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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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ZILIZOPENDWA PART D

We, 27th December 2021

Zilizopendwa Part A

Zilizopendwa Part B

Zilizopendwa Part C

Since 2019 much has come and gone. A day can be much, a year too brief. I rather play part D, you know how things have been. I start my article this night, after a hard farm day, calming with some oldies, Zilizopendwa. Bless the old man who gave me the titles to download when I stayed at Chavakali. 

He had a memory card, that man. Thin like me and old, he guessed I had a computer and could be approachable for downloads. He therefore brought me a handwritten list of songs. I checked them online and some were downloadable. 

His listing was pre Les Wanyika and Maroon commandos, sung in a melancholic manner. Heard of Urafiki Jazz Band, Kilwa Jazz Band, Atomic Jazz Band and Western Jazz Band? Songs of colour, calm, healing from life throws. From my father’s cassettes I have heard only a few of the songs. 

My father is now adjusted to rural, grazes his cow at Denja forest during weekdays and walks about during weekends. He is there nick-named, “Just imagine” as he often uses in speech. He is a good storyteller, my dad, able to put plots within others in his talks, a creativity I lack. For me I cannot describe, I rather not tell you. Just imagine. 

Glad he well retired, meds agreed to his HBP condition and he less complains of ailments. I call him often, he receives Mpesa, doing it deliberately. It will not make me a man to use my mother to send a word to my father. So I send him whatever little I get and whenever with an issue to discuss I first do it with him and when he gives the phone to mom we speak also, so that she doesn’t also complain I am neglecting her – I know mom better. 

Perhaps dad loves that I do not drink alcohol. My occasional Tusker beers takes is not drinking. He regrets the days he used to drink saying he wasted lots of monies. Now, having seen me put up a home back at cradle in Sabatia he must be a happy dad. You are my eyes back home, he says. I inform who just died as there are no main news to tell him from the village. He feels cool, informed. 

And how did we make up? You see, we were not so friends! Well, his sickness and my pity. See how he cherished my little help that he became well? And he became well! He told me I have a magic hand for his health. So why not magic air too that he lives long? 

Sad when he sees my girlfriends come and go, when he needs to see me with a wife and growing kids. He prays, I know, that I be blessed with a good ‘mukaana’. I will, I will, it will not be late. And a good job. 8 years since my graduation and no placement but survival strategies. Though I shine, nakazana somehow.

His requests from me are; “would you talk to your sisters (and brother), you know you are their eldest”. I try my best to handle the situations, never to make any feel I am condescending. I feel I fail my siblings because an elder one should be supporting them at tertiary level, helping them secure better jobs. But how when myself struggles to get along? Part E Zilizopendwa may have a different story.

He is sometimes the cause of conflict, I know. Impatient, he is quick to anger. Or when he is not being angry, he is not doing anything but be consumed by pain. A good case is the disturbance I had here, my aunt doing all she could to keep operating on all land in the name of caring for aged grandma. He disliked it, her, didn’t want confrontations, yet I wanted my space. 

Hardly does he also have any hand skills – cannot hammer a nail straight, cannot mend a fence well. His HBP condition cannot allow him doing manual works. My mother complains great of these unmanly qualities from dad, now seen in small bro. She, a Kamba, made to mend, does it all. 

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