his brother Sagirei stopped by, along with a friend named Kehongo Elias. Sagirei and Kehongo had become close friends when they studied together overseas in the 1960s. Then, their provenance from different clans (ibiaro) did not matter. But now, with one an elder from Bwirege, the other from Nyabasi, Kehongo marveled at how apprehensive he felt driving into Bwirege to visit his friend, something he had done routinely for decades.
Quite a heated discussion followed. Kehongo insisted, “What is happening now is thuggery.” The Nyabasi woman who was beaten was mentally challenged as well as poor. She was visiting her daughter in Tanzania, who gave her mother some roasted meat for the long walk back home. She didn’t have money for the ferry at Nyamongo to cross the Mara River and so ended up having to walk through Bwirege. Though initially walking with others who eventually hived off upon reaching their destinations, she reached the marketplace in the southeastern part of the location alone. There she was noticed eating dried meat (a sheep’s leg).14 People beat her and she lost an eye. A Good Samaritan took her to a clinic. Her husband was told she was dead, but was afraid to come get her body from Bwirege. He got the administration to come get her and they found her alive. She was taken to Ombo Hospital in Migori.
Sagirei proposed that this was the first time in his memory that initiations had brought about such serious misunderstanding between Nyabasi and Bwirege. “This is thuggery,” Kehongo Elias repeated. “This has nothing to do with witchcraft.” As proof for his stance, he brought up the case of the two Nyabasi men married to Abairege women. They were well known in Bwirege, but they were beaten, their hair and nails cut. They were robbed of KShs. 15,000 and 8,000, respectively.15 Both Sagirei and Kehongo agreed that this was not likely to be the work of the secret conclave, which does not operate in such a flamboyant way. To support their conclusion, they spoke of the incident in which the bushbaby was killed in the market. If the real concern had been witchcraft, it would have been killed quietly and been taken to the inchaama, instead of the spectacle that took place.
Later that day I visited Stephen Wambura and his wife Severina Nyakorema, two schoolteachers. They were planning to initiate their three oldest daughters that season, and had been working to amass a large amount of food for the celebrations. They felt thwarted by the elders calling the whole process into question. But they believed initiations would happen, perhaps after Tanzanian schools closed. They had heard about the boy who was killed and then thrown into the river in Nyabasi, at the border with Bwirege. In the days that had passed, the story had taken on additional details. Allegedly, his throat was cut, and his external organs were chopped off and circumcised by the Abanyabasi. This action was intended to signify that Bwirege’s initiates were going to lose a lot of blood and would be washed away, just like the blood in the water. Abanyabasi expected that Abairege, upon hearing that one of their own had been killed, would go get his body. But Abairege did not, and the body, after being positively identified, was buried there. Abairege claimed that since the boy was maimed and killed by Abanyabasi, and his blood washed into the water source used by their people, Nyabasi initiates would be the ones to die on being circumcised.
I have presented the rumors in quite some detail because this was the predominant discourse taking place in Bwirege during the time initiations were called off, and as people tried to understand why the abagaaka had abruptly terminated the season, the uncertainties of various individuals became clear in the specifics of the rumor. The rumors drew attention to the perceived frailties of the group by those who repeated particular stories (Smith 2008, 182).
Descent as Identity Marker
Principles of descent are of paramount importance in organizing Kuria social life. Descent relations achieve depth over time, based on the parent-child links that connect generations by blood. In Kuria society, people are connected patrilineally, with the most significant link being father-son. A group formed by links through males over five or more generations constitutes a lineage, which includes people who can specify the father-son links that connect them to a common ancestor. This happens at each genealogical depth—those who share a paternal grandfather are distinct from those who have different grandfathers. This belonging is mobilized situationally.
The identity, behavior, and status of each individual are determined first by the family group or umugi, the primary social unit comprised of a man, his wife or wives, and their children, as well as the wives and children of their sons. The umugi is based on the male homestead owner (umuene umugi). A child’s place in the family lineage is confirmed by circumcision, the first step an individual takes in the ritual cycle. Many East African peoples were and, to some extent, continue to be socially organized in this manner, classified as “segmentary lineage societies.” Historically, these societies lacked institutionalized rulers and centralized government, yet had the ability to act in unison regarding specific issues. Lineage was the main political association, and individuals had no political or legal status except through lineage membership.16 They had relatives outside the lineage, but their own political and legal status derived from the lineage to which they belonged. Because people were born into them, lineages endured over time in societies where no other form of organization lasted, and the system of lineages became the foundation of social life, but that doesn’t mean they were immovable and inflexible. People used lineage and clan membership to pursue their interests. Lineages were described as corporate in that they controlled property, such as lands or herds, as a unit. Though the colonial era eliminated communal ownership among Kuria, lineage membership continues to carry benefits.
When members of a descent group believe that they are in some way connected but cannot specify the precise genealogical links, they compose what anthropologists call a clan. Bwirege is such a unit. Usually, a clan is made up of lineages whose members believe they are related to one another through links that go back to mythical times but cannot be traced exactly. So whereas lineage members can specify the precise genealogical links back to their common ancestor, clan members cannot. The clan is thus larger than any lineage, and more diffuse in terms of both membership and the hold it has over individuals. It is also territorially based.
Early cultural history of East Africa described by Davidson identifies dispersal and migration as the basic characteristic of the spread of indigenous populations in precolonial times (1969, 47). For Abairege, as for other migrants, connection with descent groups provided a source of identity and security, and regulated social relationships with other migrants settling on nearby ridges or lands. Accordingly, members of the same lineages would move to be near each other for mutual assistance and defense, and over time the descent groups became territorially based. So a particular ridge became the land of the Abahirichacha, and members of that descent group would receive land for use from the lineage elders. On the ground, lineage affiliation served as the charter for social relationship, identifying those whom one could marry or rely on for help, as well as those who were outsiders and thus enemies.
Ruel describes traditional Kuria society as composed of four levels of descent groups at the time of the late colonial period. Ikiaro, translated as province or clan, was the most inclusive, followed by egesaku (descent section), irigiha (clan segment), and eeka (lineage). According to Ruel, these units of sociopolitical organization had lost all their relevance by the 1950s, except for the levels most (ikiaro) and least (eeka) inclusive (1959, 56). The characteristics of the segmentary lineage system he describes probably functioned exclusively until the 1920s, when colonial administration reached Bukuria and introduced territorially defined political units, controlled through the colonial administrative structure. As the precolonial lineage structures lost clear definition over time, administrators and anthropologists observing Kuia people and writing about them deemphasized the importance and primacy of the descent system, and focused instead on the forms of colonial administration as the salient pillars of political and social organization in Bukuria during colonial and early postcolonial eras: chiefs and administrative locations. Yet, what becomes clear by focusing on the ritual life of Kuria people today in the performance of circumcision is how descent continues to define identity, social relationships, and the shape of current events. Where the colonial observers saw lineages as principally elements of political organization, their significance
