By Philip Ochieng, a veteran journalist, this article explores the nuances of Luo culture, particularly the complex relationship between a woman and her son-in-law.
Among the Luo communities of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, the mother of a man's wife is an intensely forbidding person. A Luo man fears her presence as desperately as he would fear a cobra or leopard.
There are a million things that a Luo man cannot do or utter in the presence of his mother-in-law, and more than a million things that a Luo woman cannot do or say in the presence of her son-in-law or father-in-law.
Even Jaduong' Paul Mboya, in his book 'Luo Kitgi gi Timbegi,' remains silent about the intricacies of this relationship.
