Tukul

A tukul (also tukal or tukl) is a round dwelling with a conical thatched roof, found across South Sudan and in neighbouring Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. It belongs to the wider family of African round huts, alongside the Southern African rondavel.

Construction

Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the tukul of South Sudan as a round hut made of mud, grass, millet stalks and wooden poles, with a thatched conical roof. Walls are typically of mud on a framework of poles, sometimes mixed with stones, grass and cow manure. The roof is a cone of poles or sticks covered with grass.

A record of the method survives in photographs taken by the anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard among the Zande at Yambio (now in South Sudan) between 1927 and 1930: the roof framework was laid on the ground while thatch of bingba grass (Imperata cylindrica) was worked onto it.

Performance

The steep thatched cone sheds the heavy rain of the southern savanna, which makes sloping grass roofs necessary there. Mud walls are less durable: a new mud hut is said to last about one to two years, depending on rainfall and erosion, before major repair. Huts are often loosely grouped around open spaces, which helps ventilation in hot weather.

Names

• Tukul: name used in South Sudan and Eritrea; also widely used in English for Ethiopian round huts.
• Agudo: name given for the round hut in Eritrea.
• Godjo: listed for Ethiopia.
• Hotnhial: listed for South Sudan.

Today

Thatch remains the most common roof in South Sudan: in a 2010 household survey sample, thatch or palm leaf was recorded for about 60% of households (unweighted). In Ethiopia, thatch has been giving way to corrugated iron; a 2011-2012 rural survey sample recorded thatch and corrugated iron in roughly equal numbers of households (see Roofing in Ethiopia).