This work draws from several interpretations and perceptions of Lou ethnic groups regarding their kinships, lineages, and the geocultural claims pertaining to their identity and sociocultural interactions among social groups and communities. It builds on the current literature and oral history to methodologically reaffirm kinships and establish ethnic lineages. Most contemporary Luo narratives come from Kenya and Uganda, in addition to those written by Western anthropologists and missionaries. None of these narratives have changed the content of the oral stories told by Luo groups and subgroups in Africa, especially those related to their lineages, ethnic affiliations, and their path of immigration from South Sudan to Tanzania, but have, instead, confirmed the history, stories, and mythology of the greater Luo groups in Africa. This book will serve to evoke intellectual curiosity among African social scientists, prompting them to conduct more research to further understanding of Luo ethnic groups’ ways of life and social interactions, as well as their contributions to the sociopolitical and economic development in the countries and regions they inhabit.

This work draws from several interpretations and perceptions of Lou ethnic groups regarding their kinships, lineages, and the geocultural claims pertaining to their identity and sociocultural interactions among social groups and communities. It builds on the current literature and oral history to methodologically reaffirm kinships and establish ethnic lineages. Most contemporary Luo narratives come from Kenya and Uganda, in addition to those written by Western anthropologists and missionaries. None of these narratives have changed the content of the oral stories told by Luo groups and subgroups in Africa, especially those related to their lineages, ethnic affiliations, and their path of immigration from South Sudan to Tanzania, but have, instead, confirmed the history, stories, and mythology of the greater Luo groups in Africa. This book will serve to evoke intellectual curiosity among African social scientists, prompting them to conduct more research to further understanding of Luo ethnic groups' ways of life and social interactions, as well as their contributions to the sociopolitical and economic development in the countries and regions they inhabit.

Ukal Kawang Julu Mutho was born in 1964 at Lafon, Torit District, in the then Southern Sudan. He attended Primary School at Lafon in 1971; Torit one intermediate in 1978; Joined Juba Commercial Secondary School in 1979: studied in the University of Juba in 1986 and graduated with a Bachelor degree in Accounting. In 2003, he studied for pst Graduate Diploma in Sudanese and African languages in the Institute of African and Asian Studies (IAAS) University of Khartoum and graduated in 2004. Served as a teacher at El Gaderif commercial Secondary school in 1995; St. Mary Minor Secondary Khartoum in 1998; worked as senior Accountant with the Nile Commercial Bank Pic, in2006-9. Worked with the South Sudan Investment Authority as Director of Investor service; Acting Director-General with the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment (GOSS); served as Chief Administrator for Lafon Area in 2010 and became the first commissioner for Lafon county in 2016. Ukal is the author of Pӓri Alphabet Book, and The Pari Storybook; He is married and has children. Contents: Geography and the people: Cradle land and Migrations: Pӓri Clans Pӓri contacts with Outside World: Formation of Age group Political institutions and Authority: Institutions of Power, Relational Linkages and Justice. Marriage, Beliefs and Customs, Traditional burial Customs Epilogue.

In 2011, South Sudan became independent following a long war of liberation, that gradually became marked by looting, raids and massacres pitting ethnic communities against each other. In this remarkably comprehensive work, Edward Thomas provides a multi-layered examination of what is happening in the country today. Writing from the perspective of South Sudan's most mutinous hinterland, Jonglei state, the book explains how this area was at the heart of South Sudan's struggle. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and a broad range of sources, this book gives a sharply focused, fresh account of South Sudan's long, unfinished fight for liberation.

For twenty years, southern Sudan has been the site of a tragic and brutal civil war, pitting the northern-based Arab and Islamic government against rebels in African marginalized areas, especially the south. More than two million people have died and four million have been displaced as a result. In 1999, anew element radically changed the war: Sudanese oil, located in the south, was firs exported by the central government. The human price of this bonanza is immeasurable. The government, using oil revenues and aided by co-opted southerners, rained a scorched earth campaign of mass displacement, bombing, and terror on the agro-pastoral southern civilians living in and near the oil zones. The displaced number in the hundreds of thousands.

&“Richard Opio has neither the look of a cold-blooded killer nor the heart of one. Yet as his mother and father lay on the ground with their hands tied, Richard used the blunt end of an ax to crush their skulls. He was ordered to do this by a unit commander of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that has terrorized northern Uganda for twenty years. The memory racks Richard's slender body as he wipes away tears.&” For more than twenty years, beginning in the mid-1980s, the Lord's Resistance Army has ravaged northern Uganda. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered, and thousands more mutilated and traumatized. At least 1.5 million people have been driven from a pastoral existence into the squalor of refugee camps. The leader of the rebel army is the rarely seen Joseph Kony, a former witchdoctor and self-professed spirit medium who continues to evade justice and wield power from somewhere near the Congo~Sudan border. Kony claims he not only can predict the future but also can control the minds of his fighters. And control them he does: the Lord's Resistance Army consists of children who are abducted from their homes under cover of night. As initiation, the boys are forced to commit atrocities—murdering their parents, friends, and relatives—and the kidnapped girls are forced into lives of sexual slavery and labor. In First Kill Your Family, veteran journalist Peter Eichstaedt goes into the war-torn villages and refugee camps, talking to former child soldiers, child &“brides,&” and other victims. He examines the cultlike convictions of the army; how a pervasive belief in witchcraft, the spirit world, and the supernatural gave rise to this and other deadly movements; and what the global community can do to bring peace and justice to the region. This insightful analysis delves into the war's foundations and argues that, much like Rwanda's genocide, international intervention is needed to stop Africa's virulent cycle of violence.