Читать книгу Making the Mark - Miroslava Prazak - Страница 12

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Trouble with Witchcraft

The initiation season began in November 1998 in an unremarkable way. As the school year drew to a close, rumors cropped up in the marketplaces and in homesteads sprinkled across the rolling hills that this was the year for holding initiation ceremonies. Elders discussed the implications at every chance—over cups of tea, sharing pots of home-style beer, or simply while perched on a log at a kiosk watching a bicycle being repaired. Women vendors chatted about this in their market stalls between customers or with shoppers stopping by to assess their vegetables. Youths coming of age ran around the neighborhoods in high spirits and invited relatives and friends to come participate in their festivities. Mothers prepared for feasting by drying cereals in the sun, grinding flour at the posho mills, and sprouting finger millet for obosara, the much-loved beverage of celebrations. Fathers appraised their livestock with slaughter on their minds. Three years had elapsed since the last initiations were held and potential candidates were many. Free on school vacation and in high spirits, adolescent boys with bells tied around their calves stirred up commotion wherever they went, decked out in the assorted regalia of initiation. And though kept by custom out of public spaces, adolescent girls would be a part of the celebration, too, and enjoy increased attention in their homesteads.

Having received an invitation to attend the initiations and permission from my dean to miss two weeks of classes, I set off to join the festivities. The trip from Bennington, Vermont, to Nyankare,¹ Kuria District, took me from Wednesday to Saturday morning. Reaching Nairobi on Friday, I made contact with many of my urban Kuria acquaintances, hoping for a ride to Bukuria, a distance of some 400 kilometers as the road goes. I was unlucky. Everyone had either left already to participate in the initiations or had their vehicles full. Spurred to action, and fearful of missing too much, I boarded an overnight bus. I squeezed into the last row amidst packages, bags, and too many people on too few seats. I sat, jetlagged but awake, as fellow passengers dozed around me. The moon outside was full, and the night so bright that the zebras grazing along the road on the dusty plains of the Rift Valley were clearly visible. As the bus crawled up the western escarpment in the wee hours of Saturday, we were attacked by bandits. They had piled logs on the tarmac, barricading the road.

December is a dangerous time to travel from the city into the countryside. Returning to their natal homes for the month of school vacations and holidays, many people carry gifts and goods in preparation for Christmas. Most highway robberies take place during this time of the year, and overnight buses are obvious targets. A million thoughts went through my mind in the next minute, as passengers woke up shouting, and the driver lurched the bus off the road. “What will happen to my children? I left them for this experience, and I will die on a stupid bus in the middle of nowhere, for nothing” was prominent among them, as well as “What are the chances of my being passed over, the one mzungu at the very back of a bus filled with Kenyans?”

We were lucky. Thanks to the driver’s vigilance and presence of mind, the worst we sustained were a few bruises and jolted bones. The driver aimed the bus directly at the bandits, who scrambled to escape getting run over. Then he gunned the engine and somehow managed to haul the bus over the piled obstacles. For the next hour or so the bus was animated with relieved chatter. Passengers replayed the scene, taking special delight at the retreating bandits’ faces when their plan backfired. As people drifted off to sleep again, I stayed bolt upright, busily planning how I would alight and save myself if such a thing happened again. We reached Migori, our terminus, after daybreak. I was starting to feel sick with fatigue, not having laid down to sleep since Tuesday night in Bennington. I incoherently but effusively thanked the driver and stumbled from the bus.

I got a ride on the first morning run of a matatu² going to Nyankare. I didn’t recognize any of the drivers, conductors, or passengers—not surprising after an absence of four years, but certainly not an auspicious beginning. The women squeezed in next to me were Luo traders, heading to Nyankare for market day. In the past, people from Nyankare had always traveled to Migori for its market day, not vice versa. I focused inward, savoring my return to a place that had been very meaningful to my life for the past fifteen years. It looked much the same—the rolling hills, the alternating clusters of thick, short trees and bushes, and grasslands—and as we got farther from the paved road, cultivated fields took up ever more of the land. I noted extensive new construction as we drove through areas that had, in the past, consisted of isolated shops. Strips of buildings lined the road and held all types of commercial interests, including restaurants (known as hoteli), hardware shops, retail stores, grain purchase stores, clinics, and posho mills.

The matatu stopped at Kehancha, the district capital. Four years earlier, this rural center had encompassed mainly maize fields and low, one-story wattle-and-daub structures. The capital now sported several multistory buildings (most still under construction), a bank, a gas station, and a busy matatu stage. Hawkers plied their assorted wares up to our vehicle’s windows. My fellow passengers examined the cheap Chinese plastic goods with interest, though they didn’t buy anything other than cornets of groundnuts, artfully wrapped in pages from children’s school exercise books. As we were pulling out of town, we encountered a group coming home from the circumcision ground. It made for an impressive and awe-inspiring sight. An initiate was being escorted by thirty or so adults, many of them draped in branches, shouting, whistling, waving weapons, and surrounding the vehicle, menacing in gesture and word. The Luo traders shrank in their seats.³ I was not frightened, having experienced this numerous times before. I was actually, despite my fatigue, exhilarated to see the force of initiation celebrations unleashed. The pulsing music of the ekegoogo, the resounding gourd rattles, and the shrillness of human voices and whistles all formed an exuberant backdrop to the powder-streaked faces of the initiates, their liminal status indicated by the sheets tied around their necks, draped like wide aprons and stained with blood from their genitals. Members of the entourage flexed their muscles and, in keeping with their duty to protect their charges from both physical and supernatural threats, brandished machetes, rungu, cooking spoons, and other potential as well as real weapons. Some, disguised by foliage to resemble walking bushes, charged in unison, chasing invisible malevolent forces, the spirits of aggression. Protection and jubilation intermingled in a cacophony of sounds. This was what I had come for.

We came across five or six similar groups walking on the road in Bukira⁴ and were brought to a standstill each time. Even though I was tightly squeezed inside a vehicle, I felt the surge of dizzy, contagious exhilaration of the crowds. Sounds, sights, and smells saturated my senses. I felt ready to understand this. I felt far different from my previous exposure to initiation ceremonies.

Of Kuria clans, Abairege live the farthest away from the tarmac road. They call themselves abatuuri ba isaahi, meaning “settlers of the bush.” In their northward quest for pastures and land for cultivation at the beginning of the twentieth century, they had penetrated deep into Maasai country to their north and east. The leopard is their totem, and Abairege fancy themselves brave, fierce, and staunch supporters of tradition. As the dusty red murram road approached the boundary between the administrative locations of Nyabasi and Bwirege, I noticed evenly spaced utility poles alongside the road, signifying a new kind of development. I was stunned that no one had thought to inform me about this, and contemplated the enormous change in living and working conditions it signaled.⁵ Distracted by changes to the otherwise extremely familiar countryside, I felt the remaining stretch of the trip pass very quickly. In no time, we were disembarking from the matatu at Nyankare market. I heaved my tightly packed carry-on, containing all my necessities for the next two months, including a camera, tape recorders, gifts for friends, clothing, and bedding, onto my shoulder and crossed the market to the house of a good friend.

“She doesn’t live here anymore,” I was told. “They built a new home near the police post.” So short a time had elapsed since I confirmed my travel plans that I had notified few people of my return. Only my former assistant knew, but his home was four miles from the market—too far to walk in my fatigued state. I shuffled back into the market square and was approached by a young man who greeted me respectfully and kindly. Samwel Ragita, the son of another good friend, and the spitting image of his late father, told me his mother was home. He invited me to go there with him. Gladly I acquiesced, and during our short walk, I thought about how odd it was to see him grown up, and how happy I was to see him lift my bag without even asking and carry it for me. The four years since I had last been in Nyankare had brought many changes to my life, no doubt etched in my face, but Samwel, at thirteen, was physically transformed. I was glad he was so much his father’s son in appearance, or I would not have recognized him. As we left the hubbub of the market behind, I told him briefly about the processions we had encountered along the way. “So how are the circumcisions going over here?” I asked eagerly. He looked at me, seeming puzzled, and responded, “They have been canceled.”

“How can that be?” The shock of his statement sent ripples of disbelief into me.

“There is too much witchcraft,” Samwel replied matter-of-factly.

“Settlers of the Bush”

From the earliest colonial records, it is evident that migrations of Kuria people were ongoing at the time of the establishment of colonial rule. Writing about 1907 and 1908, the District Commissioner for South Nyanza District notes that “there is a marked increase of huts all along the German border from Mohuru on the Lake [Victoria] to Uregi [Bwirege]. This is most noticeable in Uregi where in March there were only six huts. In August I found 25 and on my safari last month [March 1908] when I collected hut tax there the number had risen to 94” (Kenya National Archives, DC/KSI/1).⁶ By 1911, the settlement at Bwirege had increased to nearly 200 huts (Kenya National Archives, DC/KSI/3/3). The people’s primary identification, then as now, was with the clan (ikiaro). The designation of Abairege as the settlers of the bush (abatuuri ba isaahi) by other Kuria is meant as a pejorative, but Abairege take pride in the designation, stressing those elements they perceive as prideworthy—independence, ruggedness, and a pioneering spirit, as well as their status as the ones who challenge the boundaries of Maasai.⁷ Because their area has, in the past century, been seen as remote, it has been the last affected by contact with outsiders and external institutions, including organized religion, formal education, and the market economy. Whereas other Kuria see Abairege as backward, other Kenyans level that same charge against Kuria in general. Despite the epithets, Abairege and Kuria of other ibiaro are well aware of changes in their lives on many fronts—economic, political, and social, as well as cultural. Though Kuria people were not recognized as a unitary ethnic group, or “tribe” in the colonial parlance, until the late 1950s, a shared history is referred to and cherished by many residents in the area. The importance of the overarching Kuria identity is growing, as is a sense of national identity, of being Kenyan. But since more than half of Kuria live in Tanzania, national identity has been slow to take full hold. Instead, underlying these emerging identities is an important, localized designation reflecting clan and lineage membership—that of the ikiaro, recognized as the maximal unit of affiliation prior to the late colonial era. Its enduring importance warrants examination and delineation.

Major demographic, social, economic, and political transformations on the national level in the past thirty years have not bypassed Kuria District.⁸ Many people living in this rural area aspire to be progressive and rue what they see as backwardness (Prazak 1999). Electricity in the district was limited to sporadic service in the capital until 2012, when even Bwirege became linked to the power grid. A growing number of people have solar panels at their homes, used in the past decade to recharge batteries for mobile phones and, in a few cases, to power television sets. Since 2005, the isolation of the area has been broken by mobile phone technology, and Nyankare market now hosts a phone booster tower, connecting the area with the rest of the globe. Another, just on the other side of the international border, allows people to communicate easily with kin south of the border in Tanzania.

The only paved road in Bukuria, a mere 20 kilometers, runs south of Migori to the Tanzanian border. The murram roads, on which the bulk of humans and cargo are transported, are pitted, potholed, poorly maintained, eroded, and overused. During the rainy seasons, their clay base makes them dangerous or impassable. Large lorries come into the district to remove maize surpluses accumulated and stored in the capacious warehouses of the Cereals Board, which buys up the harvests of Kuria and the adjacent Transmara districts. Lorries also export the tobacco harvest of smallholder farmers supplying British American Tobacco, Mastermind, Stancom, and Alliance companies, which compete for the best leaf to sell on the international and national markets for cigarette making. The only running water is in rivers and streams, and these have become increasingly polluted by runoff from tobacco nurseries, in which seeds are germinated and nurtured prior to transplanting. Girls and women fetch water from these sources, sometimes multiple times a day, to meet the needs of their homesteads.

Kuria widely regard educational attainment as the principal way to get ahead economically, as well as to gain access to horizons broader than the rural countryside. Nonetheless, educational attainment for Kuria men and women is lower than the national average and, perhaps consequently, employment levels are lower as well. Since very few people are able to survive by subsistence farming alone, most resort to multiple strategies to make a living (Bryceson 2002). Though employment options have been more accessible to men than to women, women are also intricately tied into the global economic system through cash-crop production (coffee, tobacco, maize), agricultural labor offered for sale, and petty trade.

In the last few decades, a number of important changes occurred in Bukuria. In the late 1980s, a large-scale in-migration of families placed a new burden on the resource base of these rural communities. The families had been squatting for the previous fifty years in the adjoining Rift Valley areas and were dislocated in the name of majimboism (Klopp 2001).⁹ This influx of peoples, whose livelihood was based on large herds of cattle, reinforced the most conservative elements within Bwirege society (Prazak 2000, 25). This is true, too, of neighboring Abanyabasi, who also squatted in adjoining Maasai areas.

That the initiation season was canceled because of witchcraft seemed impossible. It did not square with the image Abairege and Kuria generally have of themselves as the intrepid challengers of obstacles that stand in their way, an image reinforced nationally by the significant role they took historically and play currently in the police, army, and security industry, including private forces.

But that was the state of affairs when I arrived in the community on December 2. I had received my invitation back in October, and excitedly stayed up nights, preparing for the opportunity to fill this hole in my experience and knowledge. There and then, in the dusty marketplace, my heart sank to the pit of my stomach. After such a long journey, my purpose had suddenly vanished. This was too unexpected to contemplate. Despite the warm welcome of Samwel’s mother, Mogore Maria, and the excited whispering and nudging of her younger children, I felt dizzy and nauseated, hardly believing my bad fortune. It took me into the next day to get over the shock. I went from tears of disappointment, fatigue, and frustration, through a lot of rationalizing, to the beginnings of formulating a new plan and reason for being there. I decided that since I was already there and couldn’t go back home, I was ideally located for the study of witchcraft.

The Challenge of Studying Witchcraft

Studying witchcraft is an intractable endeavor. Raised in a secular humanist tradition, I have little background to help me come to grips with the ideas and reported realities of witchcraft.¹⁰ Like Ashforth, I am not predisposed to find higher or hidden meaning or purpose in the workings of the world (Ashforth 2000, 249). Yet witchcraft is nonetheless a meaningful category of thought and action to Kuria and many other peoples of the world.

Scholarship on this topic has a very long history in anthropology. E. E. Evans-Pritchard proposed that if one assumes unseen forces exist in the world and nothing happens to people by accident, then beliefs and practices concerning witchcraft (as well as magic and oracles) are rational (1937). Beliefs and practices resembling Azande witchcraft in southern Sudan, where Evans-Pritchard studied, are found in many societies, and a great deal of work has been done to identify patterns and underlying meanings of witchcraft accusations (see, e.g., Stewart and Strathern 2004; Fisiy and Geschiere 1996; Green 1997, 2003).

How do we understand witchcraft in the context of a circumcision celebration in Nyankare village in Kenya? Currently, a commonplace position of academics is that witchcraft is an idiom through which other realities, such as misfortunes, social stress, strain, unemployment, and capitalist globalization, to mention a few, are expressed (Ashforth 2000, 245). A study in postcolonial Africa in recent decades has recognized that local discourses on witchcraft and sorcery have always centered on power and inequality, on the tension between individual ambition and communitarian control. Fisiy and Geschiere (1996, 194) argue that these conceptions are invoked more often and more openly to interpret new inequalities. In the case of Cameroon, they argue that witchcraft discourses offer the idiom of choice for trying to understand and control modern changes. In some cases, witchcraft discourses pose obstacles to change, while in other contexts, they intertwine easily with new developments, with the form “modernity” takes. Sanders (1999) makes a similar point for rural north-central Tanzania. He shows that older notions of Ihanzu witchcraft—which are and always have been linked to material wealth and its accumulation and destruction—have been redefined and redeployed in more contemporary settings, and that “African witchcraft can be properly understood only as an historically conditioned phenomenon that is itself eminently modern” (127–28). Further, he proposes that though African witches represent an attempt to demystify modernity and its perverse inequities, currencies, and pieties, and its threat to the viability of known social worlds, witchcraft also critiques local forms of “tradition” by pointing up the moral and economic difficulties associated with a conceptually closed, finite-good economy. As Adam Ashforth discusses in his work in South Africa, people living in a paradigm of witchcraft seek meaning for misfortune in the actions of ill-disposed people nearby (2000, 253). And if nothing else, as one of a variety of interpretive schemes available through numerous agents, including doctors, traditional healers, missionaries, and ministers, witchcraft offers one way of deciphering signs of invisible power that shape the texture of everyday life.

Witchcraft ideas in contemporary Africa have become a prominent way of conceptualizing, coping with, and criticizing the very “modernity” that was supposed to have done away with them (Stewart and Strathern 2004, 5). James Smith (2008) elaborates the case for witchcraft as a tool to interpret new inequalities arising in Taita social life in Kenya. Smith’s detailed exegesis argues that witchcraft beliefs demonstrate how people conceptualize social boundaries (where threats to order and the good life emanate from), and how to shore up those boundaries against malicious forces (91). While teasing out Taita understandings of witchcraft, Smith highlights the ambivalent and relative nature of power and the perceived importance of creating and maintaining spatial and temporal boundaries in a reality where domains are also selectively permeable. He finds that witchcraft represents the dark antithesis of everything that Taita felt modernity should be. Different forms of witchcraft reference and represent different social dangers. In Smith’s assessment, witchcraft is a synonym for breached boundaries (93). Further, witchcraft draws attention away from structural issues by blaming evil individuals whose actions can be believed to affect structures (115). Ideas about witchcraft are intimately connected to more general notions about morality, sociality, and humanity (Green 2003, 124). Witches are people who are excessively greedy and antisocial, to the point where they quite literally embody the inversion of normal human attributes. The core antisocial quality of witches is their inability to eat with people (125).

The Kenyan Context

Seeing witchcraft through this lens makes one wonder what Kuria were so anxious about as they prepared for initiation season. The community was on edge. In Kenya, the 1990s were a difficult period of enormous political and economic uncertainty. A relatively stable democracy since independence in 1963, Kenya’s political changes, including the organization of a multiparty political system and accelerating incorporation of the economic spheres into the neoliberal global economic order, were leading to greater tolerance of dissent (Booth 2004, 16). By 1997, President Moi and his party no longer held the unquestioned support that had characterized the sociopolitical and economic character of the 1980s. On the economic front, Moi repeatedly failed to implement the structural adjustment programs that were imposed and reimposed on the country by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which resulted in the cancellation of monetary aid and loans from multilateral and bilateral agencies supported by North American and European governments. Newspaper and radio reports showcasing Moi’s attempts to blame “western imperialism” for the country’s increasingly severe economic crisis contributed to an atmosphere of tension, confusion, fear, and uncertainty. Moreover, open discussion of the rapidly growing HIV epidemic fanned tensions, as did the hugely unequal distribution of income and land, especially evident in rural areas (14).

Economic prosperity declined sharply as a consequence of complex, interacting influences. These included rapid population growth, punitive measures imposed by multinational donors, declining revenues from tourism and agricultural production, the Structural Adjustment Program, the effects of incorporation into the global economic system as a peripheral state, corruption, and mismanagement (House-Midamba 1996, 291; NCPD, CBS, and MI 1999, 2; Turner 2002, 982). Decades of economic decline culminated in 2000 when Kenya’s economy reached its lowest GDP growth level in history (about 0.2 percent), reflecting the deterioration in well-being that most of the Kenyan population was experiencing. One correlate of chronically weakening economic performance was the inability to create jobs at a rate that matched the growing labor force (CBS, MOH, and ORCM 2004, 2).

Moreover, the institutions and practices that had shaped Kenyan political life for at least a generation became unhinged during the 1990s. Political dissent broadened while government coffers dwindled, disabling the fulfillment of policy and future development visions. As Smith notes, “The state appeared hopelessly segmented, each nominal part seemingly pitted against the other, as the promise of the developmental state became the object of national ridicule” (2008, 179). With the state apparatus in retreat, foreign aid began to be channeled through a panoply of national and international NGOs, which became a new locus in the struggle for politics and patronage. Civilian members of the population could appropriate government roles by accessing and controlling money from NGOs for programs in the community. Through this process, localized social conflicts, such as those that pertained to the domestic sphere (gendered and generational conflicts with a long history), acquired public prominence, at the same time as the terms of public political debate (progress, development, transparency) permeated domestic group discourses and relationships.

These macro-level changes created significant new influences for individuals to negotiate on a daily basis. As neoliberal economics and globalization penetrated localities, people saw new channels to meet their household needs, while economic deregulation threatened the ability of local communities to retain established ways. The concerns and hopes embodied in foreign donors were accompanied by the spread of language that became ubiquitous by the end of the twentieth century and redefined the terms in which people thought about their realities. One of these notions was that culture had potential utility and was “good” when it could be deployed and rationalized to benefit the public (Smith 2008, 89). In addition, dispositions and states of mind were held to be the main factors that could influence whether things were moving forward, moving backward, or going nowhere.

The Power of Witchcraft

In December 1998, interterritorial witchcraft (okogenderana, literally “to act against”) was on everyone’s lips. Even though the initiation season had been called off some weeks earlier, a pronounced tension reigned in the community. Virtually all conversations, however casual, included the latest bit of news about the unusual, unsettling things going on. For me, the next week was devoted to conversations, interviews, meetings, and discussions on the topic of witchcraft, particularly as related to initiation. In two weeks, an assistant and I collected dozens of versions of accounts about why the initiation season had been called off. The stories and rumors whirled. Some versions seemed to be dismissed, only to reappear at another time and with further embellishment or evidence. The tellers drew gasps of astonishment, fear, or doubt, but the listeners dutifully passed on the stories, adding fuel to the fears of supernatural attacks being carried out by covert agents.

Early the next morning, a great ruckus emanating from the marketplace reached Mogore Maria’s house. An intensifying buzz, sounding like a crowd at a sports event, was punctuated by periodic crescendos. We were simultaneously curious and concerned. Samwel went running off to see what the excitement was about. As we drank porridge, passersby supplied commentary on the action in the market. A mysterious animal that people couldn’t identify had been spotted on top of one of the trees. It was not a cat, nor a monkey, but had a long tail and five fingers, just like a monkey. Eerily, it cried like a baby.

The tension was palpable as people speculated about what it could possibly be doing on top of a tree in the busy marketplace. They reasoned that it had been sent by Abanyabasi to bite someone. Or it had been sent by Abanyabasi to find out whether circumcisions were taking place in Bwirege. Either way, general sentiment marked it as a portent of evil. A crowd a hundred strong gathered around the tree where it was hiding, and people were laying out strategies for how to thwart the danger the animal presented. The discussion took several hours. Around noon, a young man came forward, suggesting that if he were given KShs. 200, he would climb an adjacent tree and bring the suspicious animal down.¹¹ People pooled money and soon the amount was collected. The young man pocketed the money and, true to his word, climbed the tree. After a few attempts to capture it, he brought the animal down to the unmerciful multitude, who stoned it to death. The carcass of the bushbaby was unceremoniously thrown into a ditch and the crowd broke up.

For the next week, I continued to listen to and engage people in conversations about witchcraft and other initiation seasons. I began to discern that the stories circulating through Bwirege as explanations for the cancellation of the initiation season addressed different points of tension.

Rumors

The first type of rumor was of the general “bad omen” nature, as epitomized by the following story I first heard from a young market woman. She described an incident that was alleged to have taken place where the Bwirege secret conclave held its clandestine meetings. As the members of the inchaama arrived at their usual meeting place, they discovered a passing hyena. All recognized the sighting of a hyena as a bad omen. This was further compounded by their finding that the egeteembe tree, used by the conclave members to read portents regarding the initiation season, had dried up on the right side. The right side symbolizes the males, and that occurrence was seen as indicating that many boys would die, beginning with the eight youths who open a period of circumcision. If that were to happen, initiation ceremonies could not proceed. This was probably the most often repeated tale I encountered.

Another widely repeated story was of a young girl who, dismayed that the initiation season had been called off, decided to circumcise herself. Youths told this story with awe for her audacity and determination. But she failed to complete the job and someone had to be called to finish it. All recognized she had seriously transgressed social rules, and thus the representatives of the inchaama were said to be visiting that home and gathering evidence. As no one would name her, I could not verify or follow the tale. I thought the story unlikely and categorized it as a contemporary legend. In a time fraught with incredible rumors, parsing stories for embedded facts can be astonishingly difficult. This story appeared not to be of witchcraft, but was clearly of transgression of normative behavior, and seemed to pertain to a genre of tales that stress the initiates’ expectation of participating in the ritual. However, many years later, a similar story came to light once more, this time in a BBC News radio program (2006), which reported that a girl who had started to circumcise herself had died in the attempt. In scholarly literature, the threat of self-circumcision appeared in a paper describing the defiance with which Meru women and girls met colonial prohibition of genital cutting in the 1950s (Thomas, 1996).

Other rumors revolved around Muniko Zachary, a renowned circumciser from Bwirege in Tanzania. He had been operating on boys for the past forty-plus years, but lately had been ailing for some time, and his eyesight was failing. Rumor had it that he had been bewitched. While a circumciser with bad eyesight is reason enough for an initiate to be concerned, community members worried that even greater misfortune could pass on to the boys he would circumcise. Still, this explanation left room for the inchaama to reverse their decision to cancel initiations. For instance, a cleansing ceremony (ogosonsoora) could be carried out and the initiation season could proceed.

In a different version of the story, his recent sickness had made him partially blind. He wanted to seek medical help in Dar es Salaam, and thus requested the council of elders to release him from his initiation duty. Because of his long and dedicated service, he was told he could retire the following year. But in preparation, he was to identify his successor, and for this last year, be in charge of all the operations. The other man who had also been circumcising was unhappy with this decision, as it robbed him of a source of income. He is said to have bewitched Muniko Zachary, causing his illnesses and blindness. But because this younger man had himself been circumcised by Muniko Zachary, Muniko Zachary cursed the man for causing the loss of his vision, saying, “I am the one who circumcised you and you have seen it fit to do this to me. May everybody you circumcise die in your hands!” With these words, he compelled the younger man not to participate in the circumcision ceremonies. This version of the story came to me via a middle-aged man from Tanzania. A very similar version was circulating in Kuria-inhabited locations in the Rift Valley.

A more elaborate version was recorded from Victoria Gaati, the chief’s wife in Nyankare. In her account, the circumciser was cursed by the father of one of the boys he had operated on, following a fight between the two men over where the circumcision of the latter’s son had taken place. The father had been circumcised in the very first set Muniko Zachary operated on, and in his anger said something to the effect that since he belonged to the first set of boys who had been circumcised by Muniko Zachary, he was thus advising him to let the operation he did to his son be the last or else something dire would happen. Come this year’s ceremonies, Muniko Zachary refused to participate unless the boy’s father renounced his statement, after which a cleansing ceremony would need to occur.

Seeing that things were getting out of hand, the inchaama met and requested that the age-mates of the boy’s father confront their colleague and ask him to retract his earlier threat, so that the circumcision ceremonies could go on as planned. That Muniko Zachary had been ill was a consequence of what the boy’s father had said. According to Victoria Gaati, who was recounting the story, the cleansing ceremony could then take place and thus the initiation season could proceed as expected.

Yet another type of rumors circulating involved the internal dynamic of Bwirege’s generation classes (amakora). About a century earlier, when the cycle was at a similar configuration, a serious famine devastated the area. The young men of that time had to leave their communities to find food. They were gone too long, and by the time they came back, the elders had starved to death. So in order to ensure that youths about to be circumcised would survive the operation, it was necessary for a series of rituals to be performed to appease the spirits of the elders who had died of starvation while their sons had gone off. Though this story is consistent with historical events of the past century, it did not circulate widely, and it was not possible for my assistant and me to ascertain whether people were taking steps to remedy past transgressions in order to bring about the current initiation season.

Generation Classes as Identity Markers

An important ingredient in determining the status of one individual vis-à-vis another is the cycle of amakora—a core institution that regulates the systematic pattern of relationships and provides the guidelines for appropriate interpersonal behavior (Ruel 1962, 17). Membership in the amakora is ascribed at birth, and a man’s children are automatically members of the successive class; his grandchildren will then belong to the next class, and the great-grandchildren to the fourth one. Then, the cycle repeats. The formal relationship between the classes is fixed. All Kuria belong to one of two complementary cycles that each have four generation classes.

In the Monyasaai cycle, Abasaai give birth to the Abanyambureti, who give birth to Abagamunyere, who are followed by the Abamaina, who in turn give birth to the Abasaai. In the Monyachuuma cycle, the Abamairabe give birth to Abagini, the Abagini give birth to Abanyangi, the Abanyangi give birth to Abachuuma, and the Abachuuma to Abamairabe. Membership in each cycle is patrilineal, and norms of coevality apply to each class in sequence.

A child remains a member of the class he or she was born into throughout life, and follows the rules of respect in regard to members of other classes. The rules are simple and apply to both cycles. Members of adjacent classes have a relationship of respect and reserve with each other, whereas members of the same and alternate classes enjoy a relationship of familiarity. The emphasis on a modal two-generational pattern of behavior norms is consistent with the basic two-generational form of the homestead. The relationships between actual lineal kin are at the center of the classificatory system of relationships established by the generation classes. But through the classes, the two broad types of relationships (those of respect and of restraint) are extended further to cover all members of the ikiaro, together with those of other ibiaro.

In kinship matters, class relationships are expressed in marriage rules. A member of one generation can only marry within his own generation class or within the next alternating group. He cannot marry the next younger group because those are his “children” and he cannot marry from the next senior group because those are his “parents.” But “class norms and general patterning of relationships dovetail with and are subsumed by all kinship relations” (Ruel 1962, 28). On ritual occasions, generation classes delineate clearly defined social groups and dictate who may play a certain role, what shares of meat may be taken by whom, who may mix together, who should be kept apart, and so govern interactions according to the basic rules of respect and familiarity. Class membership orders behavior in a specific context of events and participants. It does not itself initiate what takes place (28–29). At the circumcision ground, the oldest amakora are the first to be operated on. In the past, members of the same generations were cut using the same knife, and members of the oldest generation walk first in the line of initiates.

Generation class membership is the most important in contexts of everyday interaction within the community, where the class system acts again as a general charter for social behavior and norms of respect. Underlying all greetings, social gatherings, chance encounters, beer parties, guest/host relationships, and feasting, the norms of respect operate between the different classes to establish generational groupings. Thus, for example, only members of the same class will share food from the same bowl. The more informal the situation, the less rigidly these codes are adhered to and behavior becomes more relaxed. Generation classes tend to be associated with certain age-groups of the community. In the past, the rough equivalence of the classes with the age-structure of the community was determined by a sequence of ceremonies performed by the classes in succession. Most of these ceremonies were no longer practiced in the 1950s and none took place in the ikiaro in the 1980s (Ruel 1959, 131–33). Still, Kuria use the names of the classes in referring to people of a particular generation or time. Thus, people refer to the movement of the Abahirichacha (a descent group) north into Kenya as having taken place in the time of Abasaai, who were accompanied by their children, Abanyamburiti.

The association between generation classes and age-groups of the community is seldom clear-cut and simple, and results from membership in a generation class being assigned on a genealogical basis. Thus two brothers, sons of the same man but by different wives, belong to the same class, even though the age difference between them may be thirty years. They will thus move through the life stages and age-statuses at different points in time, even though they are of the same generation class.

As I was listening to rumors of witchcraft and supernatural happenings, the troubles of the circumciser and debts owed to ancestors, the recurrence of blame and accusation being directed at the people of Nyabasi, the neighboring ikiaro, it became clear that the sociopolitical units of Kuria society figured largely in the unease expressed through rumors of witchcraft, pointing to arenas where local boundaries need to be revitalized.

More Rumors

The most frightening stories were the ones that focused explicitly on okogenderana—witchcraft carried out between clans (ibiaro). Three of the four Kuria clans in Kenya had decided to hold initiations that year. Abakira had already begun. But Abanyabasi and Abairege had both called off their initiation ceremonies. These two neighboring clans have a long history of hostility toward each other. For the past several decades they had been raiding each other’s cattle, and it had become unusual for both groups to circumcise in the same year. The okogenderana power of the witchcraft on each side was a matter of substantial concern. Numerous accounts circulated of trespassers coming from Nyabasi, stealing hair, fingernails, and other small body parts through which to exact witchcraft on their unsuspecting rivals.¹² People told frightening tales of children being kidnapped, killed, and dismembered; adults being waylaid, beaten, and robbed; individuals unwittingly recruited to do evil.¹³ As I later found out, many of these incidents were registered with the police and the civil administration, so the rumors were often based on some level of fact.

I heard the first account from Mogore Maria, my host. An independent businesswoman, a widow, and an elected local official, she firmly blamed witchcraft for creating a climate where it was necessary to cancel initiation ceremonies. The day after my arrival, she assured me that two or even three witches from Nyabasi had already been apprehended in Bwirege, after a buried bag of magic had been discovered. One of the witches, a woman, was caught in a market community in the southeast part of the location as she carried a basket in which she was hiding a sheep’s leg. In Nyankare, the main market of the location, two men were caught, having been observed behaving in a suspicious manner. They claimed they had come to buy cattle, but instead left behind bundles containing fingernails and other body parts. All three of these people/witches were severely beaten, and it was said the woman lost an eye.

In another case, people believed to be from Nyabasi went to a farm in Bwirege where they found a young girl, not yet old enough for initiation. She was looking after her parents’ maize, which had been attacked by monkeys in the preceding days. The people from Nyabasi shaved her head, scraped some skin from the front and back of her head, and cut off her fingernails. They left her in the fields and walked off. The girl immediately ran home and told her parents what had happened. This, like some of the other stories, was repeated to me by diverse people in various areas of the location. Because the parents of the girl were named, it was easy to see that this particular story was widely believed.

Stories of this sort of witchcraft (okogenderana) between Abairege and Abanyabasi abounded. Two sisters, Nyagonchera Mwita and Janet Gaati, wanted to circumcise their youngest sons, who were insisting on accompanying each other through the process. But the sisters had heard and repeated to me a story of a young boy (a potential initiate) who had been bewitched into running into Nyabasi, to the secret conclave of that clan, where the elders killed him and cut off his private parts. When the elected official for whom the boy had been working followed the runaway to find out what happened to him, the councilor was stabbed. Both sisters are schoolteachers, traveled and well-educated, and their fear of witchcraft was palpable. The other story they recounted I had previously heard. It was of the two Nyabasi men, both married to Abairege women. The men had traveled to Bwirege to buy cattle but were set upon by the mob at the cattle auction and beaten badly. Some of their hair was shaved and their fingernails cut to create anti-Nyabasi magic. Since the men were sons-in-law to Bwirege, and were in fact quite well known, the sisters found this story shocking, as it illustrated the escalated emotional pitch and fear building in the community.

One day, as I sat on a narrow wooden bench in front of a dry goods shop in the market, I listened to a conversation between two old men perched on small stools watching the goings-on in the market center. A sixty-year-old employed watchman, the younger of the two, recounted the story of a married woman from Bwirege who had gone to Nyabasi to visit her boyfriend. The boyfriend gave her a black sheep. Members of the secret conclave in Nyabasi decided that they would strike at Bwirege through this adulterous couple. When the woman got back to Bwirege, she went to her sister’s place and asked her sister’s uncircumcised son to assist her in slaughtering the sheep. He agreed, and when the meat was cooked, he ate it and went back to his home. Two days later, the boy was helping his parents transport maize home from the fields using a donkey. The parents were carrying sacks of maize on their heads, and were left behind. On the third trip, almost halfway home, the boy suddenly unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it on the road. He then began unloading the maize from the donkey and when done, took off, leaving the donkey and everything on the road.

He allegedly went to a place in Nyabasi, where he met some boys his age looking after a herd of cattle. The boys asked him where he was from and he promptly told them he was from Bwirege and just out for a stroll. He helped them drive their cattle to the river to drink, and in the evening they invited him to their home. Their father made some inquiries about the boy, and satisfied that the boy was indeed from Bwirege, he left the boys at his home and went to inform and consult with the council of elders. He told the elders that everything had turned out as planned and expected. After supper, the other boys went to bed and the visiting boy asked to be shown where he was to sleep. He was led to where the council of elders was meeting and was killed. His genitals, nose, and right ear were chopped off, and his eyes and intestines gouged out. His badly mutilated body was found some days later in a river in a border area with Bwirege.

The storyteller went on to describe how the secret conclave of Bwirege dispatched members to the scene where the body was found to ascertain that the body was actually that of the missing boy. This done, the elders decided that the body of the missing boy should not be brought back to Bwirege. The woman who brought the black sheep had since separated from her husband and been taken to the council of elders in Bwirege, Tanzania, to be punished. She was asked to pay two cows as a fine or be killed.

The day after I heard this detailed story in the market, I stopped by the home of John Muruga, who was relaxing in the shade cast by the conical thatched roof of one of the three circular wattle and daub traditional houses that made up his homestead. We talked about the stories going around. He had heard them all, but was confident that initiation would nonetheless be carried out in Bwirege this year. He claimed not only that it would happen but also that it would begin on December 14. He was planning to circumcise his two oldest children, son Mwita John and daughter Grace Gaati. While I was talking with John, his brother Sagirei stopped by, along with a friend named Kehongo Elias. Sagirei and Kehongo had become close friends when they studied together overseas in the 1960s. Then, their provenance from different clans (ibiaro) did not matter. But now, with one an elder from Bwirege, the other from Nyabasi, Kehongo marveled at how apprehensive he felt driving into Bwirege to visit his friend, something he had done routinely for decades.

Quite a heated discussion followed. Kehongo insisted, “What is happening now is thuggery.” The Nyabasi woman who was beaten was mentally challenged as well as poor. She was visiting her daughter in Tanzania, who gave her mother some roasted meat for the long walk back home. She didn’t have money for the ferry at Nyamongo to cross the Mara River and so ended up having to walk through Bwirege. Though initially walking with others who eventually hived off upon reaching their destinations, she reached the marketplace in the southeastern part of the location alone. There she was noticed eating dried meat (a sheep’s leg).¹⁴ People beat her and she lost an eye. A Good Samaritan took her to a clinic. Her husband was told she was dead, but was afraid to come get her body from Bwirege. He got the administration to come get her and they found her alive. She was taken to Ombo Hospital in Migori.

Sagirei proposed that this was the first time in his memory that initiations had brought about such serious misunderstanding between Nyabasi and Bwirege. “This is thuggery,” Kehongo Elias repeated. “This has nothing to do with witchcraft.” As proof for his stance, he brought up the case of the two Nyabasi men married to Abairege women. They were well known in Bwirege, but they were beaten, their hair and nails cut. They were robbed of KShs. 15,000 and 8,000, respectively.¹⁵ Both Sagirei and Kehongo agreed that this was not likely to be the work of the secret conclave, which does not operate in such a flamboyant way. To support their conclusion, they spoke of the incident in which the bushbaby was killed in the market. If the real concern had been witchcraft, it would have been killed quietly and been taken to the inchaama, instead of the spectacle that took place.

Later that day I visited Stephen Wambura and his wife Severina Nyakorema, two schoolteachers. They were planning to initiate their three oldest daughters that season, and had been working to amass a large amount of food for the celebrations. They felt thwarted by the elders calling the whole process into question. But they believed initiations would happen, perhaps after Tanzanian schools closed. They had heard about the boy who was killed and then thrown into the river in Nyabasi, at the border with Bwirege. In the days that had passed, the story had taken on additional details. Allegedly, his throat was cut, and his external organs were chopped off and circumcised by the Abanyabasi. This action was intended to signify that Bwirege’s initiates were going to lose a lot of blood and would be washed away, just like the blood in the water. Abanyabasi expected that Abairege, upon hearing that one of their own had been killed, would go get his body. But Abairege did not, and the body, after being positively identified, was buried there. Abairege claimed that since the boy was maimed and killed by Abanyabasi, and his blood washed into the water source used by their people, Nyabasi initiates would be the ones to die on being circumcised.

I have presented the rumors in quite some detail because this was the predominant discourse taking place in Bwirege during the time initiations were called off, and as people tried to understand why the abagaaka had abruptly terminated the season, the uncertainties of various individuals became clear in the specifics of the rumor. The rumors drew attention to the perceived frailties of the group by those who repeated particular stories (Smith 2008, 182).

Descent as Identity Marker

Principles of descent are of paramount importance in organizing Kuria social life. Descent relations achieve depth over time, based on the parent-child links that connect generations by blood. In Kuria society, people are connected patrilineally, with the most significant link being father-son. A group formed by links through males over five or more generations constitutes a lineage, which includes people who can specify the father-son links that connect them to a common ancestor. This happens at each genealogical depth—those who share a paternal grandfather are distinct from those who have different grandfathers. This belonging is mobilized situationally.

The identity, behavior, and status of each individual are determined first by the family group or umugi, the primary social unit comprised of a man, his wife or wives, and their children, as well as the wives and children of their sons. The umugi is based on the male homestead owner (umuene umugi). A child’s place in the family lineage is confirmed by circumcision, the first step an individual takes in the ritual cycle. Many East African peoples were and, to some extent, continue to be socially organized in this manner, classified as “segmentary lineage societies.” Historically, these societies lacked institutionalized rulers and centralized government, yet had the ability to act in unison regarding specific issues. Lineage was the main political association, and individuals had no political or legal status except through lineage membership.¹⁶ They had relatives outside the lineage, but their own political and legal status derived from the lineage to which they belonged. Because people were born into them, lineages endured over time in societies where no other form of organization lasted, and the system of lineages became the foundation of social life, but that doesn’t mean they were immovable and inflexible. People used lineage and clan membership to pursue their interests. Lineages were described as corporate in that they controlled property, such as lands or herds, as a unit. Though the colonial era eliminated communal ownership among Kuria, lineage membership continues to carry benefits.

When members of a descent group believe that they are in some way connected but cannot specify the precise genealogical links, they compose what anthropologists call a clan. Bwirege is such a unit. Usually, a clan is made up of lineages whose members believe they are related to one another through links that go back to mythical times but cannot be traced exactly. So whereas lineage members can specify the precise genealogical links back to their common ancestor, clan members cannot. The clan is thus larger than any lineage, and more diffuse in terms of both membership and the hold it has over individuals. It is also territorially based.

Early cultural history of East Africa described by Davidson identifies dispersal and migration as the basic characteristic of the spread of indigenous populations in precolonial times (1969, 47). For Abairege, as for other migrants, connection with descent groups provided a source of identity and security, and regulated social relationships with other migrants settling on nearby ridges or lands. Accordingly, members of the same lineages would move to be near each other for mutual assistance and defense, and over time the descent groups became territorially based. So a particular ridge became the land of the Abahirichacha, and members of that descent group would receive land for use from the lineage elders. On the ground, lineage affiliation served as the charter for social relationship, identifying those whom one could marry or rely on for help, as well as those who were outsiders and thus enemies.

Ruel describes traditional Kuria society as composed of four levels of descent groups at the time of the late colonial period. Ikiaro, translated as province or clan, was the most inclusive, followed by egesaku (descent section), irigiha (clan segment), and eeka (lineage). According to Ruel, these units of sociopolitical organization had lost all their relevance by the 1950s, except for the levels most (ikiaro) and least (eeka) inclusive (1959, 56). The characteristics of the segmentary lineage system he describes probably functioned exclusively until the 1920s, when colonial administration reached Bukuria and introduced territorially defined political units, controlled through the colonial administrative structure. As the precolonial lineage structures lost clear definition over time, administrators and anthropologists observing Kuia people and writing about them deemphasized the importance and primacy of the descent system, and focused instead on the forms of colonial administration as the salient pillars of political and social organization in Bukuria during colonial and early postcolonial eras: chiefs and administrative locations. Yet, what becomes clear by focusing on the ritual life of Kuria people today in the performance of circumcision is how descent continues to define identity, social relationships, and the shape of current events. Where the colonial observers saw lineages as principally elements of political organization, their significance persists because they are units governing social life that, in particular circumstances, take on political significance, even in the context of introduced governmental institutions.¹⁷

Ruel characterizes an ikiaro as having changing descent composition resulting from the dispersal and reformation of groups within it (1959, 28). As the most inclusive level of the descent system, the ikiaro was defined primarily as territory belonging to specific people with an assumed relationship to a common mythical ancestor rather than any traceable lineage. The people who occupied a common province showed solidarity in shared means of settling disputes, compensation for homicide, and mechanisms for collective labor. The territorial base was the vicinity in which people lived. The occupants shared a sense of common identity and distinctiveness from other groups of the same level. Each ikiaro had its own totem, and its distinct ceremonies, though traditions were shared with other ibiaro. Abairege have the leopard as their totem, as do Abagumbe and Abanyamongo. All ibiaro perform initiations, but each at their own time, following their own sequence and form. Each ikiaro had (and has) its own ritual center and its own inchaama.

According to Ruel, the ibisaku were the most clearly “political” of all descent units because the common ancestor was hypothesized rather than known, and obligations associated with membership had the least to do with kinship duties.¹⁸ Fighting between ibisaku was common, as were rivalry and hostility. Starting in colonial times, the allocation of political office was often influenced by descent section solidarities. Moreover, colonial archives from 1931 mention rivalry between the two ibisaku groups in Bwirege, the Abakehenche and the Abarisenye. Political jockeying continues today. Conflict between these two descent sections during the 1998–99 circumcision season and again in 2001–02 highlights the social and political functioning of intermediate levels of segmentary organization, contrary to their believed irrelevance fifty years ago.

In the past, groups based on descent—ibisaku and amagiha—had two primary functions: (1) cooperation in war, defining those who could be called on for support in case of conflict; and (2) cooperation in work groups performing tasks necessary for survival. Pax Britannica was meant to put an end to fighting, but cattle raiding persists even today. Raiding provides a source of bridewealth and is still regarded by some members of the society as a legitimate occupation of youths. Accordingly, people know the ibisaku and the amagiha they belong to because the traditional functions persist. But they often misuse descent group terminology because the groups have become so large, and because the term ikiaro is identified with modern political boundaries more than with traditional descent structure. So the grouping Abahirichacha, a subsegment of the Abakehenche, is regarded by some as an egesaku; by others, an irigiha. In general discourse, people refer to their memberships by their descent group names, not by categorical referents.¹⁹

Figure 2. Kuria descent structure

Even though people continue to identify with and shape social behavior around their ikiaro, the traditional social evolution of communities from eeka to irigiha to egesaku to ikiaro is no longer possible because the ibiaro became territorialized with fixed boundaries in the early decades of the twentieth century, as administrative locations were delimited by the colonial government to correspond closely to the territories of the ibiaro. Consequently, the descent structure cannot operate as a segmentary lineage system because there is no longer free and open land available for active segmentation to continue. The ibiaro are fixed and there is no movement within the hierarchy. So, though the designations Abakehenche and Abarisenye no longer fit into a traditionally functioning descent section model using the terminology ikiaro-egesaku-irigiha-eeka, all Abairege affiliate with either the Abakehenche (seen as the larger/senior segment) or the Abarisenye (seen as the smaller/junior segment).

Although today the ibiaro are territorially based rather than descent based, they still constitute the maximal unit to which an individual belongs within Kuria social reckoning. Furthermore, private ownership of land, widely encouraged in the colony under the Swynnerton Plan (1954), created a situation where territory associated with specific descent groups is no longer strictly in the hands of the elders of that descent group. So if the Abarisenye and Abakehenche were to split into two ibiaro, the social and territorial units would no longer be coterminous, since people of each branch live intermingled in the communities of Bwirege. According to my household survey data, this shift in landholding and settlement patterns has taken place increasingly in recently settled communities.

The ikiaro remains the main focus of Kuria identification. Among Kuria, people speak of themselves as members of an ikiaro (e.g., Abairege, Abanyabasi, and so forth), rather than as Abakuria. The relationships between ibiaro are generally hostile, unless (totemic) alliance is shared. Outsiders from other ibiaro are enemies and always potentially dangerous, thus girls and parents alike fear the threat of a pregnant, uncircumcised girl exiled to a neighboring ikiaro. People from other ibiaro are distrusted, and when traveling by road through Bukuria, passengers fear getting stranded by a vehicle breakdown in any of the other ibiaro. This is especially the case at times of heightened ritual activity, such as initiations, when it is believed that misfortune, in the form of death to the initiates, is threatened by contact with members of other ibiaro.

More than a dozen Kuria ibiaro exist. Most are in Tanzania, four are in Kenya, but only one has its territory completely in Kenya. The three divided by an open international boundary, including Bwirege, have thriving social and economic cross-border exchange, and people can escape from the laws of home by shifting into the other country. So when the laws against female genital cutting were being enforced in Tanzania in 1998, Abairege parents brought their girls to be cut in Kenya. Similarly, if the Umwirege circumciser in Tanzania was operating close to the boundary, Kenyan Abairege did not hesitate to cross into Tanzania to have their candidates undergo initiation.

Some observers of the initiation cancellations were talking about a rift that was increasingly threatening the existence of the secret conclave as a unitary decision-making entity in Bwirege. Though the perceived division had been there for a while and not affected the discharge of duty to the people in the past, it became increasingly clear that the two descent sections comprising Bwirege—Abakehenche and Abarisenye—were conducting their affairs independently.²⁰

Abakehenche are regarded as the “bigger house” and Abarisenye as the “smaller” house. According to custom, Abarisenye are not allowed to conduct any affairs without first consulting Abakehenche. Abakehenche are seen to be on the “right side” where such activities as initiation ceremonies are concerned, and are expected to begin, while Abarisenye are expected to follow. But Abarisenye had been dominant in decision making for this initiation season, prompting the current crisis. So Abakehenche were counseling that initiations be postponed, while Abarisenye wanted to proceed. To make matters even more extraordinary, a third descent group was beginning to act as a corporate entity. Abaseese, with lineages in both Burisenye and in Bokehenche, were beginning to assert independent authority, challenging both the ibisaku widely recognized as legitimate sociopolitical groups of Abairege.²¹ This crisis of traditional authority was taking place on both sides of the international boundary, in Kenya and in Tanzania. The district commissioner in Kenya was rumored to have ordered chiefs from Bwirege to ensure that the inchaama in Bwirege was not divided, thereby ensuring that the tension between groups did not translate into structural fissioning.

The Uncertainty Continues

Despite the widespread concern about witchcraft that sprang up in late November and early December, people carried on with their preparations for initiations, though quietly. The public pageantry associated with the rituals came to a complete stop. Locally, outbreaks of cattle rustling fanned fears of crime.²² As this type of theft became the focus of public discourse, it became another topic that put people on edge. So did the measures to address it. An iritongo meeting was held near the market to discuss cattle theft. Nyankare was said to be harboring cattle thieves, and the people of the community were asked to disclose the thieves’ names. This was done systematically, with all community members present at the meeting filing past the secretary and telling her either the name of a cattle thief, or that they didn’t know one. The sungusungu, a posse of men, was then empowered to hunt the accused down and beat them until they returned the stolen cattle.²³ The people at the meeting were told that the iritongo would meet every week until all the thieves had been found and punished. Two days after the iritongo meeting, a posse of about twenty-five men went charging past our homestead, heading toward the Tanzanian border, arguing and calling out, spreading news of what was happening as they passed. And indeed, women cried out on numerous nights as homes were visited by vigilante justice. The anxiety over witchcraft was augmented by this additional type of fear, that of accusations and vigilante justice.

Circumcisions, nonetheless, remained the primary topic of private conversations, as did the many accounts of witchcraft acts occurring in various places in the location. On December 9, Abanyabasi began circumcising. In Bwirege, at the official Jamhuri Day celebrations on December 12 at the district officer’s camp, the crowd slowly assembled to hear speeches by government officials commemorating the establishment of Kenya as a republic. People seemed resigned to the cancellation of initiations in Bwirege. The rumor of the day was that circumcision would not take place, as this was the day that the first eight—the amanaanai representative of the amakora—were to have been circumcised as a precursor to the community-wide event, but were not. And the reopening of schools was drawing closer, so the time for healing would possibly be inadequate. People speculated that the old circumciser had gone blind, or the youth to be circumcised had refused to be operated on because of his blindness. The rumor seemed confirmed when Mogore Maria, in her role as elected councilor for this area, urged people not to kill their cattle, because in a few weeks’ time they would need to pay school fees.

After her, a wealthy Kuria businessman who usually lived and conducted his activities in Mombasa gave a scathing speech, berating the elders for having called off the initiation season. “We have brought our children from all over Kenya to become abaiseke and abamura within our communities, to become Kuria,” he said.²⁴ He went on to say that the inchaama were joking with people, they’d postponed the operation three times. The people who had brought their children back there for it would have to go back with them uncircumcised. Were the inchaama defeated, leaving everyone to do it in any way they liked? Taking the children to the hospital? If they were circumcised at that time they would only have two weeks to heal. In the past, abasaamba had had six months to recover. Why should the young ones now only have two weeks? “But if the abagaaka don’t allow them to be circumcised according to our tradition, we’ll take them to be circumcised in clinics or hospitals wherever we live.” He articulated most clearly what others were not willing to state openly: the elders had lost their power to order the affairs of the localities in which they had been regarded as the ultimate culturally designated authorities. Many people clearly agreed with his assessment. They were furious at the possibility that circumcisions might not take place. Everyone had prepared food, brewed beer, and come from long distances to be here when their children were initiated, and all that seemed to have been in vain.

Talk of initiation ended with the district officer, a young man from northeastern Kenya. He spoke of esaaro bitterly and disparagingly. “I called a meeting of the iritongo and no councilors came. The leaders only talk, they don’t do anything. And people talk about witches and being bewitched.” Though he had been in the district only two months, he was already seeking a transfer, because he felt he could not work with the people. “In many parts [of the country] they have stopped the primitive methods. But here it is still going on in that way.” What his perspective overlooked, in his equating of the witchcraft beliefs with only superstition, ignorance, and backwardness, was that Kuria he administered were trying to retain their sense of Kuria cultural uniqueness, hence their adherence to tradition as they sought to bolster claims to be given their own administrative district. The role and position of elders in Kuria society, among other things, was being challenged and renegotiated. The elders had not been the leaders in the struggle for the district earlier in the decade. That had been spearheaded by the generation of men who were the sons of the elders, whose children were to be circumcised during this season. So on one level, the struggle embodied in the witchcraft events and rumors was an internal dynamic of a clan (ikiaro) needing to revitalize local boundaries, develop a self-identity, and encourage a self-sustaining future based on local language and values. On another level, the struggle was between various segments of descent groups, vying for seniority and increased power to determine their own agendas with regard to the dynamics of the ikiaro. Within the ikiaro, members of competing ibisaku and amagiha were negotiating their own structural positions. As the public dispersed from the meeting ground, people speculated that some would probably go and have their children circumcised in clinics.

Rumors of witchcraft had succeeded in bringing preparations for an initiation season to a halt. The threats posed by outsiders, whether human or animal, were scrutinized for hidden meanings and indications that supernatural forces would negatively affect the outcome of the initiations and lead to deaths among the initiates. Despite their wide repetition, the rumored incidents remained opaque. But clearly, people of Bwirege were anxious, and locating the cause of uncertainty required teasing out a number of forces, local, national, and international. Locally, uncertainties about group definition raised fears of territorial realignment, consequent expulsion, and homelessness. Further, descent segments of various depths were staking claims for positions of power and authority within the local context. On the national level, insecurities brought on by the economic and political weakness of the state manifested in a widespread reliance on concepts of evil as a propagated supernatural force in order to rationalize the declining control of the state in areas meant to promote public good. And as the state tried to negotiate its position with international donor organizations, it focused on the eradication of female genital cutting as the cause that would highlight the clear trajectory it was committed to, moving the nation from traditionalism to modernity.