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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...

The traditional simplex of Kericho


You would assumpt of Kass Media at Ainap keles in Kericho just a journalistics’ place. It is more: a traditional broadcasting place with more to offer. A Sauna for medicare, a hall for music/gathering, a restaurant, lodge rooms, a swimming pool for recreation and a studio for recording. Including a rest field and a small vegetables farm on the side. 

I appreciated the Sauna, being my first time to see and enter one. A hot-moistured room with medicinal vapour to have you breathing in medicine and sweating what the body wanted out. You do not need to be sick. Viruses and germs are always with us, such a process is healthy every after some time. 

relaxed in the hot vapourized sauna, breathing in and sweating to the herbals

It is an improved “blanket treatment” method where Valogooli would have a sick one closed up inside a blanket with boiled medicine water inside. The persons would sweat out what was ailing them. An older person would hold a younger inside in belief what was stuck in the chest would get out – it did.

I was added that it is best for aged people, a control for HBP, Diabetes, Respiratory track problems, Gastrointestinal issues, Cardiovascular challenges, Skin problems and more. I found it a good therapy, my body relaxed. From a blood pressure of 113/56/66 to 110/69/74 at finish.

Outpatients visit the place often, some boarding to stay in the compound for days as they enter the Sauna daily. And some of the patients have extensive information on matters culture. They now get an opportunity to visit the studio and get interviewed. Kipsigis indigenous knowledge is then broadcasted at the famous Kass Media to the world.

Then to music at the facility. With a band and musical equipment there, for any practicing person. An evening of merry, tuned to old golden songs, live. Healing alike. Today they were singing some traditional Kipsigis music and I was happy for that. I wished I had a day more there.

How sweet for a young person to join in the traditional melodies of ancestors


Kericho is a fairly cold area, rain always hanging in the air. The tea-world environment and trees in the valley bottoms defines the weather as well as the people – a kind hearted Kipsigis tribe. The knit and preserved thickets are a good supply of indigenous medicinal trees. A sunny walk to the tea zones and villages is spectacular. How I wish the tea pickers, in evening cold, would have a sauna in their estate villages.  

A fresh air fiend environment - the vast teazones of Kericho


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