South Sudanese Father-in-Law

If you thought in-laws in the West were demanding, just wait until you meet the ones in traditional South Sudanese societies. Over there, they want you to pay for the wedding with cattle. And I don’t mean figurative cash cows, I mean literal cattle. Then again, America has plenty of cattle already.

The big brown hill in the background isn’t a mountain but an earthen grave pyramid. Much like the ancient Egyptians and Nubians, many South Sudanese societies would honor their dead leaders and prophets with large pyramid-like structures sometimes reaching fifty feet in height. Even to this day some of these pyramids retain some of their past spiritual significance to South Sudanese peoples.