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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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Think of this as a life long activity...

At Kidundu, the old Friends Church now used as a Bible College
I like your approach to this. I did not know that we were so many. Maybe you should think about this as a life long activity. Not only about a hobby, a pass time activity but something that can fulfill your life - take you up the academic ladder, pay your bills... That you do not hit your head on the wall someday. 

An all together different way of looking at it. The Saniaga Oral Genealogy Exercise to me is self rewarding. I get to meet new people, cycle in new villages and locations, hear stories that raise wonder in me and generally add to the adventure of my diary tales, an activity I treasure most. I gain by the networks I make, the new knowledge I am fed on, the articles I write and post at saniaga.blogspot.com and the willingness there is in a good number of my respondents to advance the search. Only limited financially, a minor problem in my view. 

Starting at the village level, an owned process of a people speaking their stories. Now to the recent past, stories that they are active participants. From there to the great parents, the hear says, oral tales that are accepted as true and sometimes need proof, areas unresearched, stories that go back to time, migrations and settlements, integration and sometimes lose of identities/acquisition of new. It depends on the approach to get the best out of this. 

A bottom up approach to this search (I am keen not to call it research) offers us with stories that are important to understanding our present and recent past. Community journalism is a good way of raising awareness to the ways of a people, an information gathering and dispensation tool, an approach that can connect and win people to a cause. A cause that not only leaves it at identity and emancipation of connectedness but that can go deeper to inform other human areas - trends, change, attitudes, capacity, lackings and such demographics interesting to pursue. 

That is at the base level. A search that any other person can adopt and by the very tool - a questionnaire - go ahead to fetching tales, finding similarities and noting differences, going out to fill the gaps and in the process add something to the general library of a community. Here, as I have observed, a person collecting the information should not assume he or she is a point of authority. Neither to put the cross on the shoulders of the informant. But to note doubts or sensitive points with such passivity that does not water down the story or change the 'truth'. The consuming people alike should be aware of the good to be informed with raw stories, regarding it a privilege, refuting the otherwise propagation of a negative instance to define a whole tale. 

From there, widening the search as leads lead, one can end up asking more questions, finding several answers/negating what has been accepted as fitting and in the process contribute greatly to the academia fields. The Bantu (Vandu in Maragori) are spread in Central (and West), East and Southern Africa, with little homogeneous studies undertaken to strengthen the colonial grouping or deny it all together. Similar to Nilo-Hamitic and others. And if there be works that I am not aware of that have tried to solve some of these questions then by coming across them shall not end this search because the future is in need of different approaches, specific (as opposed to blanket) groupings where Saniaga/Saniaka/Saniak/Kamnara is a strong example to pursue. 

The Way Forward here, advisably, is to approach history scientists who have authority in the area and by desire to share the course it might interest them to be part of this cause. Either directly as mentors or indirectly as social informers. If perchance an opportunity comes up to have the search inform an academic paper, they will be dear supervisors and invaluable consultants, the best way to make the search a fullfilling lifetime and also rewarding endeavor. 

-/With Thanks

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