Coping with Death in the Luo Society of Kenya

I am a Luo from Kenya. The Luos come from Western side of Kenya in Nyanza province. Luos are the third largest ethnic group with an estimation of 13% of the population in Kenya. The Luos embrace their cultures and traditions and family is very important to them. There are Luos who follow their traditions and believe in bad omen befalling on them if they don’t do the right thing, while there are Luos who are Christian who believe that Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice and no evil can befall on those who believe in Him, therefore they don’t go by the traditions.

The rituals that I have illustrated in this paper are mostly observed by the Luos who believe strongly in following their traditions. There are various ceremonies that the Luo people perform but two that are very important to us are funerals and marriage. Both ceremonies capture a lot of attention and there is a lot of planning. The two relate to each other because with marriage, life begins and with funerals, life ends so it has to be celebrated wisely in order to escort the spirit of the dead to a better place.

I will concentrate on funerals and the rituals involved. The rituals involved are death announcement, vigil (budho), wife inheritance, driving away of evil spirits, grave digging and many others. Death announcement We always knew that someone had died in a certain home because we could hear women crying. The way it happens in the rural areas is different because deaths are announced early in the morning by the beating of drums and crying. The announcements depend upon who had died. Death of the elderly is announced differently from young people’s death.

The elderly person’s death is announced after sunset and the burial takes a while because there are a lot of arrangements to be performed while the death of a child is announced early morning and the burial takes place the next day. Vigil (budho) Close relatives of the deceased will have to stay at the home of the deceased until he/she is buried night and day. A light is lit, stools and chairs placed in the house for friends and other relatives to come to convey their condolences. When new people come in, the ones who have been sitting down stand up for the new ones until everyone else has conveyed their condolences.

Christian songs are sung and traditional songs sung as well. Members from the church come as well to console the bereaved family. Men and women alike cry out aloud calling the name of the dead as if communicating with them. Some people are well known for the way they cry out aloud and shout while running from one corner to the other. Other tribes make fun of the Luo due to this kind of behavior. They wonder how people could cry that way and then a few minutes later talk normally and laugh too. The Luos always have a saying that even in the midst of death, there should be laughter.

This is why the Luos believe in getting together with the bereaved family to console them as well as make merry. During the vigil, food is served and usually family members and friends come together to do fundraising to get money for the burial and also to entertain those who come to be with the family. The gathering would continue for a few days until the burial takes place. During this period, food is served, music is played and fundraising continues every single night and people just sit down waiting for the day the body would be brought home.

After the body is brought home, people would pay respect by going to the casket to view the body, everyone would be crying denoting that it has really happened and now the body is with them. Usually the body is transported from one place to the deceased home on Thursday nights, arriving the village early morning on Friday. The Friday involves viewing the body, and then burial follows either on Saturday or Sunday. Grave Digging There is usually a site within the home of the deceased which is allocated to them by their ancestors for the purpose of burial. The digging of the grave starts late in the night and continues till early morning.

This is done because it is cool during the night and the soil is softer and labor is less strenuous due to the cool weather. Men usually are the ones who dig the grave; men whose wives are pregnant are not allowed to dig the grave for the fear of their wives losing the baby. The spirit of the dead could follow the fetus and capture its spirit causing it to die. Wife Inheritance Close relatives of the deceased man or his friends, are allowed to inherit his wife. This involves a week of being with the woman in her house, and the woman would perform everything that she did to her husband on this man. This s cleansing the woman off the spirit of her husband. Without doing this, no man will ever want to talk to the woman and she would be considered an outcast in the society. It is believed that anything that she touches or does in the community will never go well because she is deemed dirty. This ritual is fading away and done only in very remote areas. The reason why people don’t observe it anymore is because it leads to the spread of HIV/AIDS. Some people recommend to have the man inheriting any woman to be tested for AIDS prior to getting involved with the woman. Driving away of evil spirits “tero buru”

Dancing and music is performed which symbolizes the departure of the deceased. Ladies usually were sisal skirts, beads worn around their waist and red and white clay smeared on them for decoration. Men on the other hand would wear cow’s skin, carrying a shield and often riding on an ox, and goes to the deceased home to before and after the burial to drive away the evil spirit. At the end of the funeral ceremony, tero buru is performed to drive away the evil spirits and to bring peace in the home. Once a woman has been inherited, she could remarry. The elders in the village would recommend another woman to the man who has lost his wife.

Rituals involved are too diverse that it could take a whole book to right it all out. One thing that I found common between the Irish and the Luo regarding funerals, is that both involve watching of the corpse by relatives for several days and nights, involving feasting. In most societies social death follows biological death. This is true with the Luos as well. Biological death involves taking the death body to the morgue, the body is then prepared for burial. Social death is when the corpse is awaited by the society to come home for burial to take place.