Lango

Lango, people inhabiting the marshy lowlands northeast of Lakes Kwania and Kyoga in northern Uganda and speaking an Eastern Sudanic language of the Nilo-Saharan language family.

The Lango cultivate millet for food and for making beer and also grow numerous vegetables. Men and women share the agricultural work, but men have sole custody of cattle.

The population was traditionally divided into a number of patrilineal clans, each having its own territory and inhabiting a compact and usually stockaded village. Marriage involved a substantial bride-price in livestock. Hereditary chiefs had authority over all inhabitants of their clan areas, regardless of kinship. There was, however, no hereditary aristocracy. Above these chiefs were senior chiefs (rwot) who won their positions by personal merit, each controlling from three to six hereditary chiefs. Men also were divided into a series of age grades.

Lango traditionally believed that every human had a guardian spirit (winyo; literally, “bird”) that attended him during life and that must be ritually liberated from the corpse. There was also a belief in a shadow self, or immaterial soul (tipo), that after death eventually was merged into a vague entity called jok, a pervasive power, or supreme force. Ancestors, of whom jok was held the universal sublimation, were worshiped along with jok at shrines and sacred trees by prayer and sacrifice. Occurrences or things of unusual or unexplained nature were associated with jok, and jok can serve as a force for good or ill.

Milton Obote, the first president of the Republic of Uganda (1966–71; 1980–85), was a member of the Lango people.