Ngakidamdam

Ngakidamdams are giant celebrations, and apparently the Toposa have a lot to celebrate because these things happen a lot. This is one of the most confusing things about their culture because so far we haven't noticed many patterns or "rules" about what goes on at one of these things. I do know they involve karoting ("karot" is the Toposa word for jump) in a circle, whistle-blowing, gunshots, and they last for hours. The time of day is irrelevant. Ngakidamdams can happen at 2am or in the middle of the afternoon. Sometimes it is one village, sometimes it is multiple villages, sometimes it is for a certain occasion and today it was for nyapeses, or unmarried girls. Except even this was confusing because there were plenty of married women, men, and boys there, too. Alyssa, Carrie and I went to just observe and it turned out to be a gold mine of weird Toposa things. Due to the Toposa clothing (or lack thereof), I'm not going to post as many pictures as I'd like to. You're welcome.

 Notice the green skirts of the girls on the other side of the circle. These are made out of goat skins and look green because of the yellow and green beads that the girls sew onto their skirts. These are their special ngakidamdam skirts and aren't worn every day. The smoke in the background is where they are cooking the bull that was slaughtered earlier in the day. And no, I did not eat any.

This little girl had bottle caps tied or sewn or somehow attached to her hair. What? Why? I haven't seen this on anyone else and I don't know what the deal was. Interesting fashion statement.

This video shows the karoting. Sometimes they will all karot, but since this ngakidamdam was especially for nyapeses, everyone stood in a huge circle and sang/clapped while some of the unmarried girls karoted in the middle. During certain songs they would invite others to karot, too.