THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY: FROM THE SUDAN TO AMERICAN POWER

In THE LUO DREAMERS’ ODYSSEY: FROM THE SUDAN TO AMERICAN POWER–Joseph R. Alila presents a narrative about a spiritual journey of the Luo of eastern Africa to President Obama’s White House. In this historical fiction, Novelist and Poet Joseph R. Alila (THE MILAYI CURSE) vividly captures the perils of the Luo spiritual journey from Egypt to the White House—a journey that lasts 600 years. In the carefully crafted narrative that starts with one Ajwang’ Opodho in the old Sudan to one Hassan Opodho in Kenya to one President Hassan Ajwang’ in America, Alila visits the infamous LUO BEAD OF PASSION that caused the schism that scattered the Luo tribes throughout East and Central Africa.Reading Joseph R Alila’s THE LUO DREAMERS’ ODYSSEY (https://www.createspace.com/3373494) one realizes that the timeless narrative is as much about a physical journey through time as it is a Spiritual passage of the Luo people. This novel, like most of JR Alila’s novels, offers the reader an opportunity to glean into the Luo mind and complex anthropological space that include such controversial practices as Polygamy and Widow Inheritance (Alila’s SUNSET ON POLYGAMY; WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART).

Obama Presidency: A Luo Prophecy

The emergence of President Barack Obama of the United States as a force in world politics, and as a voice in calling for unity in a world struggling with the role of religion in public life and international co-existence, has been discussed in as many a voice as there are religions in the world. His call for reason and understanding among world peoples (today, 6/4/2009, in Cairo, Egypt) comes at a time when in Palestine, Indonesia, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan religious purists are fighting to dominate their people’s political agenda.

http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=30052

President Obama is fighting what experts now agree to be a war for the people’s minds and souls, and he perhaps is the best man in the world for the role—having been brought up under a milieu of religious doctrines, lives with kin of different religions, and has been a victim (politically) of religious stigma and bigotry because of the words of his fellow faithful, and the religions of his kin.Is this man of peace, the same man about whom a rebel Catholic Priest, Johana Owalo of the Luo Nomiya Church phrophsied in 1912? Is President Obama the man who would destroy America in 2012 ? Were some meanings of Luo words and thought lost in the translation of Owalo’s Luo words?

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=4h&oq=&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADBR_enUS324US324&q=luo+prophecies+and+obama+presidency

It can be argued that Owalo’s thought and choice of words were influenced by his rebel religious philosophy and the Luo independent streak that led him to break away from European Christianity to start his “Luonized Christian Church” known as Luo Nomiya Church (Luo I Was Given Church, which borrowed heavily from a monotheistic Luo religious tradition). Though under the yoke of British imperialism, which already had built a railway line connecting Kisumu and Mombasa, thus opening Kenya’s hinterland to a fast-spreading Christian Religion, it is curious that he prophesied of America as the land that would be destroyed by a Luo (which some people have claimed to be President Obama). Though Owalo's prophecy has been part realized close to 100 years later (a son of a Luo sits in the White House at this time as America’s 44th President)—the possibility that Obama would “destroy” the United States in 2012 may be far fetched, unless Owalo used the word ”to destroy” to mean to "fundamentally change" how America governs herself.

President Barack Hussein Obama is a transformational figure with an ambitious people-centered (read socialist by some) agenda. His governing agenda is ambitious, and he has a tongue that can sell water to the ocean. But the idea that he would destroy his American homeland is far fetched. His governance style will remain at the center because a Luo is known for the art of compromise, respect for peers, and worship of precedence. A Luo sticks to tradition (excuse my Luo Pride).

So when Father Owalo said that a Luo would “destroy America” in 2012, he perhaps had used the word “ketho” which can mean “to pollute” politically or socially, like a boy polluting the mind of a “virgin girl;” “disorganize,” as in “disorganizing an opponent’s military plan.”Rest easy folks, a Luo is in charge (Excuse Me!).

JR Alila

Author of THE LUO DREAMERS’ ODYSSEY

(https://www.createspace.com/3373494). This novel is historical Fiction about the Luo, how they view the New President’s journey, and The Luo Prophecy on the emergence President Obama

BOOK RELEASE

THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY (From the Sudan to American Power) By Joseph R. Alila.

THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY (A Novel) is now available for purchase from https://www.createspace.com/3373494 . Availability on www.amazon.com comes shortly.

Students of Luo Oral History, Luo Anthropology, Luo Religiosity, Luo Leadership and Hidden Prophecies, Luo wisdom, Current American politics with a little salt added for taste, and those attracted to Luo ways because of our current notoriety on the world stage (Haven't we father the guardian of the citadel of world power?), or if you just want to discover what makes the Luo tick, this is your Historical Novel (where facts, fantasies, fiction are mixed, cooked then served as tragedy, satire, comedy or paranormal events). I say welcome to all of you.

You are looking for romance? You won't be bored. You love tension? Tighten your seat-belt. You love heroes? They are here. You are a tough girl? Meet your friends here. You think you know about the "Luo Bead of Passion?" You ain't met it yet. Have you heard about "The Ajwang' Prophecy?" Definitely not. Have you read about "Sunrise from the West?" Most likely not. Have you heard of "The Ajwang' Mark of Leadership?" or Do you have it under a specific foot (be sure to be a Luo, must have a fifth of Luo blood)? I doubt that you have. Can you write a short essay about "The Great Schism" among the Luo clans that dispersed this great nation throughout East and Central Africa, from Sudan to Tanzania? Maybe not.

Grab your copy.

JR Alila

BOOK RELEASE: THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY

THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY (From the Sudan to American Power) is now available for purchase from https://www.createspace.com/3373494 . Availability on www.amazon.com comes shortly. Students of Luo Oral History, Luo Anthropology, Luo Religiosity, Luo Leadership and Hidden Prophecies, Luo wisdom, Current American politics with a little salt added for taste, and those attracted to Luo ways because of our current notoriety on the world stage (Haven't we father the guardian of the citadel of world power?), or if you just want to discover what makes the Luo tick, this is your Historical Novel (where facts, fantasies, fiction are mixed, cooked then served as tragedy, satire, comedy or paranormal events). I say welcome to all of you.You are looking for romance? You won't be bored. You love tension? Tighten your seat-belt. You love heroes? They are here. You are a tough girl? Meet your friends here. You think you know about the "Luo Bead of Passion?" You ain't met it yet. Have you heard about "The Ajwang' Prophecy?" Definitely not. Have you read about "Sunrise from the West?" Most likely not. Have you heard of "The Ajwang' Mark of Leadership?" or Do you have it under a specific foot (be sure to be a Luo, must have a fifth of Luo blood)? I doubt that you have. Can you write a short essay about "The Great Schism" among the Luo clans that dispersed this great nation throughout East and Central Africa, from Sudan to Tanzania? Maybe not.Grab your copy

WHAT AILS KENYA?

If you asked me where Kenya would be, politically, next month, my answer to you would be "I can't tell." Here is why. We have no properly constituted Electoral body, the contestants have become the referees in parliament. We have no Leader of Government Business because we have no properly elected government; what we have is "a coalition of the unwilling," that is sitting in wait for 2012, guzzling our shilling at a drunken pace, readying for battle.
Aren't we Unthankful?
We are a people linked to the current "Emperor and Guardian of the Citadel" by an umbilical chord. The President of the United States, who is a Kenyan through his father, could have chosen to be Kenyan at eighteen years, but decided to be an American. That is how close Kenyans are to the kill, yet we are starving.This man, President Barack Obama, must be grieving in shame. He has killed a Hippo, a very fat one, and has nowhere in Kenya to land with his kill because our so-called Kenyan leaders are feasting over a skeletal carcass of a poorly fed cow from somewhere in Nyanza.
How funny.
Amid the laughable spectre of public moral rot, our people are waiting for cereal imports, some of which are rotting in Mombasa---unfit to be consumed because of an explosion in the high-seas that generated lots of a toxic compound known as Aluminium phosphate. Now if you have some knowledge of chemistry like me, you may sleep easy on your empty stomach, knowing that, though you are hungry, some chemist at the Government Chemist in Nairobi has saved you from consuming bad corn! But you are not me, and you must be smelling corruption in the convoluted explanation of why you have no corn to buy. That the turmoil of early 2008 that displaced farmers to refugee camps from where they have been unable to escape back to their farms, gives you no reason hope at all! What do you smell?
Meanwhile your leaders are printing the "skeletal cow" known as the Kenyan Shilling in such huge numbers that the Minister for Finance cannot count it with modern computers, let alone budget and account for it, and his royalty is blaming computers made by man and typewriters attended to by man for the endemic typos in the budget!
Yes, a Kenyan has killed a hippo, and is willing to bring the fat carcass home, but has nowhere to land with his kill in Kenya because we are busy looting the Shilling which is 80 times skinnier than our adventurous son's American Dollar. Kenyan's, Ramogi must be turning in his grave, Ajuma must be turning in his grave, Kenyatta must be cursing everyone from the grave yonder. Watoto wa simba si simba, in our case!
The last I heard was the brave Kenyan hunter from the Citadel of wealth and Power has decided to land in Ghana, unload then proceed to the land of Cleopatra and Mark Antony. He could alternately have landed in Juba, Sudan, were it not for the turmoil there, and this mourning Kenyan's voice could have cheered, not because he is unpatriotic, but because listening to history is preferable to rewarding rot.
What shame on us Kenyans!
JR Alila

THE LUO DREAMERS' ODYSSEY

Six hundred years ago in the Sudan, Ajwang’s black ancestors were nomadic people needling the Nile, inching incrementally southward ahead of the encroachment of the Sahara against their livestock. Their flight south would be hastened by a new threat in a new religion, and complicated by internal family conflicts.Leading and guiding the flight south were men, who rose to the occasion and acted when the challenges of their times demanded courage, and challenged personal honor, common wisdom and established tradition. The mention of their names sent shivers down the spines of fellow men. Each would etch an indelible mark on their time, and leave permanent footprints for fellow men to follow.Leading in the odyssey out of the old Sudan was a dreamer, a nomad, a man of the wild, a man of rare wisdom named Ajwang’ or Ramogi. Ramogi (the wrestler) was a man guided by his dreams, a man of courage, who never blinked at danger, and the father of all Luo nations, from Sudan to Tanzania.Hassan Ajwang’ would live the dreams of his famous Luo ancestor. Though Hassan Ajwang’ was born to meager resources, he would be schooled in the Athenian Tradition, would volunteer in the service of the poor, but now mingles and dines with the rich of his time; a man for the times, who wields Spartan Power in his hands and debates doubters at the Citadel. His Luo people call him The Ajwang’. In their minds, he is the promise in their long and storied journey that dates back six centuries. They see in him their rendezvous with destiny, and a prophecy fulfilled, and not just a historical accident.There was a dream, and many dreamers.

JR Alila in “THE LUO DREAMERS ODYSSEY (A Novel), Coming June 2009

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