the shamba. The rupees could not do anything’.90 Though the money was useful, access to land guaranteed a better basis than a salary for generating wealth.
By the end of the First World War, the settlers had got rid of squatter cattle, so from then on goats and sheep assumed central place in the squatters’ social, economic and political life.91
Goats became the most important item in the payment of bride-wealth. But, because of their ready availability and high level of accumulation among the squatters, more goats were needed to pay for bride-wealth in the Rift Valley than in Central Province.92 The standard bride-price between the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the squatters were at the height of their prosperity, averaged between 80 and 100 goats.93 Although this price held during the kifagio (broom—signifying the sweeping away, or elimination, of livestock) period, it is necessary to recognise that this came at the height of squatter wealth and that, rather than sell their large herds, the squatters preferred to increase the size of the dowry as they married more wives.94 Ngoci Ndegwa married two wives during kifagio and paid 120 goats for each of them. Wanyoko Kamau paid 120 goats for each of his kifagio brides and 80 for a third.
The immediate success that had given the squatter immigrants their sense of arrival in the early period was to be thwarted by the settler community in the period after 1918. But, in the meanwhile, in Central Province, the kihiu-mwiri circumcision initiates of between 1914 and 1918 drew attention to the opportunities to be found in the Settled Areas in their song entitled ‘Ndingiria Gikang‘u Njugu Iremeire Ndimu’95 (I cannot continue to eat maize only, when there is a surplus of beans at Njoro). The female initiates in the same age-group also formulated a song about the productivity of the Rift Valley,’ in which they expressed their desire to settle in this land of plenty:
Ngwithiira Ruguru,
Ngahituke Mutamaiyo,
Kuria Ngwaci cia Nyakiburi
Ciaturagwo na rwamba.
Ngwithiira na ruguru,
Ngaikare murangoine
Haria burugu uhihagiria marigu
Wanjiarire ukunjuria thigagwo ku
Na thigagwo kibui mucii
Munene wi mburi na ngombe.
Wanjiarire Unjuragia thigagwo ku,
Ukiuga ni itheru wanjiarire
thii kibui ukarorie.96
I will go to the West [Rift Valley Settled Areas],
Beyond the Brown Olive Tree,
Where the Nyakiburi sweet potatoes
Are split with a sharpened stick.
I will go to the West
And sit at the entrance,
Where the purko [Maasai] roast bananas
Father you ask me where I will be married,
I will get married at Kibui the big
Homestead which has goats and cattle.
Father you ask me where I will be married,
You think it is a joke,
You had better go to Kibui
And find out (confirm).
Former squatters spoke of how the Kikuyu in Central Province homelands would try to marry their daughters to Kikuyu men in the Rift Valley, in an attempt to boost their wealth of stock with the anticipated bride-price.97 There were also instances of women married in Central Province being freed from their marital ties and brought to the Rift Valley to remarry. This happened if the woman in question was being ill-treated by her husband. Her relatives in the Rift Valley would return the equivalent number of goats and other livestock paid for her dowry to her husband’s family. Once redeemed, the girl would be brought to the Rift Valley where a better suitor would be found for her to marry.98
These discrepancies even extended to the circumcision fee. Although this later came to be paid in cash, here again the traditional surgeons (aruithia) agreed that rates of remuneration were higher in the Settled Areas than in Central Province. While in 1920 one debe (tin container) of honey was an acceptable surgeon’s fee in Central Province, in the Rift Valley the surgeon received a gourd of beer, one half calabash of black peas (njahi), one gourd of fermented porridge and about ten shillings in lieu of the gituiku, the handleless blade then widely used as a circumcision fee.99
Up until 1918, little was done to regulate the legal relationship between European settlers and their African counterparts. It was difficult to distinguish between a squatter who was supposed to be an agricultural labourer and one who merely paid rent. Both were engaged in the same productive activity and over time each developed the same rationale to explain his presence in the White Highlands, i.e. settlement in the pursuit of wealth. In this respect, the constant references to the squatters’ evasion of duty or reluctance to work for the settlers100 were indicative of the dichotomy in the squatters’ status as labourers on the one hand, and, colonists on the other. The latter was more apparent in the period before 1918, and although not publicly defended by the squatters or acknowledged by the settlers, it was an ever present phenomenon which posed a real threat to settlerdom.
This threat was instrumental in, indeed fundamental to, the formulation of the 1918 Resident Native Labourers Ordinance which, much to the disappointment of the settlers, emphasised the squatter’s labour obligations without stipulating that his status in relation to the settler was that of a labourer rather than co-owner of the White Highlands. Some of the more self-sufficient squatters completely severed ties with their areas of origin. For others, the occasional visits of relatives from the country continued to increase and perpetuate the wealth of the Settled Areas. This, in turn, resulted in the Kikuyu migrating to the Rift Valley.
Like the European settlers, a generation of Kikuyu came into existence who moved from one area to the next in search of ‘a place to feel at home’.101 This worked against the colonial plan and led to the dual problem of labour shortages on the one hand, and increasing numbers of illegal squatters on the other. The colonial government was caught in the position of trying to maintain a balance between these two conflicting productive patterns. The much discussed labour shortage was attributed to a lack of manpower, but the irony of the situation in the White Highlands in the period before 1918 was that this badly needed labour-force was actually resident in the Settled Areas as illegal squatters. Employers merely failed to offer the kinds of conditions that would attract their labour.
The paradox of a labour shortage: squatter self-perception
Settlers and colonial officials assumed that African labourers in the Settled Areas would constitute a ‘migrant labour force’ which would leave once the contract expired, or at six months notice if the settler so desired. Kikuyu migrants viewed their presence in the Settled Areas in a different light. They sought to establish a ‘dwelling place’ (utuuro)102 and to evolve a viable socio-economic system within the White Highlands.
One
