GO)DBYE UGANDA

Hello Fellow Tertians,

Here is my latest reflection:

What’s in a name?  Everyone here has two names, neither of which is a surname.  There are no surnames whatsoever—no names passed on from parent to child—which makes it all the more difficult to determine what child belongs to what parent.  Of the two names, one is usually an English name such as William or Robert and the other is a tribal name such as Yabang, Dudu, or Yor.  The tribal name usually has some meaning in the mother tongue and usually has some connection to the day of the person’s birth.  Sometimes these “meaningful” names are also in English.  Thus, Margaret Sunday was born on a Sunday and Susan Night was born at nighttime.  Many of the names are related to the feelings or statements made by the mother just after giving birth.  This is not one of their most brilliant ideas.  A huge number of men here are called Taban, which means “tired.”  Presumably, just after the last laborious push the mother gave to birth the child the family gathered around the mother and asked, “How do you feel?”  The mom answered, “Taban (tired)” and so the child was named Taban and was doomed to live his whole life being referred to as “tired.”  Like I said, this is not one of their greatest ideas.

In the middle of one Imvepi Mass just a few weeks after arriving here, I baptized more than twenty babies one after the other.  I was a bit taban myself that day and was not paying any attention to the names the mothers gave and that I repeated as I poured holy water over the baby’s head.  Later that evening, Raymond asked me if I had noticed anything peculiar about the name of one of the babies.  Apparently the child was named “Marks Tibs” in celebration of the fact that a priest had finally arrived in Imvepi! 

Because the Dinka and Nuer are pastoralists, many of them have names that would be translated as “Spear” or “Black and White Cow.” Not sure why our Imvepi head catechist is named “Albino,” since he is black as cane syrup.  It’s hard for me to say his name with a straight face. 

Because so many babies die in childbirth or shortly thereafter, the discouraged family often gives the child a shockingly depressing name.  When I ask what a particular tribal name means in the mother tongue, I often learn that they have ghastly names like: “The one born after the dead one” or “The one born in misery.”  The worst I ever heard was that of George Atibuni, who was born to a mother who lost all three of the children she birthed before George.  Atibuni means “The one who will surely die.”

(orginal version of this document you can download from here)