Robert Odongo, 20, said that recently he visited a town outside Nairobi,
"and I started talking to people, and I would tell them my name, and and they
would immediately say, 'you are a Luo.' "
Odongo actually belongs to two tribes, the Luo and the Kikuyu. His
father, a Luo, and his mother, a kikuyu, married during an era when
inter-tribal unions were rare.
Odongo's uncles ostracised his father, a senior government engineer,
because he had married outside the tribe. In part because of that, Odongo
spent little time in Western Kenya, where his dad's family is from.
He went to his father's hometown for the first time in 1994. And that
was to bury him.
During holidays he noticed that many of his friends would be of visiting
family in rural Kenya. His family would be the only one in the neigorhood to
stay in Nairobi. It made him angry.
"I didn't get to know any of my cousins," Odongo said. "If they passed
me on that street, I would not know who they were."
Odongo does not speak his tribal tongue, does not eat Luo food, does not
listen to Luo music. Neither does he speak Hikuyu, or listen to kikuyu
music. He said he has spent a little more time with his kikuyu relatives in
recent years, but does not consider himself close to any of them.
In school Odongo was teased by fellow students who did not believe he
was tLuo. "They did not see how I would not know my mother tongue," said the
shy, gentle-mannered young man. "People would start talking in Luo, and I
would have to stop them and say, "Sorry, I don't speak Luo.' "
Mbugua Nguri, who is kikuyu, understands. He too never learned his
tribal language, a defidiency that bothers his father, Pius Nguri.
One recent afternoon, sitting beside his son near a gurgling swimming
pool and a patch of gorgeous orange and red and yellow flowers, Pius said: "I
have not told them to learn their mother language. I know that is wrong. It
is very wrong."
To Mbugua's silent nod, the father added: "You will start working on it
tomorrow."
Pius, 54, is one of Kenya's most successful businessmen. He has his
hands in coffee farming, candy manufacturing, nut processing, dairy farming,
and wine making. He employs 4,000 people.
The Ngugis live in a vast white house with a rose garden, three cars, a
basketball hoop, a squash court and a steam bath. On a recent afternoon,
Pius wore a Reebok T-shirt and cowboy boots; his wife, Josephine, sported
Ferragamo shoes and headband; and Mbugua wore a gray T-shirt with Ralph
Lauren sweat pants.
Pius, a deliberate man with a serious teddy-bear face, does not
apologize for his affluence. But, he worries that his children's lack of
rural grounding has robbed them of important lessons.
" Probably the only thing he has missed is that he does not know how to go
without food," the father said. Next to him, Mbugua munched cakes, sipped
tea and nodded.
"There are so many children here in Kenya that have gone without food,"
Pius said. "It is good for someone to know this. You must feel [hunger] to
know that this happens. Hunger is why somebody kills for 10 shillings [20
cents]. You understand our people. Otherwise, you think they are all
animals.
His anxiety is not uncommon. Middle-class and well-off parents worry
that their children have lost an important sense of community and a host of
rich traditions.
They specially lament the little time that urban children today spend
with their grandparents, who historically have played a special role in the
rearing of African youngsters.
Grandparents taught grandchildren manners: how to address certain
relatives, where to sit in a stranger's home, how to laugh in public, how to
dress for certain occasions. They also taught them how to attract--and keep
--a mate.
Grandparents "taught us what was expected of us," said Malaki Warambo, a
surgeon whose five youngest children have had little connection to village
life. "They taught us about standards. We have killed the interaction
between the children and grandparents."
Asked whether she knows any of her Luo tribe's traditions, Mary Warambo,
his 24-year-old daughter, turned to her mother.
"Mommy, help!" she yelled across the living room to Anne Warambo. "Do I
know any? I don't know any."
The Warambos enjoy many benefits of urbanization - the variety of their
children's friends, the lack of attention to tribal labels, the exposure to
foreigners.
"If I were to get to someone, I wouldn't think, oh, he's a Likeya, I
can't get to know him," Mary said. "What tribe is would not be the first
question I would ask."
But her mother is not so sure about cross-tribal marriage. "From my
experience, as a parent who cares, I would be against it," she said. "It's
not easy to deal with [tribal differences], not easy to handle."
TO BE CONTINUED
BERAKI