Kuliya Ti La'bi Lo Kakwa

While studying at the University of Guelph in the mid-1980s, Yuga was struck by the absence of written materials on most of the indigenous cultures like Kakwa even though the slave traders, colonists and missionaries had been in the Kakwa region as early as the 1870s. Kakwa is an undocumented language, and it is referred to in Greensberg (1966), though no particulars of the language are given. It is also mentioned in Spagnola's Bari Grammar (1937) and in Tucker and Bryan's (1967) survey of the languages of the area, with reference to few particular (mostly incorrect) features of the language. No grammar of the language exists.

Rough estimates suggest that there are approximately 500 000 speakers of Kakwa. However, the region in which Kakwa is spoken is rife with political unrest and upheaval. Until recently, there has been civil war in the southern Sudan and in the Congo, and these have been going since the 1960s. Although the Kakwa population has stabilized in recent years, the Kakwa people feel that there has been a significant decline in degree of speaker confidence due to pressures of war, illness, poverty, migration and political oppression. Currently, Kakwa children attending school are instructed, not in their own language, but in that of the other politically powerful neighboring language, Lugbara. The elders are concerned that they are the sole possessors of much of the Kakwa language and tradition, and are actively encouraging means of preserving the knowledge.

Yuga has been working on documenting the Kakwa language and traditional culture since 1984. In 1997, he became a visiting scholar to the Linguistics Department of the University of Toronto, whereupon he worked on a descriptive grammar of Kakwa which is now a little over 1600 pages long. He has also been working on a Kakwa-English Dictionary, called Ko'dote, in the Kakwa language. This dictionary is over 20,000 pages long. Some of the works Yuga is working on include: Kakwa Proper Names and their Meanings; a children's Alphabetical and Numbering book in Kakwa; the Fauna and Flora of the Kakwa Territories; a Kakwa website; Kuliya ti La'bi lo Kakwa (Kakwa Traditional Culture); Kakwa Historical Present (a chronicle of places, people and dates which have had directly or indirectly affected the Kakwa people and their land over the decades); Kakwa People, Land and History; the Calendar in Kakwa, etc.

In an effort to involve the entire Kakwa people in the documentation of their Kakwa language, Yuga established an organization called Authentic Kakwa Language Academy (AKLA) in Ko'buko District, Uganda. Members of AKLA include the entire Kakwa community - elders, youth and women - all of whom have taken a keen interest in the ongoing work being completed in Canada. Accordingly, materials from the Dictionary, grammar and the current book have been sent to Ko'buko, and letters and tapes have been returned. What began as a dictionary and grammar project in Canada, has now become a community project in Ko'buko and amongst the Kakwa everywhere, who view it with much enthusiasm and excitement surrounding the documentation of their language and traditional culture.

The materials sent to the AKLA members in Uganda were meant to:
- solicit blessings from the Kakwa elders
- seek help from the Kakwa elders in order to edit the entries in the dictionary;
- request the Kakwa elders to come up with an authentic Kakwa orthography and alphabet system;
- encourage the youth to appreciate their traditional culture;
- find out any entries the author might have missed.

Yuga had written down a number of questions regarding certain aspects Kakwa traditional culture and practices, and he needed some help from the Kakwa elders since some of this information is fast becoming lost. When these materials reached Ko'buko, all the Kakwa elders enthusiastically embraced the idea of a Kakwa dictionary which Ko'dote meaning 'unearthing the hidden meanings of things.'

The elders also responded to Yuga's questions regarding Kakwa traditional culture and traditional practices. These responses were taped and later sent to him in Canada. Yuga listened to these tapes very carefully, and with the elders' urging and blessings, he has proceeded to write them down - resulting in a catalogue of the Kakwa rituals and practices in this book, Kuliya ti La'bi lo Kakwa.

The questions were politely posed to our Kakwa elders by one of the AKLA youth, Stephen To'doko, and these appear in boxes in the book followed by the responses from the elders. These are their stories and thoughts on the different subject matters the author presented to them.

Finally, the elders have also consistently lamented the negative influences of modern governments and religions on Kakwa's traditional culture. Despite this, they believe that the Kakwa must constantly struggle to preserve and promote their traditional culture and practices.