Cases of land grabbing are relatively rare in Luo Nyanza, the Western part of Kenya occupied predominantly by members of the Luo community.
There exists a number of techniques people use to keep their vacant pieces of land safe, especially if they happen to live far away and cannot regularly check on their land.
Here are some of the cultural techniques used to prevent land grabbing or unauthorized use.
1. Ton'go puodho
This translates to 'hacking the field', a trick used to prevent land grabbing, especially if the land in question is an agricultural property being fought over by separate groups.
To deal with this, the owner or the first person to access the piece of land strikes a few digs on it with his hoe or panga, which makes it impossible for another person to cultivate it.
In the incident that the other party proceeds to cultivate the land in ignorance to the other person's activity on the land, it is believed that they will mysteriously die after an illness.
2. Gunda
A "gunda" is a deserted homestead where all family members have died, leaving it an empty field, at times with collapsing houses previously occupied by the dead persons.
Therefore, the remaining kin of the dead, on most occasions from other families within that lineage (anyuola), will leave the main house within the deserted homestead to keep it safe.
Once the land is sold, the house can only be brought down after a ceremony called 'tedo chae' (cooking tea), after which the buyer can proceed to use it.
3. Graves
Nobody would be comfortable living around graves, especially those belonging to people not related to them. This is another technique used to keep land safe in some parts of Nyanza.
A deserted land with lots of graves becomes easy to preserve as nobody wants to love there, especially if they are aware of the graves, to avoid being haunted by the people resting there.
My grandfather Onguko Owino of Kamagaga in Kano Plains tells me that if the land is legally sold, the new occupant can proceed to exhume the bodies and move them elsewhere.
Otherwise, that piece of land can be quite frightening to leave in if turned into another homestead, with another recommendation being that no houses are build on top of the graves.
Therefore, burying bodies of departed relatives at home, apart from being a cultural necessity, becomes even more useful when there is a threat of the land being grabbed.
#Maisha