Traditional Luo Funerals Were not Costly like Current Ones

In a recent article, Dr. Bitange Ndemo referred to the splashy houses that many members of the Kenyan middle class are putting up in their ancestral homes as “dead capital” because they are difficult to sell or to present as collateral for bank loans. For this he has received both praise and blame. One of the arguments that I have read against Ndemo’s position is that if people do not put up such houses, their children will be irrepairably ashamed in the event that they (the parents) die. Some have even called such buildings “socio-cultural investments”, thus diverting themselves and others from Dr. Ndemo’s focus on economics. Here I want to focus on Luo funerals in earlier times, because the issue of “tradition” keeps on popping up in the debate on the logic of putting up splashy homes in ancestral lands.

 

Many now believe that traditional Luo funerals are terribly expensive. The truth is that the current splashy Luo funerals are very different from the traditional ones.

 

My grandmother, the late Posia Yiembe Odera, who witnessed the aftermath of the so-called “First World War”, told me the following regarding traditional Luo funerals:

1.      If a person died before sunset, he/she was buried the same day. If he/she died after sunset, he/she was buried the next day (there were no elaborate funeral preparations for days or even weeks).

2.      A person was buried naked inside his/her hut. This is why the Luo word for a widow is “chi liel” (“the wife of a grave”) - she lived in the hut where her husband was buried. In-laws only came to the funeral once they were sure the dead had been buried to ensure they did not see him/her naked.

3.      There was no cooking in the bereaved home before the burial: instead, neighbours brought “nyoyo” (“a mixture of boiled maize and beans”) and other foods to feed those who had come from far.

4.      The day after the burial, a single cow was slaughtered and shared among the in-laws (the numerous cows slaughtered in a single funeral these days were unheard of).

5.      All the above changed drastically when Luo men, who had been conscripted for the “First World War”, came back with loads of cash to show off. They went to the homes of in-laws who had been bereaved while they were away in the war, and splashed their cash in the name of “mourning in arrears”. Another elderly lady informed me that it was also at that time that Luo men violently forced their own wives to smoke cigarettes as a status symbol.

 

I will never forget a time when Raila Odinga challenged the extravagance run-away spending in Luo funerals: that was one of those rare occasions when they essentially shouted him down; and as an astute politician, he retreated. It will take courage to challenge all this unrealistic spending for the benefit of the many widows, widowers and children whose resources are heartlessly squandered in the name of mourning the dead. This desperately needed reform will come through those members of the Kenyan middle class who undertake a critical evaluation of their impoverished and impoverishing value system that leads them to spend money on luxury rather than on investments - on status symbols rather than on ventures that truly raise their status.