It's national census day in Kenya today. And I'm going home early to be counted. Me and my family. We will answer all the questions: including the vexed one of ethnic background -- still called tribe in official circles here.
We are all proud of our ethnic diversity, I believe -- even as we try to build a larger country, Kenya. We shouldn't be afraid of what the politicians might do with the numbers that come up. They cannot do any worse than they already have. And I suspect some are pertified of the figures that will come out -- as petrified as they were ten years ago (and, even more so, twenty years ago). Remember, the census figures of 1999 were never fully released. The 1989 figures were doctored, as many people in the know claimed to know. And whose respective dockets were those then, pray tell? Hypocrisy -- hypocrisy -- is the name of the game for the politicians. But it shouldn't appear to be sonfor ordinary citizens, or for the leaderships of our civil society. Hypocrisy and contradition. The 2009 figures might not be fully released either -- till after the 2012 elections.
I can think of several ways in which the new census numbers that will come will represent an opportunity we can creatively leverage for a stronger, more prosperous, more assertive, more changeful Kenya; a Kenya more attuned to and more ready for critical mass of all sorts. For one, the new numbers are certain to sharpen the equity debate across the country -- and that will be a good thing. Emergent changes in the social structure will be more sharply in focus. There will be new narratives about the nation's changing use of technology, about its innovativeness, about its world of work -- and, mor broadly, about changes in its culture. Much more will be known about the evolution of our physical, technical and intellectual assets at the household level, across different strata or segments of our changing social structure. A clearer picture should emerge about the distribution of absolute and relative poverty across the country. And likewise about the consumerist middle class.
In one of this morning's daily papers it was boldly estimated that we Kenyans now number 40 million. So be it! A watershed of sorts this. Worth taking a note of. And I can't deny I was abstractly sort of pleased by the numbers!
Showing posts with label Ethnic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethnic. Show all posts
Monday, August 24, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Kenya: The Tug of Cremation and Tradition
"Dust to dust, ash to ash"!
No burial tug-of-war ever gripped the attention and imagination of both men and women in Kenya than that of S.M. Otieno -- a prominent Luo lawyer long married to Wamboi, a Kikuyu -- some twenty three years ago (in December 1986). In some ways, it in fact drew worldwide attention, particularly among feminist and gender advocacy groups.
With the recent passing of Mr. Joshua Okuthe -- a well-known sports personality in Kenya, a former national athlete and a member of the same Umira-Kager clan of Ugenya and Alego that, after a long court battle successfully fought, buried S.M. Otieno according to its wishes and against those of his wife -- the far-less emotive, intra-ethnic controversy was now not about where to bury the dead one, but whether to cremate or bury his remains.
Okuthe's first wife insisted on cremation, arguing that that was his own wish. His second wife, and his clan, sought to bury him in Muhoroni, in the lake region. The first wife pulled a fast one on the rest and had him cremated in Nairobi under the clan's very nose and before a court injunction could have effect. This left the clan with no option but to ritually bury the idea of his body in an empty coffin. It proceeded to do just that, in a low-key and partially televised ceremony at Okuthe's modern-rural home in Muhoroni.
I suspect that an appropriate portion of Yago, the funerary tree of Luo tradition, took the place of the absent, nowhere-to-be-found, body in that bewildering coffin. This is a practice which Luo mourners have typically resorted to when the body is lost and is nowhere to be found despite a decent period of search and waiting and when all sorts of other protocols have been duly observed. So there are really never empty coffins there, and no hollow burials.
Philip Ochieng, the renowned columnist, whose writing I much admire, suggests (I think he thinks that he argues rather than suggests) that cremation was very much a Luo tradition, which they lost (and have forgotten all about) when their paths and those of the Baganda -- who (and whose 'country') bear the names that they gave them, and who have kings because they gave them a kingship though they themselves had nonesuch -- crossed and for a while merged, some centuries ago. For him, the evidence of a cremating past is in the persisting and highly charged practice of "Tero Buru" (Dispatching of the Ashes), which brings to an end, several days after the actual lowering of the departed's body into a defined grave, the series of burial rituals for the community's dead prominents. To Ochieng, "Buru" refers to real (but now only imagined) ashes of the departed. You get "Buru" only whey you burn and burn to the core, and in this case when you cremate. Read more.
I think that Ochieng's conjecture stands on very thin ground, though I have never really tried to unravel the symbolism of "Tero Buru" -- or the genesis of Oburu. In fact, I have never paid it much attention, beyond its momentary theatricality -- which is perhaps monumental on occasion, and which is infrequently shown on local television.
There is just so much historical narrative and folklore -- compounded by a long-running, deeply ingrained and 'living' system of norms and values -- that leaves one with the suspicion and even conviction that the actual burial of ringre (Flesh of the Departed, who is Elsewhere) was the common mode of practice long ago in Sudan*, and long before contact with the Baganda was made -- a practice which only continued, unabated, after that greatly consequential symbiosis was overshadowed by the further, single-minded, movement into present-day Kenya. This view seems to be reinforced by, as I am able to tell, the persisting burial practices of other Luo groups -- who remained and remain in the Sudan, Ethiopia and the DRC, and who did not experience that passionate politico-cultural embrace between the Jok'Owiny and the Baganda.
______________________________________________
*Sudan: That land of countless pyramids, more numerous than in all of Egypt. Pyramids, which symbolize not the practice of cremation but the very idea of creation, and of the everlastingness of the body (and hence of the life hereafter).
No burial tug-of-war ever gripped the attention and imagination of both men and women in Kenya than that of S.M. Otieno -- a prominent Luo lawyer long married to Wamboi, a Kikuyu -- some twenty three years ago (in December 1986). In some ways, it in fact drew worldwide attention, particularly among feminist and gender advocacy groups.
With the recent passing of Mr. Joshua Okuthe -- a well-known sports personality in Kenya, a former national athlete and a member of the same Umira-Kager clan of Ugenya and Alego that, after a long court battle successfully fought, buried S.M. Otieno according to its wishes and against those of his wife -- the far-less emotive, intra-ethnic controversy was now not about where to bury the dead one, but whether to cremate or bury his remains.
Okuthe's first wife insisted on cremation, arguing that that was his own wish. His second wife, and his clan, sought to bury him in Muhoroni, in the lake region. The first wife pulled a fast one on the rest and had him cremated in Nairobi under the clan's very nose and before a court injunction could have effect. This left the clan with no option but to ritually bury the idea of his body in an empty coffin. It proceeded to do just that, in a low-key and partially televised ceremony at Okuthe's modern-rural home in Muhoroni.
I suspect that an appropriate portion of Yago, the funerary tree of Luo tradition, took the place of the absent, nowhere-to-be-found, body in that bewildering coffin. This is a practice which Luo mourners have typically resorted to when the body is lost and is nowhere to be found despite a decent period of search and waiting and when all sorts of other protocols have been duly observed. So there are really never empty coffins there, and no hollow burials.
Philip Ochieng, the renowned columnist, whose writing I much admire, suggests (I think he thinks that he argues rather than suggests) that cremation was very much a Luo tradition, which they lost (and have forgotten all about) when their paths and those of the Baganda -- who (and whose 'country') bear the names that they gave them, and who have kings because they gave them a kingship though they themselves had nonesuch -- crossed and for a while merged, some centuries ago. For him, the evidence of a cremating past is in the persisting and highly charged practice of "Tero Buru" (Dispatching of the Ashes), which brings to an end, several days after the actual lowering of the departed's body into a defined grave, the series of burial rituals for the community's dead prominents. To Ochieng, "Buru" refers to real (but now only imagined) ashes of the departed. You get "Buru" only whey you burn and burn to the core, and in this case when you cremate. Read more.
I think that Ochieng's conjecture stands on very thin ground, though I have never really tried to unravel the symbolism of "Tero Buru" -- or the genesis of Oburu. In fact, I have never paid it much attention, beyond its momentary theatricality -- which is perhaps monumental on occasion, and which is infrequently shown on local television.
There is just so much historical narrative and folklore -- compounded by a long-running, deeply ingrained and 'living' system of norms and values -- that leaves one with the suspicion and even conviction that the actual burial of ringre (Flesh of the Departed, who is Elsewhere) was the common mode of practice long ago in Sudan*, and long before contact with the Baganda was made -- a practice which only continued, unabated, after that greatly consequential symbiosis was overshadowed by the further, single-minded, movement into present-day Kenya. This view seems to be reinforced by, as I am able to tell, the persisting burial practices of other Luo groups -- who remained and remain in the Sudan, Ethiopia and the DRC, and who did not experience that passionate politico-cultural embrace between the Jok'Owiny and the Baganda.
______________________________________________
*Sudan: That land of countless pyramids, more numerous than in all of Egypt. Pyramids, which symbolize not the practice of cremation but the very idea of creation, and of the everlastingness of the body (and hence of the life hereafter).
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Kenya's Vernacular Radio Stations: To Ban Or Not To Ban?
Kenya’s ex-President, Daniel Arap Moi, wants the Government to ban the country’s “mushrooming” crop of vernacular radio stations, according to Saturday Nation of May 31, 2008. His reasons for this are that they are giving rise to “tribal chiefs”, and are fanning ethnic animosity by serving as vehicles for divisive politics. He justifies his call with the example of Rwanda in the early nineties, when broadcasts from such stations prompted anarchy and a genocidal orgy. The catalytic factor there, however, was not the existence of the stations per se but rather the assassination of the Rwandese President, Juvenal Habyarimana, when his plane was downed as it approached Kigali. The culprits remain at large still; as well camouflaged now, perhaps, as when they carried out their murderous act in 1994.
Still, the ex-President has a valid example. This is reinforced by Kenya’s own experience in January and February of 2008, particularly in the expansive Rift Valley. Protests against the announced presidential election results quickly took a violent turn. The violence then quickly became inter-ethnic because, in the eyes of ODM supporters in the Rift Valley and parts of Western Province, the “stolen presidential election” meant that there was not going to be a resolution of the land issue this time either. There was not going to be a resolution, just as there had not been during the 24-year presidency of Arap Moi, himself a son of the Rift Valley -- a 24-year reign during which Moi was, indeed, l’état.
The land issue – precisely who (or which ethnic community) really was entitled to the land that colonial farmers left behind at independence, or soon thereafter? -- had remained unresolved for much longer than the 24 years, in fact; that is, since independence on December 12, 1963. During the 2007 campaign, ODM supporters had been promised by their political leaders, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that this time around the issue would at last be resolved, upon the much-anticipated victory of ODM’s presidential and parliamentary candidates. This time, the justice that Moi had failed or neglected to dispense for 24 years would e dispensed, with finality.
Needless to say, then, the inter-ethnic violence in Kenya was triggered by a disputed presidential election result, and by adverse message it signaled vis-à-vis the land issue, not by the existence of the radio stations as such. There have been claims, to be sure, that certain radio stations in the Rift Valley and elsewhere did prompt their listeners to xenophobic pillage and murder – and revenge. In Rwanda, fortunately, such urgings were recorded by those who would subsequently prosecute the perpetrators. I am not aware that similar recordings exist in Kenya to serve as evidence for the prosecution – perhaps I have not paid sufficient attention to the adduced evidence. If such recordings exist, they should be used in court without fear or favour.
The said Saturday Nation issue reminds the reader that Moi made a similar but unsuccessful banning call in August 2000, when he was still president, arguing that radio stations should broadcast only in English and Kiswahili – Kenya’s official and national languages, respectively. But his own Minister for Information at the time, Mr. Johnstone Makau, would hear none of it, arguing that “vernacular is part of the Kenyan culture.” It is intriguing that Moi allowed his minister to win that particular argument.
That “vernacular is part of the Kenyan culture” is precisely the point, but we can say more: These radio stations are the only viable, nearly always-on and commute-free channels of contact with the world beyond the confines of the village for a wide cross-section of Kenya’s rural communities, where English and Kiswahili remain at the margin of daily life. They are an indispensable source of broadcasts rich in locally relevant content: news (local, regional and national), announcements (including funeral announcements, the occasional obituary and visits by dignitaries and government officials), entertainment (particularly music, comedy and story-telling), radio-evangelism, language-teaching (particularly of urban youth, since many of these broadcasts reach urban areas as well) and the growth of the vernaculars themselves, as broadcasters struggle to domesticate new concepts or standardize usages arising from day-to-day local living or from farther afield. Lately, mobile phones (some 13 million Kenyans have them now, out of a population of 35 million) have emphatically arrived to challenge the vernacular radio stations as channels of communication, but not in the domain of impersonal or mass communication.
Vernacular radio stations are tailor-made avenues for reaching members of local communities during emergencies and disaster situations, and should be recognized as such in emergencies, scenario-building and disaster plans. When easily accessible and trusted information sources, and easily understood messages are at a premium, vernacular radio stations are an asset, not a liability.
What is more, these stations already offer sustainable jobs to more Kenyans than, I believe, are employed abroad in our embassies and high commissions. They also extend marketing and advertising channels to parts of the Kenyan market which manufacturers and service providers, usually based in the cities, would find it harder to reach than they now do. Viewed thus, they are an essential component of wealth-creation in the country. Demand for their services grows demand for radios and batteries, thereby further sustaining local industries and jobs, to the extent that these are not undercut by subsidized or cheaper imports.
The foregoing suggests that the use of vernacular radio stations in ways that subvert the national good tends to coincide with the onset of transitional periods, or periods of high anxiety that cut across ethnicities and regions to engulf a whole country – such as during general elections. If that is the case, then the challenge to policy-makers is how to put in place measures that effectively monitor and punish, early enough, errant stations in their specificities – during those periods of great risk. The policy solution should not be unimaginative and too unself-critical. We should not impose blanket punishment against vernacular radio stations as a generic category, in the mistaken calculation that one offender implicates and damns all. During periods of normalcy, live and let live is clearly the norm across the country – and should be the catch-phrase.
In conclusion, it needs to be said that to ban vernacular radio stations would be to ban the future, or certainly to attempt to do so. In the sense that these radio stations are almost by definition, given their foregoing characterization, an integral part of the African renaissance -- which several thinkers have been calling for or endeavouring to realize, in our time. That is, moreover, if one defines the African renaissance as the simultaneous re-flowering and re-configuration – indeed, the elevation (or levitation?) to a distinctly higher plane – of the African way of life, and of the associated modes of expressing it.
Still, the ex-President has a valid example. This is reinforced by Kenya’s own experience in January and February of 2008, particularly in the expansive Rift Valley. Protests against the announced presidential election results quickly took a violent turn. The violence then quickly became inter-ethnic because, in the eyes of ODM supporters in the Rift Valley and parts of Western Province, the “stolen presidential election” meant that there was not going to be a resolution of the land issue this time either. There was not going to be a resolution, just as there had not been during the 24-year presidency of Arap Moi, himself a son of the Rift Valley -- a 24-year reign during which Moi was, indeed, l’état.
The land issue – precisely who (or which ethnic community) really was entitled to the land that colonial farmers left behind at independence, or soon thereafter? -- had remained unresolved for much longer than the 24 years, in fact; that is, since independence on December 12, 1963. During the 2007 campaign, ODM supporters had been promised by their political leaders, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that this time around the issue would at last be resolved, upon the much-anticipated victory of ODM’s presidential and parliamentary candidates. This time, the justice that Moi had failed or neglected to dispense for 24 years would e dispensed, with finality.
Needless to say, then, the inter-ethnic violence in Kenya was triggered by a disputed presidential election result, and by adverse message it signaled vis-à-vis the land issue, not by the existence of the radio stations as such. There have been claims, to be sure, that certain radio stations in the Rift Valley and elsewhere did prompt their listeners to xenophobic pillage and murder – and revenge. In Rwanda, fortunately, such urgings were recorded by those who would subsequently prosecute the perpetrators. I am not aware that similar recordings exist in Kenya to serve as evidence for the prosecution – perhaps I have not paid sufficient attention to the adduced evidence. If such recordings exist, they should be used in court without fear or favour.
The said Saturday Nation issue reminds the reader that Moi made a similar but unsuccessful banning call in August 2000, when he was still president, arguing that radio stations should broadcast only in English and Kiswahili – Kenya’s official and national languages, respectively. But his own Minister for Information at the time, Mr. Johnstone Makau, would hear none of it, arguing that “vernacular is part of the Kenyan culture.” It is intriguing that Moi allowed his minister to win that particular argument.
That “vernacular is part of the Kenyan culture” is precisely the point, but we can say more: These radio stations are the only viable, nearly always-on and commute-free channels of contact with the world beyond the confines of the village for a wide cross-section of Kenya’s rural communities, where English and Kiswahili remain at the margin of daily life. They are an indispensable source of broadcasts rich in locally relevant content: news (local, regional and national), announcements (including funeral announcements, the occasional obituary and visits by dignitaries and government officials), entertainment (particularly music, comedy and story-telling), radio-evangelism, language-teaching (particularly of urban youth, since many of these broadcasts reach urban areas as well) and the growth of the vernaculars themselves, as broadcasters struggle to domesticate new concepts or standardize usages arising from day-to-day local living or from farther afield. Lately, mobile phones (some 13 million Kenyans have them now, out of a population of 35 million) have emphatically arrived to challenge the vernacular radio stations as channels of communication, but not in the domain of impersonal or mass communication.
Vernacular radio stations are tailor-made avenues for reaching members of local communities during emergencies and disaster situations, and should be recognized as such in emergencies, scenario-building and disaster plans. When easily accessible and trusted information sources, and easily understood messages are at a premium, vernacular radio stations are an asset, not a liability.
What is more, these stations already offer sustainable jobs to more Kenyans than, I believe, are employed abroad in our embassies and high commissions. They also extend marketing and advertising channels to parts of the Kenyan market which manufacturers and service providers, usually based in the cities, would find it harder to reach than they now do. Viewed thus, they are an essential component of wealth-creation in the country. Demand for their services grows demand for radios and batteries, thereby further sustaining local industries and jobs, to the extent that these are not undercut by subsidized or cheaper imports.
The foregoing suggests that the use of vernacular radio stations in ways that subvert the national good tends to coincide with the onset of transitional periods, or periods of high anxiety that cut across ethnicities and regions to engulf a whole country – such as during general elections. If that is the case, then the challenge to policy-makers is how to put in place measures that effectively monitor and punish, early enough, errant stations in their specificities – during those periods of great risk. The policy solution should not be unimaginative and too unself-critical. We should not impose blanket punishment against vernacular radio stations as a generic category, in the mistaken calculation that one offender implicates and damns all. During periods of normalcy, live and let live is clearly the norm across the country – and should be the catch-phrase.
In conclusion, it needs to be said that to ban vernacular radio stations would be to ban the future, or certainly to attempt to do so. In the sense that these radio stations are almost by definition, given their foregoing characterization, an integral part of the African renaissance -- which several thinkers have been calling for or endeavouring to realize, in our time. That is, moreover, if one defines the African renaissance as the simultaneous re-flowering and re-configuration – indeed, the elevation (or levitation?) to a distinctly higher plane – of the African way of life, and of the associated modes of expressing it.
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