Villagers block hearse carrying Ojodeh's body

By Evelyne Kwamboka and Nicholas Anyuor in Ndhiwa

 

There was drama in Ndhiwa as villagers blocked the hearse carrying the remains of the late assistant minister Orwa Ojodeh demanding that they be allowed to view it.

Singing dirges and chanting funeral sayings, the locals clad in traditional regalia and wielding spears, they cursed hands which caused the death of their son and leader.

Trouble started shortly after the body landed at Suneka Airstrip on the outskirts of Kisii Town and then ferried by road  via Rongo, then Rodi Kopany and the Ndhiwa market, and later to Unga which is Ojodeh’s home.

But at Unga, a group of clan elders and villagers demanded that the body be taken to Ratanga the ancestral home for villagers and the next of kin to view before being taken back to Unga where the remains will be interred on Sunday.

The convoy of over 100 vehicles snaked its way through the villages accompanied by tens of boda boda cyclists waving twigs and honking their way across the constituency.

It is at the Unga home where the stand off ensued. One group demanded that the body be taken back to Ratanga for public viewing as was advertised in the media by the funeral organizing committee. Another group group argued that Ojodeh had established his home and it would not fit the cultural rites if he is taken to his father's homne before burial.

Heavily armed security officers watched in disbelief as the factions wrangled over the venues for viewing and invoked cultural rites of a leader’s funeral.

The widow Mary and the son Andy Ojodeh  walked out of the hearse and left the wrangling  groups as MPs Prof Ayiecho Olweny and Otieno Ogindo tried to calm the groups.

Finally, the hearse was forced to turn away from the gate of the fallen MP’s home back to Ratang’a where a crowd had gathered waiting to view the remains of the man who died serving as their MP.

There was more drama as a section of people tried to argue that Luo cultural rites of funeral does not allow a body of  a man who has established his him to be taken to another home before burial.

Ojodeh, a Seventh Day Adventist by faith will be laid to rest on Sunday at his Unga home.