John Unzima/Media4All

ADJUMANI, Saturday 18^th, February 2024, at the teeming Awindiri food Market in Adjumani town, two trucks arrive from the Eastern Ugandan town of Mbale delivering a consignment of Cabbages, Onions, and Irish Potatoes. Within minutes, a swarm of retailers surrounded the trucks creating a scene of a mini – ‘gold rush.’ In a blink of an eye, the trucks are empty.

Not long ago, thoughts of commercial import of vegetables and other foodstuffs to the Ma’di region would be an outlandish imagination, but now it is a reality so normalized, yet unknown to the many local food shoppers, what they are facing is a shift from their traditional ways of feeding.

Contrastingly, for a community whose dietary culture is so distinct ranging from wild leaves, and nuts to fish, to turn to importing daily nutritional nourishment beckons a question, what has gone wrong?  The answers are somewhat obvious! Domestic food production plummeted lately! But why?

Mr. Ojja Francis, Adjumani District Forest Officer, says the line between crop productivity and reliability of rainfall is blurred, adding that one of its impacts of unreliable rain has had a direct downward effect on the local crop production capacity in the Ma’di Sub-region.

“Our rain season has become shorter, it rains a lot in a short period, this is a characteristic of Climate Change, and as such people prefer growing quick maturing crops that are not indigenous,” Ojja said.

On the changing food trend, Ojja says, traditional foods are cooked using local ingredients, where productivity is low. Due to Changing Climate trends, the ingredients are hard to come by, and the food culture had to change.

Whatever change they talk about, the reality is biting and disrupting the feeding culture of the Ma’di people who grew much of their food previously, are in a quick turn to importing food, so much so that some very traditional staple foods of the Ma’di people like millet and Sorghum are not on the market stalls anymore.

As bleak as it gets, for vegetable traders like Vincent Kidobi, from Mbale, it’s a boom, he trucks in cabbages and Irish potatoes thrice a month, making multiple folds in profits that he’s not willing to disclose.

Admittedly, a smiley Kidobi also says, “Awindiri is our best destination, here the market is ready!”

Whilst the traders cashing in, a study by Palm Corps, an Agro based Non-governmental organization puts West Nile’s net annual import of food at Seven (7) billion shillings, narrowing to Adjumani district, the Palm Corps survey counts three Trucks arriving daily into Adjumani with either Tomatoes, Cabbages or Onions.  

Alexander Andama, the Team Leader of Palm Corps Adjumani, leading the survey, among other factors, points to erratic Climatic Change that has driven many grassroots communities out of subsistence farming turning them into gross buyers of food for domestic consumption.

Dying Ma’di Culture   

In a 2016 documentary, titled Rainmaking; “Disappearing Practice”, Dominic Dipio a renowned filmmaker also Makerere University Scholar, singled out another aspect of traditional Ma’di life that is disappearing largely due to the ecological crises and Climate Change, rainmaking.

Rainmaking is a predominant practice among the Sudanic linguistic group, the ritual is centered around individuals who are bequeathed with supernatural abilities to rouse rain even in the wildest period of dry seasons, without any scientific footing, rainmakers were revered among the Ma’di people.

The ritual is performed around a specific type of tree, requiring herbs that have fallen prey to the runaway logging and Charcoal trade that is ravaging the Ma’di districts, just as it does to the rest of the West Nile region, exacerbating the climate crisis.

Dipio says, that beyond the rainmaking, the entire Ma’di heritage is at the critical stage of being deleted by ‘new ways’ of life as they adapt to changes in the environment, according to her the trend penetrates all ways of life, from social life to the economy, Ma’di culture is giving way at a worrying speed, yet little is being done to slow the changes.

She recalls, that Ma’di are avid cattle keepers but today, it astonishes her that a Ma’di family hands over their cattle to be looked after by other people.

“It is worrying, that people (Ma’di) no longer care about their culture yet culture is the reason for their very existence,”  Dipio said 

In the policy books

At the back, sitting well with the loud cry for cultural renewal echoing among the traditionalists, Uganda National Culture Policy 2006, is fittingly plain on the need to protect indigenous knowledge that includes food culture but despite its clear intent, the policy shares the plight of many, it is shelved.

Underscoring the importance of culture, the Policy reads in the quote “Although indigenous knowledge is useful to people, limited research, inadequate documentation of the indigenous Knowledge affects the practice of Culture”

The policy further states that “in some cases Indigenous knowledge, has been marginalized and threatened with extinction by modern knowledge and environmental degradation”, effectively driving home the predicaments of Cultural practices of the Ma’di people among other cultures in Uganda.

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