The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People

The Nuer conception of time is determined by social functions tied to the annual movements from village to camp. While this roughly coincides with the wet and dry seasons, the temporal values of the annual calendar are more closely related to social features than environmental ones. The year is broadly divided into two seasons, tot and mai, which track the periods from the peak to the trough of annual rainfall, and each has a further marginal season attached to it (jiom with mai and rwil with tot). The Nuer also conceive of their year as being divided into two periods of cieng and wec, which correspond to village life and camp life, but which are not exact corollaries for tot and mai. The year is further subdivided into 12 lunar months, but while the names of these months are broadly agreed upon, most Nuer refer to the lunar periods with reference to the activities which take place within them (such as the time of early camps, weeding, harvesting, etc.), rather than by using the months’ proper names. Similarly, past years are not recounted by numbers or names, but rather by significant social events, the accession of a particular age-set, or references to the location of a camp in a particular year.