Moi burial: Raila surprises mourners with Jaramogi’s Luo dirge

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Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga (left) and his elder brother Oburu Oginga during the funeral service of former president Daniel arap Moi in Kabarak, Nakuru County. [Photo: Courtesy]

Many thought that he would appear in traditional attire, perhaps some animal skin and grasp a spear and wave a flywhisk as a traditional Luo elder would do during mourning.

But that was not the case today. ODM leader Raila Odinga, the son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who served as country’s first vice president was just in a black suit as he attended the funeral service of former president Daniel arap Moi in Kabarak, Nakuru County.

He missed the traditional attires and the expectations of curious Kenyans may have vanished that he was not going to mourn Mzee Moi in his native Luo culture.

When called by the Master of Ceremonies to address the mourners, Odinga climbed up the podium amidst applause and whistles preceded as he gained calm to deliver his tributes.

After making a short speech, the ODM leader was handed his flywhisk to fulfill his personal ritual-mourning Mzee  Moi as a hero.

He said: “I must send him off as a true African and I say.” Odinga proceeded with a dirge “Yawa par uru lo, lo wang’e tek/ yawa par uru lo, lo wang’e tek/ Yawa gima ichamo e mari gima odong’ to kwer kigen…jowi, jowi, jowi.” [Remember the soil/ it’s stubborn/ What you have is what you can count/ you cannot hope for the others].

Raila moved the mourners when he read an excerpt from his father Jaramogi Oginga‘s book Not Yet Uhuru, where he describes the late Mzee Moi as a giraffe with a long neck that sees dangers from far.

“…I painted a word picture of each of my colleagues in the council. Muliro [Masinde Muliro] was a sailing boat whose neck direction was difficult for the settlers to access, Ngala [Ronald Ngala] was a young hippo who hid from his father and went to secretly to measure his footprints to that of his father, and the day he was convinced that his footprints were equal to that of his father, he challenged him for a duel. Mboya was a rabid black dog that backed furious and bit all on his path…while Moi was a giraffe with a long neck that saw from a far. I was described as a Mzee because I was the elder one.”

Raila remembered his last meeting with Mzee Moi when he visited the former president at his Kabarak home.

Odinga recalled how he flirted with Mzee Moi about how he once promised his younger son, Raila Junior a bull during his (Junior’s) wedding.

He joked that his son had not come for the bull promised by Mzee Moi and he was planning to do so afterward.

“After this Junior will come for the bull,” he said and laughed.

Odinga said that like first President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Mzee Moi rose from poverty and scaled his way through to the apex of the country’s leadership.

Dismissing the dynasty tag on him, Gideon Moi and Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila said the Constitution allows everyone to seek elective positions regardless of their family backgrounds.

“What is a dynasty? What did Moi inherit? Moi struggled… His children are also struggling like any other Kenyan,” he said amid cheers from the mourners.

“Just like Uhuru is also struggling like any other Kenyan, so is Raila,” he said adding that no leader is entitled to anything for being a son of Kenyan leaders.

Raila once attended the funeral of former vice President Michael Kijana Wamalwa who died in August 2003 while dressed in Luo traditional attire, waving spear and flywhisk.

In retrospect, Wamalwa had performed Luhya traditional mourning rites and chants during Jaramogi’s burial in 1994.

In 1978, a flywhisk -waving, Jaramogi mourned Mzee Kenyatta singing the same Luo dirge that Raila, recited today  at Kabarak.