season, had dried up on the right side. The right side symbolizes the males, and that occurrence was seen as indicating that many boys would die, beginning with the eight youths who open a period of circumcision. If that were to happen, initiation ceremonies could not proceed. This was probably the most often repeated tale I encountered.
Another widely repeated story was of a young girl who, dismayed that the initiation season had been called off, decided to circumcise herself. Youths told this story with awe for her audacity and determination. But she failed to complete the job and someone had to be called to finish it. All recognized she had seriously transgressed social rules, and thus the representatives of the inchaama were said to be visiting that home and gathering evidence. As no one would name her, I could not verify or follow the tale. I thought the story unlikely and categorized it as a contemporary legend. In a time fraught with incredible rumors, parsing stories for embedded facts can be astonishingly difficult. This story appeared not to be of witchcraft, but was clearly of transgression of normative behavior, and seemed to pertain to a genre of tales that stress the initiates’ expectation of participating in the ritual. However, many years later, a similar story came to light once more, this time in a BBC News radio program (2006), which reported that a girl who had started to circumcise herself had died in the attempt. In scholarly literature, the threat of self-circumcision appeared in a paper describing the defiance with which Meru women and girls met colonial prohibition of genital cutting in the 1950s (Thomas, 1996).
Other rumors revolved around Muniko Zachary, a renowned circumciser from Bwirege in Tanzania. He had been operating on boys for the past forty-plus years, but lately had been ailing for some time, and his eyesight was failing. Rumor had it that he had been bewitched. While a circumciser with bad eyesight is reason enough for an initiate to be concerned, community members worried that even greater misfortune could pass on to the boys he would circumcise. Still, this explanation left room for the inchaama to reverse their decision to cancel initiations. For instance, a cleansing ceremony (ogosonsoora) could be carried out and the initiation season could proceed.
In a different version of the story, his recent sickness had made him partially blind. He wanted to seek medical help in Dar es Salaam, and thus requested the council of elders to release him from his initiation duty. Because of his long and dedicated service, he was told he could retire the following year. But in preparation, he was to identify his successor, and for this last year, be in charge of all the operations. The other man who had also been circumcising was unhappy with this decision, as it robbed him of a source of income. He is said to have bewitched Muniko Zachary, causing his illnesses and blindness. But because this younger man had himself been circumcised by Muniko Zachary, Muniko Zachary cursed the man for causing the loss of his vision, saying, “I am the one who circumcised you and you have seen it fit to do this to me. May everybody you circumcise die in your hands!” With these words, he compelled the younger man not to participate in the circumcision ceremonies. This version of the story came to me via a middle-aged man from Tanzania. A very similar version was circulating in Kuria-inhabited locations in the Rift Valley.
A more elaborate version was recorded from Victoria Gaati, the chief’s wife in Nyankare. In her account, the circumciser was cursed by the father of one of the boys he had operated on, following a fight between the two men over where the circumcision of the latter’s son had taken place. The father had been circumcised in the very first set Muniko Zachary operated on, and in his anger said something to the effect that since he belonged to the first set of boys who had been circumcised by Muniko Zachary, he was thus advising him to let the operation he did to his son be the last or else something dire would happen. Come this year’s ceremonies, Muniko Zachary refused to participate unless the boy’s father renounced his statement, after which a cleansing ceremony would need to occur.
Seeing that things were getting out of hand, the inchaama met and requested that the age-mates of the boy’s father confront their colleague and ask him to retract his earlier threat, so that the circumcision ceremonies could go on as planned. That Muniko Zachary had been ill was a consequence of what the boy’s father had said. According to Victoria Gaati, who was recounting the story, the cleansing ceremony could then take place and thus the initiation season could proceed as expected.
Yet another type of rumors circulating involved the internal dynamic of Bwirege’s generation classes (amakora). About a century earlier, when the cycle was at a similar configuration, a serious famine devastated the area. The young men of that time had to leave their communities to find food. They were gone too long, and by the time they came back, the elders had starved to death. So in order to ensure that youths about to be circumcised would survive the operation, it was necessary for a series of rituals to be performed to appease the spirits of the elders who had died of starvation while their sons had gone off. Though this story is consistent with historical events of the past century, it did not circulate widely, and it was not possible for my assistant and me to ascertain whether people were taking steps to remedy past transgressions in order to bring about the current initiation season.
Generation Classes as Identity Markers
An important ingredient in determining the status of one individual vis-à-vis another is the cycle of amakora—a core institution that regulates the systematic pattern of relationships and provides the guidelines for appropriate interpersonal behavior (Ruel 1962, 17). Membership in the amakora is ascribed at birth, and a man’s children are automatically members of the successive class; his grandchildren will then belong to the next class, and the great-grandchildren to the fourth one. Then, the cycle repeats. The formal relationship between the classes is fixed. All Kuria belong to one of two complementary cycles that each have four generation classes.
In the Monyasaai cycle, Abasaai give birth to the Abanyambureti, who give birth to Abagamunyere, who are followed by the Abamaina, who in turn give birth to the Abasaai. In the Monyachuuma cycle, the Abamairabe give birth to Abagini, the Abagini give birth to Abanyangi, the Abanyangi give birth to Abachuuma, and the Abachuuma to Abamairabe. Membership in each cycle is patrilineal, and norms of coevality apply to each class in sequence.
A child remains a member of the class he or she was born into throughout life, and follows the rules of respect in regard to members of other classes. The rules are simple and apply to both cycles. Members of adjacent classes have a relationship of respect and reserve with each other, whereas members of the same and alternate classes enjoy a relationship of familiarity. The emphasis on a modal two-generational pattern of behavior norms is consistent with the basic two-generational form of the homestead. The relationships between actual lineal kin are at the center of the classificatory system of relationships established by the generation classes. But through the classes, the two broad types of relationships (those of respect and of restraint) are extended further to cover all members of the ikiaro, together with those of other ibiaro.
In kinship matters, class relationships are expressed in marriage rules. A member of one generation can only marry within his own generation class or within the next alternating group. He cannot marry the next younger group because those are his “children” and he cannot marry from the next senior group because those are his “parents.” But “class norms and general patterning of relationships dovetail with and are subsumed by all kinship relations” (Ruel 1962, 28). On ritual occasions, generation classes delineate clearly defined social groups and dictate who may play a certain role, what shares of meat may be taken by whom, who may mix together, who should be kept apart, and so govern interactions according to the basic rules of respect and familiarity. Class membership orders behavior in a specific context of events and participants. It does not itself initiate what takes place (28–29). At the circumcision ground, the oldest amakora are the first to be operated on. In the past, members of the same generations were cut using the same knife, and members of the oldest generation walk first in the line of initiates.
Generation class membership is the most important in contexts of everyday interaction within the community, where the class system acts again as a general charter for social behavior and norms of respect. Underlying all greetings, social gatherings, chance encounters,
