Madi people

A group broke off in search of greener pastures in a more or less famished state, until they found an edible tree called lugba('desert dates' - ximenia aegyptiaca).

According to the one commonly told oral narrative, the Ma’di people nakedleft Nigeria, moved southward until they reached Amadi, a town in southwest Sudan, where they settled.

For example, according to the Belgian writer, Armand Hutereau, the Bari-Logo thinks are probably or Lugbara who descended from the Lowa or the Kibali until they encountered the Dai; riverains of the Makua.

According to an oral history, the Nilotic peoples — the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, and others — had already established themselves in south Sudan by the time Turks invaded the region.

In the nineteenth century, the Shilluk people had established a centralized monarchy which allowed them to conserve their tribal heritage in the face of external pressures in the years which followed the Turkish rule.

As the Bahar El Ghazal region fell to the Turkish rule, many Nilotic people moved southward to escape from the new regime.

Some of the foreign traders even built fortified warehouses near Gondokoro where people were kept waiting shipment down the White Nile to north Sudan.

Given the superior military power of the Tukutuku and the assistance they got from the natives (who joined them), it was only a matter of time, they defeated the Ma’di people.

Faloro was called Ma’di Country, by the English explorers John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant, who visited the area in 1863 A.D. Sir Samuel White Baker, who visited the place also a year later also called Faloro Ma’di Country Several Ma'di groups from Moli, Kerepi, Arapi, Pageri, Loa, and Nimule settled in the Metu mountains.

According to Madi oral history narrators (Albino Akasi, Samuel Anzo and Makpe), a group of migrants from Lulubo came to Uganda and settled southwest of Moyo.

In 1845, a British man John Petherick who entered the service of Mehemet Ali, and was employed in examining Upper Egypt, Nubia, the Red Sea coast and Kordofan in an unsuccessful search for coal.

In March 1861, a British explorer, Mr. Samuel Baker, started an expedition in central Africa, with the aim "to discover the sources of the river Nile".

He also hoped to meet the East African expedition led by John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant, somewhere about the Victoria Lake.

In Madi country, the two were supposed to be met by Mr. Petherik, who was entrusted with a mission by the Royal Geographical Society to convey to Gondokoro relief stores for Speke and Grant.

In 1869, at the request of the khedive Ismail, Baker undertook the command of a military expedition to the equatorial regions of the Nile, with the object of suppressing the slave-trade there and opening the way to commerce and civilization.

Before starting from Cairo with a force of 1700 Egyptian troops - many of them discharged convicts - he was given the rank of pasha and major-general in the Ottoman army.

The khedive appointed him Governor-General of the new territory of Equatoria for four years; and it was not until the expiration of that time that Baker returned to Cairo, leaving his work to be carried on by the new governor, Colonel Charles George Gordon.

So in March 1986, in Nimule, the council of Madi elders gathered to decide how to prepare to face further aggressions and plunders from SPLA in the Madiland.

To prepare for the future battles, Draru and his chief advisor, Jino Gama Agnasi consulted General Peter Cirilo (of the Sudanese Army, then the governor of Eastern Equatoria) about the situation in Madiland who then gave his blessing for the Madi people to defend themselves.

Some of the Madi people who were first to join SPLA were Dr Anne Itto (who previously worked as a lecturer at the University of Juba), Mr. John Andruga, and Mr. Martin Teresio Kenyi.

For example, in Moli area alone, many innocent people were murdered at river Liro, in resulting battles led by the two brothers: Mr. Tibi and Mr. Celestino.

With the fall of Nimule, the militia led by Draru and even the ordinary Madi people fearing revenge from the SPLA soldiers, escaped to [Uganda].

However, as the SPLA established itself in Nimule, it leadership started to appeal to the Madi people who escaped to Uganda and elsewhere to come back home.

Today some Madi people still keep miniature altars called Kidori, were sacrifices are offered to the ancestral spirits in both in good and bad times as a way to approach God.

After the death of king Leopold II on 10 June 1910, the Lado Enclave, became the province of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, with its capital city at Rajaf.

The socio-political and cultural system Governance, The social and political set-up of the Madi is closely interwoven with spirituality and this forms their attitudes and traditions.

Almost the whole population live off the land planting and growing mostly seasonal food crops like sesame, groundnuts, cassava, sweet potatoes, maize, millet and sorghum.

The Madi society is established on the notions of clans and kinship under traditional rulers which all the subjects in the same geographical area pay their allegiance.

There are clan and village leaders and family units who ensure that law and order within communities are kept and maintained socially, people do not worry within close relations, communal field work, feasts, hunting and funerals take place which brings about consolidation of unity, cooperation and peace.

Redonto Unzi - Deputy Speaker in Sudan Parliarment - early 1960s Gen. Martin Kenyi Terenzio - SPLA liberation fighter, founder of EDF (Equatoria Defence Force) - deceased Moira, the war hero of Madi who fought for the Madi people Aluma David one of the famous musician known as Trey David Mzee Gwanya One of the famous Muzician of UDI.

Madi man late 1870s in southern Sudan
Luge
Luge a traditional green vegetables of the Madi culture