University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2010 "In My Heart I Had a Feeling of Doing It": A Case Study of the Lost Boys of Sudan and Christianity Kathryn Snyder University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the African Languages and Societies Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Snyder, Kathryn, ""In My Heart I Had a Feeling of Doing It": A Case Study of the Lost Boys of Sudan and Christianity" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 614. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/614 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. “IN MY HEART I HAD A FEELING OF DOING IT”: A CASE STUDY OF THE LOST BOYS OF SUDAN AND CHRISTIANITY _________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Social Sciences University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts __________ by Katy Snyder November 2010 Advisors: Tracy Ehlers and Richard Clemmer-Smith ©Copyright by Katy Snyder 2010 All Rights Reserved Author: Katy Snyder Title: “IN MY HEART I HAD A FEELING OF DOING IT”: A CASE STUDY OF THE LOST BOYS OF SUDAN AND CHRISTIANITY Advisors: Tracy Ehlers and Richard Clemmer-Smith Degree Date: November 2010 ABSTRACT While members of the southern Sudanese Dinka tribe converted to Christianity in large numbers in the early 1990s, the Lost Boys, a largely Dinka group of young men who were separated from their families during the Sudanese civil war in the late 1980s, had a distinct conversion experience in refugees camps. Using first-person interviews and participant observation with a group of Lost Boys resettled in Denver, and historical and ethnographic data, this research seeks to explain why the Lost Boys converted to Christianity and the role that it played in their identity in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, and continues to play in their lives in Denver. Findings include the Lost Boys‟ need to adapt to radically changed circumstances that separated them from the central components of their lives—their families, villages, and cattle—and retention of the Dinka values of pragmatism and group autonomy, which allowed the Lost Boys to accept the once foreign practice of Christianity. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like thank all who helped this work come together. Foremost among those who helped are the Lost Boys of Denver, who gave so generously of their time to help me understand their culture, their religion, and their lives in Denver. In particular, I want to thank Joseph, Deng, Lual, and Peter—without your insight I could not have written this thesis. I would also like to thank the anthropology department for their patience and help with motivating me to finish, particularly Dr. Tracy Ehlers and Dr. Richard Clemmer-Smith. I am also grateful to Project Education Sudan, both for the work that they do to help the Lost Boys and their home communities in southern Sudan, and for introducing me to the Lost Boys and allowing me the experience of traveling to Sudan. Finally, thank you to my husband and family for supporting me through this process—I couldn‟t have done it without you. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1—Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Who are the Lost Boys? .......................................................................................................... 1 Lost Boys in Denver ............................................................................................................... 3 Christianity in Sudan ............................................................................................................... 8 Statement of the Problem/Research Questions ....................................................................... 12 Methods ................................................................................................................................ 13 Chapter 2—Review of the Literature ......................................................................................... 18 Refugees ............................................................................................................................... 18 Acculturation ........................................................................................................................ 30 Conversion ............................................................................................................................ 32 The Nation-State and Globalization ....................................................................................... 35 The Breakdown of the Post-Colonial African Nation-State .................................................... 37 The Global and the Local ...................................................................................................... 39 Chapter 3—Historical Background ............................................................................................ 43 Dinka Culture Prior to 1955 .................................................................................................. 43 Origins of the Dinka .............................................................................................................. 44 When the “World Was Spoiled”: Turko-Egyptian and British-Egyptian Invaders Come to Dinkaland ............................................................................................................................. 45 Sudan Under British Control ................................................................................................. 50 The Departure of the British: “Independence” for Sudan ....................................................... 52 The Anyanya War ................................................................................................................. 55 Return to War 1983-2005 ...................................................................................................... 56 Chapter 4—The Sudanese Nation-State and its Breakdown ....................................................... 59 Colonial Bureaucracy and the Northern Nationalists .............................................................. 59 Egyptian Influence ................................................................................................................ 62 “Sudanese” Versus “Tribal” .................................................................................................. 63 Southern Identity ................................................................................................................... 67 Forcing the “Nation” ............................................................................................................. 68 Emergence of a Pan-Southern Identity: the SSLM ................................................................. 70 Christianity and Southern Identity ......................................................................................... 72 Chapter 5—Religion, Conversion, and Cattle in Southern Sudan ............................................... 79 iv The Religion of the Dinka: Jak and Nhialic—Flexible Monotheism....................................... 79 Cattle Sacrifice...................................................................................................................... 83 Cattle in Dinka Life............................................................................................................... 84 Early Christianity .................................................................................................................. 93 Conversion in the North—The Khartoum Clubs .................................................................. 102 Conversion: 1983-Present ................................................................................................... 103 Cattle Raids of 1991—“The gods have gone with the cows to Nuer country”....................... 105 The Lessening Importance of Cattle .................................................................................... 107 Chapter 6—The Lost Boys as Refugees .................................................................................. 113 Flight from Sudan ............................................................................................................... 113 Ethiopia and Conversion—“In my heart I had a feeling of doing it” ..................................... 122 Kakuma .............................................................................................................................. 128 Chapter 7—The Lost Boys and Identity .................................................................................. 134 Traditional Dinka Identity: Early Childhood ........................................................................ 135 Childhood ........................................................................................................................... 136 Adolescence ........................................................................................................................ 137 Adulthood ........................................................................................................................... 138 Identity in Flight