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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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Joy cometh in the evening

Mirembe! Mirembe sana! Ngurindi mpaka ndakuruha sana. Gariki? Nondi inzira indambi Musakuru. Pole korogendo. I came early here. Quite early and I have been walking around like a mad man. Was wondering what people would say, arechi murogori wavo nagota, nakuba kivi. I laughed. He told a guy nearby that I was the expected visitor. The guy looked at me and say I was good. He used to go to Kisumu and back on bicycle.

Shivering, cold wind blowing, we took for home on a motorbike. Mzee Ogova had come to the town centre with a bike and had I arrived early we would have merrily cycled home together. It was muddy and darkness was approaching. An old man, two years to eighty was not to be in cold when he could avoid.

'People hear about Kitale and think that we all came to a single village on migration. That is how we cut it short in talks. When you come over it's a long journey. Nangili is far from Kitale and Kamoiywo, the village we were heading to quite far from Nangili. Had he just told me to get to Nangili and later Kamoiywo I'd have failed the day. Who would have been my host?

Mukere ayanzi kokorora, ichai nareta na mazi mashyu nigava mwibafu. Ndamanya ninzisambasamba rigari, ninzikura rogeri rwosi rwu mbasu, vukindu vwari vwidikii mkegodo vutura na kari engolo ya nzari nayo nikama. Vwaha amayenyaa kumara kwisinga vwangu nanyoye tuzi tushyu? Kari niva urindwanji musafari si muwenya kwanguhiza.

We thereafter chatted long, how people were eating maize in Evorogori. Maduma vadidimbaa. It was also raining equally much. He said how in his youthful days he would cycle long in Maragoli villages finding out what he had in his book. He said how hungry he would go, how broke he was. But now he was settled in admirably quiet environment with cows and hens. We ate a hen!

Kuramoroma manyingi mugamba, he said. And I was ushered to a netted bed, cosy. Out, the moon shone bright amidst the stars. Sleep took me.

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