Ik People-The Mountain Tribe Of Uganda

The Ik tribe occasionally called Tueso; is an aboriginal community living in Karamoja region, northeast of Uganda. In the local language, “Ik” slackly decodes to “ahead of migration or the first to migrate here.” The Ik tribe wandered from Ethiopia, first settled in Kenya and later transferred to the Karamoja region.

True to the meaning of their name, they were the first early settler in Karamoja area perhaps running away from their combatant neighbors. In contrast to the other communities, the Toposa, Turkana and Jie of the semi-arid East African region, the Ik community did not have a lot of fortune so to speak.

They preserved a few heads of cattle, goats, sheep and chicken but crazed special skills at hunting wild game, gathering edible fruits, flowers, leaves, tubers and cultivated land to grow some food crops in the Karamoja plains.

The bordering communities to the Ik tribe outshined them in population and tactlessly were traditional warriors that took vanity in prowling the weak communities. Karamojong warriors who believed their god Akuj gave them patrimony of all cattle anywhere together with cattle for the Ik outmuscled them and seized their cattle.

The Ik community restrained from livestock keeping, focused at hunting game, growing food crops, lean towards traditional skep and gathering eatable items from the Karamoja plains.

The 1960s wildlife protection and conservation engagements buffed salt in the Ik community lesions as their inherited land transformed into a game reserve. The Ik tribe divested their lands, were not recompensed and they excruciatingly budged into the Mount Morungole ranges.

The Ik tribe occupies the Morungole mountain ranges that rise to 2,750m from the Karamoja plains. The montane vegetation asylum in the highlands with cool zephyr due to high altitude is generally not the same from grassland and woodlands in the valley with the scorching heat.

The Ik communities’ pleat in villages, odok of sociable households, asak established in the moderately flat valleys of the Morungole mountain assortments. The whole village, odok is enclosed against foreign interlopers and wild animals. Individual households, asak have a large plot that may include a food granary, beset for household utensils, kraal for goats and sheep and pit latrine.

The Ik are traditional bigamists and marry as many wives as they are able to pay dowry. The Ik community quota dowry in number of goats, sheep, chicken, beehives and monetarist cash. The Ik husbands elect an asak for each wife and husbands make gyratory visits in the same odok.

Child bearing is an emblem of benedictions to humanity and to the Ik tribe hovering children is a social bond. The parents segment the asak with tots up to a certain age, 4 years on mediocre and then the grandparents’ elite them up.

The grandparents are a bodily gen data panel from which children obtain basic life endurance skills. At an average age of 13 years, the grandchildren leave their grandparents asak. Boys of the same age group erect their own asak and live as a mob, while girls are “ripe” and ready for marriage.

The traditional Ik culture grips wife heirloom after trailing a partner or divorce. Sex promiscuity is extremely illegal, incest is a taboo and deceitfulness is indictable by death. Since youths have their own asak, it is likely to get cohorts and epoch in privacy.

From timeworn, the Ik have been a distressed community generally because of their small population. Presently, there are 10,000-15,000 less sophisticated, less skilled, not traveled, and not wide-open The Ugandan government is alerting them about health, hygiene, education, farming, security, housing and other fields. The civil society is sanctioning them through skilling and income spawning projects.

Visiting the Ik Tribe gives you a sporadic acumen into an threatened tribe in Africa with less than 10,000 members and is seen as scarce for its prospect survival as they atteo eke out a living high in the mountains with some of the most bizarre decor in all of Uganda.

Triumph to the Ik Villages is no easy accomplishment as you have to be physically fit to climb the mountains – the peak of Mount Morungole and hike up.  The trajectory is 8 kilometers long and rather a hard-hitting hike to the villages.

A day with the Ik People high up on Morungole Mountain, with some of the most spectacular decor in all of Uganda, is merely an astonishing escapade. You will find extraordinarily dazzling Decor the higher your climb takes you, simply magnificent scenes in the valleys below you and into the Eastern Rift Valley of Kenya.

As you reach the villages you will be received tenderly with traditional dancing often in Ik attire, ask questions about the lifestyle of the Ik people, the levitation of children is quite different here, polygamy is part of family life and there is not much of a formal education besides learning to fend for yourself.

The Ik people are friendly as it is tallying a bit of income for the community and truly may withstand the continuing survival of the Tribe as it has for the Batwa people in southwest Uganda.