I first ran across the nakatukok while studying the tribal people of Uganda. However this garment seems to be an adaptation that came to Uganda after European colonization.

Now, I’m not a historian; I’m just a school librarian who enjoys studying history and sewing doll clothes. So please correct me in the comments below, if you read anything here that strikes you as incorrect.

So to start, lets jump back in time to an era before Uganda was colonized. The part of Africa we now call Uganda is located in the middle of the African continent, in what we now consider East Africa, along the banks of Lake Victoria (named, of course, for the late queen of England).

Of course it wasn’t always called Lake Victoria. According to Andrew Wasike of AA.com, “Among the various ethnic groups that live around the lake, it goes by indigenous names such as Nalubaale, Nyanza, Ukerewe, and Lolwe.” To no one’s surprise, there’s currently a movement to take back an original name for the lake.

One of the tribes living in that part of Uganda today is the Karamojong people. During my research into the clothing worn by the Karamojong people, I ran across numerous photos and descriptions of their clothing, but their tribal history seems to connect them to a tribe that many Americans have already heard of: the Maasai.

“According to anthropologists, the Karamojong are part of a group that migrated from present-day Ethiopia around 1600 A.D. and split into two branches, with one branch moving to present day Kenya to form the Kalenjin group and Maasai cluster.” Here’s a helpful link, if you’d like to learn more about the Karamojong people on Wikpedia. And this link will give you a little background into the people we know as the Maasai.

But my website is all about doll clothes, so let’s have a look at the traditional clothing of these tribal people. Clothing often reflects the climate of a region and is sometimes developed to be useful in whatever industry is most common among the people wearing the clothes.

The Karamojong people are a pastoral people, and this seems to go back pretty far into the early history of Uganda. By “pastoral,” I mean that they “roamed large areas, in search of fresh pastures and water for their livestock; cattle, goats, sheep, and [chickens].” Learn more about their lifestyle on the Kidepo Valley National Park website.

Some websites I visited during my research explained that before the British colonized Uganda, the Karamojong people tended to either wear goat skins or walk nude with their livestock, carrying a large walking stick. Jewelry, however, seems to be consistently present as a part of this tribe’s cultural expression, both in history, and in modern times.

Once the Europeans introduced cotton to the Karamojong, though, the nakatukok was born.

Red seems to be quite a common color for the nakatukok, and in most of the photos I’ve found, it’s made of a plaid or striped cotton.

Both men and women wear it as a wrap around their waists or as a sewn skirt, whereas men alone (and boys) seem to wear it knotted at the shoulder, like you see in the image above. “This traditional ‘blanket’ is [worn] not just to cover the body but to also depict gender roles and social status,” according to a reporter at The Observer.

My favorite image of men wearing the nakatukok comes from the Kidepo Valley National Park website, where we see six young men — two of them adolescents or pre-adolescents — sporting nakatukok in a mix of primarily red, but also green, yellow, and purple colors.

To wrap up this segment on the nakatukok of the Karamojong people of Uganda, I want to issue a challenge! This garment doesn’t look like it would be too difficult to make… If you decide to try making one for the Black doll of your choice, please send me photos, so I can share them with my followers!

Contact me first. I’ll get back to you with a reply, and then after the reply, you can attach your photos to an email.

Be sure to click on all the links I’ve given you in this blog post, so you really get a good idea about what the nakatukok looks like before you begin your doll clothing. And as I’ve said, the blanket-style that’s knotted at the shoulder is typically worn by men.

Sources:

No Author Cited. “The Karamojong.” Kidepo Valley National Park. https://www.kideponationalpark.com/ No date, Web, accessed 21 Jan. 2024. https://www.kideponationalpark.com/information/the-karamojong/

Our Reporter. “The checkered blanket that brings colour to Karamoja.” The Observer. Observer.ug, 1 Feb. 2019. Web. 20 Jan. 2024.

Wasike, Andrew. “Clamor Grows in Africa to Rename Lake Victoria.” Anadolu Ajansı. 19 June 2020, Web, accessed 21 January 2024. Link provided with quote above.

Wikipedia contributors. “Karamojong people.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Jan. 2024. Web. 21 Jan. 2024.

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