An Uncertain Age. Paul Ocobock
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colonial rule witnessed it at a particular time. These ethnographies, as well as discussions between colonial officials and African intermediaries, identified several crucial characteristics of coming-of-age that underwent dramatic change during the colonial encounter.
First, male initiation practices marked the physical and psychological transition from childhood to manhood. Before and long after the colonial period, the majority of African communities in Kenya practiced some form of male initiation. These varied in ritual practice, most notably the presence or absence of genital circumcision. Despite ritual diversity, initiation stood as one of the most significant moments in an African man’s life. The Routledges argued that for the Gikuyu, events like marriage and death “hold but a small place . . . compared to that greatest of all ceremonies whereby the boy becomes a man and the girl a woman.”34 Likewise, initiation was a pivotal moment in the lives of young Kamba, Gusii, Kipsigis, Maasai, and Nandi.35 While Luo boys did not traditionally undergo circumcision, they did experience rituals that transitioned them out of childhood.36 Plans to initiate a boy depended on several factors. The well-being of the entire community determined when initiation occurred. Drought, famine, or war could postpone or even accelerate initiation. If conditions permitted, the decision fell to the eagerness of a future initiate and the consent of his father. A boy had to want it, and when ready, he approached his father. Only a father could secure “the satisfaction of all a boy’s longings and ambitions.”37 A father’s consent often depended on his ability to afford the necessary accoutrements of initiation, such as livestock, alcohol, food, and gifts.38 A father’s status also changed once he had initiated his firstborn. He or his age-group as a whole moved upward into a more advanced age with its own new privileges and responsibilities. While a father could postpone his son’s initiation, he could deny neither his son’s nor his own ambitions for too long.
FIGURE 1.1. African child sitting in front of house, n.d. Photo courtesy of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University.
Prior to and in the earlier years of colonial rule, boys’ initiations occurred at some point in their late teens through their mid-twenties. Kamba boys were a notable exception; they experienced circumcision before puberty, around the age of five, but did not complete initiation until much later.39 Preparations took many months. Fathers had to accumulate capital and consult elders. Mothers had to prepare food and alcohol. Boys had to visit relatives to announce initiation, procure the necessary adornments, and perform songs and dances. In the days running up to initiation, Gikuyu and Meru boys worked themselves to the point of exhaustion dancing and singing songs. Wachira Mwaniki, a Gikuyu from Nyeri circumcised in 1936, remembers that the songs emboldened the spirits of the boys who were about to face the knife.40 In Kiambu, David Chege recalls that the words differed two decades later, but the spirit of the songs remained the same: “Let me be allowed to go and get circumcision, I am old enough to face the knife!” “In our family we have never seen anyone shed tears!”41
Before sunrise, Gikuyu and Meru initiates traveled to a nearby stream where they disrobed and stood immersed in chilly waters. After some time, the boys emerged and sat along the bank or in a nearby field where a large crowd had gathered to watch. The boys dug their heels into the cool earth, pushed back against the supportive hands of their sponsors, and fixed their gaze skyward as the circumciser walked, ceremonial knife in hand, down the line, cutting each of them with two swift strokes.42 At the same time of day, but much nearer the shores of Lake Victoria, Gusii boys underwent a remarkably similar ordeal.43 Among pastoralist Kipsigis and Maasai, initiation also included intense ritualized violence, such as passing through gauntlets of stinging nettles and frightening tests of honesty and endurance.44 Bravery in the face of searing pain was a common element in genital circumcision. A boy who struggled or cried out endured mockery and humiliation. In these moments, no boy could flinch or cry out in pain. Facing the knife prepared initiates for the courage and discipline expected of them when they became warriors.
The second element emphasized by ethnographers and colonial officials was a period of intense instruction and socialization. Following circumcision, young men entered a period of seclusion, usually in a home built by their sponsors at a fair distance from their villages. These special houses went by a variety of names: the Gikuyu called them githunu or thingira, the Meru called them gichee, the Kamba thomi, and the Nandi and Kipsigis menjo or menjet. Despite their disparate names, their role in initiation was twofold: to protect and to educate the initiates while they healed. During seclusion, new initiates learned the codes of conduct of the community and expectations of becoming warriors, husbands, and eventually fathers and elders. Seclusion ensured that once physically reborn as men, their minds kept pace. Given its importance, male communities shrouded seclusion in secrecy. Before young men emerged from seclusion, their elders bound them to oaths of secrecy. These oaths frustrated ethnographers who knew little about what went on in the menjo, which ultimately pushed them to emphasize the public rituals surrounding genital circumcision over the more private affairs of the seclusion hut.
This was especially the case for Kamba initiates. Several years separated their genital circumcision from their second, great circumcision. Around the age of twelve, though boys from poor families could be twenty or older, initiates left home for the thomi. There they hunted, solved riddles, defended against mock Maasai cattle raids, and confronted their fears.45 When the young men returned home from this second circumcision, they had taken yet another step toward adulthood. After facing the knife, young Gikuyu men convalesced for a week or two in the githunu. While they healed, their sponsors, elders, and even older siblings visited to instill in them important lessons.46 They informed the boys that they were “not a child any longer, be very brave, and don’t play with uncircumcised boys or girls.”47 Moreover, “they have gone to another stage from childhood to adulthood, behave well, respect men and women when you meet them on your way, greet them with respect and move aside to let them pass.”48 It reminded them that while they were no longer children, they were still expected to obey their elders.
The seclusion of Kipsigis and Nandi initiates was one of the longest in Kenya. After circumcision, boys stayed in a special hut known as the menjo, constructed far from the community, where they healed.49 Here, according to men of the Chuma and Sawe age-groups, the most important aspects of initiation occurred. While recuperating, special elder instructors lived with them, teaching them the laws of the Kipsigis people as well as physical combat. As Anthony King’etich Rotich, a member of the Sawe age-group, recalls, “They were taught everything a Kipsigis needed to know so that he became a man; and when he came out he was now a man, and he was no longer a boy.”50 Another Sawe, Jonah Kiprono, concurs: “We learned about war, handling spears, bows, and arrows, and we were also taught about the behavior expected of a man.”51 This time offered them the opportunity to “forsake childhood traits and behave like an adult.”52 Several Kipsigis men carefully distinguished their time in the menjo—and not simply their circumcision—as making them men and preparing them for adulthood.53
Emerging from seclusion, young men entered into new sets of relations with one another as well as with their elders and junior followers.54 The crucible of initiation forged a cohesive generation, which shared a special bond governed by strict codes of intragenerational conduct. Gikuyu young men exiting their brief period in seclusion took an age-group name, usually a remarkable, contemporaneous event connecting the group to a moment with historical significance.55 When circumcised in 1936, Wachira Mwaniki’s age-set was named cindano (needle) as well as pia (Kenya Bus Service). Pins and needles had just shown up in Nyeri marketplaces, and the Kenya Bus Service had begun operation in Nairobi.56 Young men and their age-groups were bound together not only by their initiation and seclusion but also by the historical circumstances in which they came of age and the history they would make together.
Young men left seclusion only to remain in an interstitial period, between childhood and adulthood, of varying lengths of time. Instead of becoming adults, they became warriors