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To visit the cattle camp of Chief Alier Ayen, a Dinka tribesman, in the gray dawn of the southern Sudan is to see a gathering resembling ghosts. Many of the men and boys, tall and thin, have coated their naked bodies and faces in the white ashes of cow dung, a centuries-old protection against flies and mosquitoes.
Their cows, adorned with high lyre-shaped horns, are dusted in the same powder. The ground is scattered with the pale cinders of campfires. The orange hair of the young adult men stands out against the whiteness. Coiffed into the shape of snug skullcaps, their naturally black hair has been colored by repeated washings in cow urine and blanching by the sun. The Dinka, the dominant tribe in the southern Sudan, regard cattle as sacred, approximating human beings in value.
They live in symbiosis with their cows, sleeping outdoors in the same camp with them and using the cow's milk, blood, skin and waste as vital resources for survival.
In the cool dawn air, Awar, a boy of about 12, rested his body, covered only in ash, on a cow skin by the fire he had spent the night by.
