Increasingly, cremations seem to be becoming a choice in Kenya especially among the rich.

Traditional rituals that sometimes include days of the body laying instate before internment, are being replaced with ‘simplified’ versions of death rites.

‘Normal’ burial rites are the last and usually come after funeral services and Western style night wakes locally known as matanga ( night mourning assemblies of relatives and close friends) , but this order seems headed for the museum galleries.

A rare phenomenon is taking root, in which a practice imported by a tiny minority of Hindu community from Asia, is increasingly being adopted by the Christian African majority, overturning expected cultural norms of majorities influencing minorities.

Gakuu Mathenge

Generally, Christian burials have been guided by ‘ashes-to-ashes’ doctrine derived from the English burial rituals adopted from the Biblical text, Genesis 3:19 (King James Version):

‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’.

However, this notion is being challenged across social-economic sprectrum in Kenya.

Relations between the living and the dead

Among questions without answers yet is what this practice reveals about changing relationships between the dead and living, the bereaved and society.

These include the possibility the dead are making statements about the depth of alienation they experienced in society they lived in.

The choice for cremation could be a final act of courage to call out the apparent hypocrisy of community collective mourning the loss of persons to whom they did not extend humane charity and kindness in the utilitarian transactional relationships characteristic of modern urban lifestyles.

The majority of those who opted for cremation, have been urbanised folks.

The ‘bold dead’ could be speaking to the living to spare their crocodile tears.

A favourite movie by John Travolta, A Love Song for Bobby Long, has a scene in which a group of mourners are at pains to recall the last time any of them spoke or met the deceased, a lady called Lorraine, who had died alone in hospital.

‘We have all lost Lorraine, but long before she died’ a commentator says rather caustically.

This puts into question the seeming communion with the dead.

Community affair

The bulk of traditional funeral and burial rites among majority Christianised Kenya, normally have many scenes that allow mourners to spend considerable time with the dead, in a ritual whose unique language talks of ‘ paying last respects.’

These rites are solemn, conducted at one place, the same time, normally by the grave side, marked by demonstrable grieving, tears, and which normally involves family, close relatives, friends, workmates, church mates, join in a palpable community thing that takes a whole day.

What real ‘communion’ there is between the deceased and the community seems disputed and subject to debate.

Prof Philip Mbithi’s African Ubuntu concept of life that revolved around the notion of: ‘I am because we are;’ seems to be falling under increased scrutiny.

The subculture has also invented its own language use.

The new language tends to blur the lines between the reverential and the profane, decent and decadent.

For instance, post cremation funeral events are cosy, jolly ‘celebrations of a life well lived’, with activities that border on partying as opposed to solemn mourning and grieving for the loss of a life.

Cremation leaves no body to bury, sob and crying over as the departed is interred into the grave.

With dirges reaching a crescendo, the reality of the finality of death hits home, bringing closure.

Instead of these, the residual ashes may be packaged in an envelope, stuffed in a handbag or backpacked home, scattered into the sea, shamba or sealed in a tiny memorabilia mailbox.

This turns funerals as traditionally known on their heads.

This separation of burial and funeral ceremonies takes out communal mourning and grieving participation from the customs associated with death.

In one sense, it is also like defiant mockery of death itself.

With the grave and its customary rites thrown out, what remains is a hollowed out, neatly choreographed speeches, devoid of grieve , sorrow, no mentioning God or after life, which tends more towards profane entertainment than solemn.

Traditionalists and Christians are conflicted by a emergence of a subculture that excludes the ‘community’ from collectively seeing off a member after death.

In Kenya, Muslims are yet to adopt cremation to dispose their dead.

However, for Christians, the remainder of the new and modified final funeral rites in the name of ‘celebration of a life well lived’ are conducted in Churches.

For majority of Christian Africans, and the Gikuyu in particular, burning bodies in a hot kiln like charcoal and bricks is viewed as strange and odd idea.

A retired Catholic priest, and Murang’a Chair of Kikuyu Council of Elders (KCE), Fr Joachim Gitonga, 89, described cremation as taboo.

Heritage

Fr Gitonga faulted the decision to cremate a prominent leader and elder Kenneth Matiba (known as the architects of multiparty democracy in Kenya) as against contemporary Gikuyu cultural norms and values.

‘Graves of prominent people and high achievers like Matiba are a heritage and monuments for inspiration and pride to the living. The community and posterity loses the heritage value when the body is burnt,’ he says.

Some question if the elite were extending their class divisions beyond the grave, as a final act of arrogant keeping of distance from ‘ordinary’ mortals, just to make sure their remains never share the same space and status under the soil.

Before Kenneth Matiba, among elite members of the Gikuyu community to choose cremation include late former head of the Anglican Church in Kenya, late Rev Manasses Kuria (2005), a choice opposed by many members of the church then.

Matiba was Anglican too.

This was followed by late Nobel Laureate, Prof Wangari Maathai (2011), a Catholic, and more may follow as the practice seems to gain popular acceptance.

Public display of fierce diversity of opinion, cultural perspectives and controversy around burning of bodies after death played out in July, 2019, after the death of former Kibra MP late Ken Okoth in Nairobi.

Kaguthi

A long time provincial administrator, wrestled with the death and burial affair more than many have in the public sphere.

Mr Joseph Kaguthi, thinks Kenyan spend inordinate time and resources in funeral and burial affairs, which he feels should be better used to serve the living.

‘As a young DO in the 1970s, we used to file monthly returns about Harambees (public fund raisers). Contributions from Western Kenya and Nyanza regions were not much. Not because people were mean or opposed to community projects, but they spent more on funeral affairs sparing little for Harambee contributions’ he says.

‘Some would take bank loans and sell assets to stage elaborate funeral events,’ her calls.

As a District Officer (DO) and later District Commissioner (DC), he could not stop people from mourning or feasting in their cultural style.

He views the rise of cremation as alternative to burial rites among elites in his own Gikuyu community as a form of cultural rebellion and social protest.

The culture of excessive commercialisation of funerals and burial events had offended some, he said.

Without hesitation Kaguthi says he has willed his body will be cremated when his times comes, adding many ranking elders and friends of his had made it clear to their families they wished to be cremated

‘It is a protest against a repulsive culture of commercialisation and feasting at funerals. There is no mourning the dead anymore. Once a prominent person dies, some entrepreneurs start fundraising from politicians and friends drawing up huge budgets for the ‘last rites” he said.

He says traditional funerals and burial rites have been commercialised to an extent to appear a mockery of the dead and the bereaved.

Electric kilns ‘easy and cost effective’

Kaguthi suggests that it should be a policy for public hospital morgues countrywide to set up an electric crematoriums to make it easy for Kenyans to dispose of their dead easily, conveniently and cost effectively.

‘What is important is disposing off a body. Finding the shortest route to the nearest crematorium or cemetery is the urgent business of the moment. Period,’ he says.

His views have been consistent over the years.

When his mother died, in the 1990s, she was buried on the third day at Langa’ta public cemetery.

Before that, his father was buried on the same morning he died in Nyandarua County, presided over by a handful of elders.

‘After my father’s burial, we dispatched letters to other family through the Post Office to inform them of the sad news. There were no mobile phones then and few people had land line connections at home,’ he says.

Increasing privatisation of burial rites points to a cultural evolutionary shift of values and attitudes towards continuity of communion between the living and the living dead, which customary reverential rituals around death represented.

Rare cultural feat

In terms of enculturation and inculturation traditions,an extreme tiny Hindu minority was achieving an extraodinary cultural feat in a minority exerting influence on a majority culture.

Majority cultures normally influence minority cultures in terms of values norms and pracices.

According to 2009 Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), Protestants are the biggest Christian faith group reported, followed by the Catholic Christians, and Muslims in that order :

Protestants-18, 307, 466

Catholics -9, 010, 684

Muslim- 4,304,798

Hindu-53,398

Traditionalists- 635,352

Others-922,128

Don’t know-6,233

Functionalist theorists have long insisted cultural norms and customs existed to serve economic and structural needs of societies that invented and practised them.

Whatever needs traditional death rites served seem to be running low on the demand side.