6
WASERU had not been long on the council before the time came for his own generation, Mwangi, to take over the government of the land. Men of his father’s generation, Maina, were growing old and tired, and beginning to lose their keenness in judgment and debate. Their sons said among themselves that they had reached their prime and should shoulder responsibility for protecting the country from pestilence and famine, for controlling ceremonies, and for administering law. Before the change could be brought about, every man of the incoming generation, throughout the land, had to pay a three-goat fee to the retiring elders. Such payments were spread over a long period, and not until the last one was complete in all Kikuyu could the handing over of the secrets of power take place.
A season was fixed for the ceremony, called Itwika, and in each district a hut was built large enough to hold all the men of the Mwangi age from the ridges it served. Here, when all was ready, the horn of war was carried. Here, also, came Waseru and all married men of the Mwangi generation, sons of Maina, to live together for six months and prepare to receive from the older generation the right to rule. From each Itwika hut twelve delegates were chosen to represent their group of ridges at a central building, where men from all districts north of the Chania river gathered to live together for several months and to be instructed by elders of the retiring age.
At last the first day of the great ceremony came. The deputies of the Mwangi age dressed in their finery of paint, feathers and shells, and gathered on an open space near the central Itwika hut. Grass and bush all around had been cleared to make room for a great crowd. Work was forgotten; women and babies, children and old men, converged on the green field bringing beer, gruel and platters of cooked food for the feast. A goat was sacrificed, and twelve elders from each generation shared the roasted meat. While the younger men of the Mwangi age blew on war-horns and performed a strenuous dance, cheered by the trills of excited women, the twelve chosen Mwangi delegates were taken by those of the Maina age who kept the secrets into the bush, away from the noisy crowd. Here, hidden from sight, certain parts of the great secret were passed from the old keepers to the new. No one, save those who were present, knew, or would ever know, what had taken place. They only knew that the key to the unity and strength of their people had been given into the keeping of fresh guardians, who in their turn would hand it on to another generation, so that the continuity of the Kikuyu people would never be broken. How these secrets had originated none could say. They were the hidden seed within the fruit that was the people, the seed from which new fruit would always spring.
The elders of both ages returned to the meeting-place, mask-faced and solemn; and the dancing ceased. Full in the public gaze, and with many fluent speeches, the Maina elders transferred to their successors symbols of the power that the new rulers would wield. They handed over a razor, to show that the Mwangi age would now lawfully control the circumcision of youths and maidens; a red stick, to symbolise the rule of law; a trumpet, for the power to call to dances and public meetings; a string of blue beads, for the right to decide on the proper ornaments and decorations; and other things.
Next day the twelve chosen Mwangi elders, who would become the office-holders of their age, set off with their Maina mentors for a sacred place on the Chania river’s banks, held by tradition to be the spot where the nine daughters of Mumbi once had lived. Here they met twelve delegates from the country lying south of the Chania. None but these twenty-four delegates and the elders who instructed them knew what followed next. The secrets were too deep and too sacred ever to be revealed. A few scraps of information, half-spoken hints, had leaked out. Waseru had heard, for instance, that in the dark of night a trumpeter would blow his war-horn, the Maina elders would speak a summons, and the fearful monster Ndamathia would uncoil its snake-like body from the black waters of a pool. None save the office-holders of each generation had seen it, but sometimes, people said, its head came into the homesteads at night seeking a meal of offal, although its tail could never leave the pool. Others believed that it was tempted from its hidingplace with the bait of a virgin, decorated as if for circumcision, with which it copulated by the water’s edge. Then the new Mwangi elders, their courage steadfast as a tree, would give it beer, and when it was drunk each one would pluck a hair from its slimy tail.
Next morning the delegates dispersed and the hairs of Ndamathia’s tail were placed separately on the roofs of the Itwika huts. The holders of the secret removed them a few days later and buried them under a fig-tree. The Itwika huts were pulled down, and a mundu-mugu wrapped a strip of skin from a sacrificed goat around a finger of each member of the new ruling age. Thus the transference of power was completed, and the senior elders of the Mwangi generation took up the duties of government, according to the custom of their ancestors and with the sanction of the tribe.
CHAPTER X
The Bride
1
THE rule of the new generation began with a disaster. For some time it had been known that a plague had struck the Masai cattle. Scouts sent down to the plain came back with reports of rotting carcasses, whitening bones and a sky black with vultures. This was bad news, for, as Irumu remarked, birds lacking in figs will go to the fig-tree. But a disaster worse than a Masai raid fell upon the ridges. The curse that was striking down the Masai cattle turned to the Kikuyu herds. Animals broke out in sores like those of a man bewitched. Their heads hung low on their necks like heavy fruits at the end of slender branches; their eyes became dull and staring; they folded their legs beneath them, and in a few days they died. The plague swept through the herds like a hailstorm over ripening grain, annihilating beasts, fortunes, hopes.
Muthengi guarded his cow and its new-born calf day and night, believing that his vigilance could protect her from the enemy’s magic. She was mild-eyed, sleek and healthy, and would have many other calves to found his longed-for herd. Irumu gave him a charm to shield her from sorcery, but shook his head when Muthengi pressed for an assurance that it was proof against the plague. “There is no medicine for misfortune,” the mundu-mugu said.
One morning Muthengi saw that her head was heavy and her eye dull. By evening her nose was streaming and her mouth full of small sores, and on the next evening she was dead.
Muthengi refused food that night and sat silently in the thingira, his cloak over his head. Waseru eyed his son compassionately. He took a deep pinch of snuff and said:
“Grieve not, my son, for what the fire has burnt cannot be recovered. The calves which this cow would have borne filled your mind, but they were dreams; the heart eats what it wishes. You are young, and success is the fire in the hut at the end of a long journey.”
“All that I had is no more,” Muthengi lamented. “How can I help but grieve? Where shall I replace my cow, or gain the wealth to get a wife?”
“The dung-heap grows by the straws that are cast upon it,” Waseru answered.
Only one force could have brought about so great a disaster, and that was the wrath of God. No sorcerer could have wrought such havoc. And only one hope remained: that God could be persuaded, by means of a sacrifice, to relent of his anger.
On top of Niana hill stood a sacred fig-tree of great age, and around it lay a green pasture dedicated to God. Above the dark crown of the lofty tree arose the crest of Kerinyagga, pale and soft as a petal, and opposite, beyond a falling cascade of violet hills, a three-humped spine of mountains stood up black against the sky. Below stretched the long patient plain Laikipia, brown now with drought and naked to the sun. To this tree, on the appointed day, eight senior elders of the ruling generation, men whose first wives had passed the age of childbearing, drove a ram and a he-goat to the sacrifice. Both animals were black as burnt trees, fat, and without speck or blemish. They had reached as near to perfection as any beasts of their kind that could be found in the land, for nothing less was worthy of God. When the he-goat had been suffocated and its flesh roasted, one of the elders poured fat over the trunk of the tr
ee and on to the ground and, lifting his arms towards the mountain, prayed:
“God, the possessor of whiteness, who dwells alone in the hill of whiteness, send rain to fertilise our fields, and withdraw from our land the plague that has poisoned the blood of our cattle. We have suffered much, we have borne enough, and we ask for freedom. We bring you now a he-goat and a ram, a very fine he-goat and a most excellent ram, the best that we have in all our flocks, O God! These we give to you as gladly as you will give us deliverance. Send down to accept our gifts through these roots that grew out of the sky, and draw out of the earth the evil that afflicts us.”
The black ram was killed and roasted and its fat smeared over the sacred fig-tree and the bodies of the suppliants. Half the meat was left under the tree, the heads pointing towards the east and covered with branches of mukenya, the shrub of good fortune. When all was finished the deputies to God turned and walked downhill without looking back, lest they should see a messenger, perhaps in the form of an animal, descending the trunk to carry the offerings back to his master.
2
IT was no surprise to see the Masai again invade the ridges; but no one had expected them to come with grass, the symbol of peace, in their hands.
Those who lived at the foot of Niana were the first to see them. The tall, graceful forms, walking with the loose ease of leopards, were unmistakable; but they carried sandals instead of shields. They gripped plucked grass in fists and mouths and carried long bows smeared with sour cream. They walked naked, waving short leather cloaks above their heads. Without glancing to right or to left—they might have been walking through an empty desert, so oblivious were they of curious and hostile stares—they strode on until they reached Irumu’s homestead. There, placing a little grass on their plaited heads, they waited in silence for the mundu-mugu.
When Irumu came they spoke to him through an interpreter, a Masai who had gone to hunt game in the forest and there learned the tongue and customs of the Kikuyu from other Athi.
“Our cattle have been destroyed like dry grass before a great fire,” this man said. “Once the plain was brown under the feet of Masai cattle, now it is white under their bones. Babies cry for nourishment, but their mothers’ breasts hang like withered leaves from a dead tree. All are weak from hunger, and their bodies are parched. Therefore we come as envoys, to ask whether you, the Kikuyu, whose fields the vultures cannot devour, will send your women to trade food with women of the manyattas.”
Irumu saw that their bones stood up beneath the skin and that their cheeks, the colour of copper, were gaunt. He could not look at them unmoved, any more than a ram could stare at a leopard with unconcern. In the very lines of their taut bodies, clean as the sweep of far-off hills, he sensed danger. Their eyes, long and slender as the leaf of a lily, were watchful and hard. Their faces were arrogant as the plain; as if the same proud spirit of indifferent tranquillity that kept Laikipia had clothed fragments of itself in flesh.
“I hear your words,” Irumu answered. “How can we be sure that they are not bait with which to set a trap? For between Masai and Kikuyu there is always war.”
“The Masai fight with spears, face to face, and not with cunning,” came the answer. “Only the coward digs pits to trap the feet of his enemy in the path.”
At this a stir ran through the silent watchful audience that had gathered outside Irumu’s homestead, like the shadow of a cloud passing over a sun-drenched hillside.
“Only the fool comes to beg with insults,” Irumu said.
A light groan escaped from the onlookers’ throats, and when the interpreter had spoken an utter silence fell. The fingers of the Kikuyu stiffened as they gripped their swords. The Masai neither stirred nor spoke. It was as if they had closed their ears and Irumu’s insult had bounced back and floated off into space.
“There is little food on these ridges,” Irumu continued. “God has withheld the rain, crops have been poor, and many of our own people are weak from hunger. There is a Kikuyu saying: ‘In a year of many hyenas it is useless to ask for help.’”
“If there is no grain, still there are bananas, yams, potatoes,” the Masai answered. “The starving man does not reject porridge because it is sour.”
“If we send our women to the plain with yams and bananas,” Irumu persisted, “what will they bring back in return?”
“Our sheep are big and sturdy,” the Masai replied. “Our women have copper wire and blue beads of great beauty, brought by strangers from a country far away.”
An excited chattering broke out at this from a group of women listeners; and the young men, also, stirred with interest.
Still Irumu was not convinced. The Masai made no attempt to elaborate their request, to sit down to a long discussion, to engage in the fascinating exercise of wits required to strike a bargain, as any Kikuyu would have done. They were as cold as a rock under a waterfall, as deep as the sky, and as unpredictable.
“I will answer when the sun is overhead,” Irumu said at last. “There is food in the granary; my wives will serve you.”
The Masai answered with expressionless faces:
“We will not eat. We will await the answer.”
“We do not fight with poison,” Irumu retorted; but the Masai turned and strode to the shelter of a tree a little way off. There they lay upon the ground and waited, long ochre-dressed hair hanging around their narrow rock-hewn faces. They came to beg, and yet arrogance was stamped like a brand upon their faces.
Irumu summoned all the elders of the senior council within reach, others of the ruling generation, and Nduini to represent the warriors, and told them of the Masai’s request. Several elders counselled its rejection, suspecting a trap; but Irumu said: “The way of the leopard is not that of the bushpig, nor of the zebra; yet all are animals. So the way of the Masai is not our way, although they too are men. The Masai trample others before them like a herd of zebra stampeding over the plain; but we, who have homes to protect, fight with cunning like the leopardess. But we must not think that because we use our intelligence, others do so also. I do not believe this is a trap. If we send women to the plain to trade they will get very good terms, because the Masai are hungry and therefore in no position to bargain. Let us, therefore, agree to their request.”
3
FOR three days women were busy cooking porridge and roasting bananas and yams. Excitement was great. Masai had long been a word of terror, meaning burnt-out homes and the loss of husbands, sons, riches; but now every woman seemed determined to visit the homesteads of these hostile savages.
“Masai warriors are taller than a tall maize plant, more savage than lions, and without any self-restraint,” Muthengi told his sister Ambui. “It is said that they live openly with girls in a big house, all under one roof, without shame. Why do you wish to go ? One of them may seize and rape you, and I, or any of our warriors, will not be able to save you.”
Ambui burst into a peal of laughter. “You see now how much braver girls are than warriors,” she said, “only they make less noise about it.”
“You will make enough noise if a dozen warriors rape you,” Muthengi remarked.
“What must happen, will happen,” Ambui said. “The tree that bends before the gale does not get hurt.”
“Sister, your attitude is entirely shameless,” Muthengi exclaimed, deeply shocked. “It is time that you were married, and learned modest behaviour.”
Next day the women set off, burdened with food in woven fibre sacks. They took their loads right up to the Masai manyattas, curiosity stronger than fear. The two groups of women stared at each other for a long time with intense interest, taking in every detail of dress, ornament and looks. The Kikuyu were amazed at the tall straight backs, the erect carriage, the long necks of the Masai; above all at the great coils of copper wire which swathed their limbs from ankle or wrist to knee or shoulder, and which stood out like huge metal ruffs around their necks.
“They are tall like men,” Ambui said to her mother in
wonder, “and their riches must be great, for their ornaments are many.”
The Masai, for their part, were no less amazed at the bent backs of the Kikuyu, at their crouching gait, and the lines across their shiny foreheads where leather straps had left their mark.
“These people are like burdened donkeys,” they said, “and they are fat with much eating. They crouch like baboons, and their legs are naked. Yet they have wire in their ears as we have, and their cloaks are sewn deftly with beads and shells.”
By arrangement, no warriors from either side were present or even close at hand. When the food had been exchanged, with the help of Athi interpreters, the women compared their babies, ornaments, and household equipment, and by both parties the market was voted a great success. Subsequently, and for several seasons, Kikuyu women made frequent trips to the manyattas on the plain. They took grain, tubers and tobacco, and returned with brown Masai sheep, skins, and copper wire. After a little the men welcomed these expeditions, for they were able to add sheep to their flocks at a price less than half that prevailing at Karatina. Peace with the Masai, they agreed, was a great deal more profitable than war.
4
WASERU did so well out of the Masai trade that he decided, two seasons later, that he could at last afford a second wife. The first payments had been made for Ngarariga’s bride, and although Mahenia’s two widows were now living in his homestead under his care, Wanjeri was constantly urging him to marry a young girl so that her work would be lightened.
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