I Would Like To Walk Naked



I WOULD LIKE TO WALK NAKED.
On my recent visit to Kuron, in South Sudan, I found myself thinking how nice it would be if I walked naked? The people we visited are the Toposa, a very neglected tribe in  the south east of South Sudan. They are a sister tribe to the Karamojongs of Uganda and the Turkana of Kenya. They are quite a big group scattered all over East Africa, from Uganda to Ethiopia. Apart from being pastoralists, they are often known for not wearing so much. They are usually adorned in multicoloured beads and wrappers that they either wrap around their lower half or tie across one shoulder.
Many sub tribes of this ethnic group in many countries have adopted the culture of clothes, even though they are usually the last ones in each country to shade off the traditional dress code of their ancestors. The Toposa of South Sudan however, have not yet fully embraced this stage of evolution. The very first people to wear modern clothes are the school girls and boys at the primary school in Kuron, at Holy Trinity Peace Village, the organisation that hosted us. In a few years, ‘civilisation’ has slowly found its way into Kuron.
Back to why I really thought I wanted to walk naked. Before I explain this perhaps I should tell you that South Sudan can be really hot. There were afternoons where we finished lunch and wondered if evening would ever come. Sometimes by 10am it would be so hot you would feel your clothes sticking to your skin. The first impulse would be to remove your shirt, and the boys did remove their shirts most of the time. Unfortunately, I did not have enough freedom to do the same. But I wore sleeveless tops and once as I was talking to some girls when one of them noticed that there was some skin showing between my jeans and my top. She rushed to me and pulled it down, and gave me the look of ‘you indecent girl!’
I would not have been surprised if somebody had done it in my village, or in Juba. But I looked at her, and wondered when she started feeling ashamed of skin. I do not want to approach this in a political way, because I have a political analyst colleague that thinks those of us who have not studied politics have ‘interesting’ views on things like this. Things that are a bit political but perhaps made to look so academic by foreign scholars who sometimes think they are better experts in these things than us who experience them. So I will speak as a common person who has lived and thrived in Africa. It bothers me a lot when I hear people says it’s not our culture for people to dress up in skin revealing clothes. Even back home in Ug, it can get hot. But people expect you to wear jackets to work and long skirts to the village. perhaps I’m politically offbeat, but I remember that our people used to walk naked along the plains and hills of the sub Sahara not so long ago. For all I know clothes were introduced by missionaries a few centuries back.
I believe in evolution of cultures so I’m not saying we should all walk naked. No. I just think that it’s pretty shameful that we grasp so much on to borrowed cultures and claim they are our own. Most of the people who introduced clothes to Africa were from countries that experience winter. In Uganda and South Sudan, even if it gets cold, it is never too cold. A Swedish colleague once witnessed a rainy day in Kampala and made jokes about how the day was much like a Swedish summer day. But this is not about winters and summers, this is about what is appropriate. As I looked at that girl pulling down my shirt, feeling embarrassed, when her tribeswomen and men still walked around in wrappers, I thought about the attitude of the rest of the African people. And I cannot help to think that it is sometimes appalling what societies can achieve. Many times, it is not what they need, but what they see elsewhere.
So one of these days when it’s hot, I would like to think that it’s not my fault that I want to walk naked. Besides, somewhere not so far away from Kampala, a tribe still walks naked. And much as I have spread messages of development there, I hope one day I won’t go there in shorts and every one will be like “please cover your legs. In our culture, we wear gomesis, and cover all seductive skin.” Because if that happens, I might put up a fight and ask them what the hell is wrong with them, and one of them might ask me “were you not here, fifty years ago, telling us to change?” and perhaps then, I will know what it’s like to change just for the sake of change. If it were up to me, with all that heat, people would design clothes that are decent but don’t cover too much, and don’t cause sweating. But then again it’s not up to me, and I’m risking to be socially offbeat. That doesn’t mean I think this whole jacketising and long clothing going on around is a good idea.

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