Bari People - Bari Forced Into Slavery

Bari Forced Into Slavery

The second Expedition to discover the source of the White Nile entered the Bari lands on 24 January 1841. Unfortunately with this progress in the quest for knowledge, came undesirable invaders in the form of European and Turkish traders looking for slaves and ivory. This was the first time Bari encountered Europeans travellers. The Bari were lucky in this encounter, as the Turkish army assigned to protect the Nile explorers behaved, unlike the brutality they unleashed on the ethnic groups (Mondari, Dinka, Shilluk) to the north of the Bari, Pojulu, Kakwa to the South and Kuku to the South-East. However, subsequent expeditions were different.

The third expedition (1841–42) to discover the source of the White Nile also discovered that Ivory was abundant in the Bari area. From thence onwards, the rush for ivory tusks in the White Nile valley escalated. Initially, both European and Arab traders began sponsoring trips to Gondokoro for ivory. And for a decade the Bari freely sold ivory tusks and other artefacts to the traders without intimidation, and no incidents of slavery was reported by that point in time.

On April 1854, the peaceful relationship between the traders/explorers and the Bari came to an end when a Turkish trader, without provocation, fired his guns into a crowd of Bari at Gondokoro. Accordingly, the Bari mounted a counter attack that was devastating to both sides. Subsequent to this the Bari became defensive and less friendly, and the traders (mostly Arabs, and Turks) resorted to violent means to procure ivory tusks, but also started taking people (young men and women) as slaves. Girls were raped, or taken as wives by force. Some of the merchants even built fortified depots near Gondokoro where people were kept awaiting shipment down the White Nile.

Diaries of European missionaries in the region, indicate that in the market of Cairo (Egypt), the number of slaves to be sold to Europe from the White Nile area increased from 6,000 between 1858 and 1862, to approximately 12,000-15,000 per annum. These numbers reflected mostly, Bari, Dinka, and Mundari; but also included people of other ethnic groups neighboring the Bari, and beyond were hunting for elephant tusks was intense during that time. By 1863 when Samuel Baker arrived Gondokoro, boats of buccaneers (even one flying an American flag) were anchoring at Gondokoro, with the sole purpose of picking up slaves to the new world. By 1865 about 3000 slaves at any one time could be found waiting at Gondokoro to be carried down the Nile.

When authorities finally turned around and put pressure on the slave traders, the Bari people and land were already devastated. Bari Folklore tells us of how long ago the land flanking the Nile was full of strings of villages spread out to the horizon, as far as the eye could see. The slave traders reduced the Bari villages to a miserable few. Ever since then, recovery has been difficult, considering also the fact that the civil wars in 1955-1973; and 1983-2005 have further taken their toll on the Bari.