Obama and Kenya. Matthew Carotenuto

Nyakwar Ramogi,” or “I am a descendant of Ramogi.”²⁹

      More materially, urban ethnic associations, in the Luo case the Luo Union, were formed in the 1930s to counter the alienating effects of urban life and to foster social and economic ties between the city and “home.”³⁰ These associations, which would ultimately give rise to political organizations built around ethnic lines, were endorsed by the colonial authorities, who saw them as “the best answer to the detribalizing influences of town life,” perhaps because they relieved colonial authorities of having to improve the conditions of urban life for their African subjects.³¹

      The Luo Union had its roots in earlier clan societies that provided social welfare benefits for Luo-speaking migrants from particular locations in Western Kenya. As many Luo speakers believed that a person’s soul could not rest until his or her body was buried at “home” (dala), that is, the place in Western Kenya where the person was born and where his or her placenta (biero) was subsequently buried, these early organizations functioned in part as burial cooperatives.³² As one elderly Luo man recalled, clan associations often raised large amounts of money to ship the bodies of Luo-speaking workers from as far as Ethiopia, Uganda, and coastal Tanganyika to Western Kenya.³³ Further, these associations were instrumental in raising funds for development projects in the rural areas, especially in the realm of education.

      Acting as a parent organization to the multiple clan societies, from the moment of its inception the Luo Union fostered educational opportunities for Luo-speaking youth, promoted economic and cultural investment in Western Kenya, and set about creating a new history written in the vernacular that codified the mythical shared past of the Luo-speaking community.³⁴ As colonial officials correctly understood, a central part of the Luo Union’s work was “to examine and to choose the new customs which should be followed and bad ones which should be suppressed.”³⁵ The organization’s own 1945 constitution had the more expansive goals of promoting “mutual understanding and unity” among all Luo speakers while also shaping the cultural obligations of a growing ethnic constituency.³⁶ The promotion of “unity” was the principal aim of various constitutions, mission statements, and other documents produced by the Luo Union in the 1940s and 1950s, signifying both the organization’s sociopolitical impetus and the fact that “Luo” was a contested and disparate identity. Under the banner “Riwruok e teko” (Unity is strength), Luo Union officials attempted to corral a diverse and increasingly diasporic linguistic community under a single ethnic banner.

      The leadership of the Luo Union—mission-educated elites like Paul Mboya, Walter Odede, Oginga Odinga, and Achieng Oneko—also served in important intermediary positions. For instance, Mboya was a colonial chief in South Nyanza, Odinga taught at the illustrious Church Missionary Society (CMS) school at Maseno, and Oneko was a municipal councillor in Nairobi.³⁷ These positions imbued them with status, savvy, and experience in negotiating the colonial bureaucracy and earned them respect from colonial authorities and Africans alike. As the colonial era wore on, they were able to use their knowledge and influence to grow the scope and scale of the organization. For instance, in the mid-1940s, Odinga started the Luo Thrift and Trading Company (LUTATCO), a highly successful sister organization that promoted migrants’ reinvestment in Nyanza and aimed to promote, in Odinga’s words, “unity, common purpose and achievement” among the Luo-speaking community throughout Eastern Africa.³⁸ Ultimately, the union leadership mobilized its political capital to become significant players in anticolonial politics and in the first independent government.

      By the early 1950s, the Luo Union had thousands of paid members in its sixty-plus branches throughout Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and offered members of the Luo-speaking diaspora significant avenues for sociability and education organized along ethnolinguistic lines. The relational opportunities that union meetings provided—to speak Luo, to swap news of “home,” to forge friendships in the dance hall or on the football pitch—transcended clan ties as Dholuo-speaking labor migrants from across East Africa developed a shared sense of “belonging” as fellow “Luos.”³⁹ By the early 1950s, the intertwined intellectual and politico-cultural projects of negotiating labor environments far from Luoland and fostering Luoness outside Western Kenya were well under way. By the end of the decade, Mau Mau, the central event of Kenya’s colonial history, demanded new answers to the question of what it meant to be Luo and propelled Luo politico-cultural leaders of political prominence onto the nationalist stage.

       The Forest Conflict: Luo Loyalty and Subversive Politics

      1. Generally speaking, within the Province itself, Mau Mau infiltration into Nyanza tribes has been negligible since May 1954. There is however evidence to show that some Nyanza tribesmen have been contaminated through contact with Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru tribesmen while outside the Province.

      2. During 1953 and 1954 at least 1,000 Nyanza tribesmen were believed to have taken a Mau Mau oath in Nairobi City.⁴⁰