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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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Raised by a grandmother

I personally don’t know where the word was derived from but when I look at it closely, I derive two words; grand and mother. I believe something grand is magnificent and great. On the other hand, I don’t know the actual meaning of the word mother but when I was born it was imprinted on my essence that anyone known as mother deserves respect. What happens when we combine the two words to form a GRANDMOTHER? What do you think about her, is there anything grand about this mother?

In the good old days, grandmothers were scraggy, wrinkled and had “Respect/Fear Me” written all over their old souls. Today we have forty year old females applying make-up and speaking to their children in the white man’s language. Yes, a forty year-old grandma. I think it is the end result of children bearing children. Anyway, that is none of son of soil’s business.

I am lucky to have one. Everything she did when I was young was wonderful. She would even blow her nose then hand me roasted cassava and it would still taste like it came directly from God’s hand. Wait till you taste vegetables prepared from her earthen pot with no cooking fat, just the disease-free ‘musherekha.’

The worst mistake I ever did was stealing her bananas but, like a magician, she would tell that someone touched her bananas while they were ripening. She could tell this by looking at how even or uneven the bananas had ripened.

This sweet woman knew the antidote for every ailment I ever had as a kid.
“Oh! Son of my son, let me look at your bleeding finger”

She would then look at it, chew some black jack and spit on my finger. Two days and the wound is healed! The 21st century grandmother will cry more than the wounded child, take him to the dispensary, pity the child as he gets stitches before paying for tetanus shots!

By Analo.

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