ABSTRACT

The site of assembly itself is marked merely by a small mound to which the passer-by must add stick, stone or bone 'to keep the place happy'. The assembly of initiated men, having stacked their weapons against a tree, sit in the shape of a horseshoe, opening in the direction of the commonly accepted tribal cradleland. The senior elder present from the host sub-section sits at the fulcrum of the assembly shaped like ox-horns. The senior elders decide on place and time, according to moon, well in advance in order to declaim and pray over current affairs. Karamojong ritualism holds together the real and the nominal, the political and the symbolic, power and convention, causation and time. Typically there is no system that automatically comes into play at its own appointed time to regulate the transfer of age and generation-sets. All political meetings involving the elders, and therefore concerning the community as a whole, are manifestly religious events.