Where a murder victim is buried with panga, torch

Murder in the Luhya community attracts wrath both from the law and elders of the land, who ensure harsh punishments are meted on the killer to dissuade similar acts from the community.

A murder victim is also not buried in the normal routine. The whole process must be accompanied by harsh actions both on the part of the deceased and the killer.

The nature of punishment and respective actions, however, depends on whether or not a person was killed by a relative, an outsider or unknown persons.

Luhya elder Sindani Matekwa says all the rites have been passed down to them from their forefathers and must be upheld to dissuade community members from thinking they have the right to kill and get away scot-free.

Despite all these traditional actions, Matekwa says the law must still take its full course in case one is found guilty of murder.

KILLED BY STRANGERS

In the case where a person is found to be deceased and the killers are unknown, the elder says the deceased must be buried with ‘weapons of war’ to enable him to identify his killers and eliminate them by himself.

Such a person must equally be buried at night due to the ruthless rituals involved. Rituals that must be conducted by the most elderly man in that community.

Matekwa says the deceased must be buried with a brand new and well-sharpened panga in their left hand and a brand new torch in their right hand.

The logic is that, since the human eye doesn’t know their exact killers, they are to use the torch to look out for their killers and then use the panga to kill them.

The torch, as the elder puts it, will be switched on just moments before the casket is lowered into the grave.

Before the deceased is buried, the elderly member will normally summon other elders of the family and together, they will pronounce the harshest of curses, mostly asking the deceased to never slumber and instead hunt down his killers and ensure they are dead.

“They will also be telling them things like, 'We don’t know who killed you but you will definitely know because you have now grown special eyes by death. Don’t ever rest but rather look back on those who killed you and finish them',” he says.

This explains why the deceased must also be buried while lying on their side in the coffin like in the military.

“Once those are done, the torch is switched on and the actual burial begins as the curses continue. The elders will normally speak in a very bitter undertone to signify their anger,” Matekwa says.

Previously, they would ask the deceased to go into the homes of killers. But now, they ask him to single out his killers wherever they are.

“We discovered that when we sent them to the killers’ homes, they would end up finishing everyone in the homes, including innocent people. So nowadays, we tell them to just go for the individual,” he says.

The head of the deceased must be made to face the entrance to the compound to enable him to whizz off easily to his mission to find his killers, or better still, easily spot them.

The grave of this person, as the elder puts it, must also not go up in a mound like a normal grave but must be flattened.

A sheep is then slaughtered and the family is made to step onto the innards to lock out bad spirits and stop the spirit of the deceased from haunting them.

MURDERED BY RELATIVE

This is a scenario where a person, man or woman, is killed by their own blood relative who could be a child, spouse, cousin, sibling or parent.

Whenever a murder is reported, the killer normally flees or is captured and handed over to the police, while in some even cases, some will even hand themselves in.

Elder Elkana Shivanda says any person who has been in this manner must be buried at night and not during the day as with other normal deaths.

The night burial signifies the heaviness of the heart and also allows for stringent rituals, which he says cannot be performed during daytime as whatever happens then is not for everybody’s eyes.

All this while, only the uncles of the deceased are allowed to prepare the body and handle it all the way from the morgue to the final burial rites.

“Uncles and aunties in our community are held in high esteem because we believe they carry the blessings and curses of our ancestors, which they deliver rightfully depending on the situation at hand,” Shivanda says.

Once night falls on the day of burial, the uncles and elderly men of the community gather around the casket of the deceased person, during which they will ‘speak’ to him and ask him or her to do them several favours.

At this point, they will utter some words, which mostly comprise curses, to shoo away the spirit of murder and premature death from the family.

“They will apologise to the deceased and acknowledge that they are aware they were killed,” Shivanda says.

“They will ask him or her to forgive what was done to them and concentrate on the journey ahead. They will also rebuke his spirit so that it doesn’t come back to haunt or seek justice.”

Shivanda says the deceased, though dead, still hears them, and there has never been a scenario in the community where he went contrary to what he was asked of.

“We must do that because if we don’t, the spirit will most likely cause similar occurrences and since it’s a family member who killed them, the objective is normally to keep the family intact but with a lesson learned,” he adds.

While all these rites are taking place, the elder says all young people, newlyweds, children and pregnant women must never be present to witness the actual burial or the curses being pronounced.

“Every other ear apart from that of the deceased and of the elders administering the ritual will be regarded by the deceased as the enemy and will definitely be haunted by him.

A pregnant woman will go on to have a killer or their baby will grow to be a victim of murder in future if she insists on eavesdropping on the process.

The uncles will then lower the casket into the grave as they continue with the curses after which the grave will immediately be covered with soil.

However, as Sindani explains, while your normal grave will rise and form a mound, a murder victim’s grave must be flattened and hidden from plain sight.

“It was not a natural death so his grave must equally appear as unnatural as possible since we don’t want a constant reminder of that, so we flatten the grave totally. Sometimes, we even plant grass so that people won’t even know it’s there,” Shivanda adds.

Once the burial is done, elder Luka Mukabane says the uncles will demand a sheep from the family and together with the family of the deceased, they will all head out to the nearest village stream for yet another ritual.

Once at the river, the uncles must locate a spot in the stream where the water makes bubbling noises as it flows downstream.

“They must listen out for the bubbling point after which they will slaughter the sheep facing the bubbling but just on the banks of the river,” Mukabane says.

Once the sheep is slaughtered, the intestines are pulled out and the contents milked out, after which all the family members will be made to step in and out one at a time.

“The bubbling river signifies the fact that the deceased is still bubbling with life. It also means calling the spirit of the deceased to calm and asking them to follow the bubbling sounds and find their peace,” Mukabane adds.

He says the families stepping on the innards is meant to clean and purify them from any omen that might have been attracted to them through the death of their kin and also to stop the deceased from haunting them.

After that, the family will be led out of the stream by the uncles and back home, where more herbs will be sprinkled on the doorways, water, and around the compound to shoo away the spirit of the deceased.

“As they leave the stream, they must be dead silent. No one must talk until all the final rites back home are done.

The following morning, the family resumes their normal routine and even the public is not allowed to come back to the home in the name of ‘mourning’.

Mukabane says not much happens in terms of burial rites when one is killed by a non-relative and that normally, elders will simply ‘ask’ the deceased to go well and not look back to haunt anyone.

THE KILLER’S PUNISHMENT

The consequences of killing one’s own relative among the Luhya is downright ex-communication, which applies to their families, too, in case they had spouses and children.

Luhya elder Isaiah Andanje says the one who flees after such an act must never return to the community, and his spouse and children are equally chased away and their homes burnt down.

If the killer is jailed, his relatives must follow him and make arrangements for him to be resettled elsewhere far from the community once he gets out of jail.

Andanje says while some flee to their mother's homes where the uncles allocate them land, a few lucky ones will have their relatives come together and buy them land in a different county, while others will simply rent.

“He can never set foot in that community again, neither will his family. Their houses are burnt,” Andanje says.

“They must never at any point share a plate of food with a person from the community, either knowingly or unknowingly, because they will die and so will the community member in question.”

Killing a non-relative, however, appears to carry a more lenient punishment for the male perpetrator in the Luhya community than the women.

The man is never excommunicated and his property is never touched and even when they go to jail, they come back to their families and continue with life.

“If they went to jail, when they come back, some herbs will be administered to keep them safe from being haunted by whoever they killed. After that, they go on with their lives,” he says.

A woman perpetrator, however, is normally chased away and will mostly flee to her parent’s home, where she will be allocated land far away from the rest of the community houses.

The woman in this case cannot live under the same roof with her parents. She will get a small house built for her in a far-off location but in the same land.

“Normally she will die alone because word has gone around and no one wants to marry her. She will also be given herbs to shoo away the spirit of whoever she killed, though,” Andanje says.

Once the male perpetrator dies, the funeral rites must incorporate a special dance called ‘Shilembe’ to remind the mourners that he once killed a non-relative soul.

“The dance must only be done by elderly men and women of the community who will dance from the marketplace to his compound, singing out loud that he killed an outsider. Normally, they must also drink to that,” he says.