Pottery

Driberg recorded how pots were made in the Lango of a century ago.

• The clay, dagi, was fetched from river beds and used without mixing in anything else.
• Small pots were moulded by hand from a lump. A large pot was built up from its base in strips of clay.
• Patterns were pressed into the damp clay by rolling a short stick with a spiral cut in it, and the inside was smoothed with a calabash scraper called akwaya.
• The pot dried for three or four days, was wrapped thickly in grass, and was fired by lighting the grass from the base upwards.
• A slightly cracked pot could be mended by smearing the inside with a gel from a wild root, akure.

One pot was different. The dogaryo (“two-mouth”), also called agulu jok, the “pot of god”, was used for ceremonies, and it was the only pot whose making was left to particular people, because it was hard to make well.

Source: J. H. Driberg, The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda (London, 1923), p. 88; 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.