demonstrate how people conceptualize social boundaries (where threats to order and the good life emanate from), and how to shore up those boundaries against malicious forces (91). While teasing out Taita understandings of witchcraft, Smith highlights the ambivalent and relative nature of power and the perceived importance of creating and maintaining spatial and temporal boundaries in a reality where domains are also selectively permeable. He finds that witchcraft represents the dark antithesis of everything that Taita felt modernity should be. Different forms of witchcraft reference and represent different social dangers. In Smith’s assessment, witchcraft is a synonym for breached boundaries (93). Further, witchcraft draws attention away from structural issues by blaming evil individuals whose actions can be believed to affect structures (115). Ideas about witchcraft are intimately connected to more general notions about morality, sociality, and humanity (Green 2003, 124). Witches are people who are excessively greedy and antisocial, to the point where they quite literally embody the inversion of normal human attributes. The core antisocial quality of witches is their inability to eat with people (125).
The Kenyan Context
Seeing witchcraft through this lens makes one wonder what Kuria were so anxious about as they prepared for initiation season. The community was on edge. In Kenya, the 1990s were a difficult period of enormous political and economic uncertainty. A relatively stable democracy since independence in 1963, Kenya’s political changes, including the organization of a multiparty political system and accelerating incorporation of the economic spheres into the neoliberal global economic order, were leading to greater tolerance of dissent (Booth 2004, 16). By 1997, President Moi and his party no longer held the unquestioned support that had characterized the sociopolitical and economic character of the 1980s. On the economic front, Moi repeatedly failed to implement the structural adjustment programs that were imposed and reimposed on the country by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which resulted in the cancellation of monetary aid and loans from multilateral and bilateral agencies supported by North American and European governments. Newspaper and radio reports showcasing Moi’s attempts to blame “western imperialism” for the country’s increasingly severe economic crisis contributed to an atmosphere of tension, confusion, fear, and uncertainty. Moreover, open discussion of the rapidly growing HIV epidemic fanned tensions, as did the hugely unequal distribution of income and land, especially evident in rural areas (14).
Economic prosperity declined sharply as a consequence of complex, interacting influences. These included rapid population growth, punitive measures imposed by multinational donors, declining revenues from tourism and agricultural production, the Structural Adjustment Program, the effects of incorporation into the global economic system as a peripheral state, corruption, and mismanagement (House-Midamba 1996, 291; NCPD, CBS, and MI 1999, 2; Turner 2002, 982). Decades of economic decline culminated in 2000 when Kenya’s economy reached its lowest GDP growth level in history (about 0.2 percent), reflecting the deterioration in well-being that most of the Kenyan population was experiencing. One correlate of chronically weakening economic performance was the inability to create jobs at a rate that matched the growing labor force (CBS, MOH, and ORCM 2004, 2).
Moreover, the institutions and practices that had shaped Kenyan political life for at least a generation became unhinged during the 1990s. Political dissent broadened while government coffers dwindled, disabling the fulfillment of policy and future development visions. As Smith notes, “The state appeared hopelessly segmented, each nominal part seemingly pitted against the other, as the promise of the developmental state became the object of national ridicule” (2008, 179). With the state apparatus in retreat, foreign aid began to be channeled through a panoply of national and international NGOs, which became a new locus in the struggle for politics and patronage. Civilian members of the population could appropriate government roles by accessing and controlling money from NGOs for programs in the community. Through this process, localized social conflicts, such as those that pertained to the domestic sphere (gendered and generational conflicts with a long history), acquired public prominence, at the same time as the terms of public political debate (progress, development, transparency) permeated domestic group discourses and relationships.
These macro-level changes created significant new influences for individuals to negotiate on a daily basis. As neoliberal economics and globalization penetrated localities, people saw new channels to meet their household needs, while economic deregulation threatened the ability of local communities to retain established ways. The concerns and hopes embodied in foreign donors were accompanied by the spread of language that became ubiquitous by the end of the twentieth century and redefined the terms in which people thought about their realities. One of these notions was that culture had potential utility and was “good” when it could be deployed and rationalized to benefit the public (Smith 2008, 89). In addition, dispositions and states of mind were held to be the main factors that could influence whether things were moving forward, moving backward, or going nowhere.
The Power of Witchcraft
In December 1998, interterritorial witchcraft (okogenderana, literally “to act against”) was on everyone’s lips. Even though the initiation season had been called off some weeks earlier, a pronounced tension reigned in the community. Virtually all conversations, however casual, included the latest bit of news about the unusual, unsettling things going on. For me, the next week was devoted to conversations, interviews, meetings, and discussions on the topic of witchcraft, particularly as related to initiation. In two weeks, an assistant and I collected dozens of versions of accounts about why the initiation season had been called off. The stories and rumors whirled. Some versions seemed to be dismissed, only to reappear at another time and with further embellishment or evidence. The tellers drew gasps of astonishment, fear, or doubt, but the listeners dutifully passed on the stories, adding fuel to the fears of supernatural attacks being carried out by covert agents.
Early the next morning, a great ruckus emanating from the marketplace reached Mogore Maria’s house. An intensifying buzz, sounding like a crowd at a sports event, was punctuated by periodic crescendos. We were simultaneously curious and concerned. Samwel went running off to see what the excitement was about. As we drank porridge, passersby supplied commentary on the action in the market. A mysterious animal that people couldn’t identify had been spotted on top of one of the trees. It was not a cat, nor a monkey, but had a long tail and five fingers, just like a monkey. Eerily, it cried like a baby.
The tension was palpable as people speculated about what it could possibly be doing on top of a tree in the busy marketplace. They reasoned that it had been sent by Abanyabasi to bite someone. Or it had been sent by Abanyabasi to find out whether circumcisions were taking place in Bwirege. Either way, general sentiment marked it as a portent of evil. A crowd a hundred strong gathered around the tree where it was hiding, and people were laying out strategies for how to thwart the danger the animal presented. The discussion took several hours. Around noon, a young man came forward, suggesting that if he were given KShs. 200, he would climb an adjacent tree and bring the suspicious animal down.11 People pooled money and soon the amount was collected. The young man pocketed the money and, true to his word, climbed the tree. After a few attempts to capture it, he brought the animal down to the unmerciful multitude, who stoned it to death. The carcass of the bushbaby was unceremoniously thrown into a ditch and the crowd broke up.
For the next week, I continued to listen to and engage people in conversations about witchcraft and other initiation seasons. I began to discern that the stories circulating through Bwirege as explanations for the cancellation of the initiation season addressed different points of tension.
Rumors
The first type of rumor was of the general “bad omen” nature, as epitomized by the following story I first heard from a young market woman. She described an incident that was alleged to have taken place where the Bwirege secret conclave held its clandestine meetings. As the members of the inchaama arrived at their usual meeting place, they discovered a passing hyena. All recognized the sighting of a hyena as a bad omen. This was further compounded by their finding that the egeteembe tree, used by the conclave members
