Arts and Culture
Return of folk tales from Greek people of long ago
There is a master of the written word who follows no rules and takes no prisoners. He wears his skin as only a South Sudanese would and there is a fire in his eyes that even age cannot vicariate it smothering ember. I first met Taban Lo Liyong on the shelves of Kabarak High School library and soon I was rummaging through the aisles of shelves for anything with his name on it. When I found them, I hid the works in sections reserved for science books so I could go back and read them between classes. I didn’t understand him mostly, but I felt…
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Kateete’s portraits of history of tribes
Getting to Leonard Kateete’s home was not going to be easy with the legendary Rongai traffic woes. He had sounded amused that I would make the trip as if he was used to such games with every of his first time visitors. I had called him from a reference of a friend who understood our project and felt Mr Kateete fit the description of what we were looking for. He had been too busy but then he called back. I was doing another story so I mixed him up. “I am doing a story around the dollar…” and he let me go on to tell…
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Marriage in Rowo where Suba language is fast fading away
“Kijaluo ni chumbi (sic) ya samaki,” the old man spits it at me with a lisp that phonetically accompanies the signature tongue of the good people from the lakeside. Two of his calloused fingers hooked onto my forearm to insist on my paying attention. He is visibly drunk at the point of this eureka moment that he has stumbled on an answer to a question I asked five wise men a few hours earlier. Why no one spoke Suba anymore even amongst themselves? The wise men, five village relations, had been summoned to receive the dowry of our Suba-glittering-diamond Kakwe; from her enchanted Odiero of…
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Zen by the lake at Hippo Point, Kisumu
Nothing beats the sight of sunrays on water. It is like multiple mirrors, a kaleidoscope of reflections on ripples that wash outwards from the middle of somewhere unknown. It is like a mystery of warmth that fails to go beneath the surface of Lake Victoria and when you touch the water it is chilled. Watching the sunset at Hippo Point on Kisumu’s Dunga beach was one of my most relaxing, Zen moments that I would recommend any time. Visiting Kisumu City hundreds of miles away from the bustle of free-wheeling Nairobi you get the feeling that you are told not to rush things. For a…
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