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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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Luanda Reggae Defenders - what is your long term agenda?

Luanda Reggae Defenders is a now a popular movement with roots in Vihiga and border Siaya and Kakamega counties

Attention is brought to the manner and conduct the movement has gained fame and followers, mainly the Youths.

The movement capitalizes on funerals. With a poor culture of putting the dead to rest, the Reggae Defenders have taken it by storm and rebranded the infamous ‘Disco Matanga’ – disco at funeral.

Reggae Defenders on move. Pic: Charles Rankings: Facebook

They mobilize quickly on the day the dead will be discharged from the mortuary. They have this huge old school sound system that is over buzzing to no clear reggae song - that they hire a pickup to carry - and it has a young DJ mainly standing there than mixing anything.


Often, against the rules, the casket is grabbed from a hearse vehicle and tied to a motorbike. There it will be swayed and jerk breaked between other motorbikes on the narrow roads. That, is, how a fellow soldier, often a young dead, is mourned.

a casket placed on a motorbike. Pic source: Charles Rankings, Facebook

The road will be blocked. You will have to step away they pass. And if anything happens they will be on the right side. In their mind, on the day of move, there is no law and order is their jumps and curls on motorbikes as some openly smoke.


A ripe zone for social deviations this is. With all manner of branded flags, kinky dress styles and bag porches that carry bhang to smoke. Some videos have young girls lighting as they dance. And in the reggae eerie of DJ asking ‘watu wajiachilie’ (connotation to be careless), fights break, theft happen and bad manners are displayed.

the escort crowd. source: Bitiboy Mnyama, Facebook.


To what negatives this all has to Vihiga County should not be prophesied. In the past Vihiga suffered from feared Musumbiji and 42 brothers. Today there continues to be political intolerance in Vihiga and it is feared that if leaders do not check on their unweaned temerity, such grouping is a recipe for disaster - worse if all bought by one and greater worse if several sects turn on each other.


And for the future of Vihiga that the youths have to inherit. This is the time we should be sharpening on skills and talents, advancing education, building homes and networks, expanding agricultural enterprises and more. 

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