What is the gist of this passage? The Nuer word for “thousand” means “lost in the forest,” because that’s where your cattle would be if you had that many of them. Almost no one does, however—in no small part because Dinka and Nuer have been stealing cattle from each other for as long as anyone can remember. Cattle raiding is a hoary [old, ancient] tradition of pastoralists [farmers] throughout East Africa, as natural here as a young man’s hungering for enough cows to pay the bride price for a wife, as normal as a neighbor striking at the intruders he sees hogging prime grazing land.