Skip to main content

Featured

Posted by

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...
Post a Comment
Read more
Posted by

What Killed Our Grandfather

His wife died earlier leaving his stomach in the hands of son’s wives, a generation below. He knew he won’t live well without the service of a dedicated woman at his age. He mourned her on the way from the brewer’s home. He had no strength for a hoe. The tea he planted for income welcomed weeds. He regretted why he had only married one wife who bore him no (10) children.


There was no grandson to fetch water or run to the shop. There was one who was equally absent as present. He sat on his convertible wooden chair for long with his eyes on the thin path that passed his compound lest those who went to the city arrived and served him company and food. It was not as he thought that husbands left their wives home as they went to hunt.

Young children feared his walking stick. He was temperamental and could crack it heavy on any one. Not even in his gentle manner was he understood by the young. The one who called him brother-in-law couldn’t have an extra plate for him. Her husband had died and grapevine has it that rowdy elders of his church did not like his stands. He lived at a time when chameleon tails were served to enemies.

His grave lies a small distance straight to his front door. The head faces north aligning him in the tradition of the ancestors. The day he died most people said that he was old and his days were over. Critics knew well that it was the corrosive alcohol on an empty stomach. His sons gathered from the city with their wives and daughters left their husbands to come mourn their father. He died at first cockcrow, said his absent elder son.

Tomorrow is his ritual day. Early before sunrise, a bull will be slaughtered on the grave, near the head. The blood will be allowed to flow on it. Religious men, hard to move on without some traditions will be heard around, praying. Families in Nairobi and away have already gathered for the cold night to see him join the ancestors in paradise. They really loved him.

The barren Mango tree on the compound will give them a shade when the sun will strike strong. No son would be allowed any hint about the sufferings of the dead man. His generation before won’t be mentioned. Young grandsons won’t understand the ritual and the importance of a grandfather whether alive or dead. He who had remained and could offer family history is no more. Our fathers who can't explain the origins of the clan will be hurrying back to Indian jobs. Some will only gather for company and in sharing of the bull meat. Just then, at the end of day, people will walk away saying, ‘It is finished’.


Thunder clouds have started gathering. If he had slept to the ancestor's land, it would be easy. But he was killed!

A grave picture sourced on google.

Comments

Post a Comment