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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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How we connect

The Nile basin is deep in a village on the outskirts of Nandi hills, Aberdare ranges and Kapenguria. It is the Mau forest, Nandi forest, Kakamega forest, Maragoli hills and all the ups from where streams flow. Streams therefore form brooks that murmur silently through stones and on rocks, kids bathing, birds taking a bath and a cow drinking. Loose soil falls in. Rains add to the flow as sunshine subtracts. There is violence by the falls, by the drowning and in all that there is a connection.

Seeds that fall in, finding their homes in other fertile lands, having to grow far from parent plant, conquering the new land. People there have never seen such a plant, in fact they find hard naming it…and when they do, names differ village from village. Ask why the river flowed where and it would be the damnest of the questions, for in some design things happen the way they do. There are no accidents, a book title read.

When the streams flow to Idigoi and Idigoi flows in Izava and Izava flows in Yala for Yala to flow in L.Victoria for Lake Victoria to let out the Nile is all a matter of great design. Where would the Great Victoria in its massiveness expansion get its pride were it not for Yala and Nzoia? Where would Yala get its pride of expansiveness, slow flow, dwarfing rivers, making some stop their flow when it budges? Where would Izava get its reason for growth? Where would it get the water for children to swim and laugh alongside? Where would the man get a bath were it not for the small brook? And dear brook, how would you flow so shiny on the stones and cold, quiet to your character, harbouring crabs and tadpoles, irrigating young plants were it not for the springs, the springs that freely give, water that pours out from the deep rocks. Where would all this connection emanate?

In such things, where do we see ourselves? We are told that migration happened down the line, as if our forefathers' sought for this very spring that gushed out water so enormous that it irrigated the dry land endlessly. Did they not think Lake Victoria was the place? The mighty spring they must have thought before an idea stuck- we are not safe in the lowland guys- the mosquitoes bit them painfully. To the hills, guided by the streams that flowed backwards, they went. And there they were lead further, forgetting about dhows and drowning, forgetting the water culture, going up the plains and up more till the brooks were seen no more. And there a tent was pitched. Home at last. From here, my sons, I shall die.

What do we comfort ourselves with therefore? That it is not the ocean that has water. It is the upper lands that have it. It is the hills and the clouds. It is the lake that has the less of the water. The oceans with little than the lake. For if there were no streams, there would be no rivers and without Izava, no Yala, no Victoria, no Nile, No Mediterranean, no ocean and no life. And what is the ocean but you? Your brook be your cells, your clan, your childhood, your friends, your present point in life. Your now. That is the connection.

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