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NewslettersTopic: Barack Obama's Kenyan Heritage: The Luos
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Barack Obama has specific family ties with the Luo tribe, whose members in 1994, said Ethnologue.com, numbered 3,185,000 in Kenya and 280,000 in Tanzania.e Luo people are also known as Dholuo and Nilotic Kavrirondo and are the third-largest ethnic group in Kenya (13 percent of the population, according to the CIA World Factbook).
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Obama's cattle-herding ancestors migrated slowly from the Sudan over the past 500 years.Indeed, said the Encyclopedia of Word Cultures (edited by John Middleton and Amal Rassan), the Luos speak an Eastern Sudanic language within the Nilo-Saharan family, whereas Swahili (with English, the official language of Kenya) is an unrelated Bantu language of the Niger-Congo family. Language is an important tie among the Luos, as are marriage and other kinship connections. Like their fellow Kenyans, most Luos can speak at least three languages. The Luo language, like Chinese,uses different tones to distinguish the meaning of otherwise identical words, for what P. Kilbride (Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life) called "an esthetically pleasing musical quality."
When the Luos arrived in their new homeland, they exchanged social customs with their Bantu neighbors. For instance, the Bantus borrowed the Luo practice of knocking out their lower incisor teeth as a token of beauty. The Luo men, however, rejected the local tradition of circumcision.
Bride wealth -- which usually consists of cattle -- is essential to marriage preparations in Luoland. Discussions become so intense that a neutral go-between must often forge an agreement. After a groom accepts a bride's dowry and children have been born, he risks the scorn of his kinspeople; the family will still consider the couple married.
Although Christian (Anglican, Catholic and independent churches), the Luos retain some of their traditional religious beliefs, such as ancestor worship, and have adopted more recent practices from the outside world. Sometimes a family will conduct a ritual to learn whether a newborn baby is the reincarnation of an ancestor spirit "juok," meaning "shadow'), freed from spirit realms in the sky or under the earth. A "juok" may cause serious trouble if neglected or forgotten.
The Judeo-Christian God and the main Luo deity have merged in the Luo religion. The name for "God" depends on a particular power within the context of Christian religion: "Were" ("The one certain to grant requests"); "Nyasaye" ("He who is begged"); "Ruoth" ("The King"); "Jachweth" ("The molder"); "Wuon koth" ("The Raingiver"); and "Nyakalaga" ("The one who flows everywhere").
The Lord's Prayer plays an important part in Luo spiritual life:
"Wuonwa manie polo,
nyingi mondo omi luor,
Pinyruodhi mondo obi,
Dwaroni mondo otimre e piny kaka timore e polo.
Yie imiwa kawuono chiembwa mapile pile.
Wenwae gopewa,
Kaka wan bende waseweyo ne jogopwa.
Bende kik iterwa e tem,
To reswa e lwet Ngama Rach."
(Source: Christusrex.org).
Luo society is patrilineal (with descent through the male line of a family), with bride wealth and polygyny (multiple wives) cementing the kinship ties with the tribe. The Encyclopedia of World Cultures stated that in traditional Luo society:
"Products of exchange progressed from cultivation to chickens, chickens to goats, goats to cows, and finally cows to women. The success of marriages and the wives' social status both depend on their producing of children."
All the same, Luos avoid any discussion of an ongoing pregnancy for fear of mischief from jealous "juoks" or neighbors. Babies wear charms against the "evil eye" and twins are attributed to wicked spirits.
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