This archive report was first published on 3 November 2019.
On November 1, 2019, a report by NTV showed a boy from the Bukusu community in Kenya who discovered a dead body in a forest was forced to spend an unknown amount of time with the body.
According to Bukusu traditions, cleansing rituals have to be performed on a person who has seen a dead body before they can rejoin their family.
The family of the deceased is required to give the boy who saw the body a cow and slaughter a goat for the elders. The intestines of the goat are then smeared on the boy's body for him to be accepted back to his family.
The Bukusu are one of the seventeen Kenyan tribes of the Luhya community and are the largest tribe of the Luhya nation. They are also known to be among the few communities which still hold on to their ancestral beliefs and practices even in the 21st century.
