Omieri, the python, was a celeb

 Omieri the python

This revered python among the Luo people became a national sensation 30 years ago. It was debated in Parliament and when it died, a condolence book was opened at the Kaloleni Social Hall and the Kisumu National Museum. Its death made national headlines.

Omieri appeared when Kenya was having a landmark legal battle, the SM Otieno burial dispute in 1987 pitting Wambui Otieno, a Kikuyu, and her late Luo hubby’s Umira Kager clan.

It lasted five months, with ethnic rivalry, customary law, inter-marriages, women’s rights, class relations and death selling newspapers by truckloads before the 10am tea.

The Kikuyu and the Luo have stark cultural divergence and at no time has this been more prominent than during the SM Otieno case in which Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the voice of the Luo, but then consigned to political Siberia, supported Wambui.

Kisumu Town MP Wilson Ndolo Ayah said the Luo had three goals in 1987: The Umira Kager clan to win the SM Otieno case and bury him in Nyalgunga, his shags, Gor Mahia to win the Mandela Cup, and for Omieri to be returned to Kisumu.

In his 2008 book, Bewitching Development: Witchcraft and the Reinvention of Development in Neoliberal Kenya, American historian, James Howard Smith, notes that the Luo believe the python is a reincarnation of a woman named Omieri “who now returns as a serpent, bringing fertility to communities and to individual women to whom she appears.”

Omieri was thus said to bring blessings, like rain during drought. And so when it appeared in a Nyakach village, residents gifted it their goats, chicken and ugali, as pythons rarely move when hatching.

The spectacle attracted local and international tourists, forcing villagers to clear bushes to show if off, and burning Omieri in the process. It was transported to the Nairobi National Park for treatment.

Ndolo Ayah’s predictions came to pass: Wambui Otieno lost the SM Otieno case, Gor Mahia became the first Kenyan club to lift the Mandela Cup after defeating Tunisia’s Esperence at Kasarani Sports Complex in Nairobi. Consequently, the club’s anthem, Gor Biro, Yawne Yo! was tweaked to Gor Biro, Nyalgunga! And after a spirited campaign in Parliament by Nyakach MP Ojwang K’Ombudo who charged that “the Nyakach water supply and a local road have had serious problems since Omieri went to an orphanage in Nairobi,” the government transferred Omieri to the Kisumu National Museum for recuperation.

Omieri’s death in 1989 was blamed on its three-month stint in Nairobi, where he missed the ancestral drinking water from River Asawo and the Oduoro stream!