The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 180

10s Spectrum features THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1997 v. f-J-Xr 5 i 5- -vv i. II li U-1 0 i 2 I 4' ii 1 if I otographer fascinated Hitler's ph ways for a Leni Riefenstahl visited Western audience. Now, them in the 1960s, capturing their sacred rituals and ancient the lengthy Sudanese civil war threatens their very existence. 1.

1 1 1 A thousands have been killed in the fighting or have ied from famine and disease. Thousands more are interned in so-called "peace centres for controlled abuse by government soldiers. Occasionally missionaries, journalists and aid-agency personnel are able to reach the mountains. Tortuous negotiations with nervous and volatile Nuba representatives in Kenya may secure a place on one of the small planes which deliver intermittent consignments of medicine, blankets and arms to tiny airstrips carved out of the bush. Delivered into the care of rebel soldiers, the visitor must be prepared for days of relentless walking across the rough, beautiful terrain where razed villages, the echo of automatic gunfire and the sporadic explosion of mortar rounds are reminders of the brutal, low-level conflict.

There is always the risk of ambush along the fluid frontlines of the war, of shells that might fall on the villages where the travellers sleep, or of strafing from the MiG jets which the Government has stationed in its southern stronghold of the town of Juba. A white skin is no defence, and makes a rather attractive hostage. The Nuba mountains are fertile, and where the crops are not destroyed by soldiers, its inhabitants do not want for food. Desperately lacking, however, are medicine and clothing; people go naked or in rags, children regularly die of preventable diseases, and the war-wounded are tended to by witchdoctors. Yet in every village, the hospitality is overwhelming; endless handshakes and dazzling white smiles are the preliminary to obligatory feasting and dancing.

Huge spongy pancakes of sour milk bread (Iciso) are served up with sesame seed paste, roast goat, chicken or guinea fowl (on special occasions), okra, boiled sorghum, onions, pumpkin, groundnut sauce, catfish, mango, limes and banana. The visitor is offered a fine local aromatic tobacco, and plied with marissa (sorghum beer) and aragi, a lethal white spirit also distilled from sorghum. In the lowland areas, the traditional ways of Nuba life are beginning to fade, but in more remote mountain villages such as Touche, complex thousand-year-old rituals, including stick fighting and wrestling, still attend every aspect of life from birth, coming of age, marriage and death, to planting, harvesting and the phases of the moon. The communities are close-knit, and physical affection is unselfconsciously displayed. From Picone's diary of his Touche timer "They are a self-reliant, independent and hardworking people.

In the time I have been in the mountains, they have never begged me for money or clothing; only asked for pencils and textbooks and batteries. The batteries are for their radios to quench their thirst for knowledge of the outside world, which has chosen time and again to ignore them." IN HERE had never been a white man ir, the 1 in iiiw village Ul ivjuciic: UCIU1C Australian photographer Jack Ficone. Word of his coming preceded him in the mysterious way that news spreads in that remote part of Africa, and the young girls, who usually go naked except for beadwork, covered their nakedness with small loincloths of rags. He arrived in the company of rebel soldiers as the sun was setting on the plain below. The girls hovered in small groups in the shelter of the huts, dark eyes bright with amazement behind their fingers, then collapsing in fits of shy giggles, clinging to one another in hilarity as they watched the pale, long-haired creature going through the formalities of greeting the elders of the village.

Later, one of them was brave enough to touch Picone's hand, but immediately wondered out loud whether that touch put her in his power; would he take her away in the big bird that she had seen flying above the mountains? Touche lies cradled on a high ridge of the Nuba Mountains in the inaccessible heart of Sudan. The 78,000 square kilometres of craggy granite massifs interspersed with lush valleys are home to more than a million people who practise a mixture of Christianity, Islam and traditional animist beliefs, and speak more than 50 dialects from 10 language groups. The unique culture of the Nuba people -including body painting, elaborate scarification and ritual duelling was first revealed in the West by the British photographer George Rodger, whose 1949 picture of a naked Nuba wrestler borne on the shoulders of another man remains one of the most enduring photographic images from Africa. Documentaries and photographs were also made by Hitler's erstwhile photographer, Leni Riefenstahl, who made a series of visits to the mountains in the 1960s. But Picone was the first to Touche.

Yet (for once in Africa), it is not the arrival of Western culture which threatens the ancient ways of the Nuba people; it is the 15-year civil war between the Islamic Government in north Sudan and the African resistance forces in the south. Initially outraged by the nakedness of the Nuba and their other "primitive" ways, Khartoum sought to "civilise" them by banning many of their traditional rituals, including wrestling and stick fighting. With the outbreak of war in 1983, government persecution of the Nuba began in earnest (amounting to what many now call genocide) and the region has been closed to the outside world ever since. It's a long, slow war in which Khartoum has generally had the upper hand. As each new dry season makes overland travel easier, government forces advance in the south, burning whole villages, destroying crops, killing and displacing communities, capturing children as slaves or conscripts.

Hundreds of limn nii ivmm I if I Si1 it tM'J it tf I If V-' .1 1- I Photography by JACK PICONE Story by ALISON CAMPBELL The life of the Nuba clockwise from above, a feather-wearing wrestling spectator; young men prove their worth to the tribe by wrestling; a young boy enters his home, known as a tukul; the women of Touche dance to celebrate the beginning of the rain season; a traditional witchdoctor stands in a trance, warding off evil spirits; the elaborate scarification of this woman marks the significant stages of her life breast formation, menstruation and pregnancy..