“Vihiga County is leading in incest cases because of Indigenous Knowledge erosion,” so goes an utterance by a Vihiga County officer during a training earmarked to spur indigenous knowledge documentation and digitization 2023.
What is not clear is the definition of incest in Luhya, and specifically in Logooli context. And to add, if there be anything that has changed, yet still, is fixedly defined in the former terms and times.
For the Logooli, incest is termed, "inda ia kiiko", phonetic: <Inda yi chiko> interpreted as 'pregnancy by a relative. This pregnancy is a taboo, 'uluswa'. It is unacceptable.
It does ask the Logooli people of today to attention: Is it not time to rethink on clan genealogy and determine who are not ‘close’ relatives? The degree of kinship whereas it is formerly by clan name, it should be checked against consanguinity (Fourth Cousins for instance only share 0.20% DNA). What of Twentieth Cousins (within a clan) whom the tribe is against intermarrying? Aren’t innocent children being called ‘uluswa’? and unrelated couples called Related by blanket terms?
Talking of change, so much has happened since Logooli Community instituted exogamy. That a person is to marry (or be married to) a person belonging to a clan other than one’s own. Umusaniaga was not to marry Umusaniaga, for example. Even when Vasaniaga started invoking sub-clans they were sooner discouraged for political fears. Yet there was a good reason for distinguishment.
The Logooli requirement of Exogamy is to be unrelated in three ways; Paternal Clan, Maternal Clan, Paternal-Grandmother Clan. It was absolutely so. It also went to an extent that you couldn’t marry in the clan house where your aunt is married.
All belonging to paternal clan were brothers and sisters, joined in blood. Respect was to be given to maternal clan as its men were your uncles, endeared. The Paternal Grandmother contributed half of one’s father, how could he plan to take cows of his sons to the very people his father gave cows?
It is unwelcome even today among the Saniaga to marry from Saniak clans of Tachoni, Keiyo or Marakwet. The Kamnara of Luo as still believed to be blood brothers and sisters just as it were long ago. Isn't this far-fetched today?
These unwritten rules and rationale would have formed a robust documentation on customary laws and practices of the Logooli people. They would be used to define or redefine topics as ‘incest’ understanding. For communities grow and as they grow, evolve (make progressive changes).
It is not proper to have by-the-way changes as it is currently happening. You would hear some say you can marry from your grandmother’s clan only if she is dead. Or clan Y and X are now intermarrying – are they not related? Whereas it would need the elders to decide and ‘declare enmity amongst relatives to open them up for intermarriages’’ it has been left unspoken and unceremoniously, big clans are now intermarrying – Vakizungu sub-clans for instance are now intermarrying and so Vamavi, Vasaali and Vakilima.
For it to be considered incest, the Kenyan law would not find Vihigians and Logolians as guilty. For it recognizes marriage between cousins as legal (as other communities like the Somali practice). The extreme cases as biological Father-Daughter and Mother-Son are not rampant as social media would blow and would not only qualify as incest but improper and abhorred.
Yet whereas the Community would in the past ostracize, chase away the parents and atone for the abomination, the modern society is at arms with right to life, right to parenthood, genealogy and forth. The whole idea about incest hanging on who is talking. The law, the lay elder, biologist or who? You?
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| Pic Source: The Guardian, Nigeria |
Big question indeed.
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