|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Much has already been written about the influence of Raila Amolo Odinga on the Kenyan politics and psyche, but his stated will to be buried within 72 hours of his demise is of particular interest to me. Of course he ended up being buried a little later than seventy-two hours, on 19 October 2025 rather than on the previous day, but that was due to the logistics of getting his body from India and making the plans for a state funeral. Besides, unlike numerous other Luo burials today, food was not served at his burial. According to The Times Kenya, this was also in line with his wishes:
“Odinga believed that death should not burden families or communities financially. He often said funerals should be simple and resources should not be wasted to feed crowds,” said Maurice Oloo, Chairman of the Luo Council of Elders in Bondo Sub-county.
Raila’s appeal for simplicity in funerals is relevant way beyond the Luo community, since funerals have generally become much more costly around Kenya than they were in the past. For example, our Luhya neighbours also spend loads of resources on their funerals; and I have attended Kikuyu and Kamba funerals characterized by the kind of flamboyance typically associated with Luo ones. This is despite the fact that the purchasing power of our peoples has been eroded by the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s onwards, HIV/AIDS, COVID-19 protocols, the current unmanageable public debt burden, and political corruption, among others. So whether or not you are a Luo, let us reflect on ways to make funerals cost-effective, so that we can reserve the bulk of our scarce resources for the welfare of the living.
Raila’s consistent message regarding wasteful Luo funerals
Many people in Raila’s Luo community found his wish strange, while others thought it was outright unacceptable. For example, James Omoro reported that Moses Bala, a resident of Nyatike Constituency in Migori County, said Raila should have been buried at least two and a half weeks after his death: “As an 80-year-old Luo elder and a revered national leader, Raila was buried too soon,” Bala said. Omoro further reported that Elder Michael Onyango Otieno shared this view and filed a petition at the Milimani Law Courts in Nairobi seeking to delay the burial: “He argued that the State’s decision to bury Raila so quickly violated Article 44 of the Constitution, which guarantees every person the right to participate in cultural life and enjoy their traditions.” However, continued the report, Justice Chacha Mwita dismissed the petition, ruling that Otieno had failed to provide sufficient grounds to halt the burial.
Nevertheless, Raila’s wish was actually consistent with his statements while he was alive. I recall, at least two decades ago, Raila raising his dissatisfaction with the fact that Luo funerals had become extremely costly. That was the one time I heard the Luo rank and file object to Raila’s opinion; and, being an astute politician, he let the matter lie to avoid upsetting his enthusiastic constituency. Furthermore, according to a 20 May 2025 report by Western Insight, during the previous weekend, Raila had finally broken his silence on the issue of the commercialization of Luo funerals, and called on the community and the Luo Council of Elders to initiate a public discourse on the issue. Said Raila:
“We must have a conversation about our funerals and the economic impact it has on the community’s economy. The council of elders needs to guide the community on this important discourse. Funerals cannot be industries. The Luo community had a structured way for burials and it did not take a long time. The expenditures were clearly guided, unlike what we have today. This is not the way to grow as a community. It is time we re-evaluated ourselves and returned to the old ways of how the community handled burials and the expenditures that go with it.”
Luo funerals then and now
It is easy to illustrate that funerals in Luoland have become increasingly lavish as the community has become more affluent. For example, my paternal grandfather was buried on Wednesday 7 May 1980, having died three days earlier on the evening of Sunday 4th May of that year. Today it would be news if a Luo was buried within two weeks of his or her demise, but quite normal for him or her to be buried a month later. As James Omoro observes, “[Luo] funerals have evolved into an industry from which many people make a living. Catering companies, sound system providers, and other service providers often profit from these elaborate ceremonies.” Indeed, security firms, photographers, printers of full-colour programmes, those who sell space for obituaries in the dailies, florists and transporters, among others, also make a killing during Luo funerals.
Yet even my grandfather’s burial within three days of his death in 1980 would have been a wonder to the Luo early in the last century. While it is now widely believed that it is a tradition of the Luo to bury weeks after someone dies, this “tradition” only goes back to the colonial days. According to my maternal grandmother who died in 2009 at the approximate age of 100, Luo burials were extremely simple until the 1914–1918 European interethnic war (erroneously referred to as “the First World War”). She informed me that prior to that war, a Luo man was buried before sunset on the very day he died, and he was buried in his own hut, where his widow continued to live after the burial. This is why the Luo widow is referred to as chi liel (literally “the wife of a grave”). Mourners from afar, including in-laws, came to the home the day after the burial, and all the in-laws from homes where the daughters of the bereaved home were married shared meat from a single cow slaughtered in their honour. In other words, the herds of cattle slaughtered in today’s Luo funerals were unheard of in those days. What is more, there was no food cooked in the bereaved home. Instead, neighbours, who were also typically part of the larger family, brought nyoyo (boiled maize and beans) and nyuka (porridge) to the home for the exclusive benefit of the bereaved family and of mourners who had travelled to the funeral from afar.
Then, continued my grandmother, soldiers from the 1914–1918 European war came back home with loads of money, and eager to show off their wealth. They went to the homes of their in-laws who had died while they were away, purportedly to pay their respects, accompanied by pomp and pageantry: they paid musicians to entertain the gathering, and brought loads of food and alcohol for the occasion. When I told my late mother what her mother had told me, she added that it was also at that time that such flamboyant Luo husbands forced their wives to smoke cigarettes as a status symbol.
Yet even after the 1914–1918 European war Luo funerals remained relatively simple and cost-effective. James Omoro reports that according to Magayi Jonyo, Chairman of the Luo Council of Elders in Karachuonyo Constituency, the shift from traditional practices – before the introduction of mortuaries – has made funerals far more expensive: “Many years ago, before mortuaries were built, Luos would bury their loved ones within 48 to 72 hours,” Jonyo explained. “Bodies were preserved at home using sand and banana fibre. Sand was placed on the floor, covered with banana fibre, and sprinkled with water to create a cool temperature before the body was laid on top. This preserved the body temporarily until burial.” Elder Magayi Jonyo also confirmed my late grandmother’s assertion that bereaved families did not cook during mourning. He lamented that today, families face enormous financial pressure: “Nowadays, if someone dies, mourners begin eating in the deceased’s home immediately and continue until the burial day. If the burial is scheduled a month later, the family must feed mourners for all those days, which is extremely costly.”
At the function in which Raila spoke about the wastefulness of contemporary Luo funerals in mid-May this year, The Luo Council of Elders Chair, Mzee Odungi Randa, corroborated what my grandmother had told me. According to the Western Insight report, Randa pointed out that in the past the Luo community would bury the deceased immediately after death, just like the Muslim community. Said Randa: “We are a very difficult people. I have raised this matter, and it is now time we must address it as a people. We must go back to our old practices and avoid imitation.” Omoro also reports that Walter Opiyo, 69, a resident of Rangwe sub-county and head of Homa Bay County Bunge La Wenye Nchi, agreed with Magayi Jonyo’s sentiments: “If a family’s breadwinner dies and burial is delayed for five weeks, the little resources available is [sic] spent feeding mourners. Even money meant for school fees may end up being used for funeral costs,” Opiyo said.
As a member of the Luo community for over six decades now, I know for a fact that many neighbouring families stop cooking in their homes once a death is announced until after the burial, which is often typically a minimum of two weeks later. In effect, they pass on their food budgets for those many days to the bereaved family. Besides, the bereaved home hosts a multitude of guests the night before the burial, with all the food and logistics involved (showers, mobile toilets, lighting, among others). Then on the day of the burial much food is cooked and served not only to mourners from afar, but also to next-door neighbours, some of whom steal some of it and transmit it to their homesteads for future use as they would have been doing since the death was announced. Many strangers, who had never even interacted with the dead person for a single minute, and who are not even acquainted with the bereaved family, crowd the home, some of them looking for opportunities to steal from the bereaved, making the ceremony quite chaotic and close to meaningless.
In the meantime, the sons of the bereaved home do all they can to ensure that their in-laws are served extremely well, while the married daughters of the home work equally hard to ensure that guests from their matrimonial homes are accorded kingly service. Many of the religious leaders who officiate at the burials also expect and frequently receive food cooked specially for them in a manner reminiscent of the preferential treatment given to diviners and medicinemen in our pre-colonial past. The effect of all this is to keep the bereaved family busy attending to logistics instead of mourning as they need to. Few things irritate me as much as when I arrive at a burial ceremony eager to sit and listen to the proceedings, only to be told that I am “required at the tent” (for a meal), as though I travelled all the way to eat rather than to mourn.
In the early 1970s, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, the English poet and novelist married to the Luo Daniel Oludhe Macgoye, expressed outrage at the way in which the Luo regularly abandoned the living to poverty but splashed loads of cash at their burials. In her famous “Freedom Song” in Poems From East Africa, she wroteabout Atieno, a little girl exploited by a relative who turns her into a virtual slave in his urban residence:
Atieno’s had a baby
So we know that she is bad.
Fifty fifty it may live
And repeat the life she had
Ending in post-partum bleeding,
Atieno yo.
Atieno’s soon replaced.
Meat and sugar more than all
She ate in such a narrow life
Were lavished on her funeral.
Yet it is now widely believed that the current Luo funeral practices go back hundreds of years. Thus, Calvin Otieno, in an article published by the Kenya News Agency, describes what he believes to be “the ancient rites that guide a soul’s passage from the world of the living to that of the ancestors”. He claims that “In earlier generations, before mortuaries existed, burial followed soon after death. The body would be watched over by family and friends through Budho, an overnight vigil marked by dirges, storytelling, and the lighting of bonfires. Today, even with modern preservation, the Budho continues as a space for collective mourning and remembrance.” Otieno’s article contains a number of other false claims about traditional Luo funerals. To give one more example of this misreporting, we read in it: “Despite its solemnity, a Luo funeral is also a communal celebration of life. The homestead fills with song, dance, and abundant food, as people gather to honor the memory of the departed.”
What is more, Calvin Otieno’s misleading assertion above about a festive mood at Luo funerals as part of Luo traditions encourages the infamous “disco matanga” (funeral discos). At these chaotic dances during the night after the burial, youth often engage in massive substance abuse and sexual orgies that have at times ended up in deadly fights. Neighbours, some with little children and others seriously ill, are also denied sleep on that night due to the blaring music from huge loudspeakers. Indeed, there have been several calls and even government directives to abolish “disco matanga” in Luoland and Luhyaland, but they tragically persist. For example, on 15 December 2024, Rachuonyo East Sub-County Deputy County Commissioner (DCC) Job Kemey said the practice was not allowed anywhere in the country. Yet on Sunday 28 September 2025 the People Daily reported:
“Lugari Member of Parliament (MP) Nabii Nabwera has called for tough measures to curb disco matanga in his constituency, citing the practice as a major contributor to rising insecurity.
“Speaking on Saturday, September 27, 2025, Nabwera linked several recent crimes to the night-long ceremonies.
“He highlighted two incidents: the brutal murder of a 21-year-old girl in Chevaywa and the gang rape of a woman in Itumbu, with suspects reported to have come directly from disco matanga gatherings.”
A roadmap to dignified and cost-effective Luo funerals
In honour of Raila Amolo Odinga’s foresight and insight on the matter of Luo funerals, I propose the following four measures to recalibrate such funerals into the dignified occasions they once were, with the guiding light being simplicity and cost-effectiveness.
First, let us bury the dead as soon as possible, certainly no later than three days after their demise. This will save us massive mortuary charges. We can then organize memorial gatherings thereafter.
Second, let us do away with the body staying in the homestead the night before the burial. Mourners should then be instructed to refrain from going to the homestead the night before or even on the day of the burial. Mourners who travel from far and need overnight accommodation should then seek it from neighbours rather than in the bereaved home. This immediately makes the arita (night vigil) on the previous night unnecessary, thus saving on the logistical and financial costs that go with it.
Third, let the gathering on the day of the burial be held away from the bereaved homestead to save the family the pain of massive clearing up after the ceremony. Let the body of the deceased arrive at that venue early in the morning of the same day that he or she is to be buried to give the mourners ample time to view him or her.
Fourth, immediately after the pre-burial gathering, let light snacks be served at the venue of the meeting to mourners from afar (none for immediate neighbours whose kitchens are a few minutes’ walk away) while very close family members move to the homestead for the actual burial. It should be made clear to the gathering that only close family members are welcome at the graveside, and that there shall be no “disco matanga”. Let the bereaved homestead also be empowered to keep away the youth wishing to hold a “disco matanga”.
Let us endeavour to be the makers of history
We in Luoland, and Kenyans at large, urgently need to take bold steps to make funerals truly dignified by ensuring they are simple and cost-effective. Those willing to take bold steps in this direction are the ones who will make history. Indeed, A typical history book is full of detailed accounts of the lives of a few individuals who initiated change in society by daring to be different. Thus a chapter in a history book might begin by indicating the population of a region and the conditions under which they lived at a specific time in the past. That information, which is about the conformers rather than the reformers, typically occupies a few lines or pages. Thereafter, the book will typically devote numerous pages to the life of a single man or woman who dared to take the initiative to stimulate change in society. Indeed, such people are frequently persecuted by their contemporaries, but greatly honoured by subsequent generations. The true prophets of Israel, and the Greek philosopher Socrates are cases in point.
Often when I state that the contemporary wasteful Luo funerals need urgent reform, the response from a number of members of my community is: “If we don’t do it the way it is done the community will view us unfavourably.” One person conceded that there is alarming extravagance in our funerals. Nevertheless, when I suggested to her the need for people like her to take a stand against it, she retorted that it was unthinkable for her to do things differently from the rest of society. What she failed to appreciate is that she is the product of a history in which a few people did things differently. Over time the actions of such daring people have become the norm, so that anyone who challenges them is now considered to be eccentric. For one to expect to enjoy the benefits of positive social change without contributing to it is parasitic – it is reaping where one did not sow.
