By Silas Gisiora Nyanchwani

Regarding cremation, the Kikuyus are miles ahead of other Kenyan native tribes.

The list of famous and prominent Kikuyus who opted for cremation in the last 10 years grows long and longer every year. And those are the ones that we know.

I think people from Western Kenya are more disappointed by Ngugi wa Thiong’o than people from Central Kenya.

What the Kikuyus do today, other tribes will do ten or maybe 20 years from now.

I used to think that in western Kenya, first-born males have to dig the graves of their parents (in my culture, if there are grandchildren, the eldest grandson does it), which is standard Bantu practice, only to be shocked earlier this year that Kikuyus don’t do such. Neither do they have so many rituals around burials.

The body is picked from the funeral home in the morning and buried during the day. Kikuyu funerals are pretty cool, easy affairs, easily done by 3 p.m. in time for a good drink pale Kenol/Sagana, and catching up with the girlfriends people leave behind.

The only complaint we westerners have with Kikuyu funerals is the diabetic mess they serve for food (waru, chapati, ugali, a gallon of soup, does not a proper feast make).

Before I forget, a more learned friend told me the only reason they insist it is the firstborn male who should dig the grave is that, traditionally and culturally, men could only be sure that the firstborn was theirs biologically.

With wars to fight, and working so far away, the wife could be mischievous, thus firstborn males carried the most favour. Enough digression.

Expensive affair

What we assume is standard funeral practice in western Kenya is actually very new, not even 20 years old. Turn up at a funeral in western Kenya in 2005, and in 99 percent of the funerals, there were no outside caterers.

I am old enough to remember when people used to be buried with 2-4 days in the 1990s.

In Kisii, by 1998, there were fewer than 5 mortuaries. I can count them. One in Nyamira, and like two or three in Kisii town. I saw my folk being laid on a layer of charcoal on the earthen floor.

Modern embalming methods were rare, and corpses used to stink. It wasn’t uncommon to have some hapless village dude stand by the coffin and spray some odious perfume, to scare away the flies and the bad smell, especially in hotter moths of the year, like January/February and August.

What changed is that the economy grew so much under Kibaki, we modernised too fast, and health care improved, we have more morgues and embalming methods got better.

By moving to towns, logistics of traveling for the kin, have to be factored, before settling on the date.

In Kisii, the SDA-Catholic war ensures funerals can only take place in a weekday, preferably, on a Friday to favour Nairobi folk.

Only under rare exceptions can you have a burial over the weekend, or any other day of the week. 

For flowers, we made do with those ugly, shrinking bougainvillea.

For food, people ate in their homes, or various visiting families, say, in-laws, ate in the respective in-laws ‘ homes.

Like if I had two brothers and all of us are married, each son will host their in-laws, and relatives went to the corresponding relatives, guided by propinquity.

In the last 15 years alone, I can count up 5 changes that have happened to Kisii funerals.

For instance, a grave was typically dug on the day of the funeral. As the funeral went on in the tents, young men, mostly in late teen-hood, and early 20s, under the supervision of a senior male member dug the grave and helped fill it once the casket was lowered. In Luo land the grave was dug the previous night.

In Kisii nowadays, because all the young men have disappeared to towns and cities, or drive boda and the few remaining are wasted in alcohol and weed, families opt to hire grave diggers, who can dig the grave several days in advance.

Typically, the body must stay in the homestead, the night before burial, but I have seen some families take the bodies from the mortuary straight to the funeral service and burial on the same day.

Some Kisiis, especially staunch SDAs, have handed over the burial ceremony to the church program.

There is little room for speeches, just endless choirs, a pastor, and the burial. Rural folk hate this with a passion.

And in the last ten years, more and more Kisiis are opting to be buried far away from home. In Kitale, Nakuru, Kitengela, Kajiado, Mombasa and in the USA.

Turning village into cemeteries

Kisii and Nyamira County have been called rural slums and they have become one big grave yard, and I doubt, if there will be space to bury the next generation unless we bury folks on top of the other.

There will be changes to come and cremation may be very soon the way to go.

Alternatively, in a place like Kisii, we can have cemeteries, and each family can be allocated a slot, such that we can bury people using the same layout as we do our homesteads.

It shouldn’t be hard, because in Kisii, save for the Borabu bit, people are still on their ancestral lands and each clan share blood, and thus we can have cemeteries in that prioritize the elderly, and encourage people to adopt various methods, like buying land portions for their kin. I don’t know.

What I know, had the British stayed in Kenya for an additional 20 years, cemeteries would be the norm, as say in Zimbabwe or in South Africa.

As for Ngugi, he has spent 40-odd years in the USA, with a few visits to Kenya. All his adult life was spent in the USA and his spirit may well lay in the USA and his work can wander wherever in the world.

One thing the western part of Kenya gets right, is the mourning period. We don’t rush our funerals, and the long mourning periods, whereas exhausting and economically unsustainable, people heal.

Mungai Muiruri told me he appreciated this when he went to Siaya, and saw people mourn, celebrate, make merry and that 10-20 day period is enough to reflect, meet your kin and reminisce, and heal.

Up to 2005, we used to have wakes up to a month in the homesteads of the death.

Wewe soma vitabu za Ngugi to keep him in your memory. His name will last for a long time.

Mimi, cremation scares me, and I prefer the ways of my Kisii ancestors. I want to be buried where my parents are buried when my time comes.

-Nyanchwani is a journalist and literary writer. He first published this article on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.facebook.com%2Fsnyanchwani%2Fposts%2Fpfbid02ZT3bGTL5kewgdmwxLmmiNYahbDa8RCQSZwm924McGe3FZ2L44Y87YckWn42fMajwl&show_text=true&width=500