In the Shade of Hailstones: Life-Forming Realities among the Luo of Kano, Kenya

In the area of Kano in western Kenya, Luo rice farmers perform a ritual of “digging” indigenous medicine (chwoyo yath) in the rice fields to “arrest” hailstones. The practice is not only rationalized in the image of regulating the spate of climate–accelerated hailstones but also of forming life, expressed through the state of how that life is secured and propagated. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with rice farmers and an expert on hailstones, as well as on participant observation, this article explores the exegetical agency of rice medicines, which is reflected in the affective act of arresting hailstones. This is conceptualized through a cosmo–juridical agency of life-forming by creating an interconnection between human life and a natural phenomenon. The article underscores the varied domains of natural phenomena (weather conditions, calamities), rice crop, and humans as agencies that co-negotiate toward life-forming through their forces that transform states of life processes.