Western Kenya: Ways of thinking.

Hans Burgman - Kisumu - February 1987

Chapter 1 The world and Man‟s place in it

A General Picture

The world is filled with mysterious forces; they make

themselves felt in a multitude of different ways. These forces are
somehow animated, and many of them are dark and potentially
dangerous. All the people and the other beings that we encounter
have their own forces; they make this force visible, or at least
felt. This fact is even reflected in the Luo language: deep down the
adjectives seem to be verbs: just as the sun “shines” so also the
grass “greens”, the water “colds” and a woman “beautifuls”.

The forces compete with one another. They can radiate from one
being to another and exert influence there. The weaker forces have
to get out of the way of the stronger forces. We people are not
major forces in the universe: we are right in the middle of them
all. We can only hope that the superior mysterious forces hit us in
a nice way. We feel “Lucky” if they do. For we cannot master them or
subdue them properly. Thus our lives are ruled by “GOOD LUCK” and
“BAD LUCK”. We can observe this phenomenon all the time in our
relations with beings around us when we occupy ourselves with
agriculture, hunting, cattle-raising and fishing. Cleverness and
diligence may help, but basically everything is a matter of good and
bad luck.

The only one who can really control luck – if he wants to – is

God. So a fundamental piece of wisdom is : be on good terms with God
and do not irritate him. It is stupid to swear and to blaspheme (can
I be done in Luo?); it is stupid to deny his existence: atheism is
crass stupidity and asking for trouble. Other powerful entities that
can go a long way in controlling luck are devils and the spirits of
the ancestors. It is important to keep an eye on them.

A stroke of good luck, a bonanza, a windfall, something you can

get for nothing, is never to be missed. Even if it upsets other
important matters. So many people prefer to get a modest sum of
money got freely “by good luck”, rather than obtain a much bigger
sum of money by steady application to work. Would that not also be
the reason why so many people are ready to risk their well-paid job
by stealing a relatively small sum of money? As one cynical observer
put it: „Good luck is getting a thousand shilling, and bad luck is
being caught doing it”.

If a portion of good luck falls your way it looks like a sign

of God‟s approval. The clever person who evades the blows of bad
luck and manages to secure for himself strokes of good luck will be
given applause and is evidently a favourite of the supreme forces.
An unlucky person may by the same token be considered to be a bad

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person: he can be jeered at and maltreated by people who did the

same thing, but did not get caught.

We humans may be weak in force, when taken one by one. But

there are some things in which we excel: first, we know how to make
use of human companionship. The group to with we belong gives us
security and added power. This group is concrete and recognizable
and makes us into brothers and sisters. Solidarity with this group
is essential. The harmony of the group is source of joy; even
sitting together as a group is a form of entertainment. Anything
that upsets the harmony of the group is to be shunned. The group
should move as a unity: the individual cannot go against the group.
For a decision unanimity is required. Disagree with the group is a
kind of treason. Yet as an individual thinker and performer, a
human being will often have to disagree with the group. This leads
to duplicity: in this heart of hearts a person has his own opinion,
but at the same time he wants to be loyal to the group. This
duplicity is something he can cope with. Thanks to this second
precious talent :the quality of craftiness. The human person is
pitted against an enormous array of mysterious forces; he can take
them on not only because he is a member of a strong group, but also
because he knows how to use guile and craftiness. That is our glory.
The odds against us are overwhelming. We have no hope or chance to
really bring the forces of nature under our control : in the long
run they will get us. Indeed, outwitting the powerful forces over a
long period of time is a marvelous challenge. On the other hand, it
is necessary to know when you are beaten or when you have no
fighting chance; in that case you have to submit and comply, and you
night as well do so cheerfully.

Basic Wisdom

A basic general rule would be: keep out of the way of powerful
forces unless you can handle them. In fact, it is wise to keep out
of the way of any kind of forces that bother you. So why not limit
your dealings with the surrounding beings to a minimum? Moments of
tranquility and peaceful self-possession, when nobody or nothing
bothers you, are moments to relish . It would be correct to say that
things you have to do indicate encroachment of the surrounding
powers on such peaceful and free existence. There is wisdom in
reducing the number of things that have to be done. Here we have to
experiment. Many things present themselves as being utterly
necessary, but a little experimentation will show that they often
can be omitted. There is great primeval joy in finding out that

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things which seams necessary can be left undone. There is great

satisfaction in finding an excuse for not doing things. Quite a
number of people are just a busy trying to find an excuse for not
doing things as for doing things well. Once such an apparent
necessity has been moved out of the way, the person has created free
time for himself, time and space and peace. A person who “gives in ”
too much to this temptation is called “samuoyo”, a word that occurs
very often, and which is translated as “lazy”. It is more: “one who
has lost his drive”.

It would be wrong to see this desire for peaceful tranquility

as a form of laziness. Distate for aggressive engagement is a
perfectly valid philosophical attitude, and very good for one‟s
health. We might call it: “the Law of Minimum Investment”. Whenever
nature devises a scheme, it invests a minimum amount of energy in
it, so that is only just works. A lion can only just catch his prey,
and often loses it; a kingfisher has more misses than strikes. Too
much power in any particular place would upset the balance in
nature. So people should also try to reach their goal with a minimum
investment. What the minimum actually is should be established by
experiment: how far can you reduce your input before the thing
actually collapses? This explains why we love to omit actions that
seem indispensable to people of other continents. It has an
immediate bearing on the level of maintenance of vehicles, houses
and apparatus. Taken on a much bigger scale this attitude also
offers some explanation of why the people of this continent made so
little technical progress.

We feel that our “gentle approach” to nature is rewarded. If

you do not make outrageous demands on nature, you will find out that
nature responds with some degree of reliability and even generosity.
It will answer your needs if you make your needs modest enough. So
there is no need for preserving food on a big scale. This insight
leads to the “feast or famine” attitude. Some outsiders may loop
down on this, but at least we have a feast every now and then. Feast
is whenever there is a lot and we are allowed to finish it all.
Tomorrow nature will give something else again. And even if it does
not, then we have had marvelous feast today. There is even a little
glory and reason for pride in managing to live fairly decently on
next to nothing, on getting by with what everybody else declares to
be inadequate. This feeling of pride can be applied to the nation as
a whole. And it is an excellent school for survival under tough
conditions.

There are of course obvious disadvantages to this attitude of

“reduced engagement”, an attitude symbolized by the drawn curtains

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and closed windows of many of our living rooms. First, much valuable
work will remain undone. This is no calamity by itself. But in the
context of the present 20th century technology and industrial world
of intense competition, this creates problems. For our people know
and desire the many wonderful things that technology has produces.
But the amount of work that goes into producing them or even
procuring them may be more than what they find humanly desirable.
Even when these articles are obtained, these very articles will
demand a lot of care. Cars, engines, electrical apparatuses, they
all have their own law of maintenance and safety. It is very
dangerous to tamper with those laws. Yet all around us we see
people trying to omit even the minimum demands that these artifacts
make. Safety regulations are flouted with incredible ease. As a
result calamitous break-downs occur and horrifying accidents. These
will be ascribed to “bad luck”. For see: many people gave still
worse maintenance and took even greater risks; so how come that they
didn‟t get an accident, but got away with it? Thus the causal
connection becomes obliterated, and the “good luck-bad luck”
evaluation takes over. No improvement can be expected.

How to be wise when you act

When one decides to act, philosophy plays its role. People do

not like to act in the abstract but rather in the concrete. They
like to react to reality, not imagined situation. “Anticipating” is
essentially reacting to imagined situations; so it is not popular
with many people. Anticipating an event is often wasteful, for the
event may never happen. That is why most of us like to wait till the
last moment: just to make sure that they are not fighting thin air.
Also, by waiting till the last moment, one gives a maximum chance
for excuses to come along to be absolved from the action.

This dislike for anticipation and the desire to try and cope
with concrete crises can lead to curious behavior. It may explain
for instance the strange ways some people drive a motor car. Careful
drivers find it unbelievable how many of the other drivers overtake
at full speed on blind blends. The latter seem to argue thus: “Why
worry! There is no car to be seen yet, and surely, if one happens to
turn up we will find a way of coping with it”. If another car
actually comes round the blind bend, there is either a colossal
crash with a number of people getting killed, or the guilty driver
manages to avoid the oncoming car by some last-minute evasive action
like going trough the fields. In the first case the driver is most
likely to get killed and will therefore not profit from the lesson

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contained in his mistake; in the second case he congratulates

himself for being able to execute such a marvelous evasive manoeuvre
rather than curse himself for taking such risks, and in this case
too he learns nothing.

We Luos love make-shift solution. Once you opt for a make-shift

solution you are allowed to wait till the last moment (and so get
the maximum chance for an excuse to present itself). Once you start
with the make-shift solution at the last moment, the pressure is on:
you have to come up with a solution, and any kind of solution will
do. You cannot spend too much time in thinking, the result, however
inadequate, has averted a crises, and this is a marvelous boost for
one „s pride.

Coping with a crisis in a spectacular manner gives much

pleasure to our people: they are confident that they can do it.
Would that be the reason that they pay rather little advance
attention to emergencies that threaten them? They can cope! See how
organizers manage the seating arrangements at meetings. As important
visitors come in, the seating arrangements are adjusted. An
important man is given a very important chair; soon a more important
man arrives, and new and bigger seats have to be collected from
elsewhere; when the biggest man arrives a sofa-set has to be
procured from far-away. Thus every high guest is given the most
excellent place available at that moment.

Anticipating, by the way, can be a provocation: it implies that

you can predict the activities of somebody, and very powerful agents
will not like that or feel humiliated. Fate certainly should never
be provoked this way. Does that not explain why people are so loath
to anticipate events that have to do with life and death? Certainly
in the matter of child-birth they are very wary: they feel that
preparing a sleeping place, and clothes, and even choosing a name is
asking for trouble.

Conversely, if you are a very powerful person you can humiliate

people by forcing them to anticipate in vain, thus making them look
stupid or inadequate. You can force them to come very early, and you
yourself come very late, or not at all. The simple people can do
nothing about it: they have to keep on the alert; for when the
powerful person, however late he comes, finds that the preparations
have not been maintained, he may fly into a most dangerous rage. (A
number of sad stories come to my mind. Of a very high educational
authority who made the school-children wait along the road for
hours, and when at long last they went for lunch he happened to
arrive; he was so incensed that he threatened to fire the teachers

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on the spot. Or the case of the very high government official who,
coming home in the middle of the night, found out that his servant
had already eaten; in a drunken rage he smashed the man‟s head with
a piece of frozen meat; but the doctor in the hospital who treated
the man was afraid to sign the document proving the servants
injuries: the politician was too powerful a force to engage).

Chapter 2 Human Society

Guile, Justice and Rights

The high powers of human society are not very different from
the high powers in nature. We have to tackle both in the same way.
Our security is our group, our glory is our wisdom, our weapon, our
weapon is craftiness.

A good person will be loyal to his group. Yet, he will try to

retain his own freedom by manipulating or outwitting others in the
group. That is a natural thing: you see all living beings in nature
do this. Friends are very careful here not to overdo it: they “hold
back”. Parents “hold back” over against their children. It is a sign
of affection and esteem if one person does not take advantage of his
friends weakness. This “holding back” could also be called “money”.
It is a very important factor. It gives living space to the weak
ones, and everybody is weak at one time or another. Where there is
no mercy the law of the jungle takes over. Mercy, or “Ng‟uono” in
dholuo, is a term that occurs all the time in prayers as well as in
human dealings. If you need mercy, it is obtained by pleading
(“ywak”). Favours also fall under the notion of ng‟uono, and too are
obtained by clever pleading, rather than earned by hard work.
Getting “mercy” is a good example of “good luck”.

A wise man knows the order of things, knows how people and
animals and things react. He knows how to find shelter in the group,
but also knows when the time has come to carry on the struggle of
life all by himself. That is the moment when a person should cover
up his tracks, mislead and create the kind of confusion to which he
himself has the key. In this world of contest truthful speech is a
stranger. Creative cheating and telling clever lies is commendable
and builds up one‟s life; telling the plain truth is stupid, it is a
surrender to outside forces, factors and persons: it is putting your
head into the noose. Once there is sufficient confusion it is easy
to extricate oneself from a blunder. Lying then is really a powerful
element in the struggle for self-preservation. It is not really a
fault or a sin, it is a near-virtue. The same holds good for

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creative cheating: it is a part of life responsibly led. It is never

wise to show completely what is in your mind, for after that you
have no trumps left. Giving a straight answer is like showing your
mind with the concomitant risk of revealing your ignorance or
inadequacy. Much better to avoid committing yourself to a statement,
and reply with a question, The question you can always ask is: “what
did you say?” That gives a little more time to think. Similar to do
that is the popular question: “myself?”. But the best is the
question that serves as an answer at the same time: “Is it not
thus?” Some conversations consist entirely of such answer-question.

Can one build a modern nation in this way? Modern economy might
well thrive under these conditions. Democratic elections however
become a tour-de-force: the candidates may well feel that they owe
it to themselves to leave no crooked trick untried.

Can Justice survive? It will certainly take on interesting

colours. “Justice” in the Western sense of “everybody getting a
fair share” can only be realized where there is abundance. When
there are simply not enough things to go round, a “just division”
becomes impossible: everybody will get too little, the one who
distributes will be declared to be unfair, and everybody will end up
being unhappy and angry. If you look at nature and at the world of
hunting and fishing (and trade?) there is no distributive justice.
If there is any law at work it is law of the craftiest, the most
cunning and the strongest. There will be some rules, but if it is
among humans they will be more like rules of “fair play” to which
everybody subscribes. For the rest deception, bluff, muscle,
intimidation and quick thinking become the lawful weapons like in
most forms of plays or games. “Mercy” becomes the restraining
element, again like in many forms of play. So, where there is not
enough for all to go round, people have to secure their small
portion by craftiness. Most people will be proud of what they gained
or caught, even if it is only a small thing. Happiness is more
likely to follow.

What about Rights? “Rights” cannot be claimed even if you seem

to have them; they still have to be granted as “favours” by a
generous authority. Even if you earn them, you earn them as favours,
favours that can also be granted to others. Take the example of a
diploma after a course: even those that failed the exams may very
well still go to the teaching authorities and plead for mercy or
ng‟uono, stressing that it was not their fault that they failed. If
there are such things as “rights” they will derive from your place
in the hierarchy of human society, and it will be very much linked

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up with “duty”. You should not be prevented from doing your duty,
and if you do your duty, you deserve praise.

Guile and mercy are necessary companions. With guile you try to
secure good luck; but when your luck runs out, all there is left to
you is mercy. For you will have battled against superior forces with
a craftiness that is basically deceitful and insolent. There is no
excuse for deceit that has not worked; the only thing left is
ng‟uono. The fact that people are likely to resort to guile and
deceit gives them a feeling of guilt that will make it easier for
them to put up with injustice or bad luck. After so much guile one
deserves whatever one gets, even if the actual injury was
incorrectly inflicted. (one could speculate if the same holds good
for the animal world: the animals ultimately feel that their cruel
death is a punishment for their deceitful lives.) It could explain
why our people do not revolt so easily against injustice, why in
fact “revolution” is a foreign notion.

Does Culture make you Equal or Effective?

Egalite, Fraternite and Liberte are foreign notions that have

their equivalents here, but not with the arrogant overtones they
have in Europe. Europeans claim those rights without ever having
deserved them, as un-earned powers therefore. By claiming them you
assume to be allowed to criticize people above you. Frank criticism
from below is not appreciated here : even discussing a superior‟s
performance is felt to be something like an act of subversion.

In our society here everybody and everything has its place and
its time. The position of the houses, the details of the houses, the
position of the main articles in the house, the places for people to
sit, the places for graves to be dug, they all have been determined.
Who shall eat which part of the cow is determined by fixed rules;
who shall eat what kind of food too. The tasks to be done have been
divided: there are men‟s tasks and women‟s tasks, husband‟s tasks
and children‟s tasks, tasks for the old an tasks for the young.
Traditionally this constituted a fair division of work in our
culture, very much underestimated by Europeans. Civilization is to
know the right order of things, and the right way of doing things.
White people seem to like the spontaneous, the new, the unexpected.
The people here like to see the proper thing done, even if they have
seen it done a hundred times before. The big thing is to go through
the right motions of an activity and give it the right entourage;
whether the action itself makes sense is a question people do not
like to hear: it is presumed. And rightly so. Our people‟s culture

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has proved to be very effective. It has safeguarded very well the

most important aspects of human society: to make sure that children
are born into a world that takes good care of them, and to make sure
that these children get a proper and balanced education.

Human tasks relate to each other like in a hierarchy, and thus

bring about a hierarchy of relationships among people. These
hierarchical relationships are the very fiber of our culture here.
To be able to do your task well is a source of great joy to the
person and gives him a claim to praise. People do not question why
this or that is the task they have to do; the important thing is to
be good at it. If everybody would be good at this tasks, the world
would be nearly perfect, or rather: how lucky we all would be. The
idea that everybody should be allowed and able to do all kinds of
tasks is foreign, modern European. The order of things and the
assignment of tasks is not questioned. Even a European used to feel
this way: formerly their men used to stand up and offer their seat
to a woman; no man doing that would feel deprived or insulted, but
rather proud: for he knew the right way of doing things. In a
similar spirit Luo woman still happily gives up her seat to a man.

Correlatively, incompetence is a very serious fault, and

exposure is to be avoided at all costs. This makes people hesitate a
long time before they will do a thing of which they are not very
sure. It is better to be safe than sorry. And also; it is much
easier to find an excuse for not having done a thing at all than for
having done it wrongly. So it is not a very serious thing to omit an
action that one really should have done. If God were a Luo, the sun
would not rise from time to time. And there is no need to delegate
the action to a substitute when one foresees that one cannot do it
oneself. This may at times be very awkward for the people that
depend on it; but it equally often constitutes a wind-fall of
unexpected “free-time” for them; they have an excuse for omitting a
thing they had to do.

Human authority grows with age, mainly along the male line,
People accept this as correct. Male predominance looks right in view
of greater physical strength and the consequent advantage in the
decisive struggles for life and death (with wild animals, raiders,
enemies). The dignity and authority of old age has to do with the
fact that a life time of experience will have produced a great
amount of wisdom and a great familiarity with the order of society.
Old men are venerable cult figures.

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Displaying one‟s Importance

Just as people like to react to concrete forces, they also like

to evaluate others by their concrete appearance. Thus persons tend
to be taken at face value. This has interesting consequences. There
is the underlying conviction that the appearance of a being is
indicative of its essence. This is not quite “phenomenology”, for
this would demand that everything that is there should show itself,
and that is definitely not believed to be so: there is probably more
than what can be seen. But the appearance as such is not deceptive.
And it is constitutive: if you put on a brave appearance you become
brave; if you put on important insignia you become important. And
the other way round: If you show up in a less resplendent outfit you
will deserve less respect. You can manipulate the nature of things
by tampering with the nature of their appearance. This goes as far
as the furniture: a nicely embroidered cloth will make any rickety
chair respectable.

Appearances then are also messages; clothes are meant to be

read. Traditionally every detail of a person‟s outfit – here and all
over the world – had meaning. Much of that spirit has survived.
Clothes have to be read, they are a language. Now a language can
only work if it has universal terms, establishing the common ground
of things. What universals are to language, uniforms are to dress.
Western dress tries to suppress this. There the stress is put on
individualization; but this can never be pressed to the limit, and
so even Western dress is full of uniform items.

If uniform indicates status, it confers status, and establishes

the wearer‟s importance towards himself and towards outsiders. So it
is a great privilege to be allowed to wear a uniform. Loss of
uniform is loss of status, even of identity.

In the context of authority a uniform becomes very necessary.

It should bear the message across: “I am more powerful then you! I
am dangerous”. Thus the uniforms of authority often include items
that make them look taller (e.g.a soldier‟s headgear) or that are
artificially enlarged: buttons, rings. It is said sometimes that a
uniform is a sign whereby people can recognize the function of the
wearer. If it were just that, a small simple detail would do. A
uniform is a proud display of status and is often even intimidating,
calculated to make others submissive. At best it is a flamboyant
display of the order of human society.

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Transition and Desintegration

The new technical culture coming from the West (or the North)
tends to make a mess of this hierarchical structure. The fixed order
of things is being denounced as restrictive of freedom and of
initiative. More seriously: the division of tasks has been upset
badly ever the last eighty years. The work of the women has
increased: looking after the household and the children. The
introduction of clothes and many household articles caused more
work, and the very sizes of the houses has grown; the traditional
helpers in the household, the young girls, have gone off to school.
The men had to hunt, raid, train for warfare: all these occupation
have disappeared more or less. The jobs that the men do nowadays are
by and large the wage-earning occupation and the handling of the big
cash-crops. Thus the men have a lot more money at their disposal
too. Perhaps the most seriously hit are the elderly. The task of the
old men, to guide and to rule, has been eroded. The task of the old
women, to teach the small children, especially the girls, has been
taken over by the schools. Those schools do not dwell on ancient
wisdom but inculcate modern ideas and values, and could well
accelerate the disintegration. The successors of the old people are
the modern figures of authority with a leg in both worlds. The only
hope is that education will produce a growth in perception, and that
this perception will “tame” the new power that otherwise will be
rampant.

Chapter 3 – The Exercise of Power: People In Authority

Authority in human society is acknowledged to be a blessing for

the sake of order and the proper organization of activities. A
fundamental property of authority is that it is creative: it creates
order and new regulations. These regulations and laws have little
meaning unless they are enforced, preferably in the physical
presence of the lawgiver. Once the authority allows laws to be
broken, it is taken for granted that it has been abolished. Where
authorities cannot be present, the law is flouted easily. Take the
speed-limit on the road: nobody sticks to it, even though there is
daily carnage as a result. The only way to slow down the traffic is
by speed-bumps, more effective than police-men, even if they are
called “sleeping-policemen”.

The authority himself is not really under a law, but it

produces law. A person in authority is stronger than law;
consequently some authorities feel tempted to show their power by
constantly breaking the law. One would not be surprised if it was

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found out that the biggest single group of traffic law breakers are
the police: this shows their power on the road. When very important
people are found to have broken the law, they probably thought that
it was alright for them, since they were so important. It is very
bad manners to confront authorities with regulations that they have
to keep or apply. Authorities do not really think in terms of
theoretical rights, but more of favours and help that they have to
hand out. Sometimes they have to make their power felt: by parking
their car in places where people have to walk, by making people
wait, by writing or doing something else while the subject is
speaking to them, by demanding extensive apologies. The people
recognize authorities as formidable entities that have to be handled
carefully. So in harmony with what has been explained above, they
develop the following approach.

First of all they will try to limit the impact of the persons
in authority by avoiding all unnecessary contact with them.

Secondly, when contact is unavoidable or potentially

profitable, they will try to outwit the authorities. There are
several ways of doing this: by misleading or by flattering. Both
are used extensively if not universally. Sometimes one gets the
impression that it is a basic rule of life that all authorities have
to be misled: by wrong names, wrong dates, incomplete information,
mistakes, things that get lost or forgotten, the book of tricks is
inexhaustible. Very few people apparently want to be caught telling
the truth. Flattery too is very widespread, and sometimes demanded.
Fulsome praise delivered by people of dubious character is not rare.
The daily TV-News is careful to flatter many important authorities
by extensive but often boring coverage of sometimes trivial events.
But the public evidently appreciates it. There is something very
dangerous in flattery. The good thing about it is that it buys
freedom for the flatterer. But for the superior flattery is always
bad, for basically flattery is falsehood. One becomes frightened
when one sees big men surrounded by flatterers, that is: people that
distort the truth, and turn the real truth into something
subversive. Slowly but surely the big man will go mad.

The third and best way, but also the most difficult one, of
coping with important people is: to befriend them. For from a friend
you may rightly expect favours. In official matters few people
bother to find out about the so called rights you have: it is much
more effective to look for a friend who can handle your problem.

Loud laughter is something that one hears often when big

authorities are meeting their subjects. It evidently has to do with

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many of the things said above. Conspicuous laughter is a form of

flattery. Just as the English say: “A rich man‟s joke is always
funny”, so in our country we could say: “A big Bwana‟s joke is
always funny”. It is also reassuring: it creates the feeling that
everything is fine, and that there is nothing to be afraid of. It is
like an absolution from sins. So this loud laughter is functional
where subjects fear the big boss. When the big boss laughs loudly he
shows that he is the big boss and in perfect control and has nothing
to worry about. For the small fellow, who has absolutely nothing to
say, loud laughter together with a big boss is a marvelous
experience of importance. All this illustrates also why the laughter
should be loud: it has to be heard, either by the laugher himself or
by the public.

If none of these ways work: submit humbly and comply. Within

this system the crafty individual has considerable space where he
can manoeuvre, and do what he wants to do. And there is more. Very
powerful authority tends to be autocratic. However, the very fact of
autocracy creates extra freedom. For the autocrat wants to do
everything himself, wants to take all decisions personally, wants to
know everything that goes on; he cannot delegate much. By this very
fact he makes matters impossible for himself. He cannot possibly do
all, know all. And so his underlings will be found to be going their
own way: their boss is too busy to find out.

Authorities often carry on a struggle among each other to gain

supremacy, and sometimes this taken on amusing forms. In the VIP-
Room where many VIP‟s pass daily there lies a book in which they put
their names. For each person a space is provided, ample enough for
the name, the function, the address and even the remarks. Simple
authorities stick to this space. But some feel that they are
humiliated by this restriction of space, and so they spread
themselves out over two consecutive spaces. The one who wants to top
that writes his name, and cancels out the rest of the page with
diagonal lines. Some who feel that they owe it to themselves to
display their importance still more vividly will take a whole new
page, write their name in the middle, and cancel out all the space
above and below by diagonal and cancel cut all the space above and
below by diagonal lines. The highest authority in the book had
cancelled two pages before putting down his name on the third. There
is a story of a VIP book in which you find one name only, all the
rest cannot be used any more.

Modern times are making the exercise of authority more

difficult. Ideas about modern democracy clash with the ancient
concepts of authority. As for the Gospel, Jesus Christ himself

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decreed that among his followers the exercise of authority had to be

different from the way ordinary powerful people excercise it; this
means a big task for every region on earth to „evangelise„ its
concepts of authority before they can be applied to the Church. This
has proved a difficult task in many lands at many different times,
so we may expect it to be difficult here: how to combine the
“Servant-Authority” of a “brother” to the display of superior power.
Verbally everybody pays homage to democracy; in the history of
Europe this led to impossible expressions like “His Excellency the
Minister”. As for us here: will it be possible for many people to
renounce their authority freely, e.g. at the end of their term of
office? Will they not have to be unseated, either by removal from
above or a process from below that smacks of conspiracy? Is this why
we have coups and power play all over poor Africa? Authority is
power, power is life, and life goes until death.

As the young manager, technician, executive, expert, begin to

dominate our lives we sadly feel the absence of the old men who have
mellowed with age, who can be more detached, who have a great
resistance to the temptations of money, glory and personal ambition;
who have experienced how much we all need ng‟uono and who are at the
right age to give it.

However modern our authorities may be, they will find power-
sharing a very difficult thing, they will not easily permit
corporate responsibility. Delegating is evidently a horrible thing
to them, indicating loss of power: go to any office and nobody seems
to have a competent substitute who can do the work in the absence of
the boss. If the boss is on holiday for a month, his work stops for
a month, at least that is how we underlings experience it.
Consultation is another tough item it seems. The elders in former
days knew how to do it, how to listen to people: they knew that
consultation did not imply that their personal authority was
inadequate. There is still time to learn wise lessons from them.

Chapter 4 Cultural Changes

Clothes and Morals

In the month of September 1984 Kenyan Parliament had a

discussion about pornographic video-tapes. During that debate one
parliamentarian said: “Nakedness is un-African”. To Europeans who
used to refer to Western Kenya as “The great Unclad”, this may have
seemed a blatant denial of provable facts. Somewhere around that
same time two young luo ladies came back from a visit to Europe;

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they said that elderly Luo ladies would be scandalized if they went
to Europe and saw how immodestly – by Luo standard – the woman there
dressed. Again, many Europeans would have blinked their eyes in
disbelief, knowing that these elderly Luo ladies had themselves
walked about practically naked in their youth.

These examples make it clear that it is necessary to

distinguish between nakedness and immodesty: they are not the same.
Nakedness refers to the objectives absence of clothing whereas
immodesty refers to the intended amount of exposure. What the MP
meant to assert was that intended bodily exposure is rarer in Africa
than it appears to be in the West. And that is very true. However
little clothing African woman used to wear, they wear it very
carefully so as not to expose parts that have a sexual connotation.
And their breast were for the babies first of all: as it should be.
Europeans on the other hand tend to think that they are not immodest
because they wear a full ward-robe. They tend to forget that the
more clothes you wear, the more clothes you can take off: the more
refined ways of exposure you have at your disposal. Whereas if you
are practically naked and you then want to expose yourself, you have
to be an exhibitionist. And let us not forget that the European men
have stolen the breast from the babies for their own enjoyment.

Traditionally the rules of modesty were very strong here in

Africa. The near-nudity misled the early visitors from Europe. The
Missionaries, bringing a new religion and a new set of ethics , were
mesmerized by the people‟s nakedness. The Missionaries‟ home–ethics
were strongly centered on sexual ethics, and so the people‟s
nakedness suggested to them an alarming degree of sexual depravity.
At the same time they presumed that the undressed bodies were a
reflection of the minds: these too must be naked and empty, a
“tabula rasa”. Many Church-people became engrossed by problems of
sex and polygamy which was seen as a sexual problem. That there were
more disturbing weak sides to our people‟s culture escaped the new
educators because they were people‟s culture escaped the new
educators because they were convinced there was no culture worth
mentioning; and the sexual problems were big enough anyway. Few
whites investigated our people‟s culture and so the new educators
missed important insights.

Our people have strong rules of sexual ethics, stronger at

least than in Europe; and they have an important culture that may
prove to be a blessing to the rest of the world once it becomes
known and appreciated.

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Money

Money is not yet a hundred years old. In the days before money
appeared, property and land shared much more than at present, held
in common by the members of the extended family and the clan.
Everybody contributed a share, everybody received a share. There was
security in the common bond, and relative affluence was the result.
Nobody went hungry unless the whole group went hungry. People in the
group were vulnerable in as far as they relied on nature so much;
but then, nature did not let them down very often; and it also
yielded many secrets that led to cures of suffered ills.

Money changed all that. It enabled a single person to take his

possession in one hand, close his fingers around it and say: “it is
mine”. The most important aspect of clothing was the fact that it
had pockets in witch a person could hide his money and carry it
around. A great individualization of possession took place. But the
new possessors still had to learn the grammar and syntax of money.
This is a serious thing: if you do not know the laws of money, it
will rule you mercilessly: there is no ng‟uono in money. And even if
you do know the laws of money it may overcome you, but you can at
least take precautions. It takes very long for a people to learn the
ins and outs of money.

Not only did the individuals take money, the whole economy was
switched over to a money-economy. That meant ultimately that all
things, and even values, became interchangeable with money. From
then on money was needed for government (tax), education (school),
appearing in public (clothes), travel (bus), and for getting your
rights (favours). People began to sell their things to get money:
their agricultural products, the produce of their life-stock, their
fish. One effect of this was that the people‟s menu impoverishes.
This again had a considerable effect on the health of the small
children. Traditionally there was no special children‟s food apart
from the mother‟s milk; the children just got a small portion of the
adult‟s food. This had always ensured a varied diet; but once the
adult diet had been reduced to “posho” and some greens, the small
children were in great danger of malnutrition.

People have not really learned yet how to handle money well.
Just as they have not yet mastered the new areas of technique and
scientific organization well enough. The tragic thing is that these
are precisely the areas where our people meet persons of other races
who are very much at home in these matters, Thus expatriates
invariably meet the local people in a position where the latter are
still weak and not rarely inadequate. This is bound to account for a

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lot of unsatisfactory racial relations and persistent inferiority

complexes.

Mathematics

Talking about technique, it would seem that the ordinary man‟s

attitude to measurements is different from the way a European feels
about them. When a European has acquired knowledge about something,
he is convinced that there is “adequatio mentis and entis” – what
you establish in your mind is equally valid in reality. Thus, if you
calculate measurements correctly they will be necessarily applicable
to the concrete things, both in the parts and in their totality. It
seems that our Luo workmen are not so sure of that. They are not
completely confident that if all the parts are correct, the total
too will be correct. Rather than first making all the parts and then
fit them together they will make one part first, and then fit
another part to it, correcting as they go along. Or they will take
rough measurements first for the parts, and after assembling them
cut off the superfluous bits. This attitude will make mass-
production impossible and industrial work difficult.

Literacy

Contrary to what is normally hold, we do not think that

illiteracy is synonymous with ignorance and deprivation. Illiteracy
is an aspect of oral culture, denoting the absence of the written
word. To that corresponds a bigger prominence of the memory.
Illiteracy does not seem to be a big handicap in the learning of
foreign languages. Certain aspects of illiteracy endure even after
people have learned to read and write. People‟s house may remain
illiterate for a long time: there will be no room for books, no
place for writing, and papers will get lost. This is one of the
reasons why it is so difficult to start something like a lending
library.

The absence of paper is felt very widely. One literate use

of paper is: overcoming a weakness of the memory called forgetting.
In our illiterate culture the factor of forgetting is often
incorporated into the system. A notable example of this is when
people borrow money, or something else. At the moment of borrowing
one premises most solemnly to give everything back. The first few
installments are indeed given back. But as time goes on, the
sharpness of the obligation to return everything weakens, and the

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parties begin to forget a bit about the debt. No, they do not quite
forget: the act of friendship is remembered, and the remaining debt
is transformed into a debt of friendship and gratitude, and when at
any point in the future the lender is in trouble, he can turn to the
borrower for assistance. It works somehow. When people are used to
it, the introduction of paper and literacy can lead to disasters:
the debts are written down and retain their horrible character.
Paper knows no ng‟uono. One day the police may suddenly turn up and
take all your cattle and even furnitures away. It is, however,
difficult to see how you can run a modern banking system on the old
habits.

Peacefulness and Freedom

Kenya has made a colossal jump into modern times. It is hard to

believe that there is continuity between what was here in 1887 and
what is here in 1987. The Kenyans congratulate themselves with this,
and they have every right to do so. The history of the last hundred
years shows that our people have a real talent for making good use
of difficult situations. Of course the country has become heavily
dependent on outside forces. But that is true of every modern
nation: not one of them is really independent. There is no purpose
in continuing the lamentation about the colonialists„ exploitation.
What has happened has happened, and we must try to make the best of
it, and use it to our advantage, and not turn it into excuse for our
own failings. Historical facts often have an inevitability about
them. Thus one of the contributing factors for the colonial
occupation was, strangely enough, the peaceful character of our
forefathers. Our people did not care to develop heavy armaments. The
spear, the shield, the bow and arrow sufficed. Only the Masaai (and
the Nandi in imitation) developed a heavy weapon that was capable of
destruction: the phalanx. The advantage of this light armament was
that there were only small wars and no big conquests, no kingdoms or
empires to be established. The disadvantages were serious though.
Our tribes found it very difficult to protect themselves against
marauders with a couple of guns,like slave-raiders. Except for the
Masaai and the Nandi. Slavery had an immediate link with
defenselessness. Again, no strong clear nations were built, just
scattered groups of families in a crazy pattern; no “logical”
borders could be established even if somebody had wanted to do it.
Consequently our present nations struggle with border problems,
powerful groups of aliens and lack of national identity. Violence on
a big scale never played a part in our people‟s effort at nation
building, and that is how our country got its identity. It is to be
hoped that people manage to retain their peaceful quality in the
face of modern and international provocation.

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A new Religion: Christianity

In the olden days our people had a religion that gave some kind
of satisfactory answer to the problems that arouse out of their
preoccupations: agriculture, fishing, hunting living together. The
modern times brought new and wonderful things: watches, asperines,
cameras, cars, democracy, progress. The old religion could in no way
comment on these new articles and their use. The people, who were
fascinated by these things, looked for the religion that could
comment on these things of progress and that was Christianity. And
just as the artifacts from Western culture were in many ways
superior to anything they had ever seen, they took it for granted
that the corresponding religion too would be superior. So everybody
who wants to be modern and opts for progress will also want to
become a Christian. Very soon almost everybody will be Christian.

In the olden days a person got his individuality from his clan.
The clan is disappearing, and the Civil Register is only just
starting. The Christian churches have taken over the task of the
clan and give a person his identity; the baptismal ticket is his
passport.

In its deepest kernel Christianity is not something modern-

European. It can supply African with counterweights against the pull
of to-day‟s technocratic Western civilization. With one proviso:
that Christianity does not sell itself to Western Technocracy, but
reverts to its ancient heart: the Gospel in its full original power.

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