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The struggle with many a rigid Logooli cultural practices

  The Logooli community is one of the deeply cultured societies – with near everything supposed to have been done as per custom – to allow another custom to follow. One example is that for a mature man (with a child or more) to be buried, there must be a house structure at home. Another is that a boy must be circumcised and nursed in father land. If maternal family decides to, the boy will have a hard time reconnecting with father people - a dent on his masculinity. There were two children who got burnt to death in a house in Nairobi. The single mother had left for night work. Elders were told that one of the children was Logooli. The other, the woman had sired with someone else. The Logooli family wanted to burry their little one and long discussed the do’s and don’ts. Of a man who died childless and the grave was placed as if he had died as a man with children. It should have been dug on the sides, the grave. A real thorn should have been thrust in his buttocks, his name go...
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Have a roasted corn today.

It is long since diet changed to roasted maize for supper and my chef doesn’t even know of my name. I can’t blame him because Children of soil are identified by their character. If days were still what they were, a woman would be waiting with a bowl of soup and vuchima  for his husband (me). It sounds gothic to the voice vocals to say you married at 24.

He uses a flat screw driver to cut the mtwi portion before I point on the ria mudako. You cannot ask for the hind part of the corn if the upper part isn’t taken. ‘we do not work that way’, I do not want him to tell me. It was our daily childhood struggle to shout the part of maize to partake in its season. The weak ones of course remained with mtwi. To master the art of selecting a sweet corn and brownishly  roast it is a man’s blessing of such a woman- or child.


‘I do this for my community’, is his philanthropic statement. Of course there is nothing much gained from the coins- or else today he won’t come because he collected enough yesterday. The rich also buy from him as the obvious do and he really brags for this. He is a father and responsibilities are on his back. He calls himself a Director.

He is a director because he has a child in secondary school. He calls me a hustler ; employee to be. Like any other average being, sex seeps into talks as likely as a blink. A hustler for I have no wife and somehow searching; An employee because one is married; A  supervisor for a child has been sired; A deputy director because demands are many; A director for children are grown-ups. One becomes a CEO when grandchildren appear. To him this is the apex and his greatest notion.

I dodge some of his words and look at the moon. He knows that once it goes into darkness, rain will surely come. He knows that during the waning cycle, the moon rises late in the night continuously to early mornings. His working commences from 3 am for Gikomba rush hour  to win fresh maize. It is not like the boilers who sometimes prepare soaked maize- hard from granaries.

You won’t find him where I do if you came in the day. You must be a late walker. The city Askaris inhibit him in the market. He comes out when the sun sets. There he enjoys the services of streetlights, serious customers and a city clock behind to remind him that the day will not last forever.

Greatly I am interested in his machine- the charcoal thing. He says that there is great science behind which he waters down when he starts to explain, ‘This is a mixture of soil, charcoal and water’. It forms a circular shape by a support. This he makes once or twice in a week because the heat is slowly and maximumly used. Using a wire, he tingles the sides and fresh charcoal is brought into being!

A plastic flat is used as a fan. The marksmanship on the ‘stove’ prevents ash from settling on the food. More science behind how the heat heats the seeds to food is what we both see not necessary to understand. It is not poisonous- but too much will call for a belch. Tatatata is the sound sometimes but it should not be confused to good expertise.

‘The water…what do you know about it with carbon monoxide?’ son of soil blurry remembers from high school class that it is a poisonous gas. He gazes at my bring-the-story-on-face to say that the water, catalysed by the fire, reacts to form harmless CO2. That is why, he says, he does not get ‘negative effects’ from his labour. I doubt that such statements may only be his way of denial. Who wants such a task? Look at his burnt fingers and mode of wear. It wasn’t his dream.

And today, I’ve saved a 20 for him and me. He knows the hustler will come. And when he comes, they will talk about things that do not really matter as I wait for a rushing lady to buy ria mutwi.

Picture source: http://gentlymetamorphingme.blogspot.co.ke

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