Demystifying the myths: The Karamoja we never hear about

The boy will have intercourse with his chosen girl in the bush and, thereafter, take her home. When a young girl disappears from her home for a week, her parents trace her to confirm that she was ‘grabbed’. It is at this point that elders will go to the young man’s home to demand cows. In Karamoja, the girl child is still seen as a source of pride and wealth to her parents. Talk of a hunter being the hunted.

An illustration of the writer (right) talking to Mary (second-right), a teenage mother in Napak.