When someone passes on, the norm is that the living pay their last respects to bid them bye. And while death may seem so final, have you ever imagined a departed soul coming back to also say their goodbyes? In some parts of Kenya and Africa in general, cases of the dead coming into contact with the living are very common and every experience is unique.
A number of stories have been told around the world of dead people coming back in form of a spirit to bid farewell to the living.
There are beliefs such as the dead watching over the living, the dead (ancestors) eating food placed on their graves, feeling their spirits in the room, and even male spirits coming back to engage in sexual intercourse with their former wives.
While they may seem and sound as stori za jaba, people who have actually experienced this confirm they are not fictional, but real. In Kenya, some communities believe such incidences are normal, in fact, for them, it is nothing to be scared of.
James Andayi, an elder in the Abanyore community, is quite familiar with this experience. In his 60s, the Vihiga-born elder says he has seen it all and has experienced this ordeal with his departed brother who visited them in the most bizarre way. His brother, who was a high school teacher died after lungs failure in April 2012 and was buried at his homestead in Bunyore.
Three days after the burial, Andayi narrates that his late brother did the unthinkable. He came back with full force, scaring everyone who was in the house at the time.
“Some people take longer while others come back shortly after they die. We didn’t expect his to be that soon. It was at night. My family had just finished eating dinner and we were chatting as we prepared to sleep. Suddenly, we heard a loud bang on the door and it flung open letting in a dash of strange wind,” says Andayi while recounting the events of that night.
Before they could even comprehend what was happening, they heard loud footsteps that sounded like a farmer in gumboots walking around the house.
“Besides being a teacher, my brother was a passionate farmer. After his retirement, he would spend nearly all his day in the shamba just farming and tending to his bees. He used to wear gumboots and when I heard the steps, I knew too well those were his footsteps,” recounts Andayi.
The deceased spirit moved from one part of the house to another in what Andayi terms as a way of bidding farewell to his earthly belongings.
“At this point, everyone was scared. They could not comprehend what was happening, only me and two other elderly relatives and the widow understood what was happening. However, we could not tell others about it to avoid scaring them as it would have caused more panic. The good thing is that all the children were asleep,” says Andayi.
They would then hear sounds of someone farming for a few seconds and later the footsteps came back, returned the jembe at the store and left, banging the door behind them.
According to Andayi, the ordeal only took around five minutes and silence came, after which they prayed for their brother’s soul to rest in peace. And that was the last time they heard from the deceased.
“It is very common in our community for the departed souls to return and it mostly happens some few days or weeks after they are buried. Usually, it is the spirit that comes back and not the body,” Andayi notes.
Vitalis Ougo, an African cultural expert, says many local communities believe in the return of the spirit to bid farewell to the family. Some communities believe that if their loved one does not come back, then he or she might not be resting in peace.
Ougo says the Abanyore belief is similar to the one from the Luo community, where the departed soul pays a visit to their wives to “release them.”
“The women usually dream of having sexual intercourse with their late husbands. If that dream does not come, they cannot be intimate with any other man. So, a widow dreaming of engaging in sexual intercourse, which some attest to experiencing the whole thing, is a way of releasing her from their union and allowing her to move on with life, and even get married,” Ougo states.
Ougo says that people who believe in such traditions are convinced that if the spiritual sexual intercourse does not happen, bad spirits may come to haunt them or the community and bad luck is likely to befall the women if they decide to re-marry.
“For instance, if something happens to them let’s say an illness befalls them, they will likely put the blame on a ritual that didn’t happen. They will be forced to seek manyasi (a traditional herbal treatment) to be cleansed, so that the after effects can go away,” he says.
However, he notes that as time goes by, these rituals are becoming less practised because the younger generations are not only educated, but also empowered in many ways. Stacey Alugo, a certified psychologist says that such things are just beliefs, which are passed down from generation to generation, and that’s how they continue to exist long after civilisation.
Such beliefs, she says, were a way of having the families stay connected to their deceased loved ones or get closure once the spirit comes back.
“Such a culture helps with grieving as it aid in processing of the loss. One can say my loved one will come back to say goodbye and give us closure, and this helps with the grieving process,” she says.
Alugo adds that the culture of the departed saying goodbye is just the same as other traditions and it is not in any way a psychological problem. “If it is something you’ve been told happens, then your mind is likely to believe it and that’s how cultures have been passed down from generation to generation,” she notes.
Alugo further states that cultures offer a good way to help the affected with the grieving process and to help them move on with their lives. She believes that such beliefs are part of grieving as they help the families left behind find an enduring connection with the deceased in the midst of embracing a new life without them.
In addition, she says that someone who holds on to a particular belief is more likely to accept their loved one’s loss and process their grief well compared to the one who has nothing to hold on to.
“For instance, if we’ve both lose our mothers and I believe that my mother will come back to say goodbye versus somebody who knows their mother is just dead, I have something to hold on to, which will help me fair a little better than someone who does not know how to process the loss,” adds Alugo.