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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...

Hello Development Agent - You need to widen your circle

The larger your circle, they wrongly advise, the more the bullshit to deal with. But how can you reduce your circle when you are a community development agent?

Take the case of Wodanga Ward, Sabatia Sub-county. The community, on the surface, can be said to be homogenous – sharing same Logooli culture and language, a rural community where people know each other in one way or another. 

Yet heterogeneous too as Wodanga is made up of five sub-counties and numerous villages, often separated by valley bottoms. Talk of clans that a development agent has to know, talk of churches that shape the talks. Talk of the genders and different age-groups that are directly or indirectly involved in a project. 

How then can you avoid having a wide circle? That is difficult. And is bullshit the only returns gained from increased association? 

Perhaps by seeing too much bullshit is when one gets the heart to keep on, despite. To seek deeper and know the cause, whether external or internal. To more or less become one with the community, where their shortcomings do not overcome your vision to them. 

Do not fear then, fellow brother or sister in your desire to engage. Do not give up when one option fails or the noise is stronger than your spirit. Yes, and many have been there, branded wrongly. You take it differently when you are sure you did the right thing. 

Force yourself to that church even when you think a modern believer should be given a yearly calendar and if anything Sunday offerings sent on phone. There you will be, listening to unnecessary church notices as you think of them, before you can be given a chance to say what you had. 

Attend the open funerals, if you have time. Or could you be able to make your own congregation? We work with existing structures for a reason – we, thought community development agents. 

And it is not for outspoken personalities to do that. You, the loner or ambivert can catalyze community action too. If anything the project, like a human, needs the liveliness of an extrovert in coming together to take action and the meditations of an introvert for monitoring to sustainability. 

From the larger circle, when planning again, you can now admit enablers on the strengths you have personally identified. Whom you would not have known had you decided to avoid being a participant in forums you knew were of no benefits to you. 

Suffer it that your community engagements are not to drain you. Take a moment and start thinking how you can overcome the challenges and in the end rise up as a notable community leader – and that, to me, you will be the bull that shits best if not the happy farmer’s lactating cow! 


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