Skip to main content

Featured

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...

A welcome song to Saturn

Welcome Back, Father!

It is long since you left home
Visiting all your faithful houses
It is years! You spent much time away
The kid you left of me
Is twenty seven plus!

The first Saturn return it is
And it is said it means much
To any other soul
For it says, 'YOU 27+ OLD!'
Time to do it again
For three years, while home
There'll be sharing, while you were away!

It has been a struggle, Father!
Since you left me, Father!
It was purposeful, Father!
I can see why, dear Father
The ball was rolled to the cage

From the family pictures of '91
A smiling bouncy boy malnourished at '93
And the first school encounter of '96
Was fearfully dilapidated by the new millennium of 2000
So that as circumcision came in '02
The weak man in me grew weaker in '05
Least of parental care, I took to illusions in '07
And you could hear me pray to pass my exams of '10
For all problems would end thereafter!

In the middle of it all, dear Father
You had the moon and the sun
Conjuncting on my solar chart
It was not all an agony anyway
For best of the moments and memories
Are not of a smiling cheek

It is therefore a welcome home
To see the '90 seed you left me
Look at the drawer garden, Father
Does it look of a careless child?
Look at the diaries I've recorded
Have I been a true soul to self?
But the meditations of my heart
How shall I purify myself, Father?
You know me through

Take a sit Father, take a sit
I bought a pot for cool water
Tell me your adventures Father
Have humans been fated a new?
What does the great whirl say
Where are my odds henceforth?

I'll be patient, Father!
Three Years, before you leave again
Three Years, to shed my skin
Three Years, in your shade
Three Years, guiding me to maturity

Hallowed Father!

Comments