Ng'anyet: Death Rituals among the Nandi

Abstract

Among the traditional Nandi, primary concern for all religious rituals was preservation, prolongation and transmission of life. From the time of conception up to and beyond death, traditional Nandi ritualized each level of life in the rites of passage. Rites were either major or minor but all were meant to increase the life force and connected one with the ancestral world. Anyone who skipped one rite of passage had his/her life force decreased and would be looked down upon as immature and at worse a misfit in the community. This paper limits itself to ng'anyet, a ritual performed several days after burial to facilitate the journey of the deceased to the emetab oii, the land of the living dead. The ritual made the deceased an ancestor and a family saint. It was a traditional canonization ritual for the deceased. Children born thereafter would be named after him/her in gurset ritual and would be the spiritual guardian of the child the rest of his/her life. Children were named after an ancestor of either sex since it was an involuntary ritual. Ancestors were the custodians of the family and community morals. They blessed or punished the living family members depending on their behaviour and character. Above all, ancestors/living dead were intermediaries between the living and Asis, God. Without ng'anyet ritual, there would be no ancestors in the community. Hence, ng'anyet was a fundamental ritual in the religious landscape of the Nandi. Given the cardinal place of the ritual, this paper proposes that the ritual be synthesized with the Christian (Anglican) Church beliefs and practices related to the dead and life after death. As a new evangelization tool, the new approach would see many more Nandi people embrace Anglican Church beliefs and teachings