz.
The Dinka are the tallest people in the world (ave. height 5'11") and they are ancient cattle herders. I make a link between their tradition of herding and their height. (You should know that I have not researched this and therefore it is a connection that exists nowhere that I know of but between my ears.) John Buchan repeatedly described Scot sheep herders as long-legged. I can see that long legs would be useful in herding. It does seem curious that herders both in Scotland and east central Africa would have this trait, but how the hell would long legs and great height get ingrained, through evolutionary selection over ages? That doesn't sound plausible.When I sent the photos last week I captioned them but I struggled with the caption. In some photos the landscape looked post-nuclear.
In others, like an alien planet or some fantastical painting by Odd Nerdrum.
I have never seen cattle with horns like that.
Son will you go put a fucking codpiece on! Makes me nervous just looking at you and those dangerous horns that could render you a soprano for life.
The next two are by AFP and I just discovered them tonight. If I had seen these last week I wouldn't have hesitated as much as I did in captioning those by Beckwith and Fisher, “Dystopian serenity."
Go ahead motherfucker come up with something better than "Dystopian serenity" for that.
In all, taking these photos by two white females of European descent and by AFP as representative of Dinka life I would not know where the fuck to start if I were plopped down in South Sudan; well I'd start by investing in a real good, sturdy, codpiece, kevlar-lined, and I would issue the clearest possible instructions to those cattle that under no circumstance are they ever to approach me from the rear. Beyond those prudent measures I would not know how to exist in South Sudan. Like, what do I do, milk those cows? They don't look heavy with milk know what I mean? Steak, burgers? Lean meat there, lean. I must say I don't see much herding, as I am familiar with the term which is not at all, going on. If those two Dinka are herding I could do that. If I had a book. My iPhone.
In all, the Dinka landscape utterly baffles me; it is the most unfamiliar, surreal--not real in any life I have ever experienced--nor that I have ever seen--since the week before. Honest Injun. No hyperbole. The week before I accompanied my son on one of his road trips and that took us through the Everglades. Now I've been through the Everglades before but I was the driver then, I wasn't looking around attentively. This trip I was the passenger and could be attentive. After being attentive for five minutes to the "river of grass" I said to my son, "I couldn't do this." "Couldn't do what?" "Live in the Everglades; get through the Everglades," I quickly threw that in so I wouldn't look completely stupid because I don't know if any actual people live in one of those hammocks in the Everglades. I meant: nothing in my experience living in Barnesboro, Pittsburgh, Boston, Philadelphia, or Miami, nor anything I learned in my education in college, at MIT, and law school, prepared me for "real life" as it is in the Everglades or gave me the slightest notion how to live--or survive for 15 minutes--in the Everglades. Nor, to state the obvious, among the Dinka in South Sudan.
