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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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AN EVENING TREK

There was no much to do in the day apart from a shallow questionnaire to code. It happened that after codding, a total of 170, the task is more than the bargained questions and time of 70 at a few minutes each. I shall surprise the good boos with it tomorrow. He knows knot a thing of all I do in his behalf. It is more of what my planets dictate than being a slave- so much I will do but somebody will take credit.

The sky is clear, the sun losing strength as shadows lengthen. The narrow footpaths are all well ventilated by the sunstrokes and decorated with falling leaves. There are absolutely no people coming along and one can comfortably urinate in a dry soil crack. The walk is on.

There is a footpath everywhere and that could be the reason of meeting a few people. The paths are not limited to crossing a compound, peeping in someone’s kitchen, curving by the shrub bathroom or dropping to a main path. It could be because wells are in the valley bottom and households must access water there. There is therefore need to form paths that begin from grandmother’s door, to the neghbour, to another neighbor and to the relative in whose land the well is. And the land owner has no say over the well…at least not yet. It’s communal.

You meet a child going down to fetch water and in his innocence he appears shy. Hello, and the child brightens. My T-shirt had a cat drawing. I point on it. The boy starts- does it cry? Does it suck? Does it love you? Do you give it milk? Does it bring children? Holding on to laughing because the child will be disturbed in his Socratic flow, he asks a question that reminded me of kids I am away from. The cat in Nairobi that we captured young by the fence is called Junior. The cat is called Junior! The about five-year-old wonders. Another name? Just one. Not like my two jericans? He comments, tying them by handles, walking away. Smart rural kid.

A walk along the valley bottom keeps the body calm, thoughts uninterrupted and streams flowing. Trees lengthen in competition; some poor farmers have done away with undergrowths to plant Napier grass- greed. Children having a break from firewood fetch play in the open zones. They jump and fall on the green grass. No dust. Wind passes by and it falls more splits. They run to pick and remember it is time. On their loaded heads the parents determine a hardworking child. Sweet moments in a child’s growth.


Graves are avoided in a dug land. Many mud houses are uninhabited. The owners could be struggling to survive in a tiny slum area in the capital. Please come back home, plaster your mud houses with cow dung and it shall give you more warmth. If conflicts took you away, it could be ignorance, your poor education, our primitive modes of wealth production. Come back to the olden paths, follow the curvy paths alone, examine your misdoings and yearn to be better.

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