772 



NILOTIC NEGROES 



women are particular about con- 

 cealing the pudenda, whereas the 

 men are ostentatiously naked. 

 The Baganda hold nudity in the 

 male to be such an abhorrent 

 thing that for centuries they 

 have referred with scorn and 

 disgust to the Nile Negroes as the 

 - Ba-kedi," or " Naked People." 

 Speke includes all regions to the 

 north and past of Uganda and 

 Unyoro as " Kidi " (a misrender- 

 ing of the root "kedi" — "naked"), 

 and to this day the word has be- 

 come so rooted as a geographical 

 term that one of the districts 

 of the Uganda Protectorate is 

 styled '• Bukedi," or the " Land 

 of Nakedness." This condition 

 of male nudity extends north- 

 west to within some 200 miles of 

 Khartum, or, in fact, wherever 

 the Nile Negroes of the Dinka- 

 Acholi stock inhabit the country. 

 The style of house built by 

 the Nile Negroes is as character- 

 M ^»*^2 istic of them as the attitude of 



standing on one leg. The hut 



■wF <*~ ... 



| «4PM : is circular in shape, and the sides 

 419. aluru woman and child fkom wadelai may be made of reeds. There 



is great uniformity amongst the 

 Nile Negroes in the style of thatching their huts. Their houses are the 

 round beehives built of reeds or wattle and daub, but the peaked roof is 

 a high one, extending over the framework of the house nearly to the 

 ground, and is thatched in a series of flounces. Wherever the Nile people 

 have carried their languages this "flounced" thatching appears, with the 

 exception, perhaps, of Karamojo (where the people, being of Bantu origin, 

 appear to have retained the smooth-thatched huts) and among the 

 Ja-luo, whose houses are built just like those of the Bantu Kavirondo. 

 The Masai group, however, though allied in origin and language to the 

 Nile Negroes, does not adopt this style of thatch. As will be seen in the 

 next chapter, they either build houses like those of the Bantu Negroes 



