goods in preparation for Christmas. Most highway robberies take place during this time of the year, and overnight buses are obvious targets. A million thoughts went through my mind in the next minute, as passengers woke up shouting, and the driver lurched the bus off the road. “What will happen to my children? I left them for this experience, and I will die on a stupid bus in the middle of nowhere, for nothing” was prominent among them, as well as “What are the chances of my being passed over, the one mzungu at the very back of a bus filled with Kenyans?”
We were lucky. Thanks to the driver’s vigilance and presence of mind, the worst we sustained were a few bruises and jolted bones. The driver aimed the bus directly at the bandits, who scrambled to escape getting run over. Then he gunned the engine and somehow managed to haul the bus over the piled obstacles. For the next hour or so the bus was animated with relieved chatter. Passengers replayed the scene, taking special delight at the retreating bandits’ faces when their plan backfired. As people drifted off to sleep again, I stayed bolt upright, busily planning how I would alight and save myself if such a thing happened again. We reached Migori, our terminus, after daybreak. I was starting to feel sick with fatigue, not having laid down to sleep since Tuesday night in Bennington. I incoherently but effusively thanked the driver and stumbled from the bus.
I got a ride on the first morning run of a matatu2 going to Nyankare. I didn’t recognize any of the drivers, conductors, or passengers—not surprising after an absence of four years, but certainly not an auspicious beginning. The women squeezed in next to me were Luo traders, heading to Nyankare for market day. In the past, people from Nyankare had always traveled to Migori for its market day, not vice versa. I focused inward, savoring my return to a place that had been very meaningful to my life for the past fifteen years. It looked much the same—the rolling hills, the alternating clusters of thick, short trees and bushes, and grasslands—and as we got farther from the paved road, cultivated fields took up ever more of the land. I noted extensive new construction as we drove through areas that had, in the past, consisted of isolated shops. Strips of buildings lined the road and held all types of commercial interests, including restaurants (known as hoteli), hardware shops, retail stores, grain purchase stores, clinics, and posho mills.
The matatu stopped at Kehancha, the district capital. Four years earlier, this rural center had encompassed mainly maize fields and low, one-story wattle-and-daub structures. The capital now sported several multistory buildings (most still under construction), a bank, a gas station, and a busy matatu stage. Hawkers plied their assorted wares up to our vehicle’s windows. My fellow passengers examined the cheap Chinese plastic goods with interest, though they didn’t buy anything other than cornets of groundnuts, artfully wrapped in pages from children’s school exercise books. As we were pulling out of town, we encountered a group coming home from the circumcision ground. It made for an impressive and awe-inspiring sight. An initiate was being escorted by thirty or so adults, many of them draped in branches, shouting, whistling, waving weapons, and surrounding the vehicle, menacing in gesture and word. The Luo traders shrank in their seats.3 I was not frightened, having experienced this numerous times before. I was actually, despite my fatigue, exhilarated to see the force of initiation celebrations unleashed. The pulsing music of the ekegoogo, the resounding gourd rattles, and the shrillness of human voices and whistles all formed an exuberant backdrop to the powder-streaked faces of the initiates, their liminal status indicated by the sheets tied around their necks, draped like wide aprons and stained with blood from their genitals. Members of the entourage flexed their muscles and, in keeping with their duty to protect their charges from both physical and supernatural threats, brandished machetes, rungu, cooking spoons, and other potential as well as real weapons. Some, disguised by foliage to resemble walking bushes, charged in unison, chasing invisible malevolent forces, the spirits of aggression. Protection and jubilation intermingled in a cacophony of sounds. This was what I had come for.
We came across five or six similar groups walking on the road in Bukira4 and were brought to a standstill each time. Even though I was tightly squeezed inside a vehicle, I felt the surge of dizzy, contagious exhilaration of the crowds. Sounds, sights, and smells saturated my senses. I felt ready to understand this. I felt far different from my previous exposure to initiation ceremonies.
Of Kuria clans, Abairege live the farthest away from the tarmac road. They call themselves abatuuri ba isaahi, meaning “settlers of the bush.” In their northward quest for pastures and land for cultivation at the beginning of the twentieth century, they had penetrated deep into Maasai country to their north and east. The leopard is their totem, and Abairege fancy themselves brave, fierce, and staunch supporters of tradition. As the dusty red murram road approached the boundary between the administrative locations of Nyabasi and Bwirege, I noticed evenly spaced utility poles alongside the road, signifying a new kind of development. I was stunned that no one had thought to inform me about this, and contemplated the enormous change in living and working conditions it signaled.5 Distracted by changes to the otherwise extremely familiar countryside, I felt the remaining stretch of the trip pass very quickly. In no time, we were disembarking from the matatu at Nyankare market. I heaved my tightly packed carry-on, containing all my necessities for the next two months, including a camera, tape recorders, gifts for friends, clothing, and bedding, onto my shoulder and crossed the market to the house of a good friend.
“She doesn’t live here anymore,” I was told. “They built a new home near the police post.” So short a time had elapsed since I confirmed my travel plans that I had notified few people of my return. Only my former assistant knew, but his home was four miles from the market—too far to walk in my fatigued state. I shuffled back into the market square and was approached by a young man who greeted me respectfully and kindly. Samwel Ragita, the son of another good friend, and the spitting image of his late father, told me his mother was home. He invited me to go there with him. Gladly I acquiesced, and during our short walk, I thought about how odd it was to see him grown up, and how happy I was to see him lift my bag without even asking and carry it for me. The four years since I had last been in Nyankare had brought many changes to my life, no doubt etched in my face, but Samwel, at thirteen, was physically transformed. I was glad he was so much his father’s son in appearance, or I would not have recognized him. As we left the hubbub of the market behind, I told him briefly about the processions we had encountered along the way. “So how are the circumcisions going over here?” I asked eagerly. He looked at me, seeming puzzled, and responded, “They have been canceled.”
“How can that be?” The shock of his statement sent ripples of disbelief into me.
“There is too much witchcraft,” Samwel replied matter-of-factly.
“Settlers of the Bush”
From the earliest colonial records, it is evident that migrations of Kuria people were ongoing at the time of the establishment of colonial rule. Writing about 1907 and 1908, the District Commissioner for South Nyanza District notes that “there is a marked increase of huts all along the German border from Mohuru on the Lake [Victoria] to Uregi [Bwirege]. This is most noticeable in Uregi where in March there were only six huts. In August I found 25 and on my safari last month [March 1908] when I collected hut tax there the number had risen to 94” (Kenya National Archives, DC/KSI/1).6 By 1911, the settlement at Bwirege had increased to nearly 200 huts (Kenya National Archives, DC/KSI/3/3). The people’s primary identification, then as now, was with the clan (ikiaro). The designation of Abairege as the settlers of the bush (abatuuri ba isaahi) by other Kuria is meant as a pejorative, but Abairege take pride in the designation, stressing those elements they perceive as prideworthy—independence, ruggedness, and a pioneering spirit, as well as their status as the ones who challenge the boundaries of Maasai.7 Because their area has, in the past century, been seen as remote, it has been the last affected by contact with outsiders and external institutions, including organized religion, formal education, and the market economy. Whereas other Kuria see Abairege as backward, other Kenyans level that same charge against Kuria in general. Despite the epithets, Abairege and Kuria of other ibiaro are well aware of changes in their lives on many fronts—economic,
