The grieving and the dead. Who owns the dead?

The country is mourning an illustrious jurist, Mary Stella Arach Amoko, fallen Justice of the Supreme Court. The Administration of Justice Act, 2020 is in full effect, and flamboyant display. Tributes are flowing and proceedings starting from the grounds of the High Court, to Parliament and eventually the final resting place of the deceased. In the middle of this, some family members including her mother and own children are raising protest at the choice of burial grounds for their mother. Interestingly, this is not a case of marital strife at all, none is alleged.
At a family meeting soon after the deceased died, a funeral programme was widely published. The body would stop over in Pakwach where she was born before being buried in the hills in Nebbi municipality. Something came up, and the earlier details were scratched, Nebbi was replaced with Adjumani where the husband, a diplomat still in service, hails from.
Managing the wishes of the dead is not easy. We have not yet had a court ruling at the level of SM Otieno, a famous Kenyan criminal lawyer whose death in 1987 pitted his clan, against his Kikuyu widow who willed that he be buried at their upcountry home rather than his ancestral home in Nyamila-Siaya. In Luo-land, Siaya is the Jerusalem of the Luo, proud, educated, intelligent, uncircumcised, who are yet to ascend to the top office of the land. The widow lost the court case and joined politics in part in protest against the court decision. Her last days were spent with a young 20-30 something year old whom she married as a symbol of final liberation from the dictated expectations of society, on how she would live her life.
Wambui Otieno was another matter altogether, she kept her husband’s grave open for years, waiting for the body to return. The Washington Post reporting on this case, and the funeral 154 days after he had died, talked of the litigation a rare glimpse into tribal animosity, a key politics and war in Africa, hardly an over-generalisation.
Closer to home, there are competing burial narratives that inform customs for burying married women. One is the newest, the Christian one, where spouses are buried together, at the head of the graveyard. Choosing a final spot to rest the deceased is not an easy matter. In a lengthy exchange, on the Central Broadcasting Service, I listened to two years ago, someone explained that in death, marriage in fact ends. In Buganda, the married woman was returned to her family’s ancestral grounds. This the presenter explained was to keep the ties between the deceased mother’s offspring and the maternal side alive. They would always get a chance to visit her, and participate in ceremonies on the mother’s side. Some clans in Buganda, the Ngeye- colobus monkey, Ffumbe- the civet cat offer another line to this perspective, in event they buried the wife at her husband’s burial grounds, she was buried, not next to him, but at the foot of the grave, a practice many educated women abhor and detest.
My former boss, herself, a colleague of the now deceased Judge, in fact a retired Deputy Chief Justice in one of those moments that live with you for a lifetime, firmly told me her wishes were to be returned home where she always felt a sense of happiness. Her family land itself was a central anchor in their lives, graves neatly arranged, she was buried right in between her forefathers, siblings and their offspring. One distinction, she wrote a will.
Modern families choose to write or not to write a will. Wills also “disappear”. In the 24 hour days of the internet, Premier League soccer, and a tyranny of social events, people are struggling to find enough time to talk at home. Sadly too, death as a subject is a social taboo. The country does not have an authoritative voice to discuss death. Many families find themselves warily unprepared even when their loved one has been ailing for a long time. The Christian churches support one narrative, even though it is in direct verbal conflict with the marital vows. In the Otieno case, the Anglicans refused to pray for him at All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi. The Muslims are more pragmatic, in fact businesslike in these matters. They only have 24 hours to rest a dead body in the ground. Then they have 40 days to return and reflect on the deceased. May her soul rest in eternal peace.
Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law and an Advocate. 
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