26/09/2020
THE RAINMAKERS’ SHRINE IN BUNYORE
The Mulondole shrine is inherited and passed on from one family member to another. One only inherits the power once he attains 65 years because, by then, a person has matured.
Nganyi Lanet, a legendary Bunyore elder, inherited the shrine from his father, Nammonywa, who had also inherited it from Oluchiri, the grandson of Assubwe son of the clan’s founder Asiekwe.
In 2011 Osore Nganyi, the fourth in a generation of rainmakers told me that the obuisiria (science) of making rain was bequeathed to Bunyore’s abachimba (rainmakers) by a woman they married from Banyala wa Ndombi in neighboring Kakamega. “It is a science that we have tightly kept as a secret for generations and we perform the rites in the dead of the night. Its sacrilegious to do so in day time,” he said.
The shrines are also home to the graves of successive rainmakers since the legendary Nganyi, who died in 1918.They were buried there in a sitting position and with their pots on the head
