Dan Okwiri: Why Luo Women’s Butts Are Getting Smaller

My study on why Luo men are getting shorter & our women losing their famed posteriors?

To the Chairman, Luo Council of Elders,
Re: Aggrievance from Dan Rodi Okwiri

Penning?my journal memoirs, am a little distraught, one of the greatest things I struggle with is diet. The food I was used to is simply almost non existent in Nyanza today. I struggle with diet. We have adopted foods that are killing our being, affecting our intellect capacity and changing our body structure.

Luo men formerly were tall, lanky and ivory black. Today they are often short, brown, pot bellied. Our women were similarly tall, dark and strutted protruding posteriors & sturdy legs had a graceful walk. Today they are short, lack posteriors & strut it on hockey sticks. It wasn’t always the case and this must be said. Imagine If we want women with great legs today we have to search for them in Western or Meru Counties. This was never the case. Some of these imports are not to easy to handle so we must fix our backyard.

The beauty of a Luo woman was the size of her posterior & great legs. Yesterday beautiful Luo woman is no more, they are now aged. Stroll around Kisumu, Homa Bay, Migori, Rongo and you see most women wear padded inner wear to augment their posteriors, ostensibly to look beautiful. How can you strut a fake bottom? Whatever happened? It’s a shame! It’s absurd but all a question of diet.
Everywhere in Migori most of our men are short. Short men are given to being temperamental & impatience. Hop on a boda & you will precisely see these characteristics. Most of the short boda boys are short, rude and have little self confidence. All again a result of poor diet.

For those who don’t know, I would like to reiterate that “WE ARE WHAT WE EAT”. What you eat will determine how intelligent you will be? How you will look? How healthy you are?
I struggle with diet, I come from a generation of Luos who never tasted goat meat until I reached my 20s”. It just wasn’t cooked at our home. Goat meat simply wasn’t eaten in Luo Nyanza and used only for rituals.

I remember one day Dad was given a billy goat by one of his Kikuyu friends for Christmas. He simply didn’t know what to do with it. The smell was revolting. One men’s meat is another’s poison, it is said. That’s something I well believe.

Today goat meat is everywhere in Southern Nyanza. There are butcheries that exclusive sell it. People of Migori relish it. The goat innards, gut, bowels (matumbos) are barbecued and sold at a premium. The goat head is especially delicacy. Goat Soup spiked with bile & chilli is believed to be a cure for hangover.

A new disease has cropped up which in Dad’s generation & mine we never experienced called gout and many middle aged Luo men are getting afflicted. The consumption of beer washed down in gallons with roasted goat is exterminating our height genes. We are getting shorter.

Fish though plentiful is hardly consumed. I consume lots of boiled fish heads, it’s rich in Omega3, which is great food for the brain. Real men our people think consume goat. I struggle with it and often go hungry when I meet friends in social joints. Since I don’t cook the stuff, be forewarned it isn’t available in Migori Country Lodge by design and this isn’t hearsay, take it as fact.

Luo’s generally never ate fresh meat. The meat was hanged, that was to facilitate the blood to drip out. Blood if you don’t know is the cause of many diseases, it was consumed not on daily basis.
Hanged meat is always more tender cause the flesh muscles have relaxed & the stressed toxin dripped out. Everyday I go to butchery I request for hanged meat that is at least 2 days old and everyone things am nutty. Kenyans want fresh meat, and they gobble it in terms of kilos.

I wish to reiterate I grew up on “ngwen,” they are insects the Westerns call Termites. Often consumed as a snack termites are highly nutritious with high levels of protein, fats, key vitamins, and minerals. With very little or no anti-nutrient, noxious chemicals and microbial concerns, they are a great food source. Termites are richer in protein than meat. Lo & behold you will not get ngwen in Migori. How ironical yet a lakeside town?

Oily potato fries is our new snack called “chips funga”, it is even now common place even in the villages. One can get portions of this cholesterol packed snack as little as Kes 20 a portion. Everywhere & anywhere you will see ladies on the dusty roadside frying the fries in dirty jet black re-used oil in the villages.

It is rumored that they extract the oil from electricity-transformers. That’s why the transformers keep breaking down & our electricity keeps failing, without oil the transformers overheat and we are in perpetual blackout. Once again, I blame it on our diet, “chips funga” or is it “chips fungus” the bane. No wonder our kids are breaking down too.

I love smoked fish but again nowhere in Migori is it available. To get my supplies I have to go travel to Othoo in Kadem or go to Tanzania, a long journey all in the name of fish.

Don’t bother looking for smoked beef, aliya or athola, they too are just no longer available. The one thing that I still get deep in Kadem is ghee. There are 2 types the white ghee known as “mor nya Luo’ and the brown ghee “ngiende”. The sad thing is I get it from one old man, he is 82 and he started making it when he was 15 years.

Again I wonder about the continuity as the sage increasingly is unable to bring it to Migori town. He is terrified of boarding the piki bodas, the main transport system and especially since he is now frail. Soon even ghee will history.

Sadly am a dying breed, a relic of the past that still holds fort. My supplier of smoked fish is an aged lady, am not sure if her daughter will take up the trade. The consumers are simply getter fewer. Most of the young frown whilst eating smoked fish, they want bit deep fried. They love the oil, obesity is now big.

Meanwhile burnt innards (matumbo) joints are doing booming business. I sometimes wonder don’t the consumers know that the word ma’tumbo’ is derived from the word ‘stomach’ and incidentally all consumers of roasted matumbo will inevitably be pot bellied. Isn’t this a disaster if you are short?
Can anyone in the Luo Council of Elders “URGENTLY” take up & act on my findings? If they can’t, elect me Chairman, your new ‘Jakom”., I will surely address it.