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© Muchugu Kiiru 2016

Perspectives on Indigenous Therapeutic Interventions on Death and Bereavement in

Kenya

By

DH Muchugu Kiiru

Dr Peter Cook

Supervisor

University of Durham

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment for an MA (Ed) Counselling Studies

degree at the University of Durham

2001



Kenya

By

DH Muchugu Kiiru

Dr Peter Cook

Supervisor

University of Durham

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment for an MA (Ed) Counselling Studies

degree at the University of Durham

2001

DECLARATION

This dissertation is the result of my work. Material from the published or

unpublished work of others, which is referred to in the dissertation, is credited to the

authors in the text.

DH Muchugu Kiiru


Acknowledgements

I thank my tutors at both the University of Durham and the Kenya Association of

Professional Counsellors for their professionalism and humanness during the two years

that I have been a graduate student in the MA (Ed.) Counselling Studies course at the

University of Durham. Special thanks go to Peter Cook who has advised on aspects of

this work. I acknowledge the support and friendship of my student colleagues in the

course. I am grateful to Samuel Aloyo, Henry Indangasi, Peter Muia, Karega-Munene,

Evan Mwangi, Alice Njambi, Merab Odhiambo, Margaret Wakari, Joy Wangari, and

Senorina Wendo for lending or donating texts or suggesting authors relevant to this

special study.


Abstract

This study examines therapeutic interventions on death and bereavement in the

indigenous society in Kenya through personal resonance with texts written by Kenyans

on explicit and implicit indigenous therapeutic interventions on death and bereavement.

Similar literature from foreign countries and my personal experiences help to highlight

central issues the texts raise.

The introduction indicates that indigenous therapeutic interventions are still alive in

a changed and changing Kenya, interactions and reflections demonstrate therapy on

death and bereavement implicit in indigenous beliefs and practices, and the conclusion

indicates some lessons learnt from indigenous therapeutic interventions. The references

document works cited while the appendix contains poems and literary excerpts cited in

the work.


Table of Contents

Acknowledgements i

Abstract ii

Introduction 1

Interactions and Reflections 4

Conclusion 43

References 48

Appendices 53

.



Kenya

By

DH Muchugu Kiiru

Introduction

According to Lake (1998) death is “the inevitable finality of our lives” (p. 1) while

bereavement “renews all the purposes of our lives” after death takes away people close

to us (p. 2). Both death and bereavement are live, and sometimes public, issues in

Kenya, as evident from a number of court cases relating to the place of burial of the

deceased (Cotran 1995 & Nyamongo 1999). Though therapy has not been the concern of

the cases, implications for therapeutic interventions are intertwined with the

proceedings and the outcomes of the cases. Indicative of how live death and

bereavement are in Kenya is the public interest in the proceedings of the cases; captions

accompanying some pictures in Egan (n.d.) capture the public interest one case

generated:

“Riot police keep the crowds out of the court precincts” (p. 10).

“Tanks in street for crowd control” (p. 11).

“Every day outside the court the crowds gathered” (p. 29).

“More like fans at a football match than people concerned about a burial” (p. 38).

“Is it a party or a crowd discussing a burial?” (p. 91).

“Papers with the verdict sell like hot cakes” (p. 111).

“Supporters of the clan sing and dance in the streets when they hear the verdict”

(p. 112).

“Riot police keep the crowds at bay” (p. 119).

“Keeping control…a watchful policeman can’t quell the enthusiasm of the crowd

outside the courtroom” (p. 179).

Rites of passage inform the world-view of the indigenous society (Mugambi 1989) that

keeps abreast of court cases handling disputes over places of burial. The society is


changing, however, and, as it changes, it undermines its ancient beliefs (Mbiti 1992), on

some of which are based therapeutic interventions the society developed to cope with

death and bereavement. Despite the change, however, the staying power of the beliefs is

evident.

In this connection, I came across this recent newspaper report: “A secondary school

has closed after students burnt a neighbour’s property, accusing him of bewitching the

school’s proprietor” (Students Go on the Rampage, 2001, p. 4). In 2000, a newspaper

report discusses witchcraft (The Power of Witchcraft 2000), indicating that despite the

forays the country has made relative to individualism (Mbiti 1992) ancient beliefs live

still. The burning of the property of an individual suspected of practising witchcraft is

reminiscent of the ancient burning of individuals alleged to be wizards as a punishment

for committing murder (Kenyatta 1968). As the body of my work shows, the burning of

such people has links with therapy on death and bereavement as burning wizards

appears to help the bereaved go through the pain of premeditated death.

As a counsellor out to help people cope with death and bereavement, I cannot ignore the

beliefs that are incarnate in the society, though the society that gave birth to them has

been changing. The help is daily becoming critical in my society that is so ravaged by

HIV-AIDS that 2.1 million people out of a population of about 30 million are HIV+ or

have developed AIDS (McGreary 2001) while “500 people a day” die of AIDS (Wanjohi,

2000, p. 12). In this same society, not only do the court cases and reported witchcraft

attest to the endurance of indigenous beliefs but also are the tragic dimensions of the

belief that HIV-AIDS is a form of witchcraft (Impact Update 2000). In the end, I am

interested in whether indigenous therapeutic interventions would help me in my

practice in a society that is changing but has not obliterated beliefs from which arise and

on which are based the therapeutic interventions. I however need to understand the

helpfulness of, before I determine how to employ, the interventions; the endeavour to

understand the interventions is therefore a key objective of this special study.


I have employed an interactive, reflective strategy with texts—similar to what Masson

(1997) does—in a bid to show my place in the research, as well as my growth as a

person, and the implication all this has on me as a practising counsellor. Unlike Masson

(1997), my view is that therapy is useful. To this end, my exploration of indigenous

therapeutic interventions on death and bereavement demonstrates their unique nature

and function in the ritual of the people.

The people take the interventions for granted, as is evident in a court case that sought

to determine where a lawyer should be buried (Egan n.d., Cohen & Odhiambo 1992,

Cotran 1995, & Ojwang & Mugambi 1989). Explaining some burial rituals, witnesses

during the court case would answer that the rituals are because they have been; thus, to

the question that burial “customs discriminate against the women,” a witness simply

replied, “Those are the customs” (Egan, n.d., p. 49).

My incursion into other cultures—African and non-African—helps to accentuate not

only the universality of therapeutic interventions on death and bereavement yesterday

and today but also the particular therapeutic role indigenous therapeutic interventions

have played, and continue to play, in my society. As a result of the universality and the

particularity, the crisis of change individuals find themselves in today (Mbiti 1992) are

by extension a crisis of appropriate therapeutic interventions on issues, such as death

and bereavement, in their lives.

The body of the study narrates my resonance with texts, primarily texts exploring,

explicitly or implicitly, indigenous therapeutic interventions, on death and bereavement

in my society. On the whole, the texts comprise what resonates in me as being

significant to therapy on death and bereavement. I interweave the texts with personal

experiences on death and bereavement. In the end, the body of the work comprises

reflections and interactions that indicate my place in, as well as my growth as a result of,

the research on death and bereavement, and the implications this has on me as a

practising counsellor. I indicate some implications for counselling in the conclusion of

the study.


Interactions and Reflections

My MA special study in Counselling Studies at the University of Durham, I decided at

the beginning of the academic year in May 2000, would be on death and bereavement in

Kenya. I would explore the subject relative to the relationship between, on the one

hand, indigenous therapeutic strategies and, on the other, counselling theory and

practice. This comparison, I told myself, was virgin territory that, hopefully, would

enrich counselling in Kenya. As a result, I was determined to give the 'pioneer' work the

best I could within the constraints of time and literature.

In the event, by July 2000 I had built a small library of texts touching on or dealing

with death and bereavement. The texts were Hennezel (1997), Gatheru (1964), Kariuki

(1989), Kenyatta (1968), Kübler-Ross (1974), Kübler-Ross (1977), Kübler-Ross (1997),

Lake (1998), Mbiti (1992), Mugambi (1989), Mwale (2000), Ocholla-Ayayo (1989),

Shakespeare (1985a [Appendix 1]), Shakespeare (1985d [Appendix 2]), Shirley (1960

[Appendix 3]), Sirengo (2000), and Wabwire (2000). By the beginning of 2001, to this

collection I added Davy (1998), Davy (1999), Ikeda (1994), Leakey (1977), Mbiti (1996),

Muia (2000), Mwiti (1999), Nagendo (1996), Nagendo (1998), Nyamongo (1999), Peck

(1997), Rinpoche (1996), and Thomas (1951 1952 [Appendix 4]). Accessible to me all the

while were Lieberman (1995), Richardson (1991), and Roberts (1994) in the Kenya

Association of Professional Counsellors Library. At the same time, the University of

Durham had provided course readings on death and bereavement.

Despite the availability of this wealth of material, I was unable to immerse myself

wholeheartedly into the literature on “questions and answers on death and dying”

(Kübler-Ross 1974) because I must have been uncomfortable with getting close to

experiences of death, as well as the cocktail of emotions death excites. Uncomfortable to

become intimate with death and bereavement, I ran away from the intimacy through

denial spawned by the fear death aroused in me.

Away from the discomfort, I worked on an elaborate outline with sub-headings on

the statement of the problem, justification, literature review, objectives, method, section

outline, and working bibliography. In the meantime, I read a bit of Kübler-Ross (1974)

and a bit more of Kenyatta (1968) and Mbiti (1992). These must have been safe to read:

Kübler-Ross (1974) answers questions on death, Kenyatta (1968) fleetingly discusses


death in a society under alien cultural and political onslaught, and Mbiti (1992) devotes

a chapter on death in vanishing or vanished social formations.

By the end of January 2001, however, the discomfort was behind me; I had read,

initially tentatively, quite a lot of the literature I had collected. The literature stirred up

remembrances of my experiences of death and bereavement. As a result of the literature

and the experiences, death and bereavement became well-known companions to be

accepted and respected, not alien monsters to be denied and resisted. The elaborate

outline became an exercise of the past, its place taken over by simple alternative broad

outlines of my proposed work.

Lying on my working table are copies of the alternative outlines of my proposed work.

Outline 1, which I created at the beginning of January 2001, seeks to integrate Western

and Kenyan therapeutic interventions on death and bereavement:

Outline 1

Inevitability of Death: Last Rite of Passage

Literary sources: Achebe, Shakespeare, Shirley

Cultural sources: Mbiti, Vansina

Meaning of Death

Stages: Kübler-Ross

Learning: Peck, Hennezel

Finality versus afterlife: Mbiti, Kenyatta, Peck, Kübler-Ross

The Bereaved

Attitudes towards death and dying

Feelings and stages

Counselling Interventions

The dying: Hennezel, Kübler-Ross

The bereaved

Integrating Kenyan and Western interventions


Outline 2, which I created towards the end of January 2001, makes Kenyan

perspectives on death and bereavement the base from which to borrow relevant Western

therapeutic interventions on loss and grief:

Outline 2

Indigenous views on death and interventions on bereavement in Kenya

Rite of passage

Inevitability: beliefs

Finality

After-life and joining ancestors: Achebe and La Guma

Emotions and attitudes of the dying and the bereaved

Role of diviners and medicine people

Funeral and burial rituals

Communalism and religion

Dynamics of age, gender, and status

Foreign views on death and counselling strategies on bereavement

Last rite of passage

Inevitability: Shakespeare and Shirley

Finality

Afterlife: Kübler-Ross and Peck

Emotions and attitudes of the dying and the bereaved: Kübler-Ross and

Hennezel

Role of doctors and psychotherapists

Funeral and burial rituals

Individual and family and religion

Dynamics of age, gender, and status

Common perspectives in indigenous and foreign coping mechanisms on

bereavement

I have read, and I am reading, a lot on the subject. I have read several articles and books

whose authors come from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America and whose


experiences traverse not only continents and races but also religions: African, Christian,

Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic. What is more, in my mind's eye I see how the work will

look like once I write a special study that

details indigenous strategies that people in my homeland have used over the

years to cope with death and bereavement and

indicates aspects of the three main streams of counselling theory and practice

from which the indigenous strategies can borrow.

In spite of the satisfaction the visualisation of the work gives me and the pride the

wealth of the material engenders in me, I am not happy. The working bibliography is at

odds with the uneasiness I feel because a glance at the working bibliography tells me

that I am not doing too badly. Increasingly, however, the outlines make me uneasy.

And I am getting increasingly uncomfortable. How will I incorporate my feelings on

death and bereavement, which are deepening with each text I read, into the study? And

the "precious friends hid in death's dateless night" (Shakespeare, 1985d, p. 1313); how

shall the special study reflect my increasing reconciliation with their departure? Above

all, how will I capture the deepening emotional acceptance of my mortality?

What emotional effect and change the experience of reading texts on death and

bereavement have had on me! I am feeling, day by day, that my counselling on death

and bereavement will depend to a large measure on the depth I have been able to go

into myself in appreciating the feelings aroused in me by my research. I am however

more than a researcher: death has affected me as a person who has lost dear ones. In the

circumstance, the research arouses feelings in me as a human being that, I suspect, shall

have implications for my growth and practice as a counsellor.

The growth is evident in minor details. In November 2000, two lines from Thomas (1951

1952) occupied a place of honour on the soft-board that directly faces me as I sit at my

working table. Done in large letters, the lines from Thomas (1951 1952) used to give me

a lot of comfort, because they encapsulate love for life and exhort resistance to death:


“Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (p.

2585). The lines are in tandem with the defiant lines from McKay (1919): “If we must

die, let it not be like hogs / Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot” (p. 1691).

Thomas (1951 1952) brings to mind someone who died amidst my research into the

special study. He had been ailing for over a year as a result of a debilitating, incurable

disease that had invaded his body. He, however, denied the ailment. Sadly, he seemed

to entertain a forlorn hope that he would get well, but he seemed angry that his health

was deteriorating by the day. Caught up in this cauldron of opposing emotions, he

'raged against the dying of the light' as he resisted to go 'into that good night.'

A month after his burial, while I was deep into my research on death and

bereavement, I realised that I must have been angry with the departed because of his

failure to let go of the denial of life slowly ebbing away. I must have been angry with

those of us who joined the departed in a conspiracy of denial and lies, a conspiracy that

must have nourished his denial and rage. Further, I was angry because I suspected that

the departed must have died in agony because of the refusal to let go of life slowly

ebbing away. And then I thought:

Wait a minute. That is the way I believe my father died 17 years ago. He, unlike

my mother who had died 10 months before he did, must have been wracked with

agony as he struggled against death, perhaps because he had not put his house in

order.

No wonder, I now tell myself, the family feuds that outlived him and the long-

drawn suit over his estate that courts decided on nearly 10 years after his death must

have roots in his struggle against death. I wryly smile as I recall that my father was

allergic to cats. This brings to mind memories of a man uncomfortable in the face of

serious ailment, a man who hardly visited the sick in hospitals. The man too was

uncomfortable over death and the dead: he would not discuss my paternal grandfather

who I did not see because he died before my father married. Now I am musing:


Perhaps, perhaps, his discomfort over deaths and his refusal to discuss deaths of

people who were close to him might have something to do with his reluctance to

go 'into that good night’ and his ‘rage against the dying of the light.'

Today, done in large letters, words from Hennezel (1997) share with Thomas (1951

1952) the place of honour on the soft-board. The words are from an address to a huge

learned audience in Montreal by a frail, young boy slowly dying of leukaemia: “I know

I’m only here for a limited time, to learn something. When I’ve learned what I’ve been

born to learn, I’ll leave. But in my head, I cannot imagine life stopping” (Hennezel, 1997,

p. 152).

The frail boy's words have been my constant companion while I continue with my

research on death and bereavement. I have shared them with, and they have been a

source of comfort for, a friend once anxious over threatening death. They help me

accept my mortality. They help me appreciate the value of my life, and they make words

I read in a novel 25 years ago immensely meaningful:

Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so

as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a

mean and petty past…And one must make use of every moment of life, lest some

sudden illness or tragic accident cut it short. (Ostrovsky, n.d., p. 271)

Disembowelled from the overall context of the text in which they occur, however,

the boy’s words would not have had the effect they have had on me. This is because the

context demonstrates how beautiful and peaceful death becomes, and suggests the

contentment both the dying and the bereaved enjoy, once they accept human mortality.

In this way, Hennezel (1997) has put me in the shoes of individuals who accept death

and die beautifully and peacefully, as my mother must have done bolstered as she was

by her faith that a place had been prepared for her in heaven.

My appreciation for the beauty and the peace that Hennezel (1997) captures at the

moment of her patients' deaths is palpable in the tribute I pay her immediately I finish

reading her book: “Thank you!!! 28.12.2000. 14.45.” The cryptic notation on her book


remains my homage to her ability to put me under the skin of individuals who, faced by

death, accept death and dying beautifully and peacefully. Could this be the way the

Kikuyu, who faced approaching death “calmly and with equanimity,” died (Leakey,

1977, p. 937)?

I discovered Leakey (1977) in early February 2001, soon after discovering and scanning

Mwiti (1999) in January 2001. I was excited that Leakey (1977) had devoted over 60

pages of his work on the death and disposal of the dead by the Kikuyu. Kenyatta (1968)

and Gatheru (1964) had already given me snippets on death and bereavement among

the Kikuyu; now, I was going to learn a lot on a community with which I have close

cultural ties, for I hail from the Kikuyu. Leakey (1977) gives me some gems; he informs

me that people in the society accepted death as a matter of course:

Death, coming as it does inevitably to all in due course, was viewed by the

Kikuyu with a considerable degree of fatalism. Though death was never in any

ordinary circumstance welcomed, of course, the Kikuyu did not have the haunting

fear of death which grips the people of many other civilisations.

A Kikuyu who knew that his end was near usually faced the fact calmly and

with equanimity. (p. 937)

A religion that held that the individual would live again as a spirit accounts for this

absence of fear in the face of death:

Kikuyu religious beliefs did not countenance the idea of a heaven and a hell, and

when about to die a man was not tormented by the fear that after all he might be

destined for the wrong place. As a departed spirit, too, his life would not be

unpleasant, for his needs would be seen to by those members of his family who

remained on earth and by his descendants, and eventually his spirit would be

reincarnated and take its place once more among the living. (Leakey, 1977, p. 937)


Here, belief in religion appears to act as a therapeutic agent. In this Leakey (1977) is

not unique; several writers on indigenous life in Kenya, explicitly or implicitly,

recognise that religious belief or ritual practice acts as a therapeutic agent on death and

bereavement: Gatheru (1964), Kenyatta (1968), Mbiti (1992), Mbiti (1996), Muia (2000),

Mwiti (1999), Nagendo (1996), Nagendo (1998), and Ocholla-Ayayo (1989).

I went back to Mwiti (1999) in February 2001. Could this be the same book that had

excited me way back in January 2001 when a colleague drew my attention to it? How

impressive was its title (Mwiti 1999)! Here at last, I had told myself, is the first full-

length book I know of that a compatriot has written on death and bereavement. I

immediately called the publisher on a Friday afternoon; the publisher directed me to the

bookshop that stocks the book; in the evening I had a copy of the book.

How disappointing was my excited excursion into the text. Poor documentation;

some texts that the author cites in the body of the work do not appear in the list of

references. Stylistic indiscretions stare at me. I put Mwiti (1999) down, half-heartedly

promising myself that I would go back to it, someday, in the course of writing my

special study. Soon afterwards, I discovered and began reading Leakey (1977).

On the day I promised myself that I must finish reading Leakey (1977), I found

myself idly and unenthusiastically turning the pages of Mwiti (1999). Idly and

unenthusiastically because my first impressions of the book had not changed. I read his

views on biblical statements on death and bereavement. I continued reading and came

to his discussion of grief in communities in Africa. Perhaps I should not have been as

hard on him I initially became, I was telling myself, before reading the whole work, for I

soon got two nuggets from him.

One, as I read him I recalled reading elsewhere that some societies not only

stopped work during the burial of a close one but also shaved the hair of the

bereaved (Mbiti 1996). Now, Mwiti (1999) opens my eyes to the therapeutic

significance of the indigenous practice of shaving the hair: it was done, he says,

"not only to signify separation from the one who has died but also to


communicate…that death does not destroy because the hair will grow again" (p.

14).

Two, I began to appreciate the place songs and hymns I have witnessed, and

sometimes participated in, in wakes and funerals play in helping and comforting

the bereaved cope with the loss of dear ones. This is when Mwiti (1999) says

something I have not come across in all the texts I had read on death and

bereavement. He talks about music as a therapeutic agent that "assists the

bereaved persons to express the deepest human emotion that cannot be

expressed through any other form" (Mwiti, 1999, pp. 12-13).

I am aware that chants or dirges accompany most ritual on death and bereavement in

the indigenous society. As an accompaniment of ritual, this music embodies religious

matter, for ritual is essentially religious because it not only “is a set form of carrying out

a religious action or ceremony” but also “embodies a belief or beliefs” (Mbiti, 1996, p.

131). The centrality of ritual as a therapeutic intervention on death and bereavement is

evident in the society where, according to Kenyatta (1968) and Mbiti (1992), religion

permeates every aspect of life.

The ritual comprises several, mostly public, activities and festivities such as feasting,

dancing, and wailing. It incorporates taboo that sets rules on touching the dead (Egan

n.d.), shaving hair (Mbiti 1996 & Mwiti 1999), suspending work or engaging in or

suspending sexual activities (Leakey 1977, Mbiti 1996, & Egan n.d.), or smearing bodies

with substances or disowning houses associated with death (Leakey 1977 & Mbiti 1996).

Observing the necessary taboos, and preparing to resume “normal life,” the bereaved

help the dead to depart “peacefully” from “the living” (Mbiti, 1996, p. 121). On the

whole, this ritual is therapeutic to the bereaved.

It provides an avenue for them to publicly vent sorrow for the loss, and express

appreciation for the achievements, of the departed. This is apparent when Mbiti

(1996) says that mourners “especially women, wail and weep, lamenting the

departure of the dead person, recalling the good things he [sic] said and did” (p.

121).


It helps to stabilise them. Mbiti (1996) succinctly expresses how this happens

when he says: “people are able to come to terms with the agonies, sorrows and

disruption caused by death. By ritualising death, people dance it away, drive it

away, and renew their own life after it has taken away one of their members” (p.

122).

It helps them accept the death and affirm the continuity of life. This therapeutic

outcome is implicit in the symbolism, reminiscent of Mwiti (1999), of the shaved

hair:

In many places members of the immediate family have their hair shaved off,

and some of their normal activities are suspended until all the funeral rites

have been performed. The shaving of the hair is a symbol of separation,

showing that one of the family has been separated from them. At the same

time it is an indication of people’s belief that death does not destroy life, since

the growth of new hair indicates that life continues to spring up. (Mbiti,

1996, pp. 121-122)

It helps them live in comfort and peace, for, having sent off the departed to “join

other spirits” (Mbiti, 1996, p. 124), they believe that the departed will not trouble

them. Here, therapy derives from the widespread hold spirits of the dead have

on the living (Gatheru 1964, Kenyatta 1968, Mbiti 1992, Mbiti 1996, & Ocholla-

Ayayo 1989).

In some places, ritual demands that a king or the rich be interred with “weapons to

defend himself along the way to the next world, or food to eat on the journey, [or] wives

and servants to keep him company when he reaches there” (Mbiti, 1996, p. 120). In the

absence of evidence, I hazard the guess that kings and the rich are sometimes interred

with their possessions because they won’t let go of their attachment to worldly goods. I

suspect that as a result this strong attachment they resist to go ‘into that good night’ but,

with the inescapable ‘dying of the light,’ go with possessions. The therapeutic import of

the accompaniment appears to be a failure by the prominent to accept death as an


inevitable end, though the centrality of ritual demands that people and property

accompany the prominent to their graves.

The centrality of ritual is apparent too in requirements governing the place of burial.

The significance of this ritual requirement is evident in a court case that, for some

months in 1986 and 1987, captured public and media imagination in Kenya (Cohen &

Odhiambo 1992, Egan n.d., & Ojwang & Mugambi 1989). The court case revolved

around the place the body of a lawyer was to be laid at rest: his matrimonial home near

Nairobi or his ancestral home away from Nairobi.

The contending parties were his clan that wanted him buried in his ancestral home

and his widow, as well as her children, who wanted him buried near his matrimonial

home. In the end, the court ruled that the deceased be buried in his ancestral home

(Cohen & Odhiambo 1992, Cotran 1995, Egan n.d., & Ojwang & Mugambi 1989).

Arising from the court ruling on the place of burial, I see two therapeutic implications

for the bereaved, but contending, parties: either peace or distress.

In connection to attaining peace, the clan’s argument was that if the deceased was

laid to rest elsewhere except in his ancestral home his spirits would go back to haunt

and trouble the kin. In this regard, the brother of the deceased was afraid of being

haunted if he failed to ensure observance of requisite rituals that entailed that his

brother was buried in the ancestral home. “I will not be able to sleep properly,” he told

the court, “because wherever I go, there will be ghosts haunting me for having let my

brother be buried elsewhere other than home” (Egan, n.d., p. 59). The deceased’s

stepmother indicated that once the correct ritual of laying the dead to rest where

tradition demands is observed, the bereaved lives in peace, without fear that the

deceased would haunt them. “Since proper burial rites and ceremony was [sic] carried

out,” she said of her late husband’s burial, “he will not haunt me” (Egan, n.d., p. 68).

In connection to suffering distress, the widow, as well as the children, of the

deceased kept away from the burial of the deceased, evidently because the court ruling

ran counter to her prayer on where she wanted her husband buried. In the event, she

experienced pain when she lost the legal battle for the right to inter his body according


to her wishes to bury, and his reported wishes to be buried, near the matrimonial home.

The pain is palpable in what she said after the ruling: “I feel bitter and it is sad for me

and my children to have been denied a husband and a father” (Egan, n.d., p. 103).

As the case was going on, I kept wondering what the hullabaloo was all about: shouldn't

a man be buried at his matrimonial home where he has lived with his wife and children

and where they, in any case, want him buried? Now, I am beginning to realise that the

place of burial is important under the indigenous dispensation (Ocholla-Ayayo 1989),

because the ritual involved is therapeutically significant for the bereaved and the dead.

Social norms relating to the place of burial have links with therapeutic interventions in

the bereaved and, implicitly, the dying. In the bereaved because they know that they

will live in peace, untroubled by the spirits of the departed. Implicitly in the dying

because they would accept death in the knowledge that they would not haunt or trouble

their living family that would lay them to rest in the appropriate place from where they

would join kindred spirits.

Yet, I am learning that the social norms can deny power to the dying and the

bereaved unless their wishes are in line with the norms. Testimonies from the court case

illustrate the dispossession of power.

With respect to the dying, the wishes of the dying over their burial are

inconsequential if the wishes are in conflict with the beliefs of the indigenous

society:

Khaminwa [counsel of the plaintiff]: Do you know of any other close family

member whom S.M. [the deceased] told about where he would like to be

buried?

Mrs. Otieno [the plaintiff and S. M.’s widow]: Yes, his step-brother, John

Omondi….

Khaminwa: What did Mr. John Omondi when he heard this?


Mrs. Otieno: He did not say anything.

Bosire [the presiding judge]: What was Mr. Omondi told by your late husband?

Mrs. Otieno: That he wanted to be buried in Nairobi if he died.

Khaminwa: Did Mr. Omondi say anything?

Mrs. Otieno: Not then. But he later told me that a Luo [the ancestral tribe of the

deceased] man can talk about his death and burial but in the end “we [the

clan] would do what we want.” (Egan, n.d., p. 26)

With respect to the bereaved, the widow, as well as her children, has no voice

over the burial of her departed husband:

Khaminwa: What customs are you following?

Siranga [one of the defendants]: The customs of our grandfathers. In terms of

burial, a Luo over 12 years can only be buried at [the ancestral] home. The

clan takes the responsibility of the burial. His wife is even not allowed not

only to bury her husband, but even to touch his body after he has died.

The children become members of the clan after their father’s death. The

customs do not even allow them to decide or point out where their father

should be buried.

Khaminwa: He has to be buried by the clan which decides where and how he

should be buried?

Siranga: Yes.

Khaminwa: The views of the wife are irrelevant?

Siranga: Yes.

Khaminwa: And the view of the children are [sic] also irrelevant?

Siranga: Yes.

Bosire: What about the wife, is she a member of the clan?

Siranga: Yes, but she is not consulted over these matters. She is not relevant.

She is a wife, a woman.

Khaminwa: So the customs discriminate against the women?

Siranga: Those are the customs.


Khaminwa: So if she has a view it is immaterial?

Siranga: She can present it for the clan to consider. But her duty is to mourn her

husband.

Khaminwa: So after his death, it is the duty of a wife to mourn her husband?

Siranga: Yes, that is what I know.

Khaminwa: What about if the wishes of the clan differ from those of the

children, which will be adopted?

Siranga: Those of the clan. (Egan, n.d., p. 49)

I suspect that social norms ‘disempower’ the dying or the bereaved because of fear of

transgressing ritual relating to burial. In the changing dispensation, where indigenous

religion is daily losing its hold on the people and where individuals have a right to

unbelief (Kenyatta 1968 & Mbiti 1992), however, the bereaved are likely to become more

empowered relative to indigenous social norms. On the same basis, I see the role of the

helper changing from a dependence on the edicts of spirits to a response to the needs of

the bereaved. Responding to the needs, the helper will likely become less directive and

more disinterested in line with a clientele more empowered in its relationship with

helpers as a result of ritual enfeebled by social change.

I have realised that ritual, out which therapy is an offshoot and which is significant, and

indispensable, in the indigenous society, is conservative of the social order, as it is based

on a sacrosanct belief in the world of spirits and a strict observance of rites of passage.

Two of the beliefs and practices are the world of spirits and the rites of passage. That

ritual, as well as its therapeutic properties, is essential in the indigenous society because

of being conservative of the social order raises an intriguing paradox in relation to the

assertion by Masson (1997) that counselling is nonessential in the contemporary society

because of being conservative of the social order. In line with this argument, ritual

associated with death and bereavement cannot be dissociated from social necessity; out

of this relationship arise its unassailable therapeutic interventions and outcomes in the

indigenous society:


It not only helps the bereaved but also demonstrates human capacity to accept

and live with loss. In this way, it saves the bereaved from destruction from

emotions that death can stir up.

It restores individual and communal homeostasis that death threatens to disrupt

and, in the process, helps people to resume “normal life” (Mbiti, 1996, p. 121).

It achieves its therapeutic goals through indigenous helpers who are authority

figures unquestioned by the bereaved and sanctioned by the social order.

Since my research began, I have learnt to accept that someday—today, tomorrow—I will

have to let go of all I treasure in this life. To this end, I note that I have been taking stock

of my actions. Once in a while, I hold dialogues with myself about the purpose of my

life, not because I am resigned to death, but because I am aware of my mortality. As my

research progresses, more and more I continue to appreciate the meaning of ‘learn’ as

used by the frail boy in Hennezel (1997) when he says: “I know I’m only here for a

limited time, to learn something. When I’ve learned what I’ve been born to learn, I’ll

leave” (p. 152).

Learning is interactive, I remind myself. Learning involves a relationship, I reflect.

In the event, I tell myself that a component of my legacy, part of what I would like leave

behind me, are meaningful relationships with myself, with significant others in my life

and with my clients and my students. This overall awareness is therapeutic, I am

learning, as it helps me accept my mortality and urges me to make most of my life, as

my future existence as a spirit is an open question for me.

How cardinal, however, to my indigenous society belief in this invisible but eternal

world of spirits is, I am discovering, is evident in Kenyatta (1968), Leakey (1977), Mbiti

(1992), Mbiti (1996), Oruka (198), Muia (2000), Nagendo (1998), and Ocholla-Ayayo

(1989).


Belief in the invisible world of spirits is widespread in the world, however. In this

connection, Rinpoche (1996) says that since “the dawn of history, reincarnation and firm

faith after death have occupied an essential place in nearly all the world’s religions” (p.

82). In a similar manner, Ikeda (1994) says: “According to the Buddhist view, life is

eternal. It is believed to undergo successive incarnations, so that death is thought to be

not so much the cessation of an existence as the beginning of a new one” (p. 84). In King

(1968), Kübler-Ross (1997), Peck (1997), and Welch (1977) I discern similar intimations of

life or existence after death. Does belief in the world of spirits or the eternity of life have

a bearing on therapeutic interventions on death and bereavement?

Life in the world of spirits can begin only at death, I am learning. To this extent, I

tell myself, belief in this world imperceptibly accommodates death as a reality of one’s

current existence. To the extent that it accepts physical death, the belief in the hereafter

enriches life, I conclude. As a result of this, it is gradually dawning on me that, despite

my scepticism in the existence after death, the belief in the hereafter appears to be

therapeutic for both the living and the dying.

It helps the living accept death and participate in funerals and burials in the

knowledge when their time to die comes, the living will accord them decent

funerals and burials. Armed with this assurance, death does not preoccupy

them, and, as a result, they continue with the business of everyday living

without undue anxiety over death.

It helps the dying accept death with peace of mind in the conviction that one’s

physical existence is not the end of life but the beginning of life as a spirit. In the

event, the belief tempers anger and resistance at the prospect of death, the ‘rage

against the dying of the light’ and the refusal to ‘go gentle into that good night.’

In their place are acceptance and peace based on the hope of life in the next

world to join the loved ones.

Believing that when their time comes they will join those who died before them and,

albeit in an invisible form, participate in affairs of the society they will have left behind,

the living stage elaborate or lavish funerals and burials in honour of the departed. In the

process, they sometimes provide property and people to accompany the departed on the

journey to the next world. Pleased with the honour they bestow upon the dead, the


living are happy that the dead depart into the next world in peace, and, departing in

peace, will be content with the living. In the process, they will allow the living to live in

peace.

When troubles assail the living, however, I am learning, the living seek to placate the

departed, whom they believe they may have offended through improper funeral or

burial rites. They make necessary offerings or sacrifices, convinced that once the spirits

accept what they offer or sacrifice the spirits will be at peace (Kenyatta 1968, Mbiti 1992,

& Mbiti 1996). In this way, the belief in the hereafter, on which are based offerings and

sacrifices, reduces anxiety in, and, therefore, is therapeutic to, the living.

The therapeutic mechanism that helps believers accept, not resist, death as a physical

phenomenon is implicit in Leakey (1977). He argues that the Kikuyu faced death calmly

because their families would meet their needs in the hereafter and their spirits “would

be reincarnated and take…[their] place once more among the living” (p. 937). The

mechanism is similarly implicit in King (1968) “on what turned out to be the eve of his

assassination” (p. 194):

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead.

But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been on the mountaintop. And I

don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place.

But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s

allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I have looked over. And I’ve seen the

promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that

we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not

worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory

of the coming of the Lord. (p. 203)

On the whole, La Guma (1972) persuades me that the faith in the hereafter helps the

dying to accept death by giving them a vision of the world of spirits that awaits them on

death. The vision is plain when the dying Tekwane sees his ancestors alive in the other

world, “gathered on the misty horizon, their spears sparkling like diamonds in the

exploding sun” (La Guma, 1972, p. 175). On the part of the living, the faith offers them


relief that their departed will join the ancestors in a world certainly different from,

perchance happier than, this world. We see this in the eulogy for Tsatsu after his death

in a labour camp: “He has gone to his ancestors, and may they receive him with more

kindness than he has met in this world” (La Guma, 1972, p. 156).

As I talk about the immortal ancestors in Guma (1972), I recall Achilles, the ancient

Greek hero, who is destined to remain immortal but is killed once it is discovered that in

his heel lies the way to his mortality. How often have I, with relish, told my students

about this hero of antiquity who asks: “Shall I go home to Phthia and live out my life in

uneventful ease, or die young in battle and live for ever on the lips of poets?”

(Thomson, 1980, p. 62).

Life, I am telling myself, furnishes me with numerous avenues of teaching and helping

me accept death as part of my existence, if only I will. Such avenues are stages of life

which, I note, are prevalent in several cultures. In Buddhism are the stages that one goes

through in this life and in life after death (Rinpoche 1996 & Ikeda 1994). In the West are

“the eight stages of social-emotional/personality development” that Erikson says

characterise an individual’s “development through the life span—infancy through old

age” (Leal, 1995, p. 15).

Literary works, too, constantly remind me of my existential end (Shakespeare 1985a,

Shakespeare 1985b, Shakespeare 1985c [Appendix 5], Shakespeare 1985d, Shirley 1960, &

Thomas 1951 1952). As an example, Shakespeare (1985a) identifies and dramatises seven

ages that mark the life of an individual from raw childhood to ripe adulthood. All these

avenues seem to tell me that life is ephemeral; in the circumstance, I am beginning to

believe that paying heed to them could play a therapeutic role in helping me accept and

prepare for my mortality. In this sense, acceptance of stages of life is therapeutic to the

dying and the bereaved for, as it prepares people for death, it encapsulates “anticipatory

grief” (Kübler-Ross, 1974, p. 99) or “preparatory grief” (Kübler-Ross, 1977, p. 86).

Considering this, I now give Achilles an honourable place in my research: not

because he chooses to go to war, but because he is aware that death comes to us all in the


end. In the event, one, he does not fear but accepts death and, two, he seeks immortality

in the face of his mortality.

His fearless acceptance of human mortality is in line with the courageous recognition

of death by another hero, who asserts that since death is inevitable, its acceptance should

dissolve its fear:

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear,

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come. (Shakespeare, 1985b, p. 980, II: ii: 34-37)

I suspect that the acceptance of existential end by Achilles helps him lead a

worthwhile life without being unduly bogged down by rumination over or

preoccupation with death. In this way, he is unlike the people who according to Lake

(1998) “seem…to have partially given in to death” because they “are less than fully

committed to life” (p. 5). To this extent, recognition that human life surely comes to an

end and the concomitant acceptance of death as “as an intrinsic part of life” appear to be

therapeutic for, in line with existentialist counselling, it helps us “live in an authentic

manner” (Graham, 1986, p. 69). Commenting on existentialism as an approach to

counselling, Corey (1996) says:

Those who fear death also fear life, as though they are saying, “I fear death

because I have never really lived.” If we affirm life and attempt to live in the

present as fully as possible, however, we are not obsessed with the termination

of life. (p. 180)

With regard to Achilles’s search for immortality lies the assurance that his

courageous exploits in war would live forever ‘on the lips of poets.’ I feel that the

assurance that poetry would immortalise him spurs him on to accomplish magnificent

deeds and accept death as ‘a necessary end.’ To this extent, the assurance of

immortality is therapeutic.


Searching for immortality, Achilles captures the paradox in human life that death is

inevitable but that death is conquerable. The paradox touches on the quality of life we

lead in the assurance that what we leave behind will immortalise us. The paradox,

therefore, must be a source of tension, if not depression, in the living. I suspect that the

tension accounts for the several attempts that, explicitly or implicitly, seek to reconcile

the simultaneous inevitability and conquest of death. Thus, Rowe (1997):

Terrible though death is, we can come to terms with the thought of our death when

we feel that our lives have significance and that some important part of ourselves—

our soul, or children, or our work—will continue on after we are dead. (p. 17)

In the circumstance, I assume that statues seek to immortalise the people whose likeness

they represent (Shelley 1817 1818 [Appendix 6]). Similarly, literature captures, and

resolves, the paradox between the certainty of mortality and the yearning for

immortality when it strives to immortalise human creativity (Pushkin 1974 [Appendix

7]), a loved one (Shakespeare 1985c), or morality:

There is no armour against Fate:

Death lays his icy hands on kings…

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. (Shirley, 1960, p. 370)

In the end, forms through which people search for immortality persuade me to see in

the forms explicit or implicit therapeutic interventions to counter the tension certainty of

death generates by assuring us of an immortality of sorts. In this regard, Achilles

reminds me that, in spite of death, the “inevitable phase of life” (Byock, 1998, p. XIV),

being a common denominator to all the living, the quality, not the length, of life is

significant.

Bereavement, however, has a place in endeavours to immortalise the deceased

whose lives the living ‘extend’ through the memories they have for the departed. The

‘extension’ is evident also when a bereaved person says of the dead:


I feel that bereavement is an ongoing thing. It is not that one gets morbid, it

is that, up to a point, our grief is their memorial. It keeps them alive—they live

through our memories of them. I think that is important. The bad things

disappear, and that is nice. (Richardson, 1991, p. 177)

At the same time, bereavement endeavours to immortalise the departed, as is

evident in the existence of the “living dead” (Mbiti, 1996):

[W]hile the departed person is remembered by name, he…is not really dead: he

is alive, and such person I would call the living-dead. The living-dead is a person

who is physically dead but alive in the world of spirits. So long as the living-

dead is thus remembered, he is in the state of personal immortality. This personal

immortality is externalized in the physical continuation of the individual

through procreation, so that the children bear the traits of their parents or

progenitors. From the point of view of the survivors, personal immortality is

expressed or externalized in acts like respecting the departed, giving bits of food

to them, pouring out libation and carrying out instructions given by them either

while they lived or when they appear. (pp. 25-26)

In its keeping the departed alive in the minds of the living, I conclude, that

bereavement is therapeutic to the dying who hope that they will live in the people they

leave behind to remember them. It, therefore, appears to me that this hope is different

not in content but only in form from the wish by Achilles to ‘live for ever on the lips of

poets.’

In the indigenous society, the search for immortality is linked to the belief in the

hereafter. In turn, the hereafter is part of the rites of passage that mark critical stages,

such as birth, initiation, marriage, and death, in an individual’s life (Kenyatta 1968 &

Mbiti 1992). Integrated in the rites of passage is a belief in the existence of the world of

spirits that, while heralding life in a different form, puts an end to life on earth. The rites


form the worldview of this society (Mugambi 1989), and the society, revering them,

demands that all its members observe them punctiliously. In the event, it visits dire

punishment on anyone who fails to observe any of them; indeed, failure to observe one

of the prescribed rites lies at the heart of the tragedy in Ngugi (1969).

In line with this social edict, faith in the rites of passage can “conquer” fear of death.

It, therefore, is therapeutic as evident from the argument that the believer in existence in

the world of spirits who knew that death “was near usually faced the fact calmly and

with equanimity” (Leakey, 1977, p. 937). Considering this, I am inclined to believe that

the believer has no reason to resist death with anger or fear because, being a rite of

passage, death is anticipated; for the same reason, I expect the bereaved to accept death

with peace of mind. In their anticipation of physical death and spiritual birth, rites of

passage rest on the belief that an individual will mark, through appropriate rituals,

necessary stages of life. In this way, the rites rest on the principle that the individual

matures with age and stages and, that with maturation, leaves a mark on the society.

Underlying this principle, I see three implications for therapeutic interventions on death

and bereavement.

One, should an individual die before going through requisite rites of passage, the

society treats the individual as less of a social being relative to the stages the

individual has failed to go through. Accordingly, the gravity of loss and the

depth of grief, as well as the nature of burial rites, will correspond to the number

of rites of passage one has successfully negotiated. In this respect, a child is

casually grieved over as it is “still regarded as part of its mother” (Leakey, 1977,

p. 964), while an adult who dies at a ripe age, however, may receive elaborate

funeral and burial rituals (Nagendo 1996). Between the treatment of the two lie

degrees of bereavement that revolve around not only age but also gender and

status (Leakey 1977, Nyamongo 1999, & Ocholla-Oyayo 1989).

Two, marking death as a rite of passage where the relationship between the

individual and the society is so close that each is “indefinable except in terms of

the other” (Kettle, 1970, p. 14), the society supports the deceased’s kin in funeral

and burial rites such as dances, feasts, and music. In this way, the society treats

an individual’s loss as its loss and an individual’s grief as its grief (Mbiti 1996).


In the process, grief does not burden an individual alone; it is a shared

responsibility geared towards calming and comforting the kin of the departed.

In the end, the society becomes a therapeutic support group that helps the

bereaved process the loss and resume normal activities, for in the words of Muia

(2000): “Death in most African societies is socialized and localized [,] and in

Kenya [,] regardless of whether death occurs in the city or in a remote village, it

is always treated as a communal affair” (p. 16). In this way, the social marking of

a rite of passage translates into a therapeutic intervention.

Three, the indigenous society accommodates the bereavement of every

member—despite that some individuals who fail to negotiate key rites of passage

get short shift in the form of rituals associated with death and bereavement. This

is because hardly anyone dies of natural or accidental causes in this society

(Mbiti 1992 & Mbiti 1996), presumably if one is not old enough to have

negotiated critical rites of passage. In this case, society attributes death to

mystical forces: “In the Kikuyu society it was always assumed that when a

healthy man died suddenly, without previous illness, his death was caused by

witchcraft” (Gatheru, 1964, p. 52).

The sorcerer, the witch, or the wizard is one personification of these forces. Once

society identifies one as a sorcerer, a witch, or a wizard, it puts the individual to

death, in a ritual manner, for committing “a crime against the whole community”

(Kenyatta, 1968, p. 228). I suspect the ritual execution of sorcerers, witches and

wizards satisfies the bereaved who now feel comforted that the human cause of

death is dead. In this sense, the principle of rites of passage accommodates emotions

aroused by unpredictable deaths, whose causes appear mystical; the execution is

therefore therapeutic to the bereaved.

Belief in mystical causes of death, as well as in some ailments, rests on the presumption

that people do not just die; instead, death usually results from mystical forces as the

following two examples indicate:


[A] bereaved mother whose child has died from malaria will not be satisfied with

the scientific explanation that a mosquito carrying malaria parasites stung the child

and caused it to suffer and die from malaria. She will wish to know why the

mosquito stung her child and not somebody else’s child. The only satisfactory

answer is that someone sent the mosquito, or worked other evil magic against her

child. (Mbiti, 1996, p. 200)

When a man is stricken by lightning it is said…, “He has been smashed to

smithereens for seeing Ngai [God] in the act of cracking its joints in readiness to go

to smash and chase away its enemies.” (Kenyatta, 1968, p. 237)

On similar lines is the person who believes that “children die because they are

bewitched, because someone else in the family has offended a god or, in some secret

way, erred” (Achebe, 1988, p. 98). These are the beliefs that Achebe (1988) condemns as

“malignant fictions” (p. 98). Condemning, as well as pitying, believers in them Achebe

(1988) gives an eyewitness account:

Some years ago I watched the pitiful spectacle of an emaciated little child brought

out and sat on a mat in the midst of the desperate habitues of a prayer-house while

the prophetess with maniacal authority pronounced it possessed by the devil and

ordered its parents to fast for seven days. (p. 98)

In effect, the believer in ‘malignant fiction’ mystifies agents of death and,

accordingly, blames curses, nature, sorcery, or spirits as causes of death. Cognisant of

the belief by the bereaved that somebody or something is the cause of the death of a dear

one, I picture the bereaved asking the indigenous helper: “Who is to blame for the death

in my family?” Once the helper unravels the cause of the death, the information abates

fear that had gripped the bereaved. In this way, the bereaved is relieved of anxiety; to

this end, the knowledge the helper conveys to the bereaved is therapeutic.

This is not the end, however. Anxious to have peace restored and in a bid to avert

tragedy in the family, the bereaved wants to know what needs to be done: What should


the bereaved do if the cause of the death is a human agent? What action needs to be

taken if the spirits of the dead, in their unhappiness as a result of an improper burial,

exact vengeance? What steps need to be taken if the departed had transgressed a taboo

or broken an oath? Invariably, the helper’s prescribed action will involve ritual: an

offering to appease offended spirits, the destruction of a wizard who causes death

through poison, sacrifices to purify the land, or exacting vengeance on people or their

property (Kenyatta 1968, Mbiti 1992, & Mbiti 1996). In this way, the indigenous helper

helps the bereaved come to terms with the death and, in the process, restores the

homeostasis the psychological struggle with the cause of death disrupted. The

restoration is effected through interventions of indigenous helpers such as diviners,

physicians, and mediums.

The indigenous helpers through whom therapeutic outcomes are realised will have been

trained (Gatheru 1964 & Mbiti 1992); in some cases, only individuals who are ‘called’ can

be trained as helpers (Gatheru 1964). The training, Gatheru (1964) leads me to believe,

helps society duly recognise the individuals as specialists Mbiti (1992), who, because

society believes possess “supernatural powers…[,] have to be trained to use them”

(Gatheru, 1964, p. 27). In the circumstance, the training instils ethics in the specialists,

buttresses the prestige and mystique of helping, underlines the social necessity of

helping and helps the society dispense with charlatans.

The helpers, however, operate within a religious framework (Kenyatta 1968, Mbiti

1992, & Mbiti 1996). Within this framework, they partly act as a bridge between the

world of the living and the world of the spirits and, in the process, interpret and,

sometimes, enforce demands the spirits of the dead make. In this respect, when a family

is to engage in a momentous “undertaking” or “decision” or suffers “a major illness,” it

pays homage to and consults the departed “through the diviner, medicine man or

medium” (Mbiti, 1996, p. 130). In the process, a therapeutic relationship is established

between the helpers and the helped, as the former help to restore homeostasis in the

bereaved.


Implicit or explicit in Kenyatta (1968), Mbiti (1992) and Mbiti (1996) is that

everyone—helpers and helped included—in the society shares the same worldview

arising from a commonality of religion and rites of passage. As a result of its prevalence

in the society, the worldview pervades the therapeutic relationship in which helpers

administer herbs, conduct rituals and contact spirits in their capacities as physicians,

priests, diviners, or mediums (Kenyatta 1968, Mbiti 1992, & Mbiti 1996). In any of or in

all these capacities, helpers ensure that the bereaved do not suffer from guilt when they

fail to bury their dead properly, seek causes of death, help society dispense with

wizards, or convey wishes of the dead to the living. In the event, therapy can be neither

inconsequential nor luxurious.

In the relationship, however, helpers are authoritative while the helped are passive.

Indeed, the latter must obey the instructions helpers convey in order to avert calamity

on themselves. In the light of this, I see an unequal therapeutic relationship in which

helpers have the upper hand as interpreters, if not enforcers, of religious edicts. In this

sense, indigenous helpers are invariably directive in orientation. Norms prevailing in

the indigenous society fortify helpers’ directive orientation; this is because while the

dead make demands on the living, the latter cannot instruct the dead, and while the

living can offend the dead, the latter cannot offend the former (Mbiti 1992). As

messengers of the dead to the living, therefore, indigenous helpers enjoy unassailable

authority that robs the helped of power in the therapeutic relationship.

Given a choice or a chance, what kind of helper would I like to have beside me towards

my end, on my deathbed? I pose the question because I constantly put myself under the

skin of the dying I have read and am reading about in the literature on death and

bereavement. In the process, I have learnt how the dying feels as death inexorably

draws close, I have known how few are one’s needs at this point, and I have embraced

the peace bathing the individual who has accepted death (Kübler-Ross 1977, Kübler-

Ross 1997, & Rinpoche 1996). As a result, day by day, I am learning to accept death as

part of my existential self.


Seeking an answer to the question, I feel I would like, I am learning, a helper who

would be present for me. A helper who would allow me space to process anger I still

harbour against people who have abused my kindness over the years, relatives who

drove my mother to her destruction, and kinsmen who split the money donated to help

towards her funeral and burial. A helper who would respect my need to let go of the

anger that has nestled deep inside me. Subsequent anger, as well as resentment, in life

has found a home deep down there, comfortably nestling in the nooks of the nest I built

for it during my mother’s illness and after her death. In therapeutic terms the anger is

part of my “unfinished business” (Milne, 1999, p. 221). Once abated, the anger would

allow me to pass on in lustrous peace—the way I have seen patients helpers respect pass

on (Hennezel 1997). This is because I now realise that unless I let go of the anger I will

‘not go gentle into that good night’ but will ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’ the

way I saw my father raging on his deathbed.

As I continue with my research, I realise that processing the anger now will invest

my life with boundless goodness that will not give room to my deep-seated bitterness.

Such a good life, I learn from Ikeda (1994), has therapeutic bearing to the process of

dying; in his words: “our ability successfully to pass through the dying process depends

upon our steady efforts during life…to strengthen the foundation of goodness in the

depth of our lives” (p. 90).

The statement seems to tell me that the way I lead my life is therapeutically

significant relative to my resistance to or acceptance of death; I suspect that the

resistance or the acceptance will affect those bereaved by my death. In the end, I am

telling myself, I need to incorporate the significance of the quality of life into my

perspectives on theory and practice of counselling on death and bereavement, for I

would like to see my dying or bereaved clients accept death as an inviolable stage of

existence.

Talking about an acceptance of death, I recall imperceptible suggestions by Hennezel

(1997) about helpers’ need to help the bereaved and the dying identify and process

requisite feelings; these suggestions appear to be accepting or resisting impeding or


realised loss for the bereaved and accepting or resisting impeding loss for the dying.

The unqualified respect she gives her patients, the ailments ravaging their bodies

notwithstanding, as well as her presence, allows patients in the palliative unit where she

works space to process their feelings and accept death as part of their existential selves.

The need to accept death brings to mind a statement by Ikeda (1994) that the quality

of life helps or hinders one’s peace at the moment of death, for the quality of life has a

bearing on the process and the quality of dying:

Many people, Kübler-Ross says, approach death with feelings of anger or

depression. People who resist death to the last moment may create for themselves

just that much extra agony; while people who have accepted the fact of their dying

only at a superficial level, merely resigning themselves to their fate, are likely to

pass away far less peacefully than those who have genuinely accepted that this life

is soon to end—that is, right up until the last moment they may despairingly cling

to faint hope that they might be given a reprieve. (Ikeda, 1994, p. 88)

The statement reminds of the influence of Kübler-Ross (1977) on literature ‘on death

and dying’ when she identifies and discusses five stages of bereavement by the dying.

The influence is widespread, transcending continents and cultures, as the following

literature indicates: Byock (1998), Kariuki (1989), Lieberman (1995), Milne (1999), Mwiti

(1999), Peck (1997), Raphael (1999), and Rinpoche (1996).

In Kenya, Mwiti (1999) acknowledges the stages of bereavement that Kübler-Ross (1977)

identifies. Departing from her five stages and, in the process, getting her name—

“Elizabeth-Ross [sic]” (p. 18)—and title—Death and dying [sic] (p. 1)—wrong, Mwiti

(1999) talks about four phases, asserting that the phases are not linear:

In my experience in working with bereaved persons, bereaved persons go through

four phases of grief. These four phases are; [sic] shock, control, regression, and

reconciliation/integration. There is no firm line dividing these phases. One phase


may not necessary [sic] open doors for the next phase. There is a lot of interface

between these phases in this journey of healing. (pp. 17-18)

The more I read literature on death and bereavement the more I feel whether they

are four or five and whether they are ‘phases’ or ‘stages,’ the figures and the terms are

not the central issue relative to therapy. The central issue, Gatheru (1964) reminds me, is

the presence of indigenous helpers in helping their patients cope with loss. These

helpers are directive in orientation, however, as they rely on, and operate within the

context of, religious edicts.

Yes, I am telling myself, identifying phases or stages is necessary. I am learning,

however, that a helpful relationship between the helper and the dying or the bereaved

allows the dying and the bereaved space to get in touch with their existential selves. In

the process, the helper helps the dying and the bereaved learn to cope with people who,

paradoxically in the name of love or help, do not allow their dying or their soon-to-be

bereaved space Kübler-Ross (1977). The space will help the dying and the bereaved

learn the meaning of accepting or resisting the inevitability of death.

The edicts are apparent in vengeance that is widely used in the indigenous society as a

vent for the anger or the grief the death of one close to the bereaved excites. This is the

society in which, there being “no atheists” (Mbiti 1992, p. 29), members revere religion

and in which absolute obedience to religious edicts is the forte of the members (Achebe

1969, Kenyatta 1968, Mbiti 1992, & Mbiti 1996). In this regard, when an indigenous

Kikuyu kills someone inadvertently, the deceased’s relatives set out to kill a killer’s kin

in a bid to demonstrate that the deceased belongs to a kinship “group capable of

inflicting retribution on behalf of the one of its member” (Kenyatta, 1968, p. 227). The

relatives avenge the kin’s death by killing a relative of the killer or destroy the fields of

the relatives of the killer if the avengers fail to kill one of the killer’s kin (Kenyatta (1968).

Kenyatta (1968) implies that the vengeance checks a “blood feud” (p. 228) between the

offended and the offender.


Vengeance here, I am learning, symbolises anger and grief at the death and,

simultaneously, becomes a source of solace to and comfort for people who inadvertently

lose one of their own. In this way, vengeance expresses the needs and sublimates the

emotions of the relatives of the deceased and, therefore, serves as a therapeutic weapon

in the hands of the bereaved in a deeply religious society.

In the face of the need to avert costly blood feuds or to forestall debilitating social

calamities occasioned by the desecration of the earth, society appears to have chosen

healing through vengeance as the less costly option. In the light of this, I appreciate the

society’s enforcement of ritual edicts to exact vengeance, just as I now understand why it

destroys houses in which people die (Leakey 1977).

In the light of the use of vengeance as a therapeutic tool for the inadvertent killing of a

human being, I am not surprised by the heavy penalty society exacts to rid itself of

wizards. According to Kenyatta (1968), these are individuals who, operating “in the

most secret way” and in “secret hiding-places” (p. 300) and using poison or “witchcraft”

(p. 228), kill people. The penalty the society exacts for these killings is execution. Once

sentenced to death, wizards kill goats as symbols of their impeding deaths (Kenyatta

1968). Evidently well aware that ostracism in the indigenous society implies a living

death (Mbiti 1992), the society declares that convicted wizards stand “alone” (Kenyatta,

1968, p. 303) before executing them and purifying the land they have apparently

polluted.

Kenyatta (1968) gives a detailed account of the destruction of wizards and the

subsequent cleansing of the land. In him, however, I hear an authoritative voice telling

colonialists that the life of his indigenous people was noble. To this extent, in his

discussion of the destruction of wizards, I discern political intents to demonstrate that

indigenous people had a fair system of government. In the circumstance, his interests

appear to be more political than therapeutic; I can appreciate therefore why he does not

handle therapeutic processes and outcomes of the destruction of wizards.

In line with my study, however, I can extrapolate therapeutic implications relating to

death and bereavement from the political agenda Kenyatta (1968) endeavours to set.


The wizard’s magic steeps people in fear. In the words of Kenyatta (1968): the evil

magic “is extremely feared, for not only does it cause death when it is administered to a

person, but its nearness to a homestead is considered as bringing misery and suffering

which will dog the footsteps of those who dwell therein” (p. 30).

Since a fear of the evil magic lies at the heart of the social fabric, the society holds

elaborate rituals to exorcise the fear. In the circumstance, I suspect that the use of fire,

which could be a symbol of purification, to destroy wizards is symbolic of the purgation

of the fear. Yet: destroying wizards, the society kills its own. Consequently, it needs to

purify itself of the widely held social belief in the society that death contaminates

(Leakey 1977). In the end, therefore, the burning of wizards, together with the attendant

purification of participants in the burning, restores the homeostasis that wizards

threaten to upset, or indeed disrupt, through murder.

How similar is the practice of vengeance in my indigenous society to the one evident in

other cultures. Like the indigenous Kikuyu Kenyatta (1968) discusses, ancient Jews

imposed the same penalty on murderers: “if a man come presumptuously upon his

neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from my altar that he may die”

(Exodus, 21:14). In the same ancient Jewish culture existed the vengeance that Jesus

advises against (Matthew, 5: 38-42): “life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for

hand, foot for foot” (Exodus, 21: 23-24). In the imaginative Ibo culture is the destruction

of Okonkwo’s homestead as a result of his inadvertent killing of Ezeudu:

As soon as day broke, a large crowd of men from Ezeudu’s quarter stormed

Okonkwo’s compound, dressed in garbs of war. They set fire to his houses,

demolished his red walls, killed his animals and destroyed his barn. It was the

justice of the earth goddess, and they were merely her messengers. They had no

hatred in their hearts against Okonkwo. His greatest friend, Obierika, was

among them. They were merely cleansing the land which Okonkwo had

polluted with the blood of a clansman. (Achebe, 1969, p. 113)


And how similar are the therapeutic implications. Achebe (1969) implies that

because the shedding of kin blood desecrates the land that, as result, must be purified

through vengeance, until the blood is avenged the desecration consumes the social

psyche. Within this context I appreciate why destruction of property purifies the society

of the kindred blood shed, ridding the society of fear pollution of the land causes.

Vengeance, therefore, helps the society exorcise the fear of contamination arising from

shed blood and, in the process, gratifies a psyche consumed by dire consequences of

pollution should the spilled blood be left unavenged.

Like the wizards, individuals who take their lives are blamed for polluting the earth.

Thus, according to Kenyatta (1968), individuals who commit suicide are not only likely

to make their spirits “eternally unhappy and pernicious” but also certainly will have

performed an act society considers “ritually unclean” (p. 301).

Treating suicide as an abomination, the society goes to great lengths to remove its

traces from the tree from, or the house in, which an individual commits suicide and to

cleanse individuals associated with the cutting down the body from where it hangs

(Leakey 1977). Once all this is done, the society resumes its normal activities in the

belief that it has purified itself of the pollution wrought by the suicide. In this sense,

therefore, the uprooting of the tree from which an individual commits suicide, the

destruction of the hut in which an individual kills oneself and the purification of the

individual who cuts down the dead body are therapeutic to the extent that they restore

normalcy to the bereaved.

Yet, the restoration of sense of normalcy fails to account for factors that lead an

individual to commit suicide in a society proud of its harmony and religion. How can

suicide be “by no means unknown” (Leakey, 1977, p. 969) in the idyllic indigenous

society that appears, on the whole, to emerge from Kenyatta (1968), Mbiti (1992), and

Mbiti (1996)? The answer seems to lie in the overweening control society exercises on

the individual. In the event, the individual cannot conceive of existence outside the

society (Kenyatta 1968, Mbiti 1992, & Mbiti 1996), which inexorably incorporates the


individual into it through social norms such as rites of passage, taboos, and oaths. In

this set-up what then happens to one who cannot observe the norms?

Going back to the burning of wizards, I suggest that wizards operated secretly

because the society denied them an opportunity to resolve unrelieved tension, leading

them to resolve, in destructive acts, the contradictions they perceived, consciously or

unconsciously, in the society. This unrelieved tension—a probable cause of suicide in

the indigenous society—is apparent in Gatheru (1964) when he talks about a woman

who “eventually committed suicide” evidently because she “had always been ill-treated

by her husband” (p. 192). This said, on the whole, the indigenous society treats people

who take their lives as outcasts because, in its eyes, they desecrate the earth;

consequently, it forbids their burial in the bowels of the earth they have polluted

(Leakey 1977).

The indigenous society has been and is changing from a tribal to a gradually

detribalised and individualistic social order (Kenyatta 1968 & Mbiti 1992). In the wake

of the change, the hold indigenous ritual has had on people has declined (Bottignole

1984, Kenyatta 1968, & Mbiti 1992) and, I presume, so has the effectiveness of perceived

edicts from indigenous spirits. Basing myself on this trend of events, therefore, I see the

secret mourning for people who take their lives declining in the changing social

environment. I can only hope. This is because in the individualistic society towards

which my indigenous society appears destined (Kenyatta 1968 & Mbiti 1992) sees

suicide as “a taboo subject” (Pojman, 1992, p. 42), looks down upon suicide as an

aberration and tends to “blame the victim for his or her own plight” (Neubeck &

Neubeck, 1997, p. 542). In the process, the deceased’s relatives and friends suffer shame

and embarrassment, as we see in the following statement by a woman whose

grandfather committed suicide when she was a girl:

It sounds awful but the dreadful thing about it was that it got on the front of the

local paper, because he was a local character, and it said ‘He left just one

granddaughter, Annabel [,]’ and at the age of fourteen that was terrible. I knew

that all my friends would see it and I cared terribly about that. (Richardson,

1991, p. 80)


In this society, as Milne (1999) says of the contemporary society, suicide “is likely to

be related in some way to internalized pressures and expectations of family and society”

(p. 230). This is in line with the argument by Thomson (1980) that in the absence of a

resolution of the contradiction between inner feelings and outer reality stress building

up in an individual can result in mental disorders. This perhaps gives us a clue to

possible causes of suicide in the indigenous society.

The pollution of the land that Kenyatta (1968) implies is similar to that the clan in

Achebe (1969) refers to when it refuses to bury an individual who commits suicide:

It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offence against the

earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen. His body is

evil, and only strangers may touch it…We cannot bury him. Only strangers

can…When he has been buried we will then do our duty by him. We shall make

sacrifices to cleanse the desecrated land. (pp. 186-187)

Achebe (1969), however, gives us pointers that I think are helpful in relation to therapy.

Okonkwo despises Unoka, his father, for failing to live up to the industry and the

bravery that comprise some of the norms of their clan, Umuofia. While Unoka’s

behaviour is a living antithesis to the norms, Obierika’s behaviour is a living adherence

to the norms. In this respect, though Unoka is perceived as a social deviant, there is no

sense in which Obierika can be perceived as one. Yet, Obierika nurses deep resentment

for some social norms, but he evidently cannot give voice to his resentment and remain

a loyal member of the clan. As a result, he expresses and rationalises the validity of the

norms in the secret of his heart after the clan banishes Okonkwo over his inadvertent

killing of a clansman:

Obierika was a man who thought about things. When the will of the goddess had

been done, he sat down in his obi and mourned his friend’s calamity. Why should

a man suffer so grievously for an offence he had committed inadvertently? But

although he thought for a long time he found no answer. He was merely led into


greater complexities. He remembered his wife’s twin children, whom he had

thrown away. What crime had they committed? The Earth had decreed that they

were an offence on the land and must be destroyed. And if the clan did not exact

punishment for an offence against the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all

the land and not just the offender. As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it

soiled the others. (Achebe, 1969, pp. 113-114)

In December 2000, the radio reports that The Netherlands could be decriminalising or

legalising euthanasia: mercy killing, an individual’s right to die when one cannot bear

pain a debilitating disease causes, or a form of “assisted suicide” or “physician-assisted

suicide” (Byock, 1998, pp. 244-245). Peck (1997) talks about the space to be allowed an

individual willing to commit euthanasia and the circumstances under which one would

be party to euthanasia.

A form of euthanasia exists in the indigenous society, as I discover when Leakey (1977)

discusses two forms of handling the dead by the Kikuyu: burial and dumping.

In relation to burial, the Kikuyu performed funeral and burial rituals whose

overall therapeutic import was to comfort the bereaved through purification or

cleansing ceremonies. Here, the intention was to remove contamination of death

from the home of the deceased and help the bereaved resume normal activities.

To this extent, the ceremonies helped the bereaved regain the homeostasis that

death and bereavement had disrupted.

In relation to dumping, when some categories of people appeared as if they were

about to die, society dumped them on prescribed sites, supplied them with food

and left them to die; some of the castaways died and were eaten by wild animals

while others recovered and went back home. In either case, dumping was a type

of indigenous euthanasia whose link with therapy lies in the rituals castaways’

relatives performed either to purify the bereaved relatives of the dead or to

welcome recovered castaways back to the society.


Discarding live people to die on dumping sites is akin to euthanasia, I feel. The

irony does not escape me, however, that the society that abandons its sick to die on a

dumping site is the same society that exacts the ultimate penalty on wizards who

commit murder (Kenyatta 1968). The irony deepens when I look at suicide: the society

that dumps its own to die accuses its members who choose to take their lives of

desecrating the land. With respect to dumping, social control over an individual’s life is

inordinate in proportion to the society’s robbing the individual power over one’s

destiny.

I find it disconcerting that society would deny people their incarnate human worth by

taking upon itself the decision on when to throw away living human beings to die,

alone, away from their families. The dumping suggests a fear of letting sick people die

in their homes; essentially it is a reluctant acceptance of death, unlike the healthy

acceptance of death and the innocent celebration of life by the 12-year-old boy: “I know

I’m only here for a limited time, to learn something. When I’ve learned what I’ve been

born to learn, I’ll leave. But in my head, I cannot imagine life stopping” (Hennezel, 1997,

p. 152).

Overall, the widespread belief that death is a pollutant leaves me wondering to what

extent the belief tallies with a healthy acceptance that death is an inevitable mark of our

existential end.

The boy in Hennezel (1997) stirs up childhood memories long buried. I now recall

that my first experience of death must be that of a brown dog that I saw one morning on

the veranda of a shop; the dog was lying in a pool of blood. I was to learn later that it

had been shot during the night by colonial forces who suspected that it was a Mau Mau

‘terrorist.’ I was sad: poor dog—my heart went to it as it was dragged away; but I was

afraid and would not go near the congealed cake of blood left in its wake.

I am not sure that at this point, when I was five years old, I knew what death was. If

I understood what it was, why would I rush from school and blurt out to the wife of a


teacher I knew that her husband had been killed? Much as I may not have understood

death, however, I knew at that tender age that burning human flesh has a smell most

foul. The foulness came from the burning bodies of Mau Mau ‘terrorists,’ piled on a

pyre and set alight. Whenever the bodies were alight, I would make a long detour, a

long way from the acrid smoke, running away from the nauseating stench, on my way

to school.

As I write this, I am wondering whether I would be comfortable in the company of a

dead body today, though I was able to look, with false bravado, at the body of my dead

father 17 years ago. The previous year I was afraid to view the body of my dead mother

in the mortuary. The false bravado, the fear—perhaps my unconscious childhood

memories of the dead brown dog and the nauseating stench from burning bodies—must

have made me uneasy in the presence of or recoil from dead bodies in my adulthood.

No wonder, I am now telling myself, I understand why I admire and envy Brian—

the protagonist in Mitchell (1989). His early experiences with death, as well as

bereavement—the death of a baby pigeon and the death of his dog—when he is very

young help him to cope with the trauma of deaths in the family—his father’s and his

grandmother’s—by the time he is twelve years old. I now appreciate calls, such as that

there is need for “proactive rather than a reactive approach to coping with grief”

(Rowling, 1996, p. 80), that children be introduced to death as a reality of life and be

involved in bereavement as a normal process.

I am learning, however, that the indigenous society does not always treat young

children as objects of bereavement; in the process, it does not always allow the mother to

grieve over the young offspring she loses. The society may do this intentionally by

pretending that a mother who gives birth to twins has not done so by having one of or

both the twins killed for being aberrant or unnatural (Achebe 1969 & Nagendo 1996). In

the event, hardly any ritual attends deaths of the twins society destroys; instead, there is

silence and denial all round, for society sometimes regards births of twins to be unclean

(Achebe 1969 & Nagendo 1996). How can a mother, as well as anyone, bound by

sacrosanct norms grieve over a child the society believes is unclean? Unable to give

voice to their grief, the bereaved or sensitive individuals internalise pain and grieve the

way Obierika does in interior monologues and reminiscences (Achebe 1969). The


mother who becomes a Christian because her society routinely destroys her twins

(Achebe 1969) convinces me that, once social norms begin to change, individuals

opposed to them vent pent-up grief, mourn the dead and abandon, in their eyes,

abhorrent or painful norms. In this way, the mother gets an opportunity to break

through socially sanctioned silence and denial and, implicitly, grieve over her losses; her

new set of beliefs based on the religious dispensation colonialism introduces therefore

becomes a therapeutic intervention for her.

Out of my indigenous dispensation, society may fail to mourn young children or to

allow the mother to mourn young children unintentionally by slighting deaths of young

children on the facile assumption that the mother can replace them through conception

and birth (Richardson 1991). The insensitivity of this assumption is evident when a

mother complained to her counsellor that her spouse and kin “kept telling her to ‘try for

another baby as soon as possible’ as if he [the baby son] were replaceable” (Milne, 1999,

p. 230). This woman repudiates facetious social beliefs that children’s deaths through

stillbirth that we see in Richardson (1991) or as a result of cots as we see in Milne (1999)

and Richardson (1991) are inconsequential, because all one needs is to give birth to a

child to ‘replace’ the dead one.

I am disconcerted too that hardly have I come across textual evidence that the

indigenous society fully incorporates children as subjects in the process of bereavement.

Casting my eyes back at the court case I cited while discussing therapeutic implications

of the place of burial, I see that children are peripheral during funeral and burial

ceremonies of the deceased close to them (Egan n.d.). The exclusion of children from the

process of bereavement could cause childhood trauma, which does not just go but

which, if overlooked in childhood, could rear its ugly head in adulthood. The trauma is

plain in Gatheru (1964):

I remember Gacanja’s death particularly well because he was the first dead

man I ever saw. The Kikuyu do not like their children to see dead bodies and I

was dragged away quickly by my mother—however, I saw his mother raise his

head which so frightened me that even today I feel the same fear rise in me when

I pass a cemetery. (p. 53)


I think that this is why some of the literature I have come across recommends that

we should acquaint children with death as a necessary, inevitable part of life in a bid for

them to develop a healthy acceptance of one’s existential end (Lake 1998 & Rowling

1996). As a result of the fear of death the brown dog implanted in me and my inability

to view my mother’s body in the mortuary, I am in accord with the recommendation this

literature makes. What is more, the young boy in Hennezel (1997) shows that children

understand death—I should add—when they are accorded an opportunity to learn

about and accept death as part of existential reality.


Conclusion

My overall view is that therapy is useful. To this end, my exploration of therapeutic

interventions inherent in the indigenous society demonstrates their unique nature and

function; I say ‘inherent’ because the interventions are indivisible from the society

whose wellbeing is ensured through ritual, from which they arise. In the course of the

study, I make incursions into therapeutic interventions on death and bereavement in

other cultures. Similar to literature that depicts the universality and the particularities of

funerals (Apronti 1970 [Appendix 8]), the incursions accentuate not only the universality

of therapeutic interventions in disparate cultures but also the particularity of therapeutic

interventions in my society, yesterday and today. The interactive and reflective strategy

with texts that I have employed peppers the special study with relevant personal

narratives on material significant to therapy on death and bereavement. The personal

narratives map growth in me as a person and suggest implications for me as a

counsellor.

Before I undertook the study I was not aware that there existed so much literature

on death and bereavement. While the literature does not always address itself to

therapeutic issues on death and bereavement, it nevertheless demonstrates interest in

the last “inevitable phase of life” (Byock, 1998, p. XIV). The literature, however,

indicates that therapy on death and bereavement is indispensable in the indigenous

society; indeed, it is as indispensable as ritual is. I therefore am tempted to conclude

that were it not for the instances that indigenous ritual is challenged as it was during the

case cited in the body of the study (Cohen & Odhiambo 1992, Cotran 1995, Egan n.d., &

Ojwang & Mugambi 1989), the therapeutic interventions ritual embodies work

imperceptibly.

The changing society that has daily subverted the indigenous religion (Kenyatta 1968

& Mbiti 1992), which is the bedrock of therapeutic interventions, threatens, if not

undermines, the automatic efficacy of therapeutic interventions in the contemporary

society. Yet, despite the changes that have ushered in individualism and undermined

communalism (Mbiti 1992), I am aware that belief in indigenous therapy is still alive in

the society (Cohen & Odhiambo 1992, Egan n.d., Ojwang & Mugambi 1989, Students Go

on the Rampage 2001, & The Power of Witchcraft 2000). The therapy helps individuals


regain homeostasis when they meet ritual requirements such as holding proper burial

ceremonies for the dead and offering requisite sacrifices to the spirits of the departed. In

this way, it meets individuals’ needs and expectations.

The exploration of the texts on death and bereavement tells me that there is need for

therapeutic training that would that would help one become a ‘skilled helper’ (Egan

1990) or a competent helper (Gikundi 2000). In the process, I have gained confidence in

counselling on death and bereavement for the texts have taught me a lot about death

and bereavement. Despite the vast knowledge I have garnered, however, I realise that I

cannot learn everything on death and bereavement. I am comfortable with this

realisation that reminds me that the agenda in the counselling relationship belongs not

to me but to clients who have the resources for self-actualisation (Mayhew 1997, Rogers

1986, & Rogers 2001). In the event, my clients can utilise their resources to resolve issues

on death and bereavement that they present to me as a counsellor.

On the whole, the study indicates that ritual is central to indigenous therapy; religion, as

a shared worldview, governs the ritual in which individuals seek help because death

and bereavement threaten to disrupt their lives or rob them of homeostasis. Therapeutic

interventions are integrated in religious beliefs and ritual practices that promote the

worldview. In the process, therapy works because helpers and helped share the same

worldview. The shared values, I suggest, are facilitative of therapy because, when one

seeks help on the cause of death of a loved one, the helper, after performing the

necessary ritual, points out what or who is to blame for both believe that death is

caused. In the circumstance, helpers fulfil facilitative, though directive and acceptable,

functions—directive because society recognises helpers as mediums of the invisible

world of spirits and acceptable because everyone believes that therapy is necessary.

Fulfilling these functions, helpers conduct therapy normally openly and occasionally

communally, as is apparent in the burning of wizards (Kenyatta 1968) and in the


burying of the dead. The open or the communal therapeutic encounter provides

community support to the bereaved or the dying.

As a counsellor under the new dispensation, I am aware that the client and I do not

share the same worldview evident in the indigenous therapeutic relationship. In this

respect, I am aware that I am not a ritually recognised medium between the bereaved

and their spirits of the dead; I therefore cannot convey messages from the spirits,

instructing the bereaved on what to propitiate to the departed. In the event, I need to

respect clients’ values, be aware of the values I hold and be on the lookout that my

values do not intrude into my counselling. At the same time, I need to bear in mind that

the therapeutic relationships I establish with my clients will be neither open nor

communal. The therapeutic relationship will be ethical, safe and secure, however,

allowing the clients space to disclose in confidence “repressed emotions” (Thomson,

1980, p. 359), such as ones we see in Obierika (Achebe 1969) and I suggest, in the body of

the work, relative to wizards and people who commit suicide.

The study has shown me that indigenous society is not empathic to, but instead blames,

individuals who commit suicide and undervalues the sick it discards on dumping sites,

some bereaved mothers, bereaved widows, and children as objects and subjects of death

and bereavement. At the same time, I observe that bereavement ritual based on ailment,

age, gender, or status robs human beings of their intrinsic value and incarnate dignity;

in this connection, it runs counter to a need to accept one as a “worthwhile human

being” (Milne, 1999, p. 154).

As a humanistic counsellor, I would respect all clients despite ailment, age, gender,

or status. In this regard, I would allow adults—whose “unresolved grief” (Kübler-Ross,

1974, p. 60) could have roots in a childhood failure to mourn deaths of dear

individuals—space to explore the roots of the trauma and, if necessary, “weep afresh

love’s long since cancell’d woe” (Shakespeare, 1985d, 1313). I believe that the adulthood

fear of the dead that Gatheru (1964) narrates is a type of ‘unresolved grief.’ With regard

to people bereaved by suicide, I would need to be non-judgemental, for blaming them is


unhelpful as it not only ignores the tensions that might have built up in the deceased but

also condemns the deceased without the benefit of being heard.

The experience with the texts tells me that in a counselling relationship on death and

bereavement, a client, like the texts, is capable of arousing intense emotions or deep

feelings, or triggering remembrances in the counsellor. The research has provided an

avenue for exploring the awareness of self relative to death and bereavement. Overall,

my relationship with the texts demonstrates that death and bereavement can dredge up

hidden, submerged or buried anger, bring to fore ‘unfinished business’ and trigger

remembrances, humorously and bitterly, of personal experiences and losses. In spite of

the deep feelings or intense emotions the research has aroused in me, I have delved deep

into self on death and bereavement. As a result, I am aware of my ‘unfinished business,’

and I am now comfortable with death and bereavement, unlike nine months ago when I

was uncomfortable with texts on death and bereavement. I am working on my

‘unfinished business,’ aware that the depth to which I am comfortable in exploring my

relationship with death and bereavement will correspond to how deep I can go in

helping clients live with death and bereavement.

Looking at the beliefs and the practices that permeate the lives of everybody in the

indigenous society from a non-indigenous perspective, one can dismiss them as

superstitions. Given that a number of the beliefs and the practices are still alive in my

homeland, how would I be of help to bereaved clients who revere them or who believe

that mystical forces cause deaths?

While I appreciating why Achebe (1988) condemns and pities believers in ‘malignant

fictions,’ I would respect clients’ belief in ritual that is the vehicle for therapy on death

and bereavement in the indigenous society and remain non-judgemental, even when my

views run counter to their beliefs. I however would not abnegate my role as a

counsellor, but I would be active in line with


Mayhew (1997) that the person-centred counsellor needs “deep-rooted

commitment to the client’s welfare” (p. 27),

Nelson-Jones (1996) that “helpers may choose not always to be passive, but to

influence their clients actively in developing self-help skills” (p. 13), and

Rogers (1986) that the counsellor’s role is not “merely to be passive and to adopt

a laissez faire policy” (p. 27).

In the process, I would skirt the directive orientation of indigenous therapy (Gatheru

1964, Kenyatta 1968, Mbiti 1992, & Mbiti 1996) that reminds me of the “highly directive

role” of therapists operating from behavioural theoretical perspectives (Milne, 1999, p.

179).


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Appendices

Appendix 1: Shakespeare (1985a)

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/asyoulikeit

/asyoulikeit.2.7.html

William Shakespeare

(As You Like It, 2:7: 139-166)

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely

players:

They have their exits and their

entrances;

And one man in his time plays many

parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the

infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's

arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with

his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like

snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the

lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful

ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a

soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like

the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in

quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then

the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon

lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal

cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age

shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on

side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world

too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly

voice,

Turning again toward childish treble,

pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of

all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere

oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans

everything.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/asyoulikeit/asyoulikeit.2.7.html

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/asyoulikeit/asyoulikeit.2.7.html


Appendix 2: Shakespeare (1985d)

http://www.shakespeare-

online.com/sonnets/30.html

William Shakespeare

Sonnet 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent

thought

I summon up remembrance of things

past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear

time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to

flow,

For precious friends hid in death's

dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since

cancell'd woe,

And moan the expense of many a

vanish'd sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances

foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned

moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear

friend,

All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

Appendix 3: Shirley (1960)

http://www.online-

literature.com/forums/showthread.php

?77683-quot-Death-the-Leveller-quot-

One-of-My-Favorite-Poems

James Shirley

Death the Leveller

THE glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armour against fate;

Death lays his icy hand on kings:

Sceptre and crown

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made

With the poor crooked scythe and

spade.

Some men with swords may reap the

field,

And plant fresh laurels where they kill;

But their strong nerves at last must

yield—

They tame but one another still:

Early or late

They stoop to fate,

And must give up their murmuring

breath

When they, pale captives, creep to

death.

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/30.html


http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?77683-quot-Death-the-Leveller-quot-One-of-My-Favorite-Poems





The garlands wither on your brow:

Then boast no more your mighty deeds;

Upon Death's purple altar now

See where the victor-victim bleeds.

Your heads must come

To the cold tomb:

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.

Appendix 4: Thomas (1951 1952)

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poe

m/do-not-go-gentle-good-night

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of

day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know

dark is right,

Because their words had forked no

lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how

bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a

green bay,


Wild men who caught and sang the sun

in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its

way,


Grave men, near death, who see with

blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and

be gay,


And you, my father, there on the sad

height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce

tears, I pray.



Appendix 5: Shakespeare (1985c)

http://www.shakespeare-

online.com/sonnets/18.html

William Shakespeare

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more

temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds

of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a

date:

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night




Sometime too hot the eye of heaven

shines,

And often is his gold complexion

dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime

declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course,

untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou

ow'st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in

his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou

grow'st;

So long as men can breathe or eyes can

see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to

thee.

Appendix 6: Shelley (1817 1818)

http://www.poetseers.org/the-

romantics/percy-bysshe-

shelley/shelleys-

poems/ozymandias/index.html

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs

of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the

sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose

frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold

command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions

read

Which yet survive, stamped on these

lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the

heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words

appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of

kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and

despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the

decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and

bare

The lone and level sands stretch far

away.

Appendix 7: Pushkin (1974)

http://imadin12.narod.ru/entexts/pus

hkin1.html

Alexander Pushkin

A monument I've raised not built with

hands...

Exegi monumentum

A monument I've raised not built with

http://www.poetseers.org/the-romantics/percy-bysshe-shelley/shelleys-poems/ozymandias/index.html




http://imadin12.narod.ru/entexts/pushkin1.html

http://imadin12.narod.ru/entexts/pushkin1.html


hands,

And common folk shall keep the path

well trodden

To where it unsubdued and towering

stands

Higher than Alexander's Column.

I shall not wholly die-for in my sacred

lyre

My spirit shall outlive my dust's

corruption -

And honour shall I have, so long the

glorious fire

Of poesy flames on one single

scutcheon.

Rumour of me shall then my whole vast

country fill,

In every tongue she owns my name

she'll speak.

Proud Slav's posterity, Finn, and-

unlettered still -

The Tungus, and the steppe-loving

Kalmyk.

And long the people yet will honour me

Because my lyre was tuned to loving-

kindness

And, in a cruel Age, I sang of Liberty

And mercy begged of Justice in her

blindness.

Indifferent alike to praise or blame

Give heed, O Muse, but to the voice

Divine

Fearing not injury, nor seeking fame,

Nor casting pearls to swine.

Appendix 8: Apronti (1970)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/arw/su

mmary/v049/49.1busia.html

Jawa Apronti

Funeral

At home Death claims

Two streams from women's eyes

And many day-long dirges;

Gnashes, red eyes and sighs from men,

The wailing of drums and muskets

And a procession of the townsfolk

Impeded

Only if the coffin decides

To take one last look at the home.

But here I see

Three cars in procession.

The first holds three—

A driver chatting gaily with a mate,

And behind them, flowers on a bier.

The second holds five, and the third too.

A procession

Efficiently arranged by the undertaker,

From the brass fittings on the bier

To the looks of sorrow on the mourners'

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/arw/summary/v049/49.1busia.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/arw/summary/v049/49.1busia.html


faces.

And Death is escorted

Tearlessly but efficiently

By

Three cars in procession.

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