foodstuffs which are as a rule sold to the employers, the rate for maize and beans being one rupee a load’.67 As the figures in table 1.2 show, even as early as 1916–17, the extent of squatter cultivation was considerable.
TABLE 1.2
Source: KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1916–17, pp. 2, 11.
While only some settlers produced enough maize for export, they all needed large quantities of it for milling into posho, which provided the main ration for their contract workers, mostly Luo, Luyia, Kisii, Maasai and some Kalenjin. Posho was also given to squatters during their first year of engagement before their crops matured.
Squatters found it surprising that contract labourers would willingly engage in labour contracts that forbade them to produce their own food crops, especially since the food rations were sometimes inadequate. Despite this, the contract labourers never put any pressure on the settlers to allow them to cultivate.68 As Karanja Kamau recalled:
The nduriri[non-Kikuyu especially from Western Kenya] labour had no shamba. They only got posho because they were monthly employees. They did not want shambas. They would even buy maize from the Kikuyu because the European posho was not enough. Yet it did not occur to them to dig the shamba.69
The Kikuyu squatters were bewildered by these contract workers who had only come ‘to work for their stomachs’. The odd contract worker might cultivate a vegetable garden, but on the whole, non-squatter labour did not cultivate land in the White Highlands. They had nothing to show for their efforts out there, which was what Kikuyu squatters found hard to understand. The bulk of these labourers were actually migrant target workers who signed on periodically when they wanted to raise money for specific cash needs at home, which might include items such as livestock for bride-wealth, taxes, school fees, or even a hoe (jembe). Once the labourer had accumulated enough money, he would return to his village ‘to rest’ and to attend to his personal and communal duties.70 Rest periods varied as much as the periods of contracted labour, although, with time, these labourers spent longer and longer periods at work, either on settler plantations or in urban areas, while their wives and families tended the family shambas in the village.71
In the period before 1918, an average squatter family cultivated between six and seven acres of land, which meant that a surplus was almost invariably available for sale. Since the African market provided a more profitable outlet for squatter produce than the settler buyers,72 most transactions were conducted at the various trading centres. Among those in Nakuru District were Subukia, Bahati, Ndundori, Njoro, Elburgon, Turi and Molo, where regular weekend markets were held, and large amounts of produce bought and sold. Urban proletarians from the various mushrooming townships in the White Highlands, especially Nakuru, were among the African customers for the squatters’ produce.
Asian traders would purchase squatter produce in bulk to dispose of, either wholesale or retail, in the various urban areas. ‘The best buyers, however, were those Kikuyu who came from Central Province’.73 These would include the new arrivals to the Settled Areas who had not yet gathered their first harvest and therefore were in a poor position to bargain. But, the most profitable trade was undoubtedly with individuals or traders from hunger-stricken Central Province.
Despite the availability of abundant land, squatter production was occasionally reduced to subsistence levels because of the low prices offered for the produce.74 Under these conditions, flooded markets discouraged the production of a surplus, and squatter produce would either be given to needy friends and relations from Central Province, or sold to them ‘at the same price as the Europeans’75, i.e. cheaply.
Squatter accumulation: livestock
In addition to growing maize and other surplus crops for sale, including cabbages, potatoes and peas, the Kikuyu squatters sought to accumulate livestock. In certain instances, they directly exchanged their foodcrops for livestock with the Dorobo, Tugen, Somali, Turkana or Maasai people.76 More often, however, goats and sheep were purchased at trading centres from their Somali, Tugen or Maasai owners.77 Sometimes squatters travelled long distances to purchase livestock: for example, from Nakuru to the Baringo District or from Naivasha to Maasailand.78 There are even references to purchases of livestock from Maliboi in the Londiani-Kisumu region.79
The amount of livestock, especially of sheep and goats, increased rapidly in the White Highlands, and after a while the Rift Valley came to be referred to as weru, or pasture-land. Although it is difficult to establish the exact cost of livestock at this time, pioneer squatters obviously found the prices more competitive than in Central Province. At one time, two debes (tin containers) of posho were said to fetch two goats from the Turkana,80 whereas the Somali and Dorobo would sell a cow for about two rupees.81 At least seven other prices were quoted by these early pioneers, but, although there are minor differences and problems in translating into the cash equivalent the goods in kind given in exchange for livestock, the important factor is that these Kikuyu squatters saw these deals as competitive. Wangoi stated that three months’ pay went a long way towards helping to accumulate ‘a hutful of goats’.82 This rapid accumulation of stock, first by cheap purchases and later by natural increase, served to popularise the Settled Areas among the Kikuyu, not only among those who were resident in the area but also those in the Kikuyu homeland. Livestock, the symbol of wealth the Kikuyu had consistently sought to acquire from the Maasai, was now readily available, at a price, in the Settled Areas. Herding the animals became the responsibility of the young boys and old men.83
One reason why the squatters were so keen to accumulate livestock was because of its importance in the social and economic lives of the Kikuyu. Sheep and goats were required for a multitude of ceremonies and rituals and for various other forms of social intercourse. L.S.B. Leakey84 ventured to enumerate these occasions and identified 172 of them between the birth and death of each average individual (Kikuyu), each of which demanded the slaughter of a beast and the eating of meat. In addition, the acquisition of livestock was viewed as a way of saving; it could easily be converted into hard cash when necessary for the various expenditures that accompanied the establishment of colonial rule, such as taxes, school fees and the purchase of consumer goods. Though livestock still remained central to the payment of bride-wealth, other rituals, such as circumcision, required cash, with surgeons increasingly preferring to be paid in cash rather than in kind.85
In the Settled Areas, as in Central Province, the possession of livestock was concomitant with social status. It was always ‘. . . the rich people who spoke while others listened’86 at important squatter gatherings like beer-drinking parties. High social standing (igweta)87 among the other squatters was acquired by accumulating stock, and this led squatters to resist the added labour obligations and restrictions which were imposed by the settlers even before 1918. Squatters were reluctant to expend the bulk of their energy on settler farms as members of the labouring community. They aimed to earn their income from their own productive activities. As one ex-squatter’s wife recalled, ‘Wealth did not come from salaries, no, it came from shamba produce and exchange’.88
Squatters’ wages were meagre, even in comparison with those of the contract labourers. To the squatters, however, especially in the pre-1918 period, the cash proceeds of their labour contracts were of little or no economic significance.89 Wage differences did not determine whether or not a squatter agreed to make a contract. Although the money could be put to use, the squatter’s major concern was the availability of sufficient land for cultivation and grazing. As Lucia Ngugi declared, ‘People used to be paid in rupees and were
