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One day in 2018, I walked into Huduma Centre at the General Post Office in Nairobi for some government service. When I handed over my identity card, the attendant looked at it and raised his eyebrows without uttering a word. I got the message. The card had seen many days because I had kept it for over twenty years since it was issued in 1996. He walked over to the Registrar of Persons counter and then returned to serve me. When we were done, he pointed at a middle-aged man across the hall and asked me to pick up my identity card from him.
How the card had survived the volatile and dramatic days of my youth, I cannot say. The card was dear to me and that is why I had held on to it despite the wear and tear. I had not wanted to have it replaced in Nairobi; my desire was to do so in Vihiga or Hamisi. Here I was rather powerless as I faced this middle-aged man. I felt the urge to pull the card from his grip but I was well brought up. I sighed deeply and agreed to fill out the forms, roll my fingers on the ink pad and place my fingerprints on the forms.
I was born in Nakuru, moved to Kakamega District, and then to Kaimosi before Vihiga was hived off from Kakamega. My ancestral home is in Uyoma, Rarieda Constituency of Siaya County. My identity card captured this tripoint reference of my Kenyan identity that I did not want to lose. Nakuru, my place of birth, and Vihiga, the place of issue, were on the front side of the card. The back provided the name of my rural home, from the district down to the village.
I held the three identities dearly without being loud about it. I understand basic Gĩkũyũ, I speak fluent Luhya and I have perfected my Dholuo in adulthood. I believe this experience allowed me to naturally grasp comparative analysis. Gĩkũyũ has many similarities with Lulogoli which has made it easier for me to grasp Gĩkũyũ. I also speak fluent Lutirichi, the dialect spoken by the Tiriki of Hamisi in Vihiga County. I have recently embarked on perfecting my Lulogoli which has led some Luhyas to conclude that I cannot be a Luo and speak such fluent Lulogoli.
I intentionally delayed picking up my new identity card until my old card was deactivated and I couldn’t make any bank transactions. My place of origin is given as Rarieda at the back of the card which means I am permanently a Luo. However, the new “Place of Issue” now makes me a Nairobian, not a Nairobian-by-bus.
Back in the day, before the colonialists arrived, ethnicity was fluid. If I go back in history, my ancestors were neither Luo nor Luhya but Suba – there was no such thing as Luhya before 1949 – yet you will find me today defending Luo interests with zeal. Ethnicity is a political construct; people inherited it naturally from their parents or adopted a new ethnicity voluntarily – or were coerced – in order to fully enjoy the accruing social benefits. Bantus who had adopted circumcision before joining the Luo were forced to either abandon circumcision in order to belong, or move out. Colonialists froze us into the ethnic boxes in which we find ourselves today, which may not be our original ethnic identities.
This forms the ground for my second book, Kavirondo: The Story of Luos and Luhyas. I spent my formative years up to the age of eighteen between the three places I have mentioned. When I visited Nakuru, I was onyatto (for Kenyatta), in Rarieda they called me wuod okuyu, son of the Kikuyu. I belonged in Rarieda but I was the outsider who found the smell of fish in everything. In Vihiga, I belonged but was not fully embraced. In the streets of Nakuru, I was the urbanite Luo who called the lizard by its Gĩkũyũ name njagathi. My multiple identities helped me to catch the nuances of these communities because I was part of them without really belonging to any of them.
This triple heritage gave me golden ears for accents and visual acuity for cultural nuances. But I was tone-deaf to exclusivity. I was both an insider and an outsider in the three places I called home. The urban space evolves very fast for the youth; the slang, the fashion, the cliques, are dynamic. And so I did not fully belong in Nakuru as the two weeks of school holiday I spent there twice a year were not enough for me to catch up with the trends.
I was an outsider in Kaimosi, the heart of Tirikiland. This would become obvious every five years during itumi, Tiriki’s revered circumcision rite. It is an exclusive club for Tiriki men that even their women know little about. Some of my peers would tease me that they could make my manhood grow on my forehead. You know how such harmless teasing can impact a young mind. The Tiriki are hospitable and welcoming but, despite my flawless Lutirichi, I did not fully belong.
The population at Vihiga High School was predominantly Maragoli who also have their own dynamics. The moment the lights went off at 10 p.m., Lulogoli became the official language. I could not be part of the banter that preceded the rapturous bouts of laughter. I had to grasp basic Lulogoli if I was to catch the drift of the conversation. This was in the mid-1990s when benga sensation Okatch Biggy was a hit machine. Benga music in Kenya was developed by Luo and Luhya musicians after independence. As the only Luo in my class, Okatch Biggy became my nickname despite my lanky frame.
It did not take me long to get into Okatch Biggy’s music. On my way to Rarieda during my final years in high school, I would pass by my cousin’s house in Kisumu. She lived across the road from Donna Inn where Okatch Biggy’s band was based. His husky voice, drum-kick lead and bass guitar-laced beat resonated with me and it is no surprise that I would go on to use Okatch Biggy’s life story and his catchy line – “Why do you mourn someone who has died in promiscuity?” – to speak of HIV-AIDS among Luos. Okatch sang to the soul of Luos, to their obsession with romance, politics, and bubbly banter.
In Uyoma, my peers called me jamwa, the foreigner, a term which I didn’t know is derogatory among Luos. I called women dhekni because a woman is dhako, unaware that I should say mo’n. I was the outsider in Uyoma but my football skills allowed me in; I could shift into “insider” mode to engage and to “outsider” mode to watch and study them. The Luo home is called Dala while Luhyas call it Lidala. The two communities share similarities in their cultural practices with regard to house building and setting up a home.
I remember a meeting following the burial of my father’s cousin in Uyoma. Even though I was only a teenager then, the men allowed me to sit with them under a tree for this important meeting. On the agenda was the question of who should inherit the widow and perform the necessary cultural rites. They settled on another cousin of my father’s who had stepped out briefly. I could sense the anxiety as they waited for his return; if he objected, things would not be easy for the family.
When they saw him walking towards them, they argued about who would bring up the matter. “You are the designated redeemer,” were the flattering words that greeted him and, to the relief and amusement of the men, he gladly agreed to take up the role. The meeting was an eye-opener for me and it ignited my interest in Luo culture.
After high school, I tasted the locally distilled Nubian Gin, chang’aa. This gave me another opportunity to read the rooms and homes of people who sold and partook of the drink. I loved offering an old man a glass of chang’aa before asking questions. This is how I heard the stories about my homeland and Luo culture that I had missed while growing up in Nakuru and Vihiga.
Over time I came to note some similarities between Luos and Luhyas despite having been taught in school that Luos are Nilotes and Luhyas are Bantus. I once went to visit my aunt in Dudi, on the border between the Luos of Gem and the Khisa of Kakamega. Walking behind two old ladies, I overheard one speaking Lusisha, the dialect of the Bakhisa, while the other responded in Dholuo. What fascinated me was how they understood each other so well. At my aunt’s home, the two languages mingled in a fascinating way. In other Luo-Luhya border zones, the norm in language and culture is neither Luo nor Luhya but that which is convenient at the time.
Ironically, my first experience with negative ethnicity was at the University of Nairobi which I joined in 1998. District-based student unions were still active despite the Students’ Organization of Nairobi University – SONU ’98 – having held its first elections a few months earlier. Kenyan districts, which became counties in 2013, are all ethnic-based. Student activism sucked me in and I got elected into the SONU executive. In a committee of eleven, only three were neither Luo nor Luhya.
We had an idealistic view of non-tribal politics that caused the Luos in the group to shun Raila and embrace Orengo’s Mageuzi movement. But we ultimately gravitated towards our tribes in national politics. Luos and Luhyas also make up the majority in the top leadership of trade unions in Kenya. Years later I would ask myself why Luos and Luhyas are attracted to student activism and trade unionism like bees to nectar. Kavirondo gave me a chance to delve into this.
The region now informally known as Western Kenya was named Kavirondo by colonialists. The region produces the majority of Kenya’s sportsmen and women. Team sports in Kenya can be classified as a Luo, Luhya, and others affair. From football, to rugby, to basketball, to hockey, to cricket, Luos and Luhyas rule the fields. This is down to the wide genetic diversity in Kavirondo and the protein-rich diet available in the region.
Stereotypes, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observes in The Danger of a Single Story, are not entirely untrue, they tell half the story. Telling half the story breeds doubts and suspicions because it amplifies a one-sided, negative, aspect of a community.
If you want to know a community, go over the stereotypes and look at their proverbs. What is important to a people will be codified in a short, pithy idiom or proverb and passed down the generations. Luo and Luhya proverbs are covered in the book and what they reveal about the two communities. Language is the custodian of cultural treasures. In the book, I have gathered about two hundred words that are common to both Luhya and Dholuo.
That is Kavirondo the book for you, the story of Luos and Luhyas that sprung from my multiple identities. Luos and Luhyas are two sides of the same coin.
