Luo

By INGRID HERBICH

Joluo; also known in some early colonial documents and ethnographic texts as the "Nilotic Kavirondo" (not an indigenous term).

The Luo homeland is an area of over 3,860 square miles (10,000 square kilometers) surrounding the Winam Gulf on the northeast end of Lake Victoria. Most of this area is in the Nyanza Province of Kenya, but a portion extends into northern Tanzania. A number of Luo also live in the urban centers of Nairobi and Mombasa. The Luo area is composed of three concentric climatic and vegetation zones that extend outward from the Winam Gulf. The first is an arid coastal plain from about 3,608 to 3,936 feet (1,100 to 1,200 meters) in elevation with an erratic annual rainfall of 20-40 inches (50-100 centimeters) and savanna vegetation. The second is an intermediate savanna zone up to about 4,592 feet (1,400 meters) in elevation with more than 45 inches (115 centimeters) of annual rainfall. The third region is a foothill zone up to about 4,920 feet (1,500 meters) in elevation with 59-69 inches (150-175 centimeters) of annual rainfall supporting a relatively lush vegetation. Periodic drought is common on the coastal plain, while the higher elevation zones generally receive enough precipitation during the "short rains" period to support a second cropping season.

Figures from the 1989 Kenyan census for which ethnic affiliation data are available indicate that there were 2,653,932 Luo at that time, or 12.38 percent of the total population of Kenya. More recent estimates are difficult given the uncertain demographic effects of AIDS and other factors over the last decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century; however, assuming a projected total Kenyan population of around 30 million people in 2001 and a constant ratio, the total Luo population in Kenya would be approximately 3.7 million. The Luo population in Tanzania has been estimated at approximately 223,000.

Dholuo is the language of the Luo. It is classified as a Nilotic language within the Western (or "River-Lake") Nilotic branch of the Chari-Nile family. The most closely related languages to Dholuo are those of the Padhola and Alur of Uganda. Among the Luo there are several internal regional variations in vocabulary and pronunciation, with the inhabitants of much of Siaya District (especially the JoAlego) considered significantly distinctive by inhabitants of the other Luo districts.

According to reconstructions based upon oral history, the various lineages that constitute the modern Luo settled their current homeland in Kenya in an extremely complex and lengthy series of migrations that began in the late fifteenth or sixteenth century and continued through the end of the nineteenth century. Nyanza was previously occupied by Bantu-speaking peoples who were both absorbed and displaced by the several streams of infiltrating Luo. The early Luo settlers first entered the portion of Nyanza that lies north of the Winam Gulf (the current Siaya District) from eastern Uganda as part of a series of migrations of Nilotic-speaking peoples (Padhola, Acholi, Alur, etc.) out of southern Sudan. By the mid-eighteenth century, several Luo groups expanded out of this area and spread over South Nyanza as well. This whole process involved sequential displacements of earlier Luo settlers and Bantu groups by later arrivals, as well as the assimilation of many Bantu groups. The nineteenth century witnessed the most aggressively militaristic phase of expansion, especially into lands held by Bantu (Luyia) groups to the north. These ongoing population movements were halted by the imposition of British colonial control at the end of the nineteenth century when the territories of the various Luo subgroups at that moment were cartographically inscribed as the boundaries of the administrative sub-districts.

The regional settlement pattern consists of individual patrilineal and patrilocal extended family homesteads scattered over the landscape without any larger traditional concentrations of population (although the multi-ethnic lake port city of Kisumu was established in Luo territory during the colonial period, as were a number of small administrative and market centers). Each homestead (dala; plural (delni) is occupied by an extended (usually polygynous) family. A man must always marry in the homestead of his father, rather than that of his grandfather; consequently, when a man's eldest son is ready for marriage, he will move out from his father's dala; and found a new one of his own. Thus, each homestead has a three-generation life cycle. When the last of the original inhabitants of a homestead has died, the settlement (now called gunda; plural gundni) will be left fallow for a period and then used as farmland by the sons of the former head of the homestead. The landscape also shows traces of significantly larger gundni with earthen ramparts (gunda bur) dating to the nineteenth century and earlier. In South Nyanza, there is also evidence of large gundni surrounded by stone walls called okinga. A gunda bur is identified by the name of an ancestor-inhabitant and they frequently serve as anchors for lineage claims to territory.

Each dala is bounded by a euphorbia hedge-fence and the houses are arranged in a highly ordered pattern on the interior. The spatial and temporal organization of the Luo homestead is a complex symbolic representation of the genealogical structure and the relations of authority in both the homestead and society. Lines of structural opposition and alliance between co-wives, and within the broader kinship and political system, are correlated with house placement on alternating sides of the homestead. Relations of seniority and authority are also represented and naturalized through temporal sequences of house construction, repair, and a host of daily activities and rituals that take place in the homestead.

Luo subsistence depends upon a mixture of agriculture, animal husbandry, and fishing. Subsistence agriculture is performed almost exclusively by women in scattered multiple small plots in the general neighborhood of the homestead. Primary agricultural production to feed her family is considered the duty of every rural Luo wife, and there is little dependence on purchased food (aside from small-scale "target" selling and buying of foodstuffs at the local markets and the purchase of a few imported items such as tea, sugar, and salt). Hoe agriculture is predominant, but ox-plows are found in some areas. The primary grain crops include sorghum, maize, and millet; cassava and sweet potatoes are major root crops. Sorghum and cassava are especially valued for their resistance to drought. These starches are complemented by various kinds of beans, lentils, and greens. In the higher elevation zone bananas are also grown. The early Luo settlers in Kenya had a pastoralist orientation, and cattle have remained very important as a symbol and unit of wealth; they have long been, for example, the central component of bride-wealth exchanges (now augmented or partially replaced with cash). The cattle are generally eaten only in the context of feasting rituals, but their milk forms an important part of the ordinary diet. Sheep, goats, and chickens are a less valuable and somewhat more commonly consumed source of meat. Fish of several types and sizes (tilapia, Nile perch, etc.) are also a much-appreciated source of protein. They are caught in the waters of the Winam Gulf and traded throughout the market system.

The Luo were forcibly drawn into a monetary economy at the beginning of the twentieth century by the colonial imposition of "hut" taxes designed to stimulate a supply of native workers for the farms of English colonists and for railroad construction. In fact, the most important source of cash has continued to be migratory wage labor by Luo men, such that about a third of middle-aged Luo men live outside the Luo area at any given time. The Luo have been notoriously resistant to cash cropping, especially in Siaya District. However, small-holder cash cropping of tobacco, cotton, sunflowers, coffee, peanuts, and a few other items is somewhat more prevalent in parts of southern Nyanza and the area around Kisumu. Large sugar plantations exist in the area north of Kisumu, but these are owned by outside agents who employ Luo workers. Other commercial activities oriented more toward a local market include such things as fishing, the sale of beer and chang'aa (an illegal distilled liquor), and motor-transportation services (especially the running of matatus, or "bush taxis").

Luo artisans make a wide variety of crafts that are largely consumed locally rather than directed toward a tourist market. Pottery is a thriving craft performed entirely by women. Less than 1 percent of all women are potters, yet they manage to supply nearly all Luo homes with a diverse range of forms to serve a common set of cooking, serving, and storage functions. Potters live in clusters of homesteads centered around clay sources scattered throughout the Luo area and they sell pots at local markets. Other local craft products sold at markets include baskets (for storage, food-processing, eating, and fishing, etc.), forged iron goods (agricultural tools, ornaments, etc.), and such things as ropes, brooms, reed mats, wooden tool handles, and oil lamps made from recycled cans.

A system of regular periodic markets exists throughout the Luo area and serves as a focus for both trading and social activities. This system developed in the early twentieth century out of the prior practice of sporadic famine markets under the influence of the developing cash economy. Markets serve as centers for the exchange of local crafts and foodstuffs as well as for the distribution of imported goods (e.g. clothing, kerosene, salt, plastic and metal containers). However, they do not usually serve as major collection points for large amounts of local produce flowing out to distant urban or international markets. The Luo do trade with neighboring peoples at border markets, and they are, for example, major suppliers of pottery to the Kisii/Gusii and some other non-Luo groups. Moreover, some of these products are distributed further afield by middleman traders.

The primary division of labor is gender-based. Subsistence agriculture, childcare, cooking, arid domestic maintenance are all female tasks. Women are also the primary or exclusive contributors to several kinds of craft production (especially pottery), although men contribute to some crafts (e.g. basketry) and are the exclusive producers of others (e.g. iron working). Men are the predominant ritual, political, and oral history specialists. In the pre-colonial era they were also the warriors. External wage labor and cash cropping also tend to be predominantly male activities. Market traders, on the other hand, are predominantly women, but men are also involved in the selling of some items, especially goods coming from outside the Luo area.

According to Achola Pala's ("Women's access to land", 1983) calculations, the majority of women work between three and five small, scattered parcels of land totaling 4-11 acres (1.5-4.5 hectares) but spread over a wide area. However, this system has been subjected to various kinds of pressure from increasing population density (hence land shortage), and from land tenure reform programs implemented by the colonial and, especially, postcolonial states. The goal of the reform programs is primarily to consolidate land holdings and register individual title to land. The effect has been to transform land into an alienable commodity in a system of almost exclusively male individualized ownership with little concern for women's access to it. The sale of land for cash has created serious moral tensions as well as sometimes leaving aged mothers and widows landless.

The traditional system of land tenure was one in which land was corporately held by patrilineages and was not individually alienable. This included farmland, pasture, water, firewood, and clay sources. Women received usufruct rights to agricultural plots and other resources by virtue of their husband's membership in a patrilineage. These rights were distributed among the women of a homestead by the husband or senior co-wife (mikayi), and they depended upon various dimensions of seniority relations.

Kinship has a powerful role in structuring Luo social life, identity, and politics, as well as the landscape. Luo maximal lineages (dhoudi; singular dhoot), sometimes called "clans" in the anthropological literature, are exogamous land-holding units. Descent is patrilineal and women remain members of their father's lineage after marriage. A cluster of maximal lineages occupying a distinct territory (piny) is called oganda (plural ogendi). These clusters are often referred to as "sub-tribes," or even, by one source, Evans-Pritchard (1949), "tribes." All these groups claim descent from a common ancestor named Ramogi. Their genealogical relationship to each other is a product of a long and continuing history of fluid segmentation of lineages. Each co-wife's house (ot) in a polygynous homestead is seen as the potential kernel of a future lineage. A person's identity is viewed as depending upon nested membership in the family of a particular father (jokawuoro) and grandfather (jokakwaro) within some distinct minimal lineage that is a segment of a given dhoot and oganda.

The Luo are markedly polygynous in both ideology and practice. Post-marital residence is patrilocal in the strictest sense of the term: that is, the wife goes to live with the husband in the homestead of the husband's father. Marriage involves a protracted series of exchanges and ceremonies between the families of the bride and groom, and most crucially the payment of substantial bride-wealth to the bride's family. Formerly, this involved cattle (and, in the pre-colonial era, iron hoes); now it involves cattle and cash. Once bride-wealth has been paid, the children produced by the marriage are considered to belong to the husband's lineage. Divorce necessitates a return of bride-wealth. Marriage is not simply an individual affair: it establishes an enduring relationship of mutual obligations between affines that can be invoked for aid in times of hunger or other need.

The basic domestic unit is the polygynous household. Each co-wife must have her own house (ot) in the homestead (dala) occupied by the patrilineal polygynous extended family. The husband, considered the wuon dala (head of the homestead), rotates among the houses of his wives for eating and sleeping, although he often has a small independent house (duol) for entertaining other male guests. Each house, occupied by a woman and her children, also has its own granary and is responsible for raising its own subsistence, although there is often a great deal of cooperation among co-wives or neighbors in labor of various kinds.

Inheritance is patrilineal. Sons inherit cattle and other forms of wealth, as well as rights to the land of the father's gunda, from their father. A woman generally does not inherit wealth from her father or husband: the property of the husband passes to his brothers. Women do sometimes inherit small household items from their mothers-in-law.

Caring for young children is shared by mothers, grandmothers, and older siblings. By the end of the twentieth century, school also played an important role in socialization. From the time they reach the age of puberty until they marry, boys live together in a house called samba just inside the main gate of the homestead. For women, who typically marry young (traditionally before age sixteen), there is a great deal of post-marital re-socialization in which the mother-in-law plays an authoritative role. The spatial organization of the settlement itself has an important part in channeling the flow of social relations and inculcating beliefs and attitudes about proper behavior, authority, and relationships. The Luo have no formal initiation rites to mark the transition to adulthood and they are not circumcised. However, until the 1970s it was a common practice to extract six lower front teeth at some point in the pre-adult phase of the life cycle.

Generational time structures relationships between individuals within lineages or lineage segments. For example, two males of identical chronological age may stand in the relationship of either "brothers" or of "father" and "son," depending upon the temporal depth of their genealogical connection. This structural relationship will have a great deal to do with the behavior considered appropriate between the two and will have much more to do with determining seniority than the relative times of birth.

Lineage membership is the primary structuring principle of social organization. The distant past is perceived as the history of successive segmentation of patrilineages from a common Luo ancestor (Ramogi) resulting in a dendritic system of connections among all Luo lineages. Membership in a lineage implies a specific social distance from all other Luo lineages which is calculated on the basis of the temporal distance of the segmentation event. This temporal and social distance has practical significance in structuring personal interaction, as it determines whom one can marry, where one can expect political allies, with whom one is expected to share, whose funerals one must attend, where one has rights to land, and other relations.

Although at the beginning of the twenty-first century they live with an administrative system of local "chiefs" imposed by the British colonial government and continued by the postcolonial Kenyan state, the Luo have traditionally had a strongly egalitarian political ethos and lacked centralized authority. They do, however, have an indigenous term, ruoth, that is used to refer to modern chiefs. In the precolonial era this term more likely meant something closer to "leader" or "man of influence" than to the institutionalized political role it has come to signify. However, oral histories indicate that the degree to which individuals in the past were able to transform their informal influence within councils of elders into naturalized positions of authority and power varied somewhat from region to region. Traditionally, there was no pan-Luo centralized political authority or formal political hierarchy. Rather, the Luo are considered to be a classic example of a segmentary lineage system with fluctuating ad hoc alliances among lineages structured by genealogical distance between the disputants. The modern administrative boundaries within Luo territory, which were defined during the colonial era, effectively froze into static form what had previously been a series of highly dynamic factional and territorial struggles between competing subgroups organized according to lineage affiliation and military expediency.

Belief in witchcraft and the potentially lethal supernatural consequences of violating cultural codes has been a powerful traditional force for social control. In this strongly egalitarian society, ostentatious accumulation of riches and deviation from the obligation to share are thought to provoke jealousy and the attention of witches, resulting in sickness and death. Moreover, violation of a range of cultural practices (especially temporal sequences of ritual acts that emphasize relations of seniority and authority and codes of personal interaction between classes of kin and affines) is thought to result in a state of supernatural illness called chira, that can be fatal, sometimes for entire families, if not expiated through appropriate rituals.

In the precolonial period, the arbitration of disputes within the smallest local territorial unit, the gweng, was handled by a council of elders (jodongo). The possibility to become an influential leader in this context required the building of prestige and moral authority, and these qualities were acquired from several possible sources. The most immediate criteria were genealogical position and the strength of the lineage: the most genealogically senior member of the dominant lineage of the gweng had responsibilities to settle disputes within the gweng, and he met with other similar leaders to attempt to resolve disputes between gwenge. Disputes that could not be settled peacefully were resolved by fission and migration, or by armed conflict. Pragmatic alliances often formed in which strong lineages would secure the support of weaker jodak (tenant) lineage groups that had settled in their territory after being forced out or fissioning elsewhere. Chiefs appointed by the Kenyan state now fulfill many of these local conflict mediation roles and the law courts are the locus of higher level disputes.

From the late fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, the Luo, in the course of their southward migration and intrusion into the territory of Bantu-speaking peoples, were frequently engaged in armed conflict. There was little to distinguish internal and external fighting since in the segmentary lineage system fighting could be directed at one time against other Luo lineages (such as the earlier settlers) and at other times it would be against Bantu speakers. Fighting mostly ceased with the imposition of British colonial rule. With the exception of occasional isolated skirmishes, territorial disputes have since been displaced into the court system and the legislature. A number of Luo men were also drawn into larger conflicts when they were conscripted into the British colonial army during World Wars I and II.

Religion among the Luo exhibits a complex creative hybridity of traditional beliefs and practices and those imported by Christian missionaries of a wide range of competing sects. Both Catholic and Protestant missions of European and American origin have been active in the area since the end of the nineteenth century. Even more numerous are the independent African churches (of which over 220 are officially registered in Kenya) that have splintered off from the Euro-American churches. Many of these independent churches actually originated among the Luo and they are extremely popular. Nearly 90 percent of Joluo are professed adherents of Christianity in one or another of these manifestations. The charismatic independent churches, such as Roho and Legio Maria, often incorporate traditional Luo beliefs in such things as spirit possession with Christian symbols and practices. However, even adherents of the more orthodox Euro-American Christian churches often see no contradiction in maintaining or adapting traditional beliefs and practices. On the other hand, churches of both types sometimes target specific traditional elements (e.g. drinking) for prohibition as a way of positioning themselves as a force capable of, for example, liberating people from witchcraft. Traditional beliefs include various forces called juogi (spirits), tipo (shadows), and kwere (ancestors), which can act positively or negatively, as well as a creator or life force god (Nyasaye or Were).

Traditional religious practitioners include several kinds of witches, sorcerers, or magicians and diviners. These go by various names depending upon their attributes. Those who use medicines are called jobilo. They are feared and respected for their powers of divination and their ability to use killing magic on enemies. Ajuoge is a more general term for witches or sorcerers, while jopuok is used for "nightrunners" and those (usually women) who have the power to cause sickness through the "evil eye" (sihoho). Witchcraft and magical powers can be inherited or learned, depending upon the circumstances and type of powers. The independent African churches have a range of parallel religious specialists (priests, bishops, popes, prophets, etc.) derived from the Christian tradition. Leadership roles in these churches tend to be predominantly male, while church membership is predominantly female.

The largest and most ostentatious Luo ceremonies are funerals. These can last for several days, during which time the host family must supply a large gathering of kin and affines with a steady supply of food and beer. The ritual involves a parade of the cattle owned by the deceased and a great feast accompanied by dancing and praise songs. A person's prestige can be measured by the number of people who attend his or her funeral. There are a host of other important ceremonies that are less elaborate than funerals, including marriage, twin-birth rituals, rites for establishing a new homestead, and harvest festivals. These all involve feasts with beer (and often chang'aa).

Oratory is one of the most admired and highly developed arts among the Luo. This includes the ability to tell stories and proverbs, to engage in formal praise speeches, and to marshal eloquent skills of political persuasion. There are also professional musicians who play the nyatiti (a plucked string instrument) to accompany songs that include both praise and witty satire of patrons and other influential men. Dancing also plays an important part in most festivities and rituals. Among the plastic arts, potters and basket-weavers are notably skilled.

The Luo have a rich lore of herbal and other natural medicines. Some plants and their uses are known by everyone. Others (especially those used for harmful magic) are the domain of specialists (jobilo). Much curing is also done, after divination of the causes, by rituals that are not based upon plant medicines.

The ancestors are a strong force in the life of the living. The spirits of the dead can be very dangerous if they have died under troubled circumstances or if they have been offended by the behavior of the living. However, they can also be a positive force. Children are often renamed after an ancestor who appears in a dream or who is invoked by a diviner. Most Luo also hold views of death and the afterlife influenced by their participation in Christian religions. Adults are buried within the homestead, while infants and those who have died in some spiritually dangerous luminal state may be buried outside the settlement. It is imperative that even those Luo who live in distant cities be brought back to their homestead for burial out of their own house. The famous legal dispute following the death of S. M. Otieno in 1985 (in which his non-Luo wife objected to his being returned to his homeland for burial) is a dramatic demonstration of the force of this belief and of the potential conflict between traditional law based upon collective rights and the law of the state based upon individual rights.

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