rate for female genital cutting and 100 percent rate for male circumcision. The high adherence to genital cutting underscores its significance within practicing communities and how the opponents of FGM have not been able to redefine it in terms that resonate within the context—cultural, social, and economic—where the rituals actually occur.
Throughout this book, each chapter contains an ethnographic account of participant observation from one of the ritual seasons covered (1998, 2001, or 2004). Each chapter combines individual narratives with the theoretical discussion necessary to analyze and understand the larger picture. The narratives are taken from interviews, paraphrased, and edited for clarity, voice, and continuity. Sometimes, where possible, quoted statements appear amid extensive paraphrasing. Interviews were carried out in Igikuria or in English and were transcribed, translated, and, in all cases, edited for readability.
Capturing various dialectical dynamics—between local and exogenous, traditional and modern, backward and progressive or enlightened, collective and individual, duties and rights—necessitates concepts and constructions that inform the discovery of the many layers of initiation practices. Kuria society and culture, in addition to concepts of initiation and genital cutting, provide the basic underpinning of the emic milieu. The aim of this book is to create a record of a long-established practice, and to share the description of initiation rituals of Kuria people and of the transformations taking place during the two decades spanning the change of the millennia.
In this introduction, I have discussed how I came to be concerned with the topic of genital cutting, the initial fieldwork context in which I witnessed initiation rituals in the late 1980s, and a return to that milieu in the 1990s. My intention is to capture the emic conceptions of genital operations and their roles, and this can only be carried out by contextualizing the changes arising out of national and international concerns that have defined the discourse and that aim to eradicate the practice. I have offered a brief history of the efforts to eradicate genital cutting in order to access the perspective of the agents of change. And though I see that Kuria perceptions and understandings are indeed shaped in the context of the discourse unfurling around their practices, I resist the pull to privilege the discourse of academics and activists over the voices of the practitioners. In order to achieve some balance, I strive throughout to present multiple voices addressing specific issues.
Chapter 1 documents some of the social context of initiation. Focusing on the power of witchcraft to bring the initiation season to a halt, I examine how rumors serve to identify and mark anxiety and discomfort within the community as well as some of the underlying issues that gave the late 1990s a character of uncertainty that permeated all aspects of Kenyan rural life. Witchcraft, thus, allows an investigation of the tension between, on the one hand, historical structures that order life through descent-based social, economic, and political organization and, on the other hand, destabilizing socioeconomic and political changes that result from a nation-state on the path of free market development. In this chapter, I look at responses to socioeconomic change and the ideas people hold about identity as mediated by descent, gender, ethnicity, and class.
The initiation experience for males is the subject of chapter 2. Beginning with the opening of the initiation season, the process of initiation is revealed, both as it was shaped in the 1990s and as it took place in the 1970s. In both cases, the discourse is centered on the experience of individuals. I explore the ritual cycle and generation class membership as important loci for marking identity. In chapter 3, I discuss the initiation experience of females, focusing on three periods: 1998, 1992, and 1931. Using this diachronic perspective allows for an investigation of tradition and innovation in Kuria initiations, as well as a focus on gender and age as identity markers.
Chapter 4 focuses on the controversy over female genital cutting and medicalization of the practice. The ethnography follows initiation at the mission, carried out by a trained nurse. Interviews with a clergyman and circumcisers, among others, reflect on what this innovation means for Kuria society and culture. Because Kuria people consider the ritual context and celebrations to be a central part of initiation, chapter 5 offers an in-depth look at the liminal stage the initiates undergo, the importance of relatives in comforting, consoling, and sponsoring feasts, and the reinforcement of connections between kin and affines. In coming out of seclusion, the initiates step back into the social world, and the circumcision set they belong to becomes a lifelong marker of their identity.
Chapter 6 introduces some of the many voices taking part in the genital cutting controversy. The final chapter begins in 2004, and focuses on the newly introduced alternative rite of passage for girls. It begins with a look at the efforts to eradicate genital cutting since the introduction of the Children Act, and briefly summarizes the state of current practices for the people of Bwirege and Kuria more generally. Further, I focus on the specific perspectives and positions of the three main parties concerned with genital cutting practices within the community: the elders, the youths, and the parents. The book ends with an epilogue that presents a view of the latest initiation season (2014), showing the ongoing concerns over the practice and partiality of media coverage.
1
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
