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