The minority within the minority!

The initial root

Buda was a primary school teacher who was born of mixed parenthood. His father was a postmaster in Nairobi. That meant he grew up in town as well as being very much in touch with his rural home of Ugolwe. A flat place, Ugolwe has horizons stretching into the distance. The land is lush and green, well fed by good rains and a sun that burns down upon it all year round. Being close to the Yala River, and the Equator, the climate and soils are rich making it ideal to support the large herds of cattle of the people that lived there. 

Buda was a well-built man of average height, a boxer and volleyball player during his school days in Nairobi and the Nyanza province, which had left him solid and fit. Inside of this robust physique though, lived an artist’s temperament. Music was his first love and he played the guitar as if it was an extension of himself. It is true of some artists that in their past is an experience that closes conventional communication abilities which then come to find a new voice through creative expression. Perhaps Buda was one such person.

Buda’s father, Nyayiekka, was born in the early 1900s and so grew during the years that entrenched Britain’s colonial rule and the wide-ranging changes that came with it. He was a forerunner in many ways. As a postmaster his house was the first to have a tin roof in Ugolwe. Nyayiekka was also one of the first from his community to have a salaried job, something that was very uncommon among the nomadic herders during that time. Despite this though he was very much in touch with the ancient ways of his people even while starting to take the first steps into a new and foreign world.

Nyayiekka was later transferred to Yala, the administrative town near to Ugolwe. In the years he worked close to his ancestral home many children from the community would be invited into his house where they were fed and cared for. His salary meant that the family lived and ate well and were even able to share the extra in support of others. Those who became dependant on the selling of their labour to the foreign government were often left poorer having severed ties with the indigenous system of life that they were a part of. Things were made worse still when these people were removed from jobs inside of a relationship that was intrinsically unequal, they found themselves cut off from the ways of their people and now excluded from the one that they had surrendered to. It was the children of such families that were looked after by Nyayiekka and his wife, Dana Dom.

Nyayiekka was killed while still young, leaving the difficult duty of looking after six children, and the many others taken in when he was working, to Dana Dom and his three warrior sons. Because Nyayiekka was one of two children, his own father having been killed in his youth, and the only son, he had no brother to take over the responsibility for the care of his family, as was the custom of his people at the time.

The circumstances around Nyayiekka’s death remain unclear to this day but it was after a night of heavy drinking, one of many in fact, that his body was found. He was a good and caring man when sober, a man who carried the heavy responsibility of an important ancestral calling, but alcohol had the power to bring out something negative in him. Buda was not close to his father as the eldest child, instead he gravitated toward his mother and so he gladly took on the role of helping Dana Dom provide for the family after his father’s murder.

The Ugolwe are a minority, nomadic tribe, a hybrid of Nilotes and Bantu numbering less than one thousand. Their ancestral lands are in the western parts of East Africa, an area known as Gem, close to the ever-flowing Yala River. As I have mentioned, the land is fertile, able to sustain the large herds that are the core to their way of life. Cattle in particular are highly valued and are seen as part of one’s family, their lives are valued as much as any other. These sacred creatures are revered for their social role in the way of wealth, sustenance, and the ritual connection to the ancestors.

The Ugolwe are the smallest clan of all those that make up the Maasai. They are so small so as to almost be extinct though their spirit lives on. Added to this is that, for the Maasai, to take a husband or wife from another tribe is looked down upon. Ugolwe is an area where the Nilotes and Bantu have settled close to one another and so it was inevitable that, given time, they would intermix. It made them at the same time a nation of half-castes, not fully belonging to either, but also a point of unity in their representing a coming together of differing peoples.

The Nilotes and the Bantu have often been cast as adversaries in North and Eastern Africa, at times out of contestation over land usage, the Bantu generally being settled and agrarian while the Nilotes practice a more nomadic way. They trace a different ancestry, linguistic make up and even genetics, the Nilotes being a minority group having originated in the Nile Valley. Physiologically even, the Nilotes are among the tallest in the world, being darker skinned, slender with long limbs. They are characterised by the Highland Nilotes, the River Lake Nilotes, of which the Luo are one group, and the Plain Nilotes of which the Maasai are one.

The Bantu, who make up the largest of the native peoples of East, Central, Western and Southern Africa, are different in culture, language and social organisation, tending towards being settled and agrarian. Many of their ways are unlike those of the nomads. Historically, these differences were taken advantage of by foreign powers under the strategy of divide and rule, Sudan and Rwanda being good examples of the long-term effects of this.

Buda’s family grew up in a town despite coming from a native community whose way of life is at odds with settled, urban life. Names such as Nakuru, Naivasha, and Nairobi, among the major economic centres of East Africa, were established on land that the Nilotes were previously custodians of. This is land that was denied them inside agreements they were forced into signing with fingerprints. Were they ever aware of the true intentions of those scrambling for this continent called Africa? And so from the beginning of settlement and “civilization”, the Ugolwe, the Maasai and Nilotes, all minorities, were there.

Maasai was a name that had come to have a negative connotation amongst the city people. Amongst the settlers and foreign powers they were often held in esteem, taking on a mythical quality as warriors and nomads in the European imagination. This was perhaps tinged with guilt inside the knowledge the Maasai had been tricked out of their claim to the use of the land, and so their way of life, inside of treaties designed to this end. Among the other tribes in the city the Maasai were looked at with suspicion as they did not fully embrace its ways. They were competent in the urban spaces but not competitive, modern but also traditionalists.

The effect has been that they are competent in the city, often more so than other tribes, something naturally so as the land was familiar, ancestral, something they were already in tune with. With this ancestry had come an advantage, they knew its rhythms. They had fought and spilled their blood for it and they were also the first to be part of the labour force, enslaved or employed, whichever way you choose to look at it, during colonial times. Nyayiekka was one such example.

The Maasai, and the Ugolwe in particular, were staunch traditionalists, stubbornly holding onto the ancestral values, even while being among the first to learn and adapt to the new environments of the urban centres. This was something that also made them the object of envy. For the Ugolwe, being a minority within the Maasai, finding themselves on the border of the Nilotes and Bantu, and having their land chosen as the site of modern cities, they were familiar with the position of the minority in different ways. Despite this though, one result was that they became an unyieldingly communal people, always pushing on all sides to justify and hold a place for themselves. The Maasai are one of many such peoples across Africa and even the world, the Tuareg, San, Bedouin, Aboriginals, and American Indians, are others that come to mind.

I knew Buda, his family, the Ugolwe and this history because I am one with them and they are of me. The land, its people and the events around them all played their part in shaping of my life. This is part of my inheritance, my journey.

It is a curious thing time. People look at the past as the past and yet it is alive now as I tell this story, the same patterns playing out again and again just as the saying that is to do with the doomed history repeating itself. I have been reliving the moments of this past as an escape from taking on the present, the now, as is my, our, responsibility. This story is one of a kind, unique in script and cast, and yet at the same time it is the story of us all. It does not follow convention and order but then, when we truly look, does anything really ever?

After his father’s death Buda was schooled with money from the sale of an illicit local brew called achwaka or rachar. A wry part of the story is that he never drank alcohol all through the time I knew him. Maybe this had something to do with his father’s abuse of drink and the impact that it had on his own family. Having lost the man of the house and so being cut off from a monetary income, it was, ironically, this brew that helped the family survive.

The added irony is that this same system demonises such people and yet how many politicians, policemen, and lawyers are the product of such families, of such funding. I don’t know if Buda’s dislike of drink stayed with him until later because, before he was killed by the government of Kenya in 1994, I myself started having problems with politics and had to move before they had my life.

By this time Buda had a rather large family and his death affected its entire course, dramatically changing the lives of all involved. As everywhere else in the world, and mostly in the native communities, including the Ugolwe clan, no death is by chance and there must be a reason behind it. Modern man might say that death is a calling by God and still such things as a post mortem are necessary to ascertain the cause of God’s calling? The native inyanga or ajuoga (traditional healer) was always sought out for their oracle powers to help determine the reasons and causes of death. No wonder there were so many rituals to be performed in the event of a death. Experience had shown that a future effect occurs on the lives of the clan and community at large after death. It is true a lion does not just attack and kill, never!

Buda’s mother was a strong woman, small in size physically, but in stature it was as if she was squashed into such as small body. Dana Dom managed to find the strength to school Buda and his brother, Pesa Rakoyo, whose nickname was faru meaning rhino. Faru and Buda were very different in character. Faru was good in class and did not challenge his teachers or the school system, he chose hard work and compliance. As a result he was successful in achieving his goals. He was one of the best of conformists and a humble scientist, a field he loved. The last time I heard of him he was lecturing at a university in the Rift Valley.

Like the rhino, Faru did not bother with talk, he pointed towards his goal and executed without fuss or show. As a result the nickname was given him by his father, it was a praise name. Nyayiekka would boast about his son’s achievements to others whilst drinking himself to joy in the shebeens. Buda, by contrast, was very much his mother’s child. He was a musician, a guitarist, which was his pride. His gift was something he shared with many and always encouraged in his own family despite the fact that to be a musician did not carry much social standing. Even as the first child, a son, he was not close to his father and yet he took on his father’s responsibilities after his passing.

Buda and Faru did their best to support their other four siblings to finish school. Buda even went to the extent of selling njugu (ground nuts) while still in school, in support of his darling mother. As time past and the family grew in age, Buda and Faru continued assisting the family, even doing their best to place their siblings in work. Getting work for anyone in the country was easy for these two brothers in those times when who one knew was of greater benefit than what one knew.

This was just after Independence in the early 1960s, a time that was bringing great change and celebration to the continent as new nations were emerging from the foreign yoke. There were many vacancies to be filled by professionals and the beginnings of a different type of corruption was starting to set in. Understandably so, in a new and uncertain world families were looking after each other, there was shame to be had for a man who did not care for his brother. People fighting for scraps at the master’s table are bound to share amongst their own rather than with the strangers on either side, no matter how competent or deserving. This was the dawning and root cause of tribalism.

Employment in the new nation then was, and still is, dependent on who one knew or rather to whom one was related. This is the same as everywhere else in Africa and the world where life is modelled on the western definition. One has to prove to someone else, not to himself, that he can do something. That he can fit well into a certain defined box. From religion to economy one has to belong and so we shape and mould ourselves, however uncomfortably, to fit into these externally defined borders so as to be accepted.

Buda later trained at Maseno Teacher’s Training College in the province of Nyanza and as a young adult found a job teaching on a farm that was owned by the first installed president of the Bismarck-created Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. This was in Elburgon an extended village area that fell under the Nakuru District. In the Rift Valley Highlands, where the land is rich like Ugolwe and good for farming, it is able to support commercial farming and its extensive fields of wheat and maize. The school was one of the best in the province, being well resourced and serving the families of the many workers on the sizable Kenyatta farm.

Interesting that the families of the country’s colonial imposed leaders, Kenyatta, Moi, Biwott, Ole Kaparo, and Criticos, together own land that is larger than Rwanda, an entire country on its own! Kenya is not alone with the affliction. When we have millions of people staying in slums all around, can we say we are free and independent? It makes one wonder what did our Ken Sarowiwas, Thomas Sankaras, Dedan Kimathis, Steve Bikos and Chris Hanis die for?

Here, at Elburgon, Buda met and married the woman he loved. Queen, or Lizzy, as Buda always referred to her, was from a different Bantu tribe from the western province, the Luhya. While geographically close to the Ugolwe, the Luhya were Bantu, “from the other side”, whose ancestors, it is understood, migrated from central Africa. Their relationship was not taboo in these times of increasing tribalism but it was not easily accepted. The two cultures had lived along side each other for centuries, they were not strangers and, despite cultural differences, intermarriages did happen. Through this mixing the two tribes had even exchanged some customary practices.

Buda was playing music at the time when it was not considered to be a profession. He spent some time performing with Ochieng Kabaselleh whose music was a blend of local and Zairean music. Kabaselleh became something of a thorn in the side of the government and spent some years in jail on charges of subversion.

The story of how they first met was fondly told to me by the amazing Queen. They started dating when they met at a gig where Buda was performing. It was a village setting, the gathering place for the surrounding community, a ritual space even where various rites and rituals were performed. It was a space of communal gatherings and socialising. Buda had become something of a celebrity in the village through his music and this is one of the questions that was later raised by his family around Queen’s interest in him.

Their hearts clicked and they decided to pursue the emotion. Why Buda used to call her Lizzy is unknown to me but I believe it came from a song that Buda had written for her. Looking back, I wonder what their expectations were and if both were truly walking the same path from the beginning as things would go wrong despite them having raised a large family together. Were they sincere in their desire to be as one? It would later be shown that they were two different personalities suggesting that one, maybe even both, had compromised. Anyway, in their time together I believe they had done what they were supposed to.

Traditionally, marriages were not entered into lightly. They were not in the way of the modern institution, a union of two people, but one that involved entire families and even the ancestors on both sides. Much negotiation and preparation went into ensuring that they were lasting. Divorce was uncommon, unthinkable even, as once the agreement was made it had binding implications for all involved and so, when undertaken, there should be no party with any doubt.

Buda and Queen married in the traditional way but when two cultures collide each side wants to claim its ritual space. In the end however, it was Ugolwe that performed most of their rites with only a few of Queen’s customary processes being observed. Buda was the man and so his people’s ways were observed. 

Because marriage between the two tribes was uncommon and not fully accepted by either, there were a lot of accusations and suspicion around the intentions of both Buda and Queen. The families used perceptions and stereotype to level a range of accusations at the other when they were at odds. When it suited, one side would point fingers at Buda and the other at Queen. While uncomfortable, it was normal in a way, this was new territory and more about a fear of the unknown.

For example, Buda’s family often accused Queen of wanting to marry his status, the well-known musician and teacher, while the other side accused Buda of taking a learned woman that he would not be able to support. Queen was educated, something that was not the norm for a woman during those times, and a teacher. She was strong willed and able to stand on her own.

Buda’s sisters did not take well to Queen. Perhaps for these women it was the feeling of not having had a say or some control over their brother’s choice of woman. These are the things of a family and while they may not be friends, when faced with matters of great concern they were together as a family. There was not the kind of conflict that leads to bloodshed it was the natural order of things among extended families and in-laws.

This being said, I believe that if the families had gotten their way it is unlikely that Buda and Queen would ever have been able to marry. But they did and it was not without its reason.