Masinde clan elders riled by Bifwoli visit

TUESDAY, 30 AUGUST 2011 00:07 BY SIMBI KUSIMBA

REVEALED: Elijah Masinde's widows at their home. MP Bifwoli paid the family a visit at night. Photo/Simbi Kusimba

The disclosure on Sunday that the Bumula MP Bifwoli Wako paid a night visit to the gravesite of the founder of Dini ya Musambwa ahead of the planned visit by the Prime Minister Raila Odinga left elders of a Bukusu clan baffled and enraged.

Sources confided to the Star that Bifwoli took a spotted bull which was slaughtered in a traditionalBukusu ritual to appease spirits of the dead.

In an Interview with the Star, Masinde's first-born son, Richard Wafula revealed that Wakoli came with three people. They took with them a bull with black, red and white spots which was slaughtered and the meet feasted on by relatives and neighbours.

Wafula explained that Wakoli had sent word that he intended to visit the gravesite a week before the planned visit by the PM through an emissary. "I accepted that he comes. This is a place for every one to come, People from all walks of life do come here to pay homage just like they did when my father was alive.

However, Masinde's Babichaachi clan chair Patrick Chaka read something sinister in the visit by the lands assistant minister. "Why did he have to come a day before the PM's official visit? Where has he been all this time? Why was it secretively done at night?" Chaka posed.
Chaka said the clan members had no information about Wakoli's visit and blamed Wafula for failing to update them. "We want things done openly and in broad daylight. We are opposed to people coming at night with ulterior motives," he said.

He said the clan does not want visit by people who have largely abandoned Masinde's family since his death in 1987.
Another clan elder Lucas Watta Bukusu told the politicians to desist from politicising issues related to the family as they have failed to offer any help in the past. "Let them leave us in peace," he prayed.

Coincidentally Wakoli was the only one of the five Bungoma MPs who turned up at Sunday's ceremony when Raila proclaimed Masinde a national hero and demanded that the ban on Dini ya Musambwa activities by government be lifted. "Every Bukusu professes Musambwaeven if he is a Christian, so let the ban be lifted," he declared. He dissociated himself from those opposed to the PM's visit to the lateMasinde.

Masinde was born around 1910 - 1912 in Kimilili, Bungoma county. He started out as a footballer who captained a football team fromKimilili. He also played for the Kenya national team in the Gossage cup against Uganda in 1930. By the early 1940s, he had risen to the rank of a junior elder within his community and became increasingly anti-colonial.

In 1944, he led a number of localised defiance campaigns against the colonial authorities, and was imprisoned many times as a result. At one time he was kept in Mathare Mental Hospital and in Lamu.