US President Barack Obama talks with June Muli, head of Customer Care at
M-Kopa, about solar power during the Power Africa Innovation Fair in
Nairobi. Though US president advocates for women’s rights, like all men,
he had to go out and try to trace his true lineage. AFP FILE PHOTO |
SAUL LOEB
The male ideology of my clan, the Kaswanga clan of Rusinga
Island in Homa Bay County, features most prominently when an eminent
male member of the clan dies, especially during the much denigrated tero
buru ritual, in which we, equipped with our spears, drums, and shields,
among other paraphernalia, drive our cattle to Mbita point, the natural
boundary between us and our traditional enemies of Kasgunga, my
mother’s people, on the mainland side of the Mbita channel.
There,
screaming out our war cries, we point our spears at the enemies to let
them understand in no uncertain terms that if they had been responsible
for the death of our clansman they would have suffered the wrath of the
clan in its unabated fullness.
The
last time I participated in such a ritual was in the late 1970s when the
then Rusinga Senior Chief Semekia Wakiaga of the Kaswanga clan died
after a short illness in the wee hours of one of the most memorable days
in the history of the clan.
BROUGHT BACK MEMORIES
My interest in the event has to do with what I witnessed, certainly not for the first time, on our way back from Mbita.
As
we approached the border separating our clan from the neighbouring clan
of Wanyama, the women of our clan came to meet us wailing, ululating,
and singing reassuring songs that celebrated the greatness of the clan
in spite of the tragedy that had befallen us.
Of
the many accolades that they heaped on the clan, the most memorable was
their chanting of words that summarised the clan’s male ideology:
We,
the people of Kaswanga, are unrivaled cattle keepers and we have
winnowed women like millet, picking the very best of them all.
With our egos thus boosted by our women’s songs, we responded in unison by screaming out our war cries even louder.
However, nothing that came out of the clan women’s mouths was as important as the word ‘cattle’.
These animals were not only the bedrock of our economy. More importantly, they guaranteed the future of the clan.
It
was they, our cattle, that were the basis of our claim on the women
that we were proud of and the children that they brought forth. They
tilted the biological argument in our favour.
Essentially, biology gave equal share of our children to our clan and to the clans that our women had come from.
But
our cultural constitution settled the argument by putting the
children’s lineage in the clan of the owners of the animals that had
been used to pay the bride price of the children’s mothers.
That
is how our children became Kaswanga children, and not the children of
their mothers’ clans. In effect, this cultural provision put every child
in the father’s lineage.
The point
was driven home to me during a long-drawn-out court case involving the
paternity of a celebrated Kenyan boxer in the 1980s.
When
I told the story to my late father Elisafan Okombo Owuato, he was
unable to understand where the problem was. According to him, the matter
could have been settled in one sitting during their chief’s baraza
meetings.
ONLY TWO WITNESSES REQUIRED
There
were, he said, only two witnesses required: the boxer’s mother and her
father. The mother would tell the elders when the boxer was born, and
her father would tell them if by the date of the boxer’s birth (as given
by the mother) he (the mother’s father) has received cattle from any
man as bride-price for the boxer’s mother.
That would settle the matter: The owner of the animals would be declared the father of the child (the boxer).
To
be sure, there are situations where such matters are unclear or where
it is known that the biological father of the child has not paid any
bride price. However, as long as no other man or clan is claiming the
child, it is assumed that the father will one day pay the necessary
bride price and thus consolidate his (and his clan’s) claim on the
child.
It is this provision that
makes the people of Alego K’Ogelo (and by extension the people of Kenya)
consider President Barack Obama to be their child. Luckily, for the
people of Alego K’Ogelo, Americans (the people of Obama’s mother) do not
ask for bride price when their daughters get into relationships with
men.
Apparently, they also assume
that the child belongs to the father’s lineage, without any cultural
encumbrances that bring cattle into the equation.
Something
else emanates from these cultural provisions: the understanding that
the marriage between the parents of a child is located at the man’s
place, in this case Alego K’Ogelo.
This
means, in principle, that Obama has some space in the territory
occupied by his father’s people. Alego K’Ogelo is his home both
spiritually and physically.
It is
this understanding that gave me problems in trying to grasp the full
meaning of what one contributor to the Saturday Nation of August 1, 2015
had in mind when he claimed that Obama was an American in all senses.
How
could that be so when Obama himself was loudly celebrating at the
Kasarani stadium the fact that he was (still is) the first
Kenyan-American to become the president of the United States of America?
The
double-barrelled nature of Obama’s identity is only explainable in
terms of the cultural and ideological parameters summarised above.
The
long and short of this narrative is that, in spite of Obama’s strong
advocacy for women’s rights and opportunities in society, he still, like
the rest of us, acquiesces to the male cultural and ideological
underpinnings of our definitions of who we are and where we belong.
That is what makes him Kenyan and a member of the Alego K’Ogelo clan.
That,
too, in the American context, is what defines Jewish, Italian, Chinese,
and other double-barelled categories of the American identity.
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