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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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A toxic mother and an unsuspecting daughter

My first serious girlfriend did good to break up with me. Ten years now I am nobody in the context of today’s world and its trends. On her end, she’s on her third job, all well-paying. She is a mother of two and married. If I am available, she tells me, ‘I can drive you in town’. Though the last time I was available she did not drive by.

As a rule, we do not disagree to burn bridges but to express our views and show we cannot be slave driven. So I have contacts to all my sane buddies – of talk we talk, of silent we mean no harm. And the other day when I was doing my gardening and resting, she texts, ‘I need a listening ear’. I simp by, ‘Here is Pât [she used to call my name beautifully], lean on me’.

‘I am going crazy with my fam, especially mom. We are at war, Pât. Can you imagine I have schooled my siblings, built her new house, medicates her kidney failure and all that yet when I fail in any of her demands she nowadays gets cold on me? See, I have a family to take care of now, and it is breaking me considering my siblings are also following in mom’s footsteps. I’m drained; I wish her death! Sorry to say this.’


'I am at war with mom, Pât', Pic source; dreamstime.com

Tereng! When did I even become a family relationship expert? What I know is to be as far as possible from my family. To only engage on the necessaries. Proximity of any kind like often messaging and calls sooner breeds contempt. Large families are breeding grounds for conflicts.

I tell her that mothers are opportunists by nature. When her husband is no longer providing, she casts her net to the unsuspecting children. The sons might develop a hard heart but a daughter is more likely to do all she can to satisfy her mother. And like a bottomless pit, human needs will never be enough.

The daughter, in good faith, will wish to change the life status of the mother. She may not mind whether her brothers and father is involved or not. Without knowing that hers’ are time-bound initiatives. If anything she should be minding about her coming midlife, career, home and stabilizing a marriage. Not in the fake dealing that her mother will be ready to welcome her if things go south. How many cases are there of innocent girls slaving in Arabian land having sent money back home to fraudulent mothers only to find nothing worthwhile on return?

It is difficult to look after your parents, your husband/wife and children [do not add siblings for black tax] at a go while at the same time immersed in income generating activity as a job. It can be easy to talk on phone and dream of all the possibilities but when it gets on ground, it scorches. A parent could be having the security of a home and some land in the rural yet the poor children slaving in the town to pay for everything there are also required to remit some monies at home – for sugar and bread.

The mother having sucked out the juice in her daughter, she will repel her soonest. She will want her to be equally at her marital home forgetting she was the one who discarded the poor son-in-law. She had wished for a more ‘cooperative’ one. For the sons she may have begrudged the daughters-in-law in one way or another. Hers is to survive as long as she can, the way she first domesticated the man and family from the wild pre-agrarian years.

‘You did not strike a model of association early – though it is not late,’ I advise. ‘Think of the future you have and work on it. If goodies are born out of it, those who depend on you will feed on them. That way you won’t have time to be blackmailed into supporting what is not part of your future!’

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