T U R K A I R O
Mr Caam
At the end of his career, Caam was promoted at the cultural bureau of Gambella. He launched an extensive ethnological research on the Anuak society. "To re-establish the truth about our society, he told. Because all the big names of anthropology (Evans-Pritchard, Lienhardt) who came in the 1930's could not understand us because they used translators who didn't understand our language and culture.More recent like Kurimoto, the Japanese, are better. But even so, there are some mistakes."
Caam recognise that Anuak culture was mixed with the surrounding cultures. Ethiopian Anuak got many words in Amharic, Sudanese Anuak took many words from Arabic language. "But if there was one thing to remember, remember that everything around us changed, but our culture remains the same in its fundaments"!
Then Caam laughed again, told some few more jokes, we smoked more cigarets. I promised to bring him next time some magazines in English. Next time, I am not sure I will be able to meet him again. He has the gangrene of feet and may die soon.
'Mister' Caam would have let a great legacy to the Anuak community: a recognition of its own identity apart from the 'colonial' anthropology, apart from the violence and conflicts of the region that too often shape the competing identies. His legacy is the recognition of identies being shaped in the contact of Otherness. A culture of peace for sure.
update november 2009: Got some news of Mr Caam, he is still alive and seems very alive!
Mr Caam
At the end of his career, Caam was promoted at the cultural bureau of Gambella. He launched an extensive ethnological research on the Anuak society. "To re-establish the truth about our society, he told. Because all the big names of anthropology (Evans-Pritchard, Lienhardt) who came in the 1930's could not understand us because they used translators who didn't understand our language and culture.More recent like Kurimoto, the Japanese, are better. But even so, there are some mistakes."
Caam recognise that Anuak culture was mixed with the surrounding cultures. Ethiopian Anuak got many words in Amharic, Sudanese Anuak took many words from Arabic language. "But if there was one thing to remember, remember that everything around us changed, but our culture remains the same in its fundaments"!
Then Caam laughed again, told some few more jokes, we smoked more cigarets. I promised to bring him next time some magazines in English. Next time, I am not sure I will be able to meet him again. He has the gangrene of feet and may die soon.
'Mister' Caam would have let a great legacy to the Anuak community: a recognition of its own identity apart from the 'colonial' anthropology, apart from the violence and conflicts of the region that too often shape the competing identies. His legacy is the recognition of identies being shaped in the contact of Otherness. A culture of peace for sure.
update november 2009: Got some news of Mr Caam, he is still alive and seems very alive!