Uhuru family on holiday in Europe And Pauline Njoroge "holiday" in Europe: What is really going on here?
Dedan Kimathi died young at the tender age of 37. He died a defeated man in great pain from gun shot wounds and the torture he went through in the hands of his captors. Read his final pencil written letter (heartbreaking)
However in the 50s (the decade that tribalism was probably at its' lowest ebb ever in Kenya. Because Luos were getting elected to parliament in Nairobi by an enthusiastic Kikuyu electorate and Luo men were falling head over heels in love with Kikuyu women.)
Because if we were to believe this widely held view, then Wambui would never have become Mrs Wambui Otieno (she has recently remarried a much younger fellow called Mbugua in a marriage recorded by the media at the AG's chambers in 2003 that hit the headlines across the continent). All young Kikuyu ladies from Wambui's days were circumcised. And virtually all DhoLuo men from Mr Otieno's days were NOT circumcised. But the sparks still flew between these two Kenyans. And Mrs Wambui Otieno is just the sort of tough cookie that would have told off any jeering fellow Kikuyu with the words like; "it is non of your business and if you try anything I will show you that at least one of us is cut."
By the time the Otieno's marriage ended in the late 80s with the tragic death of Mr Otieno who by then had distinguished himself as probably one of the finest Kenyan criminals lawyers to ever walk the corridors of the high court, the couple had been married for over 3 decades. But sadly the end was far from being a happy one. Mr Otieno's Umira Kager clan from Nyalgunga, Luo Nyanza insisted on burying Otieno in his ancestral home following all traditions to the letter, including the dreaded Tero Buru. Tough former freedom fighter Wambui Otieno, said "over my dead body." She pointed out quite clearly that her sweetheart had indicated to her that he wanted to be buried at their Upper Matasia home (near Ngong). What followed was the mother of all legal tussles. Sad that Mr Otino must have helped write many wills in his time but never wrote one for himself which would have averted all the heartbreak and suffering for his wife, Wambui.
In my opinion, this court battle further divided Luos and Kikuyus and must have been used as a stern warning to many young people hit by cupids arrow (flying from the wrong direction so to speak) for many years.
I can still imagine those stern parents saying to those poor love-struck youngsters; "Do you want us to go to court when one of you dies?"
Wambui won the sympathy of many Kenyans across tribal lines but lost the court battle and her right to bury her own husband.
I dare add that I believe that many Luos took the opportunity presented by this case “to get back at the Kikuyu.” In other words, those who have always promoted this hatred (on both sides) are constantly spoiling for a fight and looking for every opportunity to further their evil cause.
Wambui and Mbugua at their wedding reception.
To many Kenyans, Wambui Otieno embodies the dilemma Africans face between the old African ways and the modern Western lifestyle that is rapidly becoming the dominant culture across Africa. Wambui caused a public scandal this week by marrying a stonemason 42 years her junior in a short civil ceremony in the Attorney General’s office. ‘Love is what matters. Love is blind,’ she said, ‘women should be liberated so that they can marry men younger than them.’
Wambui is a descendant of the great Chief Waiyaki, patriarch of an important Kikuyu clan, whose descendants included Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta as well as cabinet minsters, high court judges and leading industrialists. Wambui was one of the only women to join the Mau Mau rebellion against the British in the 1950’s and later became a Nairobi politician and vocal activist for women’s rights.
By the time she married her first husband, SM Otieno, Wambui already had three children by two fathers. Both families opposed Wambui’s wedding to SM because marrying outside one’s tribe was highly unusual at that time. For a Kikuyu to marry SM, a member of the Luo tribe, was like ‘mixing oil and water’ as her uncle later testified. SM’s clan opposed the marriage because marrying a Kikuyu woman with three children born out of wedlock was nothing short of a scandal.
The Kikuyu despise the Luo as kihii, uncircumcised fish-eaters, while the Luo see the Kikuyu as arrogant and greedy westernised Africans who have abandoned their cultural traditions. Wambui did not care that her family did not see her uncircumcised husband as a ‘real’ man and she refused the traditional dowry between families saying ‘ I am not going to be married under any bride price because you know women then become property of the clan. I am worth more than a few goats.’ The couple took advantage of a 1931 statute, the African Christian Marriage Act ‘making it clear they were not bound by tribal customs’ as Wambui’s lawyer later described it in court. They had married for love.
By the time SM passed away from hypertension in 1986, the couple had fifteen children. According to Luo tradition, when a man dies, his relatives inherit his possessions. Since the Luo consider a wife and children as possessions, a deceased man’s brother inherits his wife. But the immediate problem was not the fact that Wambui was now deemed the potential wife of SM’s brother but the more pressing problem of where to bury SM’s body. This issue became one of the most hotly contested debates in Kenya’s legal and social history and brought about a clash of opinion between African traditionalists and modernists that has risen to the surface again seventeen years later with Wambui’s new marriage to Steven Mbugua, who was seven years old when SM died.
SM did not leave a will because he knew as a lawyer that wills have been overturned in Kenyan courts in favour of clans claiming a relative’s body. He relied instead on the evidence of 15 of his children, his wife, friends, neighbours, lawyers, journalists and leading members of society who he instructed specifically that he wished to be buried at his farm in Upper Matasia near Nairobi. He expressly forbade his wife and children to allow his other relatives to bury him in his ancestral village Nyalgunga in Siaya district some 300 kilometres away from his house, saying that to do so would be ‘to throw me away’.
Upon his death, Wambui ordered a grave to be dug on the farm only to discover that SM’s relatives had taken out a court injunction barring her from doing so. Wambui and the Umira Kager clan went to court and within three weeks, the court decided that SM was ‘a metropolitan and a cosmopolitan….it is hard to envisage such a person as subject to African customary law and in particular the customs of a rural community,’ overturning the injunction. The clan appealed immediately.
The Court of Appeal over-ruled the lower court’s verdict, arguing that despite SM’s education, marriage, professional success and verbal instructions, it was wrong to assume that ‘the deceased had thereby lost his tribal identity and could not be governed by customary laws, traditions and culture.’ A full trial was ordered.
According to testimony in court, recently deceased Luo are a bridge between the living and the ancestors. The ‘living dead’ therefore have a direct influence on day-to-day matters. Great importance is attached to burial rites. A cast of characters gave evidence on behalf of the clan including witchdoctors and the gravedigger who had buried SM’s father, who testified from his hospital bed. SM’s brother told the court that unless he was allowed to bury his brother in the prescribed way, SM’s ghost would ‘sabotage his life’ and ‘make his clansmen spit on him.’ The Professor of Philosophy from Nairobi University testified that an improper burial meant that ‘your children or your livestock may die and if you sire children they may be born without legs.’
Wambui’s lawyers presented evidence from many well-known members of society who confirmed SM’s wish to be buried at his farm and his distaste for traditional custom. The judges conceded that there was no doubt that SM had expressed a desire to be buried on the outskirts of the city hundreds of miles from his ancestral home. What was at stake was not his wishes but the importance of the old ways against the new, whether customary laws of the village and tribe could take precedence over the laws of the Kenyan nation and constitution and most importantly, which of them should govern the social institutions of marriage, birth and death.
Thousands of Luo men surrounded the high court each day and newspapers reported the trial verbatim. Newspapers with headlines like ‘Luos have no homes in Nairobi’ and ‘We’ll be haunted if we don’t bury him’ sold out by mid-morning. The case was the talk of Africa.
On February 13th 1987, six months after SM’s death, the court decided that SM was to be buried by the clan in his ancestral village against his own wishes and those of his wife and children. The Appeal Court Judge said that Wambui ‘chose to be married to a man who was not of her tribe. She knew she was marrying a Luo. She cannot now complain that the Luo are uncivilized…they did not force her to be married into their clan…times will come when circumstances dictate that Luo customs with regard to burial be abandoned. Change is inevitable but must be gradual.’
The clan mobbed the city mortuary where SM’s body remained under police guard and carried the corpse on the back of a truck to SM’s ancestral home in Siaya district for the funeral which was attended by three cabinet ministers and thousands of Luo tribespeople. African tradition had won on the day, a decision praised throughout Kenya at the time. Wambui and her family including SM’s children chose to boycott the funeral deliberately breaking the taboo that dictates that Luo children should visit their father’s grave to lay a cross as a final part of the burial ceremony.
Wambui’s new marriage has reignited the debate about the degree to which African traditions and customs are important in modern life. SM’s clan have objected to Wambui’s ‘sham and repugnant marriage’ saying, ‘Wambui is still married to SM Otieno’ and reiterated calls for her to go to Siaya to be inherited by SM’s relatives. ‘Even if Wambui died today, the Umira Kager clan will ensure she is buried at Nyalgunga, next to SM Otieno's grave.’
Cabinet Ministers have described Wambui's marriage as ‘a golden opportunity’ for Kenyans of all walks of life to consider the meaning of the institution of marriage as the country moves towards a new constitution. ‘I don't think there would be so much fuss if an old man married a much younger lady, ’ said Wangari Maathai, head of the Culture Committee at the conference on Kenya’s new constitution.
Home Affairs minister Moody Awori said: ‘Love has no boundaries’ but added quickly that the two consenting adults must be of opposite sexes. The opposition secretary for Labour, Ms Orie Rogo-Manduli differed, describing the wedding as ‘an isolated case of Kenyans in mid-winter madness. Women must continue to play their role as role models and be cradle rockers and not cradle robbers.’
Wambui’s story brings together many elements of the African dilemma; the old traditions versus modern living, a British legal system dealing with an African cultural case, tribalism versus an individual’s rights in a democracy, traditional beliefs versus modern science, women’s rights in a chauvinist society and the role of a wife, the family, the clan and the tribe in modern African society. It also raises fundamental and sensitive questions about identity and what it really means to be African.
Kenyans of all persuasions debate the Wambui case in an effort to find meaning and significance in a society where the ancient and the modern have difficulty in coexisting. Urbanisation, westernisation and modernisation have not bought prosperity and harmony but sowed the seeds of discord.
Eminent African scholar Colin Turnbull commented on this ‘disconnect’ for Africans by saying ‘there is a void in the life of the African…. to go forward is to abandon the past where the roots of his being have their nourishment; to go backward is to cut himself off from the future, for there is no doubt about where the future lies…there is no bridge and this is the source of his terrible loneliness’.
In a final twist, Wambui’s new mother in law Florence Nyambura announced after Wambui’s wedding that her son had another fiancée called Mugure, who he was scheduled to marry next month as a second wife. This development came as a surprise to the Wambui the modern politician and women’s rights activist. Then events took a rapid turn for the worse when her new husband’s family announced that Wambui’s mother in law had taken ill and died quite mysteriously.
Kenyans remain divided into modern and traditional camps on who is to blame for the tragic death. Some blame the press for harassing her and others blame the Umira Kager clan who they believe cursed Mbugua for marrying Wambui, ‘their wife’. Either way, Wambui remains a heroine for women in Kenya and a flag-bearer for modernist Africans in the 21st century.
I dug this out of the Kumekucha archives
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