How Karamojong Elders Predict Fortunes and Misfortunes Using The Internal Organs of Dead Cows

Karamoja is one place where bizarre happenings are not uncommon. One such mysterious culture that governs the people’s way of life is the faith in local individuals who wield power as spiritual mediums and fortunetellers.

A Karamojong woman who currently resides in American recently got the shock of life when the cow she had bought to celebrate her home coming after 17 years of absence from her people became an instrument of fortune telling. It all started with the physical Killing of the cow by spearing it through the heart. Once it was dead, the elders embarked on dismembering the animal, taking care not to disorganize the stomach, the intestines and other internal organs.

A senior Elder who is probably the most gifted individual in reading and interpreting the intestinal linings stepped forward and cut opened the internal organs of the dead cow. He concentrated on the intestines and the stomach area. After a long scrutiny, he made an announcement regarding the signs he had detected. Firstly he told the attentive crowd at the party that there was an impending attack on the people of the area and that the people must prepare for war.

Unfortunately for the People of Dodoth-Kaboong district where this ritual was conducted, the senior elders who believed this prediction with a passion, voiced this alarm to the Army calling for increased security but they were simply ignored and rubbished as backward, primitive and superstitious intelligence which could not be relied upon.

Efforts to mobilize the local warriors did not help because unlike in the past when young men in Kaabong had guns, this time the guns had been taken away by the government on grounds that they were being misused by the local people to kill others and raid cows. Several times the elders approached the army officers to increase security because an attack was eminent, but nobody took them seriously, some even laughed them off.

On the very night that followed the reading of the intestinal signs by the elders, a vicious attack was carried out on the Dodoth people by the Jie tribe, where several civilians and soldiers were killed. The predictions of the elders had come to pass and they could not hide their anger at the military. They mocked at the soldiers for being weaklings who were too stupid to heed to the Elder’s warnings about this attack. The woman who returned home from America has now gone back to the USA, but she vows never to forget the “Science” of intestinal interpretation as practiced by the Karamojong Elders.