Gor is the name of a powerful
medicinal Luo man who lived more than 80 years ago. Established in 1968, the
club reincarnated the fading reputation to presently a famous soccer team in East
Africa and beyond. Ingwe, on the other hand is a Luhya name for a Leopard. The
wild animal, largely in Luhya folk tales was considered a disaster that
devoured people as it did to reared animals. The hard times that the ancestors
went through now live in our age as a football club. With a pre-colonial
interaction history of marriage, trade and peaceful neighbourhood, the Luo and
Luhya, Nilotes and Bantus respectively, nick name each other shemeji (in-law).
Our forefathers welcomed war as
part of their social life. With our present lives seeming more precious and
sacred, we participate in war in form of sports and politics- the war of words.
The loud shouts at the field to encourage the soldiers controlling the ball to
shoot directly in the heart of the goal posts is followed by a loud cheer of enormous
victory when the time ends, one side up.
When Gor meets Ingwe the match is
greatly attended, motorist become cautious of approaching the fans, trees and
objects are vandalized, a super weekend is awaited and the Kenyan Premier League
hype increases. When Gor meets Ingwe there is tension about which in-law will
go away with his head up and who will lose appetite days after the match.
The love of the game is more to
do with something of our fathers. A son feels good in participating in what his
father used to talk about while he was young. A son feels good when he
participates in something that he knows he isn’t the author but lurks deep
before he was. And it would be easily welcomed as a defiant when one is warned
not to attend the match known in the past as a cause for injury and even death.
For sons will forever be sons, and risk, a deliberate thing we do in wait for punishment
from our parents who may no longer be there to pinch us can dawn on us in the
form of a teargas, stone fall or lose of personal items.
The two communities hail from a
region of high population and increased poverty levels on a national scale. In
the capital, employment and social amenities increase their desperations of a nationally
unequal distribution of wealth. The fans knowingly attack the majority kikuyu
tribe and insult the police whom they view as the government in words and acts.
Attending the match is a way of releasing frustrations from a son who is in a
far away land, a slave to an Indian master, desperate of his future dreams. The
middleclass men drive in and get out quickly missing the best moments.
The best moments are welcomed
when luckily the match ends without major hitches. The drummers are revived by
their responsibility to evoke the women and men to a higher notch. Luhya drums
are exorcised and shemejis, not
minding about the loss or win join in dance and singing. Such moments are
witnessed in the rural during circumcision and death ceremonies but continue to
fade. To experience the moment in live day in the midst of kinsmen is like a
time travel into the unpolluted past, mocking the present with songs, being
home at least for a moment and forgetting oneself for the long distance that
the drummers will go.
When Gor and Ingwe meet, fans do
not really know the names of the players. When they meet, they settle for a
tussle, like a dowry discussion knowing that it is not the end yet the outcome
matters a lot. When Gor and Ingwe meet, fans look forward to a similar meeting.
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