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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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Who shall weep for the slum boys?

If you happen to live in or to have been brought up in a crime infested area like Kibra then the horrific video clip of a policeman pumping bullets to a helpless young man in Eastleigh is not news to you.

In these neighbourhoods there exists a familiar script of a "famous" policeman. This is a man who every mama mboga, matatu driver, teenager and clergymen knows. He is a member of the elite police flying squad. He is rarely seen in public but when he surfaces then you have two or three dead bodies of teenagers or youth in their early twenties lying besides him.

At first, the community seems to be cheering them on. Their approval ratings are sky rocketing. The locals who have had enough of the crimes being commited see him as a saviour ( by the way I am yet to hear of a "her"). You will hear them being discussed in barbershops, salons, miraa chewing zones and any other place that time-spenders gather.

However, after sometime the script changes. The policeman starts killing more than "normal". He doesn't do his homework. Any young man who frequents miraa chewing zones or the bus stops and dresses up in the fancy dance hall or hip hop artistes "badman style" becomes his suspect. He grows bold in his law unto self conduct. He no longer kills them in dark corridors after shoot outs or in the quiet and deserted early morning streets. He now comes for them in the middle of a soccer game at the playing ground and shoots them in front of hundreds, he moves to the teenager's homestead drags him out and kills him right there at their doorstep in the full glare of the parents. Young men start disappearing in their numbers only to be found in mortuaries months or weeks later.

They start calling on the police bosses to take action on the rogue officer. The officer is transferred to another area within the city and the story and cases die just like that. The affected families are not given justice. When he meets with a boy he had expected to kill in the new estate, he assumes he's there for murder and so he strikes first.

Whereas it may be popular to say that the youth who take up crime or are suspected of doing so deserve hard handling, history shows that these senseless killings have never solved the crime problem especially in our ghettos. The cycle will always continue and so does the vice.

Article contributed by Ronny Ayumba.

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