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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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A homestead without a son

The screeching of doors, a leaking roof, a bushy fence, faulty bulbs and poor TV signal reception in a house narrow down to one simple query- isn't there a son in that house?

As early as a toddler has a young boy engaged himself in doing repair works to his toys. Sometimes he deliberately unhinges different parts of a thing to give him a challenge of reassembling. From their actions, young boys have gained nicknames as Fundi, Engineer, Tailor and others.


A tool case rest at his reach. At least there were small nails, wood and minor iron bars that the parent regarded safe for the child. Primary School mathematical sets were a thing for the boys. It had a few small pencils among other necessary tools as razors, half piece of a divider and a ruler whose measuring digits were long erased and broken. He used the ruler to cut fractions on the desk and enjoyed the friction smoke. To risk, because his hands are weak for a panga, he stole a knife and before the wood was in half, the handle had broken. The home knew who to ask.

With ones growth so does his involvement with home matters. A walk into a few homesteads (there are few or no homesteads in town) would leave one admiring the cypress fence whose tops have been decoratively beautified and creatively criss-crossed that the hens must be stubborn enough to find a way through.

But many a kitchen ways has the boy been tamed by the family and experiences that he has become a crook. He lives in a house whose main switch he doesn’t know where it is located. Tamed by syllabus, he waits for the electrician to repair his faulty spot after a week. He fears and hates cats like his sisters. He does not have a tool case and therefore can’t know what a tester, pliers, a screw driver or file homonyms are.

It started by losing the pastoral life that taught one how to use wood to perfect his marksmanship when handling cattle. The break away from extended family made the boy without a father figure or an elder brother see nothing but the kitchen and whining efforts to what became faulty in the house. When the boy mishandled a thing, considered so expensive in the house, he would be punished because it would need a cost to fix it. The paranoid parent considers it insolence. He therefore takes his minor bicycle punctures to an expert who does much less of exposing the tube to some water, find the faulty spot and using glue and a patch, he pays.  He thinks that by doing so, the man will have something to eat. Stupid son.

The son is no longer at home nor does he desire to live there. In search for autonomy has he rebelled in many a ways. Walls and rooms have become monotonous. Sitting on a couch is not the haven that would make him grow into a responsible adult. He needs to be under the sun- that it shines on me in the morning, afternoon and at the evening. The soft and cool sittings in the schools and workplaces continue to make him a machine- a crooked machine. A feminized man.

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