Burn or bury? When burial wishes collide with faith, tradition and kin

The cremation of Maureen Nyadida-Lukoye has reopened one of Kenya’s most sensitive conversations over whether a person’s final wish should prevail when it conflicts with the traditions of the family and community left behind.

Nyadida, a mother of four, was the daughter-in-law of Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) Secretary-General Francis Atwoli, having been married to the veteran unionist’s elder son, Prof Lukoye Atwoli.

It came as a surprise when it was revealed that Nyadida wished to be cremated. The woman had been battling cancer. A stickler for tradition, many people expected Atwoli to overturn her wish and have his daughter-in-law buried according to Luhya customs.

But the elder Atwoli grudgingly accepted Nyadida’s wish, albeit with a rider that no other member of his family would be cremated while he remained alive. “I want to say that as long as I live, no member of my family will be cremated. Any lawyer who will come with the Will shall meet the father of goons and will not dare come near,” he declared.

Prof Lukoye, Dean of Medicine at Aga Khan University, honoured her wish, and Nyadida’s body was privately cremated at the Kariokor Crematorium in Nairobi, following a requiem Mass at All Saints’ Cathedral, two weeks after her death at Nairobi Hospital.

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Atwoli said cremation denied his family the chance to accord Nyadida a stately burial at their Mulwanda village in Khwisero, Kakamega County. “Maureen was not just a daughter-in-law; she was a friend. This is hard for me because it does not agree with our Mulembe culture,” he lamented.

The COTU boss noted that news of the cremation sparked disbelief among members of his community, considering that he was a respected Luhya elder.

“Watu wanauliza (people are wondering), Francis, you are not only a Luhya elder, you are a Kenyan elder, how do you allow your daughter-in-law to go through cremation? You would have taken her for burial at home. I could not convince my son,” he said.

He further said Nyadida’s biological father’s decision to accept her wish meant accepting a form of farewell that some relatives regarded as alien to their cultural identity. “I had to come to terms with the decision much later after the biological father of the late Maureen Nyadida sided with the Will,” he said.

According to Atwoli, burial among the Abaluhya is more than the physical disposal of a body; it is a cultural and spiritual responsibility through which the deceased is returned to the family and ancestral land. The homestead also provides a physical place where relatives can remember, mourn and maintain a connection with the departed.

Atwoli expressed concern that, where burial rites have traditionally involved extended family, elders and carefully observed customs, cremation can feel like a disruption to the social order surrounding death.

Cultural resistance

“I asked myself, how is my son going to carry the ash? And how is the ash? How will it be buried, the ash, at home? My aged men and old men will ask me, where did you leave your daughter-in-law? Why couldn’t you prevail over your son?” he questioned.

Atwoli himself strongly rejected the idea that cremation represents modernity. “Many are saying cremation is now the modern way, it is not modern, it was there many centuries ago. Many learned people are saying we are living in a new normal, it is abnormal,” he said.

He went further, describing cremation as incompatible with his understanding of African and religious traditions. “It is not Christian. It is not Islamic. It is not ours,” he said.

As Atwoli found himself in a dilemma, Nyadida’s case is the latest in a growing list of traditional Kenyans opting for cremation, stretching back to 1996, when former Cabinet minister Peter Okondo was cremated, reportedly against the wishes of some members of his extended family.

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By the time relatives arrived at the morgue to collect his body for burial, his wife, Maria Louise Okondo, had already had him cremated, triggering a dispute over his final rites. Relatives accused his European wife of introducing foreign customs into the family.

In 2002, Mary Nyambura Kuria, wife of former Anglican Archbishop Manasses Kuria, was cremated at Lang’ata two days after her death at Nairobi Hospital. Her cremation shocked some members of the Anglican community. Archbishop Kuria himself was cremated three years later.

In 2009, former sports administrator Joshua Okuthe was cremated by his wife, Ruth Okuthe, in accordance with his wishes. His relatives unsuccessfully attempted to challenge the decision in court. They ultimately held a mock funeral in Muhoroni and buried an empty coffin, in accordance with Luo tradition of using a cenotaph when a body is unavailable.

Prof Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, was cremated in 2011 at the Eastleigh Crematorium, with her ashes buried at the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies.

Kenneth Matiba, an advocate of cremation and founder of the Ford-Asili Party, said in 1994 that he did not want a State funeral or “dancing parties and harambees” upon his death.

Justifying his preference, Matiba argued: “After all, the Kikuyu traditionally never buried their dead. They used to take the bodies into the forest to be devoured by hyenas. Was that not wisdom?” He was cremated at Lang’ata in 2018.

When former Attorney-General Charles Njonjo died on January 2, 2022, his final journey was unlike the elaborate funerals that have traditionally accompanied prominent Kenyans.

Njonjo, who was 101, died at about 5am. Within hours, his body had been taken to the Kariokor Crematorium in Nairobi and cremated in a private ceremony attended by close family members and a few guests.

His son-in-law, Carey Ngini, said the decision was made in accordance with Njonjo’s explicit wishes. “Charles Njonjo was very clear in his instructions that he be cremated immediately after his death; he didn’t want funeral-related fanfare,” he said.

Njonjo’s cremation did more than mark the end of the life of one of Kenya’s most colourful public figures. It reopened a longstanding national conversation about how Kenyans should dispose of their dead.

Changing customs

In Kenya, cremation was historically associated largely with communities of Asian origin, whose funeral customs survived after their settlement in the country. With time, however, interaction between communities, urbanisation, education and global exposure have introduced cremation to a wider section of Kenyan society.

According to James Kibisu, a Maragoli elder, in many African communities, death is regarded as a transition into an ancestral world, making funeral rituals important to the relationship between the living and the dead. “Among communities such as the Luo and Luhya, funeral rites historically involved the entire family and community. Burial was more than disposing of a body; it was a carefully structured process through which the dead were ushered into the next stage of existence,” he explains.

Kibisu says Luhya rituals, such as Lisaabo, a ceremony observed in remembrance of the dead soon after burial, helped maintain remembrance of ancestors. “Among the Luhya, rituals are performed to honour ancestral spirits, while food, drink and animal sacrifice form part of traditional funeral observances,” he says.

David Owuor, a member of the Luo Council of Elders, maintains that for decades the community buried its dead within the homestead, accompanied by elaborate funeral rituals that reinforced family relationships, succession and inheritance.

Among the Agikuyu, notes Kariuki Muthoni, some members traditionally left corpses exposed in the wilderness to be devoured by animals. “Burial practices could also reflect social status. Wealthier Kikuyu families, for example, could afford elaborate burial ceremonies and rituals associated with the deceased’s transition into ancestral status,” he adds.

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But cremation is challenging these long-established traditions, raising difficult questions about Christian teaching, African culture, individual choice and the changing realities of urban life.

For Christians, the question is particularly sensitive because burial has long been associated with Christian funeral traditions, and the Bible records the burial of Jesus.

For many Christians, Bible passages, such as John 19:40 and Romans 6:4 reinforce the symbolic importance of burial and the belief in bodily resurrection.

Anglican Bishop of Garissa Diocese Francis Omondi argues that burial should not automatically be treated as a Christian command. “Burial is not inherently Christian. The church acquired the burial custom from Judaism and the pagan communities,” he observes, adding that although church policies have changed, many Christians have been slower to change their attitudes. “The attitudes of Christians have not shifted to favour cremation, despite the reforms the churches have made into their funeral policies,” he says.

Personal choice

He said the Anglican Church of Kenya adopted a resolution in 1999 allowing cremation where a Christian had specifically expressed such a wish.

The Roman Catholic Church has similarly retained burial as its preferred practice while permitting cremation under specified circumstances. It requires cremated remains to be treated with dignity rather than casually scattered or privately disposed of.

CITAM Bishop David Oginde represents a more conservative position, arguing that “traditional Christian faith considers cremation as inconsistent with orthodox doctrine”.

Critics of cremation point to the numerous biblical accounts of burial and the absence of a clear biblical example in which a believer deliberately chose cremation as a preferred funeral practice. Theologian Rodney Decker, who discourages cremation, says: “I would not go so far as to declare flatly that cremation is sin.”

University of Nairobi sociologist Dr Joseph Kabiru links resistance to cremation to historical memories surrounding fire. In some traditional settings, he says, burning bodies was associated with punishment and post-mortem disgrace. “Cremation is not African. The slow process of cultural change suggests it will take a long time for attitudes to change towards cremation and for it to be accepted widely,” Kabiru notes.