Luo

By: Robert Fay

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Luo

Around the sixteenth century the ancestors of the Luo people began migrating from the Bahr al-Ghazal region, south of the Nile River, and settling on the eastern side of the Lake Victoria basin. They continued arriving in a steady stream until the nineteenth century. Practitioners of Pastoralism, they spoke a western Nilotic language now known as DhoLuo, which is distinct from the languages spoken by most of their neighbors. By the 1990s the Luo had become Kenya’s second largest ethnic group, numbering about 2.7 million. Today their number exceeds four million. Much smaller numbers of Luo also live in Tanzania and Uganda.

Although most rural Luo now depend primarily on farming and fishing for subsistence, livestock are still highly valued in Luo culture. Cattle are their most important animals, used in bride wealth transactions and religious ceremonies as well as for food and skins.

Luo farm households typically grow staple food crops such as maize, millet or finger millet, sorghum, beans, peas, and cassava as well as cash crops such as cotton, coffee, tobacco, and sugarcane. Women do most of the farming, especially in the many households whose male members migrate to seek paid employment.

Historically, Luo society has been politically decentralized, governed by clan leaders and knit together by ties of patrilineal kinship and marriage. Rural Luo live in scattered homesteads (dala) and cultivate land inherited from a patrilineal ancestor. Unlike many ethnic groups in Kenya, the Luo do not form strict groupings based on age or sex, and do not typically practice circumcision. Most rites of passage are considered private.

Customary Luo religion featured a central deity, Nyasae or Nyasi, the creator of humanity and the universe. It also emphasized ancestor worship and “free Jok,” spirits associated with specific diseases or natural disasters that had to be exorcised by prophets known as jabilo. Today about 90 percent of Luo are Christians, but many still engage in customary rituals. Luo funerals are still extravagant affairs, reflecting the time-honored role of ancestor worship in unifying lineages. In addition, Luo have founded a number of independent Christian churches.

During the colonial period, Luo nationalists allied with the Kikuyu to form the Kenya African National Union Party. Since independence, however, the Luo’s numerical strength has not translated into significant political power. Although some Luo have served in high-level posts, particularly former vice president Oginga Odinga and cabinet minister Tom Mboya, they have been the exception. U.S. President Barak Obama’s father belonged to the Luo ethnic group.

See also Christianity: Independent and Charismatic Churches in Africa; Ethnicity and Identity in Africa: An Interpretation; Languages, African: An Overview; Marriage, African Customs of; Religions, African; Rites of Passage and Transition.

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