After I had washed myself Muchaba advised me not to wear anything again. So we walked back near Karanja’s home where I was to be circumcised. I was naked and followed by a large number of women who were happy – singing, dancing, and shrilling. I felt even more embarrassed.
These songs were consolation, advice, and encouragement to dispel any fear that I might have had. They told me that “We of the Ethaga clan have never cried, do not cry, and shall never cry when we are initiated, or show any sign of fear. Those who may do so are only the children whose mothers were not wedded when they had them, but were wedded afterwards.
“Be firm, our Mugo, be firm and brave, so that you may encourage the young ones who will be circumcised after you. Be firm.”
As we approached Karanja’s home I saw Karanja with a crowd of people forming a circle and waiting for me.
The circumciser was in the crowd. As soon as I arrived I was told to go to the centre of the crowd. Muchaba, my aide, was very close beside me. My heart was pumping fast! I sat down in the centre of the crowd. But now I was completely fearless. Muchaba was about nine feet from me holding a white sheet which was to be put on me after circumcision. Beside him was Karanja holding a fried chicken and a kettle of chicken soup to be given to me after circumcision.
The crowd was very silent, waiting perhaps to detect whether I would show a sense or feeling of fear. I was aware of them and their expectations. After I had sat down I folded my two fists like a boxer and put them on the right side of my neck. I then turned my face towards the Aberdare Mountain on the western side of the Kikuyu Country. I was now ready for the knife!
In a few seconds I heard the circumciser approaching me from the right side. I was not supposed to look at him so I kept on looking on the left side. He held my penis, pulled the foreskin back and cut it off. It was very, very painful! But I did not show any feeling of fear or even act as if I were being cut. No medical aid was applied first or later, and this made it extremely painful.
The cutting was over. I was now a grown-up Christian Kikuyu. I was a man….
Muchaba, my aide, came to me and put a sheet around me. I was now allowed to look down at the handiwork of the circumciser and see what had been done to me. Blood was streaming from me like water from a pipe. Thank God I did not faint for I would have been disgraced! The crowd was glad because I had shown courage. They dispersed singing and happy that another Kikuyu child had been brave and had become a man. They sang out: “He is brave.” (Arikuma!) Muchaba showed me how to hold the sheet around me so that it would not become soiled with blood, and he proceeded to guide me home.
Child of Two Worlds Mugo Gatheru.
Forty years on little had changed, although most of the candidates were schoolboys. This Maasai ceremony was observed in 1983 not far from Nairobi.
The day after Christmas, Sekento [a Maasai school-teacher] and I went to Empaash for Noah and Penina’s circumcision ceremony, arriving at the boma with a contingent of newly circumcised girls and boys in dark-charcoal shukas [a toga-like cloth]. The boys wore head-dresses like Noah’s with stuffed birds and spiral brass earrings tied around their heads. The metal chains of the girls’ headpieces draped across their high foreheads. The group had come to lend support and encouragement to Noah and Penina….
Penina, her head shaved and wearing a beaded leather cape, was whispering with her girlfriends behind one of the huts. Noah wore a turquoise shuka, like a woman’s, another fertility symbol, and the elders were outlining his feet with a knife on a piece of hide, cutting special sandals for him. His head was shaved, and he looked very solemn, his thoughts perhaps on the next morning, when the circumcisions would take place. I waved, but it did not seem fitting to interrupt or talk to him. Sekento and I, who stood out in our Western clothes, kept to the edges and observed….
Semoi asked if we would like to meet the man who would circumcise Noah. He was a Dorobo, a member of a small hunting tribe that had a long association with the Maasai. In the past, the Dorobo, who were beekeepers, provided the Maasai with honey, and with smelted metal to make their spears and swords, a task too demeaning for the Maasai themselves. They also specialized in circumcisions.
This circumciser’s name was Kesi. He was a short man with bright, feverish eyes; he was wearing a black-and-maroon-striped blanket, metal bracelets, two strings of beads around his neck, and metal earrings. We found him sitting on a rock, guarding his knife, which was wrapped in cloth. “So, you have come very far – perhaps from London – to talk with me?” he inquired. “Ask me whatever you like, because I am expert at this job.” Semoi told us that Kesi’s father had circumcised him. Kesi said he hoped his own son, though he was a schoolboy, would carry on the family tradition. He said he had performed more than a hundred circumcisions. “All of the boys were brave; none of them ran away.” Sekento asked him how he was paid. “When I started, I was paid only in animals,” Kesi said. “But nowadays it is more convenient to be paid in shillings.” …
These days, he said, there was growing competition in the circumcision business. “Some Maasai take their sons to clinics to be circumcised,” he said. “It’s cheaper, but I think it is very wrong to go against our traditional culture. At the clinic a nurse will wrap a boy’s penis in a dressing after the circumcision, and who can be sure the thing was done properly? But with me you can see everything; you can be sure you are not cheated.”
Kesi unwrapped his knife and used the cloth to polish the blade. “I have used this knife for twenty years,” he said proudly. “It is very good for the job – hard and sharp.”
Semoi handled the instrument, a seven-inch knife with a curved end, running his index finger along the blade, turning it over, examining the handle. “When I was circumcised, I told Kesi’s father to make the blade of his knife dull – to crush it on stones – because I was ready and brave and could stand the pain,” he said.
Kesi said he was very sure that Noah would not cry out. “Once I look a boy in the eye, I can tell immediately if he is brave or a coward,” he said. “This boy is clean and brave.”
The women stayed inside while the men blessed their cattle sticks with cow’s urine. No women would be allowed to watch the circumcision, but Musei joked that since I had long hair – like a moran – I could not be counted as female. The boys who had sung the night before formed a reception line on the rocks, watching for Noah. Kesi began his preparations, painting his face with white chalk. Semoi stood stiffly, not speaking to anyone. As the sky grew lighter, the boys and younger men rattled their cattle sticks and performed a frenzied storklike dance, some yelling out with emotion. The elders began pacing, predicting disaster. It would be a sad day, they said, as Noah would surely let down his family and the tribe. This was tradition, Sekento explained. Everyone prepared for the worst.
With a huge orange sun rising behind him, Noah appeared, first walking, then running toward the boma. The young men around me began to tremble, waving their cattle sticks and screaming. Noah ran past us, threw down his shuka and grabbed the goat hide on which he would be circumcised. Several men pinned him to the ground. An elder squatted behind him and supported his back. Kesi splashed his face with milk, then knelt down and held out the knife for everyone to see. The men drew in closer. Noah looked as if he were in a trance, his eyes closed, his arms limp. Kesi rang a small bell and began the cutting. Sekento flinched and turned away. Noah remained perfectly still. As blood poured from the wound, there was more frenzy. One boy began to jerk violently and cried out that if Noah was a coward he would take his place. The boy began hyperventilating and fell to the ground unconscious. Other boys followed, dropping one after another, overcome with emotion. The older men stood in a tight circle watching Noah’s face for any trace of reaction, but his expression was placid. The cutting, following the Maasai practice by which the foreskin was loosened but not entirely removed, took several minutes, and when Kesi stood back to let the elders examine his work he looked satisfied. Semoi, who had stood by silently, hi
s lips pursed, splashed milk on the wound and hugged Mr Sha, Naisiawua and Musei. Then the men carried Noah, who remained motionless, to one of his mother’s huts.
“Noah is a free man now,” Sekento said. “The father can no longer dictate to him.”
The circumcision of girls – in this case also Maasai – is not for the squeamish.
Naseyo, the female circumciser, was painting her face with white chalk in preparation for Penina’s surgery, which was next. She had taken off her floral-print dress and now wore traditional shuka and a knit cap. The circumcision was to take place inside Agnes’s other hut, as Agnes had planned it would, in the small, dark compartment where lambs and kids were normally kept. The night before, pans of water had been left outside on the roof to chill. The cold water, which was thought to act as a mild anesthetic, would be splashed on Penina. Two little girls got up on the roof and dug out a small whole to let in some light. Agnes told me to follow her inside the hut when Penina was taken in. “You have asked us so many questions about this thing, and now you can see for yourself,” she said. There was none of the public drama surrounding Noah’s circumcision. Most of the men were squeamish about female circumcision, and some had already drifted across the street to Mr Sha’s bar.
Unceremoniously, Kipeno and Nanta grabbed Penina and took her inside. Agnes motioned me to follow. The women handled Penina roughly, which seemed to frighten her. They removed her shuka and laid her on the dirt floor. The hole in the roof let in only a small stream of dusty light. There were flies everywhere. The women held Penina by her shoulders, and pulled back her knees. Naseyo bent down, splashed her with cold water, and, using a curved razor, began the cutting. Penina screamed, “You are killing me! You are killing me!” The pain must have been stupendous. “Stop! Save me!” Her clitoris was sliced away, as were the outer lips of her vagina. Blood ran down her legs. I steadied myself against the wall and looked away. Penina continued to scream while the women shrieked with laughter. Finally, the cutting was over, though Penina continued to whimper, and her face was streaked with tears. Naseyo splashed the wound with milk, and then Penina was carried to a sleeping platform. “Are you all right?” I asked her. She could not speak. Outside, people were singing and dancing. The younger boys were serenading Noah, praising his courage. A second olive sapling was planted outside the hut, and guests stood naming their gifts to Penina – cows, sheep, goats. Naseyo, the circumciser, kissed me on the cheek. “Would you like to be next?” she asked. Then she winked and opened a bottle of beer with a can opener hung around her neck. A second ox was shot with an arrow, and the blood was collected for Penina. Agnes said she would also be given sheep fat to drink, as this would make her vomit and prevent infection. Two men smothered and slaughtered the sheep in the compartment where Penina’s surgery had taken place. I stepped away quickly.
“Are you okay?” Sekento asked when I met him outside. “Your face is green.”
Maasai Days Cheryl Bentsen.
Warriors
One of the last observers to see Maasai moran in action, before their battle array dwindled to small, illicit cattle- raiding parties, recorded these impressions.
Nothing more romantic can be pictured than the return of a raiding party. Far away behind some undulation of the ground is heard the first faint refrain of the Blood Song. Everybody rushes out wild with excitement. The captured cattle gradually come into view, with here and there a guard tending them. Then the warriors appear in a compact body of regular formation, moving very slowly with measured tread. The rhythm of the song is marked by slightly throwing the spear vertically up into the air, making it spin, and catching it again. As the spears are bright as silver, and the blades four feet long, they throw back the sun’s rays like so many revolving mirrors. The warriors in their song recount what they have done, and will do, and every now and again an individual under its influence works himself up to such a pitch of frenzy that he loses all self-control, especially if he has failed to kill a man, and has to be disarmed and held down till the fit passes off, or he would certainly kill somebody. For this reason an old man always heads the procession as it approaches the crowd, in order to give the word to disarm any too excited warrior. Lean, gaunt, tall, and taciturn, they move at the walk or the run, with the long, easy, tireless stride of the bird of their own plains – the ostrich. Distance they hardly seem to consider. To cover it seems to cost them no effort. With sufficient incentive they perform extraordinary feats of endurance. Given that meat is available when fighting, they seem capable of eating an indefinite quantity: nothing is left, however large the original amount.
When on the warpath sleep seems absolutely to be laid aside: they march and fight all day, and eat and sing round the fire all night; no sentries are posted or watch kept. They sit in small circles round a number of fires, each man’s shield being placed on edge behind him and maintained by his spear driven into the ground butt-end downwards. Clothes they have none, but look exceedingly smart and well groomed, and a picture of manly strength and beauty, rubbed down with mutton fat and red ochre, their hair elaborately dressed in a short pigtail, and their arms and ornaments brightly burnished….
Essentially men of the plains, in the open they are splendid fighters, but become absolutely useless if confronted by an enemy in cover. Nor will they cross a river: the smallest stream that is unwadeable will turn an army. No Masai can swim, nor will he learn to swim, though its military advantage is obvious to him, and all adjoining nations are expert swimmers. This point is quite characteristic of the unadaptable character of these people. The Masai is certainly by nature a brave man: fighting, or, more accurately speaking, the taking of life in war, he loves for its own sake, and he is quite willing to stake his own life for the fun of the thing and the chance of distinction and plunder.
A few years ago the rinderpest broke out and almost exterminated the herds. Famine and disease followed to the herdsmen. Starving, they fell on one another, the eastern clans against those of the west, for the possession of the surviving cattle. One day more than a thousand dead lay on the Arthi plain, the result of a pitched battle: in other words, the result of a thousand simultaneous duels – shield and spear against shield and spear – for such is Masai battle. Time and place is specified and no quarter given. Similarly, when fighting with other nations, no quarter is given. Old men, women, and children, the sick and the wounded, all alike are speared, for no other motive than the satisfaction of taking life
With a Prehistoric People W. S. and K. Routledge.
A brave and ferocious warrior caste was not unique to the Maasai. An officer of the King’s African Rifles posted to north-western Kenya records a conversation with a Turkana chieftain.
“Chaggi, you have the scars for women victims as well as men victims; have you killed many?”
“Effendi, I have killed a great many. I have few scars; there would not be room for them all if I put one for every one of our enemies, the Suk, that I have killed!”
“Tell me, Chaggi, when you raid the Suk, do you lead out a large army of spearmen?”
“Effendi, I often raid alone! I go over the border with no one else at all; I reach a manyatta as day is about to dawn; I kill everyone there and then I go home with the cattle. It is the custom of our tribe to raid for cattle and that has been the custom always!”
“What glory is there, Chaggi, in killing women?”
“It isn’t glory, it’s sense!”
“So you deliberately kill women, Chaggi?”
“And children too!”
“Have you no use for women as wives?”
“Effendi, I am a Turkana. The Turkana like Turkana girls as wives. I do not want Suk women; I do not want a wife who is grieving over the husband whom I have killed.”
“Why don’t you just let the women go, Chaggi?”
“Do you know anything about women, Effendi?”
“Not much; I am hoping you will tell me.”
“Effendi, women are the ones to make trouble
! If I raid for cattle and kill all the men and let all the women go, the women run off screaming until they find some more men, and then they so disturb the hearts of those men that those men set out on a raid to get all the cattle back again. That is why I run after the women and push a spear into them. It is just a matter of sense; no Turkana thinks it a glory to kill a woman.”
“And then about the very small children – do you even spear them?”
“Effendi, what do you expect? Little children need mothers and milk to keep them alive. When the stock have gone with me taking the milk with them, and when the mothers are lying dead, what is there for the little children to look forward to when the sun goes down except a Fisi (hyena)?”
“So then, Chaggi, once you pick on a Suk manyatta, you kill everyone in it, even to the babes that can neither speak nor walk?”
“Certainly! Kluch!” (Sound of spear penetrating!)
“You have been punished for doing these things, Chaggi.”
“I have been punished!”
“If the white authority were to leave the country, what would you do?”
“Effendi, if the white authority were to leave the country and you were to pack up and leave this afternoon, before light came into the morning sky I should be over those hills and into the country of the Suk!”
Nine Faces Of Kenya Page 49