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Chahilu’s Funeral; Logooli Culture in action

Guuga Chahilu was respectfully laid to rest at his home on Saturday 14th June 2025. Having passed on at Mbale Referral Hospital on 31st May 2025, the two weeks leading to his burial were full of cultural discussions. His passing on is a great loss to the Logooli Language and Culture Family as he was a custodian and informer of Luhya Indigenous Knowledge. An observation as to how the funeral proceeded leads us to revist Logooli traditions amidst modern realities.  One, having left the house alive and now coming back in state, Chahilu was to be taken inside the house, placed muihiilu for a moment and then officially taken out in wait for earth burial. His casket was able to enter the doors. There are cases where the dead would find it difficult to be taken in and then out due to an oversized casket or thin door. A man or a lady of his house who died out of home has to be taken in the house for a last ritual mark. But if the person had died inside, he or she would not be brought bac...
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The best of our elders are Beggars

The best of our ageing men and women have opted to begging and living in despondency at our own looking with least efforts in place to curb the quickly growing trend.

You knew Musakuru Nareve would now be so poor after accumulating so much of Vuyari and Vunyari while still a person wiviriga? He had a good home, children, neighbours, relatives. He was a teacher that everyone called him as truly one. During his tenure as a key person in Company Why he wouldn't fail to help here and there, and now, as he sits lonely, with no one to salute him assumes a picture as if he had lived the careless of the most lives, repelling success, cursed, outcasted and forth. No, not so. Life but turns around and with time situations happen when you most needy.

So they sit, our ageing wise men, alone, hungry, land sold, children in Nairobi, neighborhood hostile - no one cares how he woke or slept, whether he ate or showered, whether he is sick or not. By a small kind of disturbance they are repelled, these old men who never really control outbursts, no one need take them seriously but to extend a hand of love, care, understanding, engagement and general friendship.

How often haven't we heard when they said, 'I am hungry' or 'I am not feeling well' but went about our business thinking it is normal to say you hungry or their age allows them to complain of malady? We have had to chase some away from our homes such a crude treatment that have turned some of our old men to big time liars, instead of wise stories they invent money minting words and instead of wishing the young well they look at them as a foreign generation, disconnected from theirs. It is against the thoughts of good breeding, people who grow up caring for others. And those can imagine their later lives to come.

And how worth is their input if these good people were engaged in all round social sessions, giving their offer to decisions, being handled with cherish, allowed to advance their interests, respected and hallowed. Don't we lose the most refined amongst us when we disengage the elderly? Don't we rush and later stumble because we lacked experiences worth sustaining. Haven't we turned to neglect and therefore shredded social links? And don't our elders complain or feel lonely even when we are around them? We have fallen short.

May you have an accommodative day, won't you?

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