Kuem And Nyarial: Suits, Trousers, Mini-Skirts And Learning To Wear A Tuac On a May morning in 2007, the preparations for tuoc, the wedding dance marking a stage in the Nuer marriage process were underway. This was also the beginning of tot, the rainy season, which often saw marriages being concluded. The bride’s family was busy cooking and getting her ready for the dance, while negotiations around bridewealth were taking place in a luak (cattle byre). It was decided that half of the groom’s cows were to be transferred to the bride’s family. The groom, Kuem, a Kukuma refugee who now was in his late twenties and had a lucrative job, was marrying Nyaluak, a beautiful near-16-year-old who had never left Lϵr. The daughter of a high-ranking influential commander, and considered ‘somehow educated’ – Nyaluak had finished four grades of primary school – she commanded a high bride-price. Her father demanded seventy head of cattle, the highest bridewealth payment known in Lϵr, where thirty to thirty-five was the norm.

Kuem, one of the many ‘lost boys’, was recruited by the SPLA in 1988 and taken to Ethiopia for military training. From 1991 to 2006 he was a refugee in Kakuma, after which he went to Nairobi, where he finished secondary school. He subsequently found a job with an NGO in Lϵr and returned to his father’s home for the first time in eighteen years. One of Riek Machar’s brothers, Kuem’s father had stayed in Lϵr during the wars to look after his family’s property, while most of his children were either killed or displaced throughout Sudan and East Africa. An influential local guan kuoth, he was introduced to me as a ‘kuäar moun’. Hence, due to his family background and his ‘advanced’ education, Kuem was being asked a premium price.

As half of the cattle were transferred, I heard singing and saw groups of women and men dancing. The men were carrying spears and sticks and singing in praise of the forthcoming marriage. Both the groom and his best friend wore elegant black suits and a tuac (leopard skin) tied around their waists (Photo 6.1).