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  The Luo believed that anybody with bad intentions toward the family could harm the baby through witchcraft in the days after the child’s birth, so following the burial of the placenta, mother and child were confined to her hut for four days. This period inside her hut also had the practical advantage of allowing the baby and his mother to rest and bond before the celebrations began. Although no one except for Obong’o was allowed to enter, people still brought copious quantities of food to the hut because it was believed that mothers who had just given birth needed lots of food; in fact, new Luo mothers are called ondiek (hyena). For the next six months Opiyo was breast-fed; eventually his mother would gradually wean him off her milk and begin to feed him a gruel made from finely ground millet flour and water. By the time he was two years old, Opiyo would be eating the same food as adults.

  On the fourth day after his birth, Opiyo was brought out at dawn and placed just outside the door to the hut, carefully watched by his parents, who sat a safe distance away. This ceremony is called golo nyathi, literally “removing the baby,” and it represented Opiyo’s introduction to the world. Golo nyathi usually marks the start of a great celebration, particularly for a healthy newborn male. But as Opiyo was the firstborn of twins, the family participated in a different type of ritual. Several days after the birth, Obong’o and his wife joined the rest of their extended family in a ceremony where large quantities of beer were consumed. By tradition, the dancing that accompanied the revelry was intentionally licentious, and the family referred to the couple in the foulest and most obscene language imaginable. The proceedings were intended to lift the taboo from the parents, although the ignominy of being a twin would haunt Opiyo for the rest of his life.

  On the fourth day after the birth, Obong’o had sexual intercourse with his wife. The couple carefully placed Opiyo between them before making love, a ritual that is called kalo nyathi, literally, “jumping over the child.” Many events in Luo life need to be consummated by sexual intercourse; in this case it symbolized that the child belonged to the couple. The ritual was also a form of cleansing after the birth, in the hope that another baby would soon follow. If Obong’o had sex with any of his other wives before kalo nyathi, the Luo believed that Opiyo’s mother would never conceive again. To be safe, Obong’o would sleep with the new mother for several weeks after the birth. Opiyo’s final birthing ceremony occurred a few weeks later. It was called lielo fwada, “the first shaving of the child,” when all of the baby’s hair was removed. In many parts of Luoland, this ceremony is still practiced today.

  The names of Luo children can tell you a lot about the individual and their family. Traditionally, babies are given two names (and sometimes more), and nicknames are also commonly used. The first, personal name says something about the child’s birth: Otieno is a boy born at night, Ochola is born after the death of his father, Okoth is born during the rainy season, Odero is a boy whose mother gave birth by the grain store, and so on. The child also takes the father’s personal name as a surname, so Opiyo’s full name was Opiyo Obong’o.

  (Of course, the Luo may adopt other names when it suits them, which can cause some confusion. The name Obama was frequently used across generations; Opiyo’s elder brother and Opiyo’s second son both had it as their personal name. The name is thought to have originated in the early eighteenth century. Opiyo’s great-great-grandfather was called Onyango Mobam—Mobam means “born with a crooked back,” indicating that he was probably born with curvature of the spine—and the name presumably became corrupted to Obama.)

  A girl’s personal name usually begins with an A, so Atieno is a girl born at night, Anyango was born between midmorning and midday, Achieng’ is a girl born shortly after midday, and so on. When a woman marries, she becomes known by her husband’s surname.

  The vast majority of Luo, probably more than three-quarters of them, use this unique form of naming. However, when missionaries brought Christianity to Luoland in the early twentieth century, some people began taking Christian names when they were baptized. Therefore Charles, Winston, Roy, and David are all common first names for boys, and Mary, Sarah, Pamela, and Magdalene are typical girls’ names. Barack (which means “blessed one” in Arabic) is unusual, and it comes from President Obama’s grandfather, Onyango Obama, who converted to Islam while in Zanzibar after the First World War. (When Barack Obama defeated John McCain in 2008, practically every child born in Nyanza that night was called either Barack or Michelle, and both names have remained very common ever since. It is something that will cause chaos in Nyanza’s primary schools in about three years’ time!)

  Opiyo’s younger brother, who was probably born around 1835, was called Aguk. Normally this is a female name (the male version being Oguk, meaning a boy born with a humped back; together with the name Mobam, this hints at some genetic abnormality in the family). However, a boy is occasionally given a female name (or a girl a boy’s name) to indicate something significant or prestigious about the birth. For example, the only boy born into a large family of girls might be given his mother’s name to mark the honor of giving birth to a male heir; conversely, a girl could be named after her grandfather if he was particularly respected within the community, or if he was a renowned warrior and hunter. This reversal of names confers a special status on the individual. A woman with a man’s name, for example, will often be offered a chair to sit in when she is waiting in line, or she might receive a small discount when she is out shopping.

  One final layer of naming that is very common in Luoland is the use of nicknames, which are always related to where the individual lives. A man from Kendu Bay might be referred to as “Jakendu”—in this case the preface Ja- is used in combination with the village or township of a man. A woman from the same location might be nicknamed “Nyakendu.”

  As a young boy, Opiyo grew up in a large, extended family, with many brothers and sisters. The family homestead was also home to any widowed grandmother in the family, and the girls would gather in her hut, called the siwindhe. Girls usually moved out of their mother’s hut at a relatively young age, so as not to disturb their mother and father when he visited at night. In the siwindhe they learned about appropriate behavior for a Luo girl, the mores of the clan, and the sexual and social duties expected of them; it served as a classroom in a society without formal education.2 Opiyo’s grandmother also presided over storytelling and verbal games in the siwindhe. Friendly arguments often broke out over the precise interpretations of ngeche (riddles), such as “Which is the pot whose inside is never washed?” (The standard answer is “Your stomach.”) Sometimes the children were asked to solve a riddle that had several potential answers: “What is the four-legged sitting on the three-legged waiting for the four-legged?” The standard answer would be a cat sitting on a stool waiting for a rat, but children vied to find alternative answers. The girls stayed in the siwindhe with their grandmother until they married.

  The most important area in the compound for Aoko, Obong’o’s first wife, was the agola, or veranda outside her hut, where the thatched roof extended beyond the mud wall, supported by pillars. Most of the domestic activities took place on the agola, including grinding flour, cooking, and tending to the chickens; a traditional hearth sat here, consisting of three large stones that raised the pots above the fire. Obong’o’s wives used traditional earthenware pots of varying sizes to prepare meals, with each pot kept exclusively for one particular food. Even today, the Luo will tell you that cooking in an earthenware pot is far superior to using aluminum saucepans.

  After the day’s work was finished, Opiyo and his brothers would join their father in his hut for their evening meal. (Single men slept in their own bachelor huts, known as simba.) The men always ate separately from the women and girls, and Obong’o’s three wives would cook in the evening and bring the food to his hut. This was one of the few occasions on which they would ever come to his duol, which was always the preserve of the male members of the clan. The staple food was kuon (called ugali in Sw
ahili), a dough made from hot water and maize flour; it is usually rolled into a lump and dipped into a sauce or stew. Everyone ate with their fingers (and still do), and ugali is used in a variety of creative ways when eating; sometimes a thumb depression is made in the dough to create a scoop, or it is flattened into a thin pancake and wrapped around pieces of hot meat. Fish, either fresh or sun-dried, was also popular, eaten stewed or roasted. The meal was supplemented with vegetables and legumes from the home garden, or anything that could be collected in the forest, including mushrooms, fruit, honey, and even termites.

  Traditionally, certain foods were not eaten by certain members of the family; women, for example, would not eat eggs, chicken, elephant, or porcupine, and men would never eat kidneys. Obong’o, as head of the household, was served the best meat, such as the cuts from around the chest of the animal, the tongue, liver, and heart. The women ate the intestines and other offal. The skin of the carcass would then be tanned and used for clothing or bedding. After the meal, Opiyo’s father would talk to his sons about Luo legends and stories of their ancestors. The discussions in his duol would dwell mainly on heroes, battles, bravery, and hunting, and in this way the oral traditions of the tribe were passed down through the generations. Like the girls, the boys too would play verbal games, asking riddles and telling stories. After their anecdote, each of the storytellers would close with the phrase Adong arom gi bao ma kanera—“May I grow as tall as the eucalyptus tree in my uncle’s homestead.”

  The Luo have a long tradition of entertainment and partying, and even today, Luo are some of the best musicians and dancers in Kenya. During important ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, Obong’o would invite a musician to play the nyatiti, an eight-stringed wooden lyre. This was played either as a solo instrument or with an accompanist on the drums or some other percussion. Nyatiti sessions were great social occasions, and people would make requests or ask the player to repeat a piece. Any request had to be paid for, often with a chicken or a useful household object. Other musical instruments included the ohangla (a drum made from the skin of a monitor lizard), horns, and flutes.

  Beer drinking was also an important part of these social events. The best Luo beer is called otia, and it is brewed from sorghum flour that has been fermented, dried in the sun, cooked and fermented again, and finally strained. The men drink the beer warm, sipping from a large communal pot with a long wooden straw called an oseke, sometimes up to ten feet long. The men always use their right hand to hold the straw, because this is the hand that represents strength and integrity. (Left-handedness is viewed with suspicion by the Luo, and left-handed children are forced to use their right hand for eating and to greet people.) Another type of beer is mbare, which is made from brown finger millet flour, called kal. This is not cooked but, like otia, is dried and refermented. (The fermented grain left over from beer making is a useful by-product that the Luo leave outside for wild guinea fowl to eat. The residue, which is still potent, intoxicates the birds and makes them much easier to catch.)

  Often the adults also smoked tobacco or took snuff during these social events, and they smoked bhang (marijuana) from calabashes. Opiyo would have played games with his siblings and neighbors at these parties. One popular game that is still played in Luoland is ajua, which uses small pebbles on a board with two rows of eight holes; adhula, a form of hockey, was also popular; and sometimes the young men would play a type of soccer using a ball made from rolled banana leaves. Another sport was olengo (wrestling), which gave the young men a golden opportunity to show off their strength and physique to the girls from neighboring villages.

  When he was around fifteen, Opiyo faced one of the most important ordeals of his life: the traditional removal of his six lower teeth. Both boys and girls underwent this ceremony known as nak, which was performed by specialists in the community called janak. By tradition, Opiyo’s parents were not given advance notice that their son was being prepared for his initiation into adulthood. The practice was widespread in Luoland until the middle of the twentieth century, when both the government and missionaries tried to discourage it. Despite this, nak is still performed today in some rural villages in Luoland, and even in certain churches in the main city of Kisumu.

  It is still very common to see older men with their lower teeth removed. Joseph Otieno, a retired farmer in his late sixties, lives in a remote community in Gangu in western Kenya. He still remembers with total clarity the day of his nak:

  The ceremony was usually done during the summer in August. The night before the ceremony, I crept into my mother’s granary and stole a basket full of millet. This was my reward.

  My sister came to my hut, and she escorted me the next morning to the ceremony. That morning when I went, I felt brave because it was my initiation into manhood … because all the Luos go through the same thing. I had to kneel down, my sister held my shoulders, and I opened my mouth. The way they did it was to use a thin, flattened nail to remove my teeth. They forced the flattened nail into my gums to loosen each tooth. You can’t be afraid—you must be strong.

  You could not reach the age of twenty without your teeth being removed. There were some people there who were afraid, so they put a stick in their mouth to keep it open. If you are too fearful, which some people were, then a group of boys would come and hold you down.

  I asked Joseph what the significance was to the Luo of having their front six teeth removed:

  Number one, the reason why they were removing this is that sometimes people can get sick, and this would be a gap where they could feed you food or drink.

  Number two, if you die anywhere [away from home], then people would know you were a Luo.

  The third one, it was an initiation into adulthood, and it shows that you are now no longer a child. Luos are not circumcised, so this was our initiation. If you didn’t do it, then your agemates would not walk with you. If it wasn’t done, I would have to stay in the house all day. It was painful, but we had to go through it.

  Afterward, my mouth bled for eight days.

  Joseph made the whole experience sound straightforward and perfectly normal, but I knew that the nak ceremonies didn’t always go quite so smoothly. Leo Odera Omolo is a Luo journalist who lives in Kisumu. He too had his lower teeth removed, but against his will:

  When I was young, I lived away from home a lot of the time, and I did not want my teeth removed. When I was about eighteen, I returned to my parents’ house one day for a short visit. That night I was grabbed by several young men from the village and they dragged me from my bed. My parents insisted that I should have my teeth removed, otherwise it would bring shame to my family. It was done forcibly. The boys held me down and the janak pulled out my six lower teeth with pliers.

  As a young boy, Opiyo spent most of his days tending his father’s growing herd of cattle, taking them out to the pastures in the morning and returning with them every evening. But once he had undergone nak, Opiyo became an adult and an important member of his clan. As he grew older, his father, Obong’o, and his uncle Ogola taught him to hunt. Wildlife was still very common around Kendu Bay during the middle part of the nineteenth century, and the animals—antelope, buffalo, warthog—were an essential food source for the family. Opiyo learned how to throw a spear and shoot a bow and arrow, and he went off on regular hunting trips with his brothers. These hunting expeditions were not without danger; the African or Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer), for example, is one of the most unpredictable and thereby dangerous animals in Africa, often turning and attacking with little provocation. (Today, only the hippo and the crocodile kill more humans in Africa.) Lions, leopards, hyenas, and poisonous snakes also made Opiyo’s hunting forays risky affairs.

  Opiyo now also had the opportunity to really make a name for himself as a warrior. One of the reasons the young men did not marry until they were nearly thirty was because of their responsibilities as fighters; the defense of the clan was a priority, and being a warrior was a form of “national service” expecte
d of all young men. (Only sons whose family lineage depended on them to produce an heir were exempted; such boys might be married as young as fifteen and would not be expected to fight.) The young Luo were always prepared for war, and frequently skirmished with other clans and tribes over land, cows, resources (such as grazing rights for cattle), and sometimes women. Disagreements also arose during social gatherings, such as the succession fight between Owiny Sigoma and his older brothers at their father’s funeral.

  Platoons of warriors were organized for battle along family lines, based on the principle that kinship strengthens the bond between combatants. The clan leaders called the fighters by blowing a small sheep’s horn called a tung’, which made a high-pitched wailing sound that could be heard a long distance away. Once the warriors were assembled and ready to fight, the oporo was blown; this was a low-pitched booming horn from a bull or buffalo. This sounded the attack, and the young men of the clan, often high from smoking bhang, would advance on the enemy. The fighters were armed with spears (tong’), war clubs (arungu), and arrows (asere). For protection, the men carried a shield (okumba). The kuot, an even larger, body-sized shield, was made from three layers of African buffalo skin and would deflect even the most powerful spear or arrow. A village elder would select a spear and fold its blade in on itself; this was the first missile to be thrown at the enemy, in the belief that this act would render the enemy’s spears ineffectual.

  The battles could be bloody affairs, and in the aftermath the job of recovering the dead and wounded fell to the women, who remained safe from attack by the enemy under widely accepted rules of warfare. The women carried the dead and injured back to the homestead, where they were greeted with loud wailing. If the clan had been victorious in battle, the returning warriors would stomp their way back to the compound in elation, thrusting their spears skyward and chanting the agoro—the victory song. It was taboo for those fighters who had killed in battle to enter the homestead through the main gate; instead, they waited outside the compound until a new opening was made in the thick euphorbia hedge for them to enter. Inside, their wives and mothers waited for them, smeared with dust, to celebrate their safe return. The fighters then underwent a cleansing ceremony that involved swallowing tough strips of raw lung from a billy goat; the goat skin was also cut into strips, which were tied to the wrist of the successful warrior and around his spear, one strip for every man he had killed in battle. The goat’s heart was then removed and the warriors also ate this raw before their heads were symbolically shaved as a mark of victory.