Pain, Growth, and the Fail-Safe Design: A Lesson from the Masai and the LNC

By Nokrach (2025).

It is natural to avoid pain, but is it always bad for you?

Going to the gym, pushing through exercise, and stepping out of your comfort zone can be painful—but they are essential for growth. To reap real benefits, we must often embrace discomfort, if not pain.

Masai Morans and the Art of Controlled Combat

The image above shows a Masai Moran in combat, wielding a rungu (club) high in his hand. Notice the machete in the red sheath on his hip. Two Masai warriors will fight each other to exhaustion using the rungu, but neither will dare draw the machete. Why?

Because it is against their rules of brotherly combat—a sacred taboo.

If a fighter breaks this rule and draws his machete, the fight immediately turns into a battle between him and all the onlookers—his peers. He will be beaten to a pulp as punishment and as a warning to others.

Engineering a Fail-Safe System

This principle is known in engineering as a fail-safe design.

The Masai system recognizes that conflict among brothers is inevitable. Instead of banning fights completely, they contain them—ensuring they don’t lead to catastrophic failure, such as the loss of life.

The opposite philosophy is called fail-free design—where conflict is strictly forbidden. But fail-free designs are often expensive, difficult to maintain, and have uncertain consequences.

LNC’s Fail-Safe Approach to Governance

At the LNC (Luo National Congress), we have adopted a fail-safe approach to governance.

We encourage open discussions, allowing both those who claim to know everything and those who claim to know nothing to speak—while following clear rules of engagement, particularly:

No personal attacks.

Why? Because if you think Opwonya “pretends to know everything” and it annoys you, remember—Opwonya won’t be the last know-it-all in the LNC.

If one Opwonya exists for every 800 members, how many will there be when LNC reaches 80,000 members? What will you do then?

Building a System for the Luo People

When crafting a pot, one must understand the clay.

When building an institution for the Joluo, we must understand the Joluo people.

The Luo people are diverse:
Kiswahili-speaking Joluo in the South
Arabic-speaking Joluo in the North
Amharic-speaking Joluo in the East
Lingala & French-speaking Joluo in the West

With such diversity, we must build flexible systems with safety valves to manage cultural friction caused by centuries of Luo disintegration.

The Pain is Necessary for Growth

So, endure the pain and discomfort of endless arguments as we stress-test the LNC system. We must seal loopholes before expanding our membership.

This is how we ensure that the LNC functions as designed—to achieve our ultimate goal:
Luo unity and integration.