page_title: Moru people
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Moru people / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Patients at Lui hospital in 1923, having been wounded by lions.
context_page_description: Moru is an ethnic group of South Sudan. Most of them live in Equatoria. They speak Moru, a Central Sudanic language. Many members of this ethnicity are Christians, most being members of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan. The Pioneer missionary in the area was Dr Kenneth Grant Fraser of the Church Missionary Society. The population of this ethnicity possibly does not exceed 200,000.
context_section_description: The clearest communal historical narratives are of attacks by the Azande, particularly those that drove them onto a hill near Lui, raids by slavers from the North.  It was loosely part of the Ottoman-Egyptian province of Equatoria, administered by Sir Samuel Baker and then Charles George Gordon and finally Emin Pasha.  The Moru area was then part of the Lado Enclave, in the far north east of the Congo Free State, later Belgian Congo from 1894 to 1910.
  Dr Kenneth Grant Fraser, a physician and missionary for the Gordon Memorial Sudan Mission (GMSM) of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) of England, and his wife Eileen began working in South Sudan in 1920 to improve access to health care, establish churches, and improve education. Fraser organized the establishment of a hospital at Lui and developed a program that trained and equipped medical workers to provide medical care under his direction at the hospital. Leper colonies were created under his direction. He trained teachers and evangelists to serve schools and churches that were established in Moruland along main roads. The buildings also operated as dispensaries. The benefits have included a good quality of education for the Moru people and reform of some harmful indigenous practices and customs.
caption: Patients at Lui hospital in 1923, having been wounded by lions.
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