Death and Dying in Rural Western Kenya: Christian Rituals for American Medicine
Dillon Stull, BA in University Scholars from Baylor University, Student, Duke Divinity School
Modern medicine leaves patients, families, and healthcare providers with few resources for healthy engagement with death, dying, and bereavement. In the clinic, patients, loved ones, and providers need rituals that teach of the nature of death, create space for grief and remembrance, and habituate involved members into the practice of mutual support.
This paper examines the experiences of sickness and death as recounted by members of the Luo tribe from a rural community on the Nyakach Plateau in western Kenya. Drawing data from sixteen home-based interviews, this study employs a grounded theory ethnographic approach to identify and describe Luo responses to sickness and death.
Members of the Luo community on the Nyakach Plateau, almost all of whom identify as Christians, tend to face sickness and death not as individuals but as a community. The communal response to suffering is rooted in the Luo ritual of gathering to tell stories. The content of shared stories, which are inherently spiritual, are important in providing a common basis from which tribespeople communally identify and respond to each other’s health needs. Furthermore, the physical act of coming together for storytelling prepares the community to likewise come together in material, spiritual, and emotional solidarity in order to confront death as a united body of people.
Discussing Luo notions of death’s inevitability, the “gaps” left by death, and the continuing role of “the living dead” in the community of the living, this paper strives to inform the practice of medicine in America, especially in matters of end-of-life care. Examination of Luo cultural resources from a Christian theological perspective points to the construction of healthcare rituals that allow American providers and families to face death and dying in solidarity as the Church.
Modern medicine leaves patients, families, and healthcare providers with few resources for healthy engagement with death, dying, and bereavement. In the clinic, patients, loved ones, and providers need rituals that teach of the nature of death, create space for grief and remembrance, and habituate involved members into the practice of mutual support.
This paper examines the experiences of sickness and death as recounted by members of the Luo tribe from a rural community on the Nyakach Plateau in western Kenya. Drawing data from sixteen home-based interviews, this study employs a grounded theory ethnographic approach to identify and describe Luo responses to sickness and death.
Members of the Luo community on the Nyakach Plateau, almost all of whom identify as Christians, tend to face sickness and death not as individuals but as a community. The communal response to suffering is rooted in the Luo ritual of gathering to tell stories. The content of shared stories, which are inherently spiritual, are important in providing a common basis from which tribespeople communally identify and respond to each other’s health needs. Furthermore, the physical act of coming together for storytelling prepares the community to likewise come together in material, spiritual, and emotional solidarity in order to confront death as a united body of people.
Discussing Luo notions of death’s inevitability, the “gaps” left by death, and the continuing role of “the living dead” in the community of the living, this paper strives to inform the practice of medicine in America, especially in matters of end-of-life care. Examination of Luo cultural resources from a Christian theological perspective points to the construction of healthcare rituals that allow American providers and families to face death and dying in solidarity as the Church.