The tribe that has sex before everything

The donors were horrified The story was that the Luos of Kenya allowed sex with corpses Really Necrophilia That would have to go It was a Harmful Traditional PracticeThere was a list of HTPs including Female Circumcision and Female Genital Mutilation In one tribe ritual rape was said to be allowed on certain nights though the rapist was obliged to later marry the woman he had raped Another HTP That had to go tooI was to design the communication strategy to get Luos to give up their nasty sexual habits but my research had drifted off track and I found myself intrigued by an odd story from the Kenyan island of RusingaHardly anything grew on Rusinga other than sorghum and poverty and HIV were rampant This made the island a Mecca for missionaries international donors and philanthropists Rusinga was the most funded part of Kenya a Charing Cross station of NGOs and donorsI came upon an article describing a donorrsquos attempts to introduce a hybrid sorghum into Rusinga Proven marketing wisdom said younger farmers were more likely to bite and should be wooed firstAccordingly young farmers and their wives were invited to a Sunday prayer with a beer and grilled meat lunch ldquoIt will grow twice as fast in half the timerdquo the donor promised them raising a toast to prosperity Later free seeds were handed outA year later the donors invited the same farmers back for BBQ lunch this one just after the harvest There was joy in the air ldquoThat seed you gave us bwana it was truly from Jesusrdquo one farmer swore ldquoIt grew twice as high in half the time just like you saidrdquoWhen the donors moved in for the kill and asked how many seeds theyrsquod like for the next planting season this time on cash payment there was unhappy murmuring No one wanted any more of those amazing seeds that grew so well and so fast No reasons were given for decliningOne of the older Luos present said with some hesitation ldquoYou see bwana that seed of yoursmdashit does not fit our culture wellrdquoThat was the sentence that got me curious What was it in Luo culture that found a fastgrowing highyielding culturally unacceptableThe next month digging really deep I found a thesis written by a Chinese American from Yale University His work said that sex was intricately interwoven into nearly everything the Luos did In their culture sex went well beyond a mere passionate coupling of lusty bodies It was thought to be benediction protection sanctification A Luo will have sex before nearly every significant eventmdashselling a house going on a long journey taking a child for her first vaccine shot buying a new carAnd yes sex was mandatory before planting or harvesting a new crop The practice was called golokodhiThere were rules In a large Luo family the patriarch and his wife normally occupy the main hut in the circle The male childrenrsquos huts would be arranged around it in order of seniority Each son would have his own plot of land but could neither plant there nor harvest until his elder brothers had had ritual sex with their wives and were sighted on the fields The younger waited for the olderThe fastgrowing sorghum seed presented a bit of a problem since it was ready for harvest well before the others were However golokodhi did not allow the young enterprising farmer to have a quickie with his wife and head out to reap his harvestmdashbecause his elder brothers and his father were still waiting for their slowgrowing sorghum to mature Nothing could be done until they had had blessed sex and were sighted heading for their happy harvestThe wretched farmer had no choice but to wait for his elders to do it before he couldmdashand meanwhile watch his bountiful sorghum harvest die before his eyesNecrophilia The Luo believe that when two people have sex their spirits cross over the womanrsquos to the man and vice versa Once this axiom is accepted everything else is logicalWhen a woman is widowed her husbandrsquos brother must marry her but canrsquot since his brotherrsquos spirit still inhabits her body and must be evicted An odd fellow called the ldquocleanserrdquo is paid to terrorise the spirit out of the widowrsquos body He does this by having sex with herThe cleanser is an odd bod drunk blind and stoned most of the time utterly exhausted from his day jobWhat if the widow should pass away from say AIDS before she can be cleansed She couldnrsquot possibly be buried along with her husbandrsquos spirit Wouldnrsquot be fair to the husband would itThe cleanser just drinks a little more hooch says a Hail Mary and has sex with the corpseHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper