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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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Ruragori : Bunulu is not Vunuru

This is a third article on Lulogooli (ruragori). I was cycling down Eregi for the lack of adventure when I arrived at the centre. Bars, shops and groceries were on and I could get a cold banana. The road should have been tarmarked along ago that the many motorbikes on the route would only zoom noisily and not spew dust. Opposite, a butcher stood. Meat hung and choma roasted. 'Bunulu Butchery,' it read.

'Why have you named this butcher so?'
'What is wrong with the name?' Question for question.
'You mean you steal from people?'
'Ah, Bunulu means delicious!'
'Aaaa! I didn't know!'

What did I not know? I did not know that lwidaho is not ruragori. In fact we are wrongly put in 'luluhya' when the first white man tried to group us. Ruragori is a distant tongue with no 'Khwes' and khas' as the '17 luhya sub-tribes'. In harmonising, they wanted to put 'l' for 'r', 'b' for 'v'. We ended up mixing up our tongue. The present interactions make it worse. Unless we stand on both legs, we falling...

Bunulu is what we would term 'vunūru' to mean thuggery, robbery and theft. Written, we are asked to do so as on the butcher yet we do not speak that way!! But Idakos' are speakers and writers of the same. We therefore in our 'harmonising' get lost. 'vunūri' is a synonym. It is bad kunūra. You won't live kuhindira if you keep nunūra vandu.

Delicious in Lulogooli would go 'vonoru or vunoru.' Go to hell with 'bonolu or bunolu.' Something delicious is kenoru. At a party, vinoru (delicacies) are prepared. Hen is enoru as isindo. And to those who are initiates to curiosity know how munoru venus is. Maximum Sweetness, Mumias Sugar.

There is a challenge that a learned man needs to write and speak his language well without bringing in his own ideas. And those ideas are what but writing what the tongue says not? Let the tongue rule. The brain is its servant here.

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