Burial and mourning

Driberg recorded how the Lango buried and mourned their dead a century ago.

• Men were buried to the right of the door of their house and women to the left. Graves were deep, dug down to red clay, with the head towards the sunrise. A man with several wives was buried in the courtyard in front of his otem, and chiefs and war-leaders just beyond it.
• The funeral wail was raised at once by the wife (or sister) of the dead person and taken up by the women of the village, so that relatives in neighbouring villages knew.
• The body was laid on its side with the knees drawn up and the hands under the cheek, wrapped in the sleeping hide. A chicken and a sheep were killed over the grave, and leaves of the tree edugu were scattered on it.
• The wife and mother wore strings of fibre round the head, neck and waist, and close relatives took off their ornaments. Men shaved their heads on the third day and women on the fourth.
• Close relatives, in the first days of grief, were closely watched, and the burial was done by someone from outside the family.
• The funeral feast, achuban, was quiet and sad. At the next harvest the relatives gathered for the apuny me gonyo tol, the “feast of the undoing of the string”.

Source: J. H. Driberg, The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda (London, 1923), pp. 165–169; public domain. It describes life about a hundred years ago as a colonial administrator saw it, so customs have changed and some may be told differently today. Elders and families are invited to correct it and add what they know.