Girdles, aprons and skins

A century ago most Lango men wore ornaments but little clothing; in the north-east some wore a small goatskin. Women and girls wore leather and fibre.

• From about the age of five a girl wore strings of hibiscus fibre on a thin leather girdle, with more strings as she grew older.
• If her father was well off, an unmarried girl could wear an ariko, an apron of small metal chains made by a specialist smith. The wider it was, the more it cost: an apron ten chains wide was worth a goat. She wore it until she had borne two children.
• A mother wore a strip of leather, the lau, given to her by the child’s father. A broad leather “tail” studded with metal had once been fashionable.
• These leather garments were made from goatskin, except among clans whose women were forbidden goatskin.

Skins, beads and shells are still a part of the costume of Lango dancers today.

Source: J. H. Driberg, The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda (London, 1923), pp. 62–65; public domain. It describes life about a hundred years ago as a colonial administrator saw it, so customs have changed and some may be told differently today. Elders and families are invited to correct it and add what they know.