Tribal warriors in traditional feathered headdresses jab the air with spears as the funeral cortege passes, symbolically repelling death from the village.
The cattle of the homestead are herded out to join the procession, but several bulls, sheep and chicken have already been slaughtered to feed mourners who will descend on the family home for up to a month.
In a continent where the dead are customarily honoured on a lavish scale, the Luo tribe of western Kenya have some of the most extravagant ceremonies of all.
But church leaders and aid workers say that the feasting which accompanies a death in Luoland is proving increasingly ruinous to the living.
”The impact of funerals is very big, very negative,” said Celline Odipo, a Red Cross worker in Kisumu, the main town in the region.
”If the household elder dies, and he had herds of cattle, the family left behind won’t have a say: the community members will carry on slaughtering cows until the last one. They will not consider what happens after.
”In most cases the wives suffer a lot. A widow can be left naked: they can take blankets, mattresses, everything in your house.”
The custom began with the intention of feeding mourners who may have travelled long distances to honour the dead. In the past, neighbours helped the bereaved family with the cooking, but as more people migrate to the cities and village life becomes fragmented, the burden is increasingly falling on the bereaved alone.
Kisumu is the poorest town in Kenya and the province has the highest rate of HIV infection: 14%. Because of HIV, funerals are no longer rare.
”When my father died, my brother slaughtered a cow for him,” said Agnes Adoyo, 47, who subsistence-farms squatted government land on the outskirts of Kisumu. ”But three weeks later he died in a road accident. Now my mother has died. People have asked if I can provide a cow to be slaughtered for her, but there is nothing left.”
In keeping with Luo custom, Agnes’s mother, Leokadia, was buried yesterday in Kibigoria, her ancestral village, in a bare earth clearing fringed by slim savannah trees and surrounded by the lush green cane fields of western Kenya.
Unlike more westernised tribes, the Luo insist on burying their dead in their ancestral homesteads, which adds greatly to the cost if the death occurs in the capital, Nairobi, six days away by car. Because of the family’s poverty, Leokadia’s coffin was carried from the mortuary at Kisumu in an ambulance lent for the day by the church. There were no warriors or procession of cattle, and the only food to offer the mourners was ugali, the maize porridge which is Kenya’s staple starch.
The Luo observe a far longer period of mourning than other Kenyan tribes. That means Agnes must abandon her farming for two months to stay in the ancestral village and greet mourners.
Women whose husbands have died are the most vulnerable. They are not only required to pay for the funeral ceremonies, but may be turned out by their in-laws if they refuse to be ”inherited”.
The practice of ”widow inheritance”, in which a male relative of the husband undertakes to look after his widow, began as a way of sheltering women but has become a means of appropriating the dead man’s wealth.
When Mary Magdalene’s husband, John, a maths teacher, died her in-laws insisted that she must be inherited by his brother. ”It was very rough,” said Mary (36) a nurse in Kisumu. ”The closest brother to my husband was a very arrogant man. The man’s family thought there was wealth, they feared that this wealth would be taken out of the family.”
She refused, and was forced to leave the family home with her son, then three.
”They said I will die six months after his death,” she said. ”I said: ‘God loves me, and I will not die’ — and here I am.”
The churches, which regard widow inheritance as immoral because the women are expected to sleep with the men who inherit them, are campaigning to change attitudes to funerals.
The Rev Joseph Ogola, dean of Kisumu’s Anglican church, said: ”The church has stated clearly that funerals should be as cheap as possible, that burials can be done on weekdays and not just at weekends [when it is most expensive]. Cremation has also been accepted by the church.”
Some ministers are trying to set an example by refusing food after funerals. ”In some parts ministers have stopped eating,” Ogola said. ”They will just get on their bicycle and leave.” – Guardian Unlimited Â