Paul Spencer Youth and Experiences of Ageing Among Maa Models of Society Evoked by the Maasai, Samburu, and Chamus of Kenya

Paul Spencer Youth and Experiences of Ageing among Maa Models of Society Evoked by the Maasai, Samburu, and Chamus of Kenya

Paul Spencer Youth and Experiences of Ageing among Maa

Models of Society Evoked by the Maasai, Samburu, and Chamus of Kenya

Managing Editor: Kathryn Lichti-Harriman

Language Editor: Steve Moog Published by De Gruyter Open Ltd, Warsaw/Berlin

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

ISBN: 978-3-11-037232-8 e-ISBN: 978-3-11-037233-5

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

Managing Editor: Kathryn Lichti-Harriman Language Editor: Steve Moog www.degruyteropen.com

Cover illustration: © Paul Spencer Contents

Introduction 1 Outline of Chapters 5

1 Reminiscence and the Manipulation of Experience 8 1.1 The Maasai Who Would Not Grow Old 8 1.2 The Apparition in the Bush 11 1.3 Adolescence and the Bottomless Pit 14 1.4 Conclusion: The Confusion of Historical Time and the Experience of Ageing 18

Part I: The Maasai Age System (1976-77)

2 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai 22 2.1 Primate Behaviour and the Male Arena 22 2.2 Maasai Polygyny and the Social Construction of Adolescence 25 2.3 The Arena of Elderhood and the Social Construction of Old Age 31 2.4 The Maasai, the Samburu, and the Primate Model 33 2.5 The Life-course of Women and the Quasi-matrifocal Network 37 2.6 Conclusion: The Nature and Culture of Ageing 41

3 Stratification and Social Mobility: Patterns of Inequality among Maasai and Hindus 43 3.1 Comparing Incomparables 44 3.2 Maasai Concepts of Purity 46 3.3 The Two Arenas as Alternative Modes of Production 48 3.4 Rivalries between Adjacent Age-sets 50 3.5 Status, Power, and the Premise of Respect 53 3.6 Conclusion: Fundamental Structures and the Premise of Holism 55

4 Anger, Comradeship and Age-set Exogamy among Maasai: an Elaboration of Alliance Theory 57 4.1 Comradeship and Anger among Women 57 4.2 Seasonal Influences on Interaction 59 4.3 Group Indulgence and the Restrictions of the Age-set System among Men 61 4.4 Marriage Bonds and the Fundamental Premise of the Maasai Age-set System 64 4.5 Conclusion: Elders as Controllers and Women as Custodians of the Age- set System 68

Part II: Samburu Ritual and Cosmology (1957-60, 1962)

5 Arenas of Dance among Samburu 72 5.1 The Initiation Dance 73 5.2 Wedding Dances 78 5.3 Dancing and Elderhood 89 5.4 Conclusion: The Abuse of Power and the Inviolability of Play 90

6 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu 92 6.1 Perpetuating Gerontocracy 93 6.2 Interpretations of Shivering and Shaking 100 6.3 Conditioning and Reconditioning through Ritual 102 6.4 Conformity, Suggestibility, and the Assembly of Clan Elders 108 6.5 Conclusion: Ritual, Anxiety, and Evolving Roles 109

7 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion 111 7.1 Misfortune and the Curse 111 7.1.1 Explanations of Misfortune among the Samburu in 1960 111 7.1.2 The Anatomy of Fortune and Misfortune among the Samburu in 2002 114 7.1.3 The Transformation of the Curse from 1960 to 2002? 117 7.2 God and Afterlife 122 7.2.1 Perceptions of an Unknowable God among the Samburu in 1960 122 7.2.2 Samburu Perceptions of God and Afterlife in 2002 127 7.3 Conclusion: The Extraordinary Transformation of Samburu Beliefs 132

Part III: Indigenous Democracy and Change Among the Chamus (1959, 1977)

8 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion? 142 8.1 The Dorobo 142 8.2 Chamus as a Quasi-oasis Society 143 8.3 The Transition to Agro-pastoralism 148 8.4 The Transition to Individualism 151 8.5 The Growth of Knowledge 153 8.6 Conclusion: Keeping Tradition in Good Repair 157

9 Maa Democracy, Development and Alternative Realities: an Open Letter 162 9.1 Public Consensus and Private Anxieties 162 9.2 The Institutional Context of Decision-making 164 9.3 Institutionalised Adaptability 166 9.4 The Problem of Subversion 168 9.5 Conclusion: The Clash of Fundamentals and the Pragmatics of Compromise 170

References 172 List of Maps 176 List of Figures 177 List of Tables 178 List of Charts 179 List of Plates 180 Subject Index 181 Name Index 186

Introduction

The Maa peoples of East Africa share the same language and are predominately nomadic pastoralists. The Maasai have a dominant position at the centre of this area, with 60% of the Maa population dispersed among 16 independent tribal sections. This volume stems primarily from anthropological fieldwork among the Maasai of Matapato and among the Maa-speaking Samburu, who live in the northern reaches where conditions are harsher. It is convenient although a matter of speculation to regard the Samburu as close to some proto-Maasai ancestral group before the Maasai expanded southwards against other Maa- speakers, spurred by their legendary Prophet Supeet during the first half of the nineteenth century. Conditions were more arid in the north, families were more nomadic and warfare seems to have consisted of lightly armed skirmishes and mobile tactics. The easier conditions of the south permitted the Maasai to mount more heavily armed and organized companies and the development of more stable territories defended by strategic warrior villages (manyat, s. manyata).1 A third Maa-speaking group are the Chamus, who have had close links with the Samburu, borrowed the idea of manyat from the Maasai at one point, and provide an independent insight into the history of the area. A significant feature of inland pastoralist societies in East Africa is the variety of age-based organizations that group men into cohorts according to age from initiation in youth until the cohort – or age-set – dies out. Historically, this type of society has been described in every continent, displaying a similar range of ramifications. This suggests some basic principles of age-based existence, parallel to those of kinship elsewhere, but raising questions in some quarters of whether this type of society could possibly have worked. East Africa provides the principal surviving cluster of age-based societies, among whom the Maasai are the best known. A likely cause of the demise of age systems generally is the emphasis on equality within each age-set that cuts across family interests, whereas the spread of world trade and hence capitalism has created inequalities that tend to be perpetuated within families. The strong commercial streak in Islamic societies in East Africa, for instance, has led to cumulative inequalities that are inherited down the generations. Differences of wealth between families also occur among age-based pastoralists, compromising their ideals of equality within each age-set. However, these tend to be temporary rather than cumulative: their herds can multiply quite rapidly over a period of years and then be wiped out through drought, epidemic or raiding, giving the impression of a saw- tooth profile of growth and collapse. In these conditions, the ideal of age-set equality applies to long-term prospects and opportunities rather than current wealth. In the short term there is an emphasis on sharing products of the family herd rather than

1 Merker 1904: 90-9. This can be compared with Lamphear (1992: 18-26) whose description of the Turkana raiding tactics gives a useful indication of the ecological constraints on intertribal raiding in the north.

Map: The Maasai and Maa-speaking Peoples in 1977

Introduction 3

sharing the living herds which are treated as a reserve capital. With no trade routes through the area, Islamic and other traders were unable to penetrate the Maasai in their traditional setting, and the Maasai were unable to build up capital in the long-term. In contemporary society, the Maa are an anachronism, but they can provide useful insights into aspects of ageing from childhood onwards that have a more general relevance. The present work arose indirectly from an invitation by Oxford University Press to submit an annotated bibliography on ‘The Maasai and Maa-speaking Peoples of East Africa’ for their Oxford Bibliographies Online programme in African Studies.2 The strict format that they proposed appealed to me and the labour involved stretched my understanding of the Maa-speaking region. This led to the notion of resurrecting some earlier dispersed articles and bringing them together as a collection that complemented my published ethnographies. These articles reflect opportunities to pursue particular models of Maa society, responding to conference themes and seminar series. They lay bare some fundamental aspects of structure that tend to be obscured in comprehensive ethnographic accounts. Two approaches to models of age systems are possible. The first is to strip them of their social context and discern some basic rules that govern the process of ageing and the succession of generations. This provides a series of ideal types – constructs – that pose and resolve some basic problems of how they work. It is this approach that Frank Stewart (1977) has adopted in his outstanding analysis of recorded age systems throughout the world, stripping them down to the bare bones of rules and principles, simplifying them in order to arrive at a basic understanding of complexity. Maa age systems are at the simplest end of Stewart’s spectrum with no generational complications (Maasai) or just one unproblematic restriction (Samburu). In this sense, the Maasai provide an ideal type at the level of rules and procedures. An alternative approach towards models is adopted here with reference to selected topics that arose from the study of Maa society and especially their age systems. These models were the product of perspectives offered by my Maa informants on the one hand and insights borrowed from a variety of disciplines and parallel fields on the other. Each chapter in this volume views the Maa through a different lens that throws light on their system in order to clarify some aspect of a more complex whole. As Max Weber pointed out, models are abstractions that simplify and distort reality, but they also throw further light on it, and ultimately we can only perceive reality through models. There are cross-threads and a logical sequence between the chapters, but there is no overarching model other than an attempt to expand an understanding of Maa society by viewing it from a variety of angles and comparing the Maasai, Samburu and Chamus as a means towards this diffuse end. Originally, these chapters were developed from ten articles. The dates when they were produced merely reflected the opportunities that arose at the time rather than stages in my own thinking or fashions in social theory that seemed to switch with

2 Spencer 2012. 4 Introduction

uncomfortable regularity as they engaged new generations of anthropologists. While these articles were unconnected, there was considerable repetition in matters of detail between them, and these had to be edited in the first instance. From that point, it was not clear where to stop editing to improve the flow and structure of the argument, even borrowing whole sections from one chapter to another where they seemed more appropriate, reducing the ten articles to nine chapters, and ultimately revising and expanding chunks of the text while preserving the original thrust of each chapter. My thanks to the copyright holders for permission to reproduce the articles – or what remains of the original articles – are included as a footnote for each chapter. My research among the Maa deliberately sought to understand their indigenous institutions as they appeared at the time of fieldwork. This provided a full agenda without delving into history or attempting to follow new trends in regional development. The use of the ethnographic present throughout my writings was deliberate. At the same time, the Maa were clearly affected by the changing interface with economic and political trends in Kenya. Moreover, Chapters 7 and 8 address radical changes in their indigenous beliefs and systems over the years. Regardless of such changes, this work retains the ethnographic present tense in order to establish the various chapters at a particular point in time rather than blur the boundary between (what was then) present and past by resorting to an inclusive ethnographic past tense. Whatever changes have occurred since my material was collected, these chapters remain an attempt to contribute to the Maa and Kenyan heritage and to our own understanding of the diminishing number of societies based on age organization and ultimately the process of ageing itself. These researches were not strictly contemporaneous: they concerned the Samburu around 1960 and the Maasai and Chamus around 1977. The gap of seventeen years between these studies raises problems of comparison between the Samburu as a restricted colonial enclave and the Maasai and Chamus as postcolonial outposts that were more directly affected by global trends, notably the Chamus. However, in approaching my study of the Maasai, I deliberately chose to work primarily among the Matapato because they were remote enough to appear to have been less affected by change and tourism than other Maasai tribal sections at that time, and it was their view of tradition that focused my attention. I also visited the Maasai of Purko and of Loitokitok-Kisonko to assess the degree of variation among Maasai, and they confirmed my broad impressions despite the greater evidence of change in these areas.3 The Maasai as a whole were regarded as unrepentant traditionalists and the stability of their system in times of change was directly relevant to my work. At the level of my enquiry, it seems justified to regard my studies of the Samburu in 1960 and the Matapato in 1977 as broadly of the same period, whereas the Chamus in 1977 clearly represented a society in transition.

3 For fuller details of my research among the Samburu, and among the Matapato, Purko and Loito- kitok Maasai, see Spencer 1965, 1988 and 2003 (Chapters 7 and 8). For a synopsis of these volumes, see Spencer 2010. Outline of Chapters 5

Of more relevance here are the changing conditions of my research. I learned the Maa language among the Samburu and spent more time there collecting data as an apprentice social anthropologist. In approaching the Maasai years later, I was in effect standing on my Samburu shoulders and trying to see further in a shorter time. This meant relying more on gathering data through conversation among the Maasai than through direct observation and participation as among the Samburu. The balance between these is significant in this work. Whereas the chapters on the Maasai focus on their age-set system, which was altogether more elaborate than the Samburu and needed a lot of explaining, while the chapters on the Samburu focus on aspects of ritual which relied more on community involvement. Fortunately, the Maasai excel in talking about the intricacies of their system. Work among the Chamus relied substantially on their history, again because this was a major topic in their self-presentation and delved more deeply into this topic than either the Samburu or the Maasai.

Outline of Chapters

Chapter 1 of this work focuses on the problem of reminiscence and tricks of the memory and self-presentation. My heavy reliance on conversations with older Maasai especially raised this issue. This was not just a problem of relying on the accuracy of what I was told, especially as there was often a strong element of personal involvement in their recollections, but also of discerning the relevance of inconsistencies and exaggerations, and whether there were deeper levels of insight underlying any distortions. As Malcolm Johnson has put it, autobiographies by older people have to be kept in good repair.4 Then, when writing up my material over the period that followed fieldwork, there was the problem of the reliability of my own memory, which implicitly shifted each time I recalled incidents or pieces of information that were not necessarily fully recorded in my field notebooks. To the extent that there were hidden distortions, these could be seen as the essence of model building – of compiling an incomplete range of data and converting it into a meaningful whole for presentation to a notional readership. The present work is essentially about models of Maa society that have to be taken for what they are worth, and seek to provide insights into selected aspects. In a rather similar way, my Maa informants were presenting models of their society and of their own roles and experiences, and these too were relevant to an understanding if one could pursue the points with a variety of respondents in an attempt to unravel the contradictions. The dilemma haunts the integrity of ethnographic enquiry generally, and in the final analysis an anthropologist can only rely on the consistency of the various strands of argument to arrive at a reliable shot at understanding.

4 Redfern 1986. 6 Introduction

The next three chapters concern aspects of the Maasai age-set system in which males climb up from youth to old age, fitfully and in cohorts (age-sets). Chapter 2 compares this system with a primate model borrowed from physical anthropology. It considers how far youth and ageing are determined by biological features for each sex, and in what ways these have been elaborated through culture to produce a distinctively Maasai slant that can only override natural ageing up to a point. The Samburu variant with their own age-set system provides an opportunity to take the analysis a step further. Chapter 3 compares the mobility of the Maasai system of age stratification as men climb up towards old age with the wholly immobile Hindu system of stratification by caste with no climbing throughout the lifespan. This is to compare incomparables, but some unobvious parallels at a deeper level are revealed, and these point towards competing systems of classification that lie in the shadow of the dominant hierarchy, reminiscent of the articulation between modes of production. Chapter 4 turns from a model of relations between age-sets in the process of ageing to an examination of internal relations within each age-set. While the Maasai have a reputation for being highly egalitarian, this is only true within each age-set, where the ideal of equality is developed to the point of obsession. This introduces the notion of a ‘group indulgence’ that taken to the extreme endangers the reproduction of society. This is examined here as an extension of alliance theory in societies dominated by kinship rather than by age. This chapter overlaps with my Maasai of Matapato (1988) to a considerable extent, but in drawing together diverse themes from this work, it seeks to stress the dominance of male age-sets and the reactions of women to male hegemony. The following three chapters consider aspects of Samburu ritual and belief. These have much in common with the Maasai, notably in relation to belief, but my material is heavily weighted towards the Samburu. Chapter 5 is concerned with the nature of dancing as a central aspect of ritual performance and relevant to emotional expression. Ethnographic literature tends to be sparse on the dancing itself, avoiding the complexities of choreographic description, but it does provide the wider social context that gives meaning to each performance and the social relations among the performers and with their audience. In a society that is dominated by the power of the elders, dancing among Samburu provides an inviolable arena that moderates this power. Chapter 6 introduces a psychological dimension into the analysis of rites of transition. It examines the role of anxiety generated by ritual and political pressures in implementing change and examines the role of shivering and shaking among Samburu warriors (moran) in resolving emotional tensions that result from their restricted position. This is an elaboration of a theme that was previously explored in The Samburu (1965, Chapter 9). This approach received encouragement at the time, but it has been largely overlooked in the literature since then. In my more recent research among the Maasai, it is quite clear that the same principles would apply to the drama of their ritual behaviour, and the approach seems worth resurrecting here. Chapter 7 is an extended critique of a recent publication that provides new insight into the nature of close family relations among the Samburu, but also suggests an incredible switch in their system of beliefs over 40 years since I undertook Outline of Chapters 7

my fieldwork. Approaching this with a willing suspension of disbelief, I suggest that the new system of beliefs stems from an alternative women’s view of religion and perhaps reveals a gender bias on my part during my fieldwork, which was strongly influenced by male Samburu attitudes at that time. The final two chapters introduce the Chamus of Lake Baringo, who spoke Maa and displayed strong Samburu and Maasai influences, but had their own oral history that was remarkably rich and introduced new themes. Chapter 8 outlines this history of the Chamus, elaborating the succession of economic transitions from hunter-gathering, to irrigations agriculture, to agro-pastoralism, to exploitation by capitalist opportunists. Karl Popper’s model of the evolution of knowledge appears especially pertinent here, throwing light on the process of indigenous development. This is not to assume that oral traditions provide an accurate record of history. As with autobiographies (Chapter 1), they have to be kept in good repair. But as an interpretation of current knowledge, they may still provide the most reliable evidence of historical processes on offer. Chapter 9 is a critique of a work that is concerned with the eco-system and the need to broaden participation in community development. The chapter examines the nature of the Maa democratic process through formal discourse among elders to the exclusion of moran, women, and expert outsiders. The Chamus are particularly relevant to this problem, illustrating the robustness of the institution that underpins community decision-making in the course of recurrent change. This underlines the importance for developers to understand and respect indigenous institutions. In compiling the present collection, I am grateful for the patience of my Maa informants as I built up my understanding of their systems, responding to their explanations with new questions, and responding to their questions with answers that revealed the inadequacies of Western society in Maa terms, but also suggested new paths of enquiry. The Samburu hold a charm for everyone who has met them, and their friendliness at a time when I had only limited resources to share with them in return was especially important as I learned the rudiments of their language and culture, and the kinds of issues that I could later explore among the Maasai and Chamus. The greatest help of the Maasai was not only their acceptance of our presence, but especially their enthusiasm for talking about their social system, and discussing moot points. In effect, the rudiments of my agenda had been set among the Samburu, and the Maasai built on these as an extension of their daily gossip. The Chamus were not only keen to discuss their earlier system, but it was they who determined the agenda of my research at a time when their society seemed to have been overturned by exposure to new trends in the Kenyan and global economy. Their keen recollections of a dwindling past were clearly important to them and pointed towards a reconstruction of their history to a depth that had not seemed possible among the Samburu or Maasai. Finally, my deepest debt is to my wife, Diane Wells, for suggestions that led indirectly to this work, and for her loving care and understanding while it evolved out of the fragmentation of my earlier writings. 1 Reminiscence and the Manipulation of Experience1

This chapter is concerned with personal anecdotes, told and elaborated before an audience, as a form of structured autobiography. Erving Goffman (1969: 28-40) has drawn attention to the element of performance in such presentations, with role play and the manipulation of reality to create an effect. In this way, a contrived self- image is built up which inadvertently may even captivate the teller. The aim here is to discern the relevance of exaggeration in recalling episodes of one’s past for an insight into autobiographical accounts, and ultimately even the record of history itself. Both history and biography are concerned with processes in time and are bound up with the life courses of individuals. Autobiography gives a uniquely personal insight into the process of history, but may view the memories of earlier times through the distorting lenses of later life, and these in turn are moulded in part by the social construction of ageing. To illustrate this, I have chosen two autobiographical anecdotes that relate in the first instance to the self-image built up by a colourful Maasai elder. The second is of a misencounter of my own during my first spell of field-work, narrated years later. Each can be viewed in its historical context and both are shown in the concluding section to relate to the interpretation of maturation and ageing in the relevant culture.

1.1 The Maasai Who Would Not Grow Old

Popular accounts of the Maasai give a larger than life portrayal of a proud, tradition- bound people who once dominated a whole region of East Africa. While these accounts are open to question, the larger than life aspect at least is fostered by the Maasai themselves who remain convinced of their stature. This is not only for the benefit of tourists, but is found also in remoter areas where it is the tourists who are the spectacle, and even today when there is a new status quo in Kenya with the Maasai officially relegated to little more than an extension of the game parks. While working among the Maasai, much of the information I collected, even from the most reliable informants, was dogged by this element of exaggeration. Collecting autobiographical accounts, then, had its dangers, especially when the informant projected his own role prominently. In one respect, however, any autobiography was a valuable resource. The Maasai are a semi-nomadic people, and no one with whom I had close contact early in my stay was still living with the same neighbours a year

1 A previous version of this chapter has appeared under the title “Automythology and the Recons- truction of Ageing”, and was published in Okely, J. and Callaway, H. (eds.), 1992, Anthropology and Autobiography, ASA Monographs 29. Routledge, London. (pp. 50-63). I am grateful to the Association of Social Anthropologists for their permission to reproduce it here.

later, and many were no longer even in the same neighbourhood. Nomadism creates a situation in which a community study extended over time, comparable with Turner’s Ndembu (1957) or Middleton’s Lugbara (1960), is not feasible for the anthropologist. For the actors, on the other hand, there is a lifetime experience of an extended community. They see themselves over the years as itinerant members of a much larger slice of their society, making visits as well as moving with their herds, and constantly re-establishing social contacts that have lapsed in the course of migration. Autobiographical accounts provide an introduction to this wider community, albeit coloured and distorted by tricks of the memory and trips of the ego. In Matapato in 1976, this dual aspect of autobiography was vividly illustrated by ‘Masiani’, an elderly Maasai who as an informant was not particularly interested or well informed. He was deaf, self-centred and impetuous, but also generous and a lively raconteur. His flamboyant narratives of his various encounters with other Maasai could hold an audience, giving the impression of a spirited young man (morani/warrior) who had never quite settled down to the more subtle ways of elderhood. I managed to collect enough of these anecdotes to piece together his life story over a period of historical change.2 This was complemented by rather different interpretations of some of the same events and of his character by his age mates and members of his family. An intriguing aspect of his self-centred perspective was his inability to fit together the two ends of his experience of the tense father-son relationship, first as a truculent boy and later as an overbearing patriarch. He claimed that his guardian uncle had killed his father by sorcery and portrayed him as a kind of ogre from a Maasai children’s story: ‘he was gigantic. He was as big as that tree over there. Each of his fingers was as thick as my wrist. And his nose – it was terrible!’ This led to Masiani rebelling and asserting his independence as a grown boy. Then, when I met him as an old man, he boasted of his overbearing behaviour towards his oldest son, while glossing over the point at which this son in his turn had rebelled and asserted his independence. When collecting his fragmented account, the strong element of exaggeration reminded me of The Life of Benvenuto Cellini (Gust 1935). As a Renaissance ‘lie’, Cellini’s autobiography gives a vivid picture of the ethos of his times. Similarly, Masiani’s colourful account was a Maasai ‘lie’, and the licence he assumed in his actions and recounting is a feature of Maasai society which increases with age. On his own terms, Masiani’s self-portrayal provided a model of Maasai society, riddled with Maasai clichés, and as much a truth of Maasai ideals as a distortion of biographical and historical detail. Take, for instance, the incident when Masiani was punished by his age-set tor being involved in a drunken brawl. He drew blood by retaliating against an age mate who had attacked him. This was a ritually dangerous offence for an established elder,

2 For an edited translation of Masiani’s life, see Lechieni 2013 (a fabricated anagram of Cellini). 10 Reminiscence and the Manipulation of Experience

and Masiani had to make reparation even though he claimed to be the innocent victim of the attack.

‘The elders of my age-set told me to give the man I had fought a sheep so that he could drink the liquid fat and we could become friends. But I refused: “I wont give anything to that man who throttled me until I wet myself and beat me until he thought I was dead”, I said. I had many sheep, but I had none that I was prepared to give that man. So they went round calling one another [to mount an age-set posse to punish Masiani’s disobedience]. One night I could hear them yelping not far away. I had a quiver with poisoned arrows, so I went out of my village determined to shoot them as they approached. Another young man of our family came with me and told me not to shoot. The posse came and settled down to a discussion. We both lurked in the darkness to overhear what they said. They were as far away from us as that thorn-fence over there. One said: “Oye ... let’s not rush in and grab his cattle: let us be careful in punishing this elder”. And another said: “No. Let’s rush in and beat him”. And a third said: “He should not be rushed or beaten. We must get him carefully”. My young friend then turned to me and whispe- red: “You said just now that you would shoot them all; but do you want to shoot men like that who are shooting away from you [and advising restraint]? Wouldn’t that be bad?” And I said: “It would be bad. Let’s forget about shooting at them”. So we got up and walked slowly towards the discussion. And addressing these elders, I said: “Oye ... don’t again suggest that you should rush in and grab my cattle”. And they replied: “Forget it, for we are not going to rush in”. And I went on: “When I overheard that you wanted to rush in and grab my cattle – I didn’t beat that man recently nearly as hard as I would have beaten you, the one who made that suggestion. And you are that man’s brother, you goodfornothing (laka iposo)” So they came and grabbed two of my cattle: a heifer and an ox ... I did get that ox back again though. It had been placed by the elders in another herd and one day it strayed. So I stole it back and drove it away. I then swapped it for a white heifer elsewhere, and drove that one back to my own herd. The man who was looking after the ox came to search for it, but he never knew that it was me who had taken it, getting my own ox back.’

The incongruity of this account is that Masiani was not just an implacable rebel. He was well connected within his own age-set and popular for his loyalty and the colour he brought to their ageing reputation. The whole episode – taking up his bow against his age mates, haranguing them, and then recovering his ox after it had strayed – overstretches credibility, as do many of his other stories. His excessive rashness at each stage, the coincidence of the stray ox combined with the incompetence of the herder simply does not ring true. Taken as a fantasy surrounding Masiani’s punishment, on the other hand, the account seems to portray his feelings quite vividly: the urge to defend his herd; the voice of caution from a younger kinsman whom he was not obliged to obey; the desire to rise above his punishment by first boasting over the heads of his age mates and then staging an audacious counter- theft; and implicitly his ultimate loyalty to his age-set in submitting at least to the minimum fine of just one heifer. These expressions of the ambivalence that surrounds the defence of a man’s own domestic interests as against his submission to age-set discipline would be perfectly intelligible to a Maasai audience. The tension between these two types of involvement alters in the course of the life span and is expressed in their ideology and in various Maasai stereotypes. Masiani’s audacity may have been The Apparition in the Bush 11

largely that he was prepared to fantasise in public what others would have felt in private. Rising in his own estimation above his adversaries, he also tried to show that he was prepared always to defer to higher Maasai ideals. At worst, he paid for his excesses by having little personal influence in the local political scene, but he still carried weight as a virile member of a dwindling age-set who refused to bow to old age. What he sometimes lacked in personal dignity, his age-set gained in popular acclaim placing them above trivial conformity. Their occasional flamboyant excesses displayed the irrepressible spirit of younger men, and to this extent old age itself had to be respected not only as the ultimate achievement, but also for its own irrepressibility. Historically, it was a period when ultimate power was felt to have slipped into the hands of younger men encouraged for the first time by an alien black administration. Against this trend within the local community, older men could retain their prestige so long as they could hold an audience with stories that glamorised their role and responses within Maasai tradition. Beyond the flamboyance of the performer, the element of exaggeration becomes intelligible in the wider context, parading the undaunted spirit of a Maasai. It is perhaps significant that the setting for this episode was not, for instance, Samburu. The Samburu are up-country cousins of the Maasai and generally less competitive. I suspect that a Samburu Masiani would have projected his fantasies and tales on to some peripheral third party, identifying himself as story-teller with the conformist majority. The struggle for power between senior age-sets was altogether weaker among the Samburu and to this extent, older men were in a more secure position than among the Maasai. Such accounts as I collected from older Samburu were essentially oral histories rather than self-centred fantasies.

1.2 The Apparition in the Bush

Masiani’s account opens up the disquieting question of the extent to which all our Goffmanesque presentations of ourselves – even to ourselves – contain an element of autobiographical distortion, giving coherence and meaning to our being. Given that any anthropological account is inevitably reflexive and indirectly autobiographical, this in turn throws doubt on the anthropologist’s own judgement. To what extent, in other words, are my own accounts of the peoples of the Maa region distorted by unresolved dilemmas of my own past and present? To what extent do I too respond to my perceived audience, and possibly in different ways on different occasions?

Let me try to unravel this.

Writing about such peoples as the Maasai for an unknown reader, I feel obliged to be largely impersonal and essentially serious. Yarning about field-work with friends on the other hand, I find myself frequently resorting to personal anecdotes, rather 12 Reminiscence and the Manipulation of Experience

like Masiani, and not altogether aware of the extent to which the retelling of these stories takes on new complexions in the effort to gain an effect or to hold an audience. The frequent theme of such stories is the incongruity of the encounter between two cultures wrapped up in a joke. Take, for instance, my recollection of an episode that I have retold on a number of occasions. This concerns a time when I had just acquired a Land Rover, and I then ended my first long stint of fieldwork among the Samburu with a trip to their close allies, the Rendille. There I was faced once again with a new language and an unfamiliar culture. I simply did not have the energy to start all over again; and this made me realise that I needed a break. A motor road nearby led me to hanker for a dose of English culture, to be able to relax with others in my own language, and to indulge in some privacy. I had been struggling with these feelings for several days, when my lethargic research efforts with some Rendille elders were interrupted by an apparition. A boat had suddenly appeared, perhaps 40 feet long, sailing majestically above the sparse bush cover. I could not have dreamed up a more incongruous diversion. Even the elders seemed disconcerted. Then as we looked, the boat came to an abrupt halt. That day was clearly not destined for untangling Rendille kinship organisation. I ran towards the boat, half expecting to discover some uncharted lake, but at least certain that any vessel that had run aground in the middle of this remote wilderness was in trouble or lost. This was the excuse I needed to get away from the Rendille and even to grapple with a western problem in English. I arrived at the roadside to find not just a stranded boat, but a line of stationary trucks with the boat perched on top of one of them. There was no lake and no sign of trouble, just some heavy vehicles and, beside them on the roadside, a huddle of Europeans looking at a map. This was my cue. Even if I could not help them unground a shipwreck, at least I could make out that I knew the area – and in English. ‘Can I help?’, I asked. They looked up with mild surprise and then down towards my feet. One of them said ‘No thank you’, and they turned back to their map. I too looked down and realised that I was wearing a well- seasoned blanket, a pair of sandals made from car tyres, and clutching a stick and a notebook. Had I been a Samburu – or if they had been Samburu – I would simply have stayed where I was and looked on. As it was, they were of my own kind and I wanted to escape. In desperation, I looked at my left wrist, as if wearing a watch that would remind me of an urgent appointment. ‘Good heavens!’, I said, ‘I must be going! Bye bye’. They looked up again and said ‘Goodbye’, and then returned to their map. I turned and fled into the cover of the bush. That, then, was my slice of English culture for the present. Years later, my attention was drawn to an account by Hilary Ruben portraying an aspect of Africa that was fast disappearing. She and her family were members of this amphibious expedition and she gives a diverging account of the same incident. Possibly for effect, the encounter appears to be cited more than one hundred miles further north in an even more remote part. The Apparition in the Bush 13

One day ... a fantastic apparition appeared in the midst of all that nothingness: a white man, wearing shorts and shirt [sic] and a pair of thonged sandals [sic] like the nomads. He walked like a nomad too, with the same long [sic], springy gait. He smiled, waved [sic?], enquired whether everything was all right, and before we had time to catch our breaths and ask whence he came and whither he was going, passed on. Mad dogs and Englishmen, I muttered ... Months afterwards, we were to discover that this man was an anthropologist living mostly with the Samburu, and partly with the Rendille. It was in fact Paul Spencer ... (Ruben 1972: 160-1)

The two accounts are sufficiently similar to identify the same event, but they differ enough to raise questions. I am now unconvinced by at least one detail of my own version: it is altogether unlikely that I would have been wearing a blanket in the heat of Rendille country; a cloth just possibly, but even this would have been unlikely at this early stage of my research among them. Somehow over the years, the elaborations of this story seem to have taken over from the reality of the encounter. In my mind’s eye, I do not see Hilary Ruben or her two daughters, but only a group of men, studiously trying not to look at me. The story has become part of my self-image. Even in writing about it now, I wanted to substitute a cloth for the (less plausible) blanket, missing and yet effectively demonstrating the point I wish to make. I am equally unconvinced concerning minor details in the other account. Each version gives a different slant on this fleeting encounter. The normal view of the English meeting in remote Africa is of spontaneous warmth that would be inconceivable anywhere in England. And yet here, in an unusually remote area, the very unexpectedness of the encounter appears to have led to a very English reserve on both sides. In my own account, they did not respond to my overture, and in Ruben’s account I did not even give them a chance. Exaggerations in each of our anecdotes apart, we appear to have revealed – or rather concealed – something of our national character to each other. We had brought the stiff upper lip with us to Africa, barely camouflaged by brief pleasantries. A feature of this self-portrayal (but not necessarily of the encounter itself) was that I was setting myself apart from the very people whose company I was seeking, as if unable to resolve the gulf between the two cultures. In elaborating the story – inventing the worn blanket for instance – I suspect that I was trying to insinuate how far I had gone to incorporate myself into Samburu society, contrasting it with the world of maps, expeditions and affluence. This may well have been a pose, but it was in tune with my feelings of ambivalence towards my Englishness at this time. The period was in the wake of the Suez crisis, which even today is remembered by many as a watershed between two eras of British foreign policy. It was an episode that had split the nation (and my own family for that matter) between the believers in British imperialism and those embittered by the hypocrisy of an outdated paternalism towards the Third World. Decolonisation was already in progress, but after Suez a veil of disinformation had been swept to one side and the moral issue seemed to resolve from a matter of dignified enlightenment to one of naked self-interest. Having already launched on my own anthropological career in a mood of benign and innocent optimism, I now found myself ashamed of my nationality and irritated that 14 Reminiscence and the Manipulation of Experience

the evidence of Suez had somehow become blurred once the issue ceased to be news. What had been a myth of my own schooling had been exposed and yet remained intact. The believers for the time being – my own kith and kin – could continue to believe. The episode had no direct effect on my approach to research, but it clarified the moral issue. In Kenya, I avoided those who represented in my mind the ultra- believers: the white settlers. In elaborating on my encounter with the convoy in the bush, clothed like a local (according to my story) and unable to make contact with those who spoke my native language, I was implicitly identifying myself with the exploited. Carrying the symbol of my profession – my anthropologist’s notebook – I was at the same time legitimising my position there. Wrapping this up as a joke was, of course, a useful way of holding an audience, but it also permitted a certain licence to emphasise the gap between cultures and possibly to exaggerate my own isolation somewhere between them. The breakdown of communication within the society I had left less than a year before was replicated by a comedy of misencounter in the bush.

1.3 Adolescence and the Bottomless Pit

Masiani’s anecdote portrays a true Maasai in spirit, even to the point of defying his all- embracing age-set to save his cattle. As the Maasai say, ‘Cattle have their own law’ and in this case Masiani enhances his self-esteem by straying beyond the strict borders of unquestioned loyalty to his age peers, but he remains a committed member of his age-set. In my anecdote, I presented myself as a cultural hybrid, a wandering soul with no strict borders, no property to defend, and no clear purpose. I was accepted as a member of a Samburu age-set and a family that offered me a precise niche in their society, but this too was a fiction without an all-embracing life-long commitment, which I could not give. Beyond my anecdote, there was a more serious side to my work that led me to the Samburu in the first place (and later to the Maasai). This section concerns this background as part of a bumpy process of learning that can be seen as an aspect of my ageing in contrast to Masiani’s prescribed path in a heavily traditional society, with its own prescribed beliefs and procedures that my worldview lacked. If the elaborations of my encounter bore on my response to the Suez crisis, then this in turn evoked memories of my childhood at a deeper level. The Suez crisis can now be seen as a telling episode in the history of changing attitudes towards decolonisation, exposing the ugly side of ideas that so many of us had grown up to accept. Seen retrospectively, history and growing up were entwined, and the uniqueness of my personal experience was in part the uniqueness of the time in which I lived. As a child I had unquestioningly accepted the supremacy of British Empire, along with the sanctity of the family and the unambiguous truth of Christianity. My growing up at a time when these were put to the test was experienced as a series of painful episodes, each leaving me more uncertain than the last, and each perhaps priming Adolescence and the Bottomless Pit 15

me towards a value-free discipline, such as anthropology. What had previously been an acceptance of a world that had emerged successfully from two world wars, wrapped in the comfortable certainty of my childhood, was now exposed step by step as a self-deception, piercing the fragile shell of my innocence. For me personally, the Suez crisis in the mid 1950s was not a major watershed, but it hurt and left me angry precisely because it exposed my own gullibility and replicated the truths behind diplomatic lies that I had faced in the late 1940s, splitting the family in new ways. The earlier period of disillusionment occurred during the years of adolescence, dulled by the absence of my father at home and the drabness of an undistinguished Methodist boarding school in Yorkshire. The transition at the age of thirteen from a southern English background to a northern one was itself unnerving. The revelation of my parents’ divorce two years later came as a blow that took years to come to terms with. In the late 1940s, divorce rates were climbing steeply, but within the cocoon of a prudish school that upheld Christian values, divorce was regarded as an outrage. With a sense of utter shame, I kept this family development from my school-friends, hiding it like some inner deformity. At home during the holidays, it was a topic that we simply did not discuss or admit to our neighbours or friends. We continued to live as though nothing had happened. If we had only discussed it among ourselves, then we might have come to terms with it and worked the grief out of our systems. As it was, there was an unresolved feeling of unreality about home. I was surprised that I had always accepted my father’s absence as quite normal. Why had I never sought an explanation or even toyed with the most obvious one? It was as if my whole childhood had been a facade, undermined by an ugly truth that had been so well concealed that I did not even think of asking the most obvious questions. My education had encouraged me to ask questions and yet at the same time to accept some basic dogmas. To question these dogmas was to lay bare a bottomless pit. Now, with no certainty to draw round me and a sense of divine injustice, I felt cheated and the questions started to flow. If there was no room for divorce in my religion, then somehow I did not belong. It was in this spirit of niggling doubt that the firmly held beliefs I had grown up with started to crumble. Within a year, what had been an unquestioning faith simply evaporated. Belief gave way to immovable disbelief. At first, it was as if I had woken up from the comfort of a dream to find myself confronted by a nightmare. My faith – whatever that had been – was destroyed and I was terrified. There was no Being up there and nowhere to go after this life had run its course. Why should there be? I had discovered the fragility of my own mortality. The great cosmic mystery now shifted from the uncertainties of death and afterlife to the inscrutable fact of life itself. All I could rely on was the unique sense of my own existence to shield me from oblivion. Once again, I felt that the facts had always been there, and yet my whole upbringing, as in the case of my family background, had blinded me to them. The facade of family unity seemed replicated at a higher level by an empty facade of religious belief in a society of half-believers. It was my own way of adjusting to a new set of values and 16 Reminiscence and the Manipulation of Experience

to what has, after all, become a commonplace experience in the post-war decades. I was just one of many who encountered and had to accommodate a major historical trend in their own private way. Disenchantment with the assumptions that have surrounded childhood and schooling is perhaps a very general aspect of attaining adulthood, especially in times of change. To become an adult, one has to disengage from childhood. Autobiographical memory is then transformed into a kind of myth, rather like a Kuhnian paradigm. For me, this was the memory of a lifestyle infused with a set of beliefs that served to hold the family together, but it did not stand up to close scrutiny – or to being displaced by a new set of beliefs and perhaps a new myth. It was not so much the historical trend that was so shattering as the suddenness and stark intimacy of the realisation. The process of ageing was a discontinuous series of steps. Other aspects of my world-view remained intact and I saw no reason to discard these. Scientific subjects at school seemed to hold a sufficient integrity within my grasp, and my inclination was towards some unambitious career in this field, working among fellow beings, but concerned with inanimate problems associated with progress. However, at heart this vague notion of progress seemed part of the myth of my childhood. It did not answer the desire to recreate some kind of order in my mind, some meaning out of life itself that went further than the nothingness of eternity. It was this need for understanding that laid the foundations for a search that was to be realised years later when I encountered social anthropology, which seemed to offer a search for the fundamentals of human existence, and then the Samburu of Kenya, whose collective way of life displayed a certainty that mine lacked. These encounters in themselves entailed a random element of chance. But the way in which I responded to each in turn seemed to make sense in terms of my curiosity for understanding things that appeared hidden from me. Changing the course of my career, prior to the vociferous 1960s, was also a silent form of protest against a system that rang hollow and seemed based on half-truths and self-deception, especially after the Suez crisis. To express this in Bernsteinian terms (Douglas 1970), it was as if my education encouraged an elaborated mode of thought along channels bounded by restricted dogma that ranged from Christian values to the mindless conformism of my own peer group. Once the dogma had been breached at one point, nowhere was it sacrosanct. An unrestricted mode of thought spiralled out of control, and life itself lost meaning. If, as I have suggested, the dilemma of my youth had been the impasse of a search for answers with no fundamentals of faith or certainty, then the highly traditionalist Samburu seem an odd object for study and my enchantment with them as a people even odder. Here, I wish to argue that the erratic course that led me eventually to the Samburu somehow offered a way forward; but I was not exactly aware of it at the time and have never quite been able to spell it out clearly. The impasse of one extreme and a sceptical view of progress led me stumbling towards a people who embraced the opposite extreme, whose resilient traditionalism was highly restrictive. From a family background that had seemed to evaporate inexplicably, I was heading Adolescence and the Bottomless Pit 17

towards a kinship system that had a benign halo of certainty and encompassed almost endless ramifications that I could explore at length. Emotionally, as I learned to accommodate this system and take my adoption into a particular Samburu family seriously, it was like re-entering the primitive world of childhood. I had to be eased out of my bewilderment, not by my own ill-formulated questions, but by the ques tions that Samburu repeatedly asked me and that I in turn had to learn to turn back on them. Reflexivity was a term I had not then heard of, but the principle was inherent in any attempt to enter an exotic culture, to master the language and make conversation – any conversation – on topics that emerged from the context of the moment. The luxury of selecting my own topics had to wait until I could reformulate them. Like so many others who have had dealings with the Samburu, I was wholly captivated by them. At times, I felt thoroughly drawn towards them and wanted to stay almost indefinitely. At other moments in the still of the night, I would sense the faint and solemn ticking of a clock, reminding me of the one at home during my childhood, and the ticking would then fade as I listened. Why my childhood? Or was this fantasy somehow bound up with the make-believe watch that beamed me away in my joke? Was it reminding me that life’s opportunities were ticking away? Whatever my feelings for the Samburu or private misbeliefs, I could not completely rid myself of an inner Protestant ethic that always reminded me to use my time and to work to my open-ended brief. I had to separate my personal involvement from the task of research. Only by completing this research, ultimately as an outsider could I justify the whole exercise to everyone concerned, including myself and including the Samburu, whose future was by no means certain in an independent Kenya. I had to transform my involvement with them into an involvement with a model about them as an outsider and disbeliever, aware of the contradictions within their system and of wider issues when viewed from outside. Again this was experienced as a very personal problem and yet is common for the anthropologist whose attempts to empathise in order to analyse entails a moral dilemma. This stems at least in part from the fact that anthropological fieldwork in practice can never be value-free any more than it can be an emotionless experience, for it lies at the interface between two cultures, rather like my joke. In writing up this research as a thesis (1965), some aspects had a certain autobiographical relevance at one stage removed. These included: the angry reaction of youths (moran) to the narrow constraints of their upbringing; the ritualised nature of knowledge in manipulating the young; aspects of religious conversion in the course of socialisation; and tensions between the nineteenth-century middle-class family and boarding schools which I compared with the Samburu age system. I do not wish to dwell on these here since there were other equally important themes that were less autobiographical. To the extent that this study was unashamedly functionalist, I would question a widespread view that this approach represented a pre-reflexive phase in anthropology and was unsuspectingly caught up in a colonialist mode of thought (Asad 1973: 18). A more valid criticism of studies such as The Samburu is that 18 Reminiscence and the Manipulation of Experience

they reflect too close an identification with a widespread African sense of tradition and too little an awareness of processes of change. In other words, they are too reflexive at the expense of the historical context. Certainly, Evans-Pritchard as my supervisor was more concerned that my thesis should reflect my own personal experience of the Samburu than that it should embody a watertight argument. Today, this advice sounds surprisingly modern, reflexive and unfunctionalist (cf. Pocock 1961: 72). Yet it remains that the principal thrust of my research was to construct a meaningful whole out of the premises of Samburu society in order to demonstrate to myself that this could be done. Piecing together a self-contained argument out of fragmented field data was like piecing together a fragmented past. If order could be made out of chaos, then as a matter of faith other things could make sense. If this was a functionalist stance, then at least it echoed the self-awareness of such peoples as the Samburu for whom the concept of tradition was strong and implied no change. The warmth that they exuded was one of absolute certainty in their way of life within an unquestioned system of beliefs. There was a widespread sense of wholeness, of wholesome integrity that I needed to replicate in my writing. It was the anthropology of Durkheim with collective representations, collective sentiments and a collective life in which society itself rode above the fragile dilemmas of the individual. There was, need I say, a strong element of transference in my attachment to the Samburu, which built up as my relationship to one clan became firmer and more secure. Correspondingly, writing this up entailed an element of disengagement with all the difficulties of disentangling my emotional experience. Or a better metaphor perhaps would be that I had fallen in love – not with any individual – but with an idea that I associated with a community at large and the way of life of a people who had cast their charm over me. Writing this up was not so much a falling out of love, or grief at the loss of a loved object. It was more a matter of consummation, a necessary fulfilment of the relationship I had formed and of the conditions on which that relationship was based. The whole experience had been contrived, and yet its creative potential had led me towards a sense of completeness. I would suggest that this total experience was not idiosyncratic, but must be very common in the early careers of social anthropologists.

1.4 Conclusion: The Confusion of Historical Time and the Experi- ence of Ageing

Let me conclude by returning to Masiani’s autobiographical encounter as compared with my own, each of us concerned with ambivalent views towards our own society. Both accounts were narratives in which the author presented himself to his own culture, stepping into a realm of partial fantasy. The contrast between Masiani’s account and my own stilted attempt here seems to be broadly the contrast between restricted and elaborated modes of thought: an older man conforming in his own way Conclusion: The Confusion of Historical Time and the Experience of Ageing 19

to an exaggerated but acceptable Maasai stereotype, and a younger man out on a limb and making a joke of an episode of his career to impress his audience. However, the Maasai are restricted only up to a point, since as I have noted, there is a competitive edge to their society that is generally lacking among the Samburu. Masiani’s brand of nonconformity set out to stir a receptive audience. He emerges as a Maasai, competitive and thrusting among his peers, but perhaps a little more so than normal, and confident that his boasting has not violated the ultimate constraints of Maasai decorum. The flavour of his account was not just his own irascibility, but also his faith in the certainty and strength of Maasai society. His reminiscences generally and his boasts were tinged with Maasai ideals. In the above episode, as elsewhere, he was using the latitude permitted an elder in late middle age to project himself as an undaunted spirit, clinging to youth with all the bravado of a committed morani, while maintaining his claim to seniority and respect as the occasion demanded. In a highly age-conscious society and within the restrictions of Maasai convention, he was playing with his age to an extent not permitted to younger men. In my own joke, I seem to have been projecting myself as a serious-minded research student who had lost contact with his own culture. In emphasising the unbridgeable gap, I was implying how far I had gone in identifying myself with the Samburu, and perhaps tried to give the impression that living among them had been an end in itself. But in making this a joke of my past self, I had clearly come back to my own culture and the end lay in my research. In an odd sort of way, preparing my doctoral thesis was a replication of the joke, reliving episodes of my life among the Samburu, identifying with them in an attempt to understand; and yet now in the telling, slanting this experience as a bridge across the gap between their culture and ours for the benefit of my audience: the hypothetical western reader in my mind’s eye. The flavour of the joke was only made explicit in a brief preface: ‘By adopting me into their numbers ... accepting me. ... as a morani ... Time meant something quite different; and under this spell, three years of my life slipped past unnoticed’ (1965: xiv). Note again the element of fantasy in expressing my enchantment. It was after all largely an adoption on terms of my own choosing. What about the breaks in my fieldwork? What about that inner ticking reminding me of the seconds – and years – slipping away? Wrapped up in a joke or tucked away in a preface, I was projecting this whole episode of my career into a timeless limbo, suspended between a troubled youth and settling down. In a sense, like Masiani, I too was playing with my perception of ageing. Implicitly, I seem to have been viewing my development with its liminal period of separation as a rite of transition that had its counterpart among my Samburu peers: bush-loving moran in their twenties, socially suspended between childhood and elderhood. Once I had completed my thesis, I could settle down to whatever lay ahead. This left me apprehensive of the future, but with a sense of completion in respect of the past and a renewed confidence. Disengaging successfully from the Samburu had a therapeutic effect. It replicated and in some ways marked the end of disengagement from my childhood. 20 Reminiscence and the Manipulation of Experience

Masiani’s self aggrandisement is oddly reminiscent of some biographical commentaries on Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown and Margaret Mead (to name but three). These pioneers of anthropology are now seen to have cultivated their own images as our hero ancestors, manipulating the historical record in the course of establishing their careers.3 From Malinowski especially, we have inherited a discipline in which the claims and expectations of something new outstrip the record of history and trigger polemic responses. But this is the essence of myth and says something about the subject of anthropology and its excitement, in which our careers too are embroiled. The Malinowskian flame lures us like moths, and in the pursuit of new interpretations and a personal sense of achievement, we are all vulnerable. Ironically, this raises the question: to the extent that we misconstrue the past – even our own pasts – is it because we too are caught up in restructuring the process of our ageing? Is the perpetual rearrangement of anthropological fashions really a development of the discipline or is it in part a false time perspective, a construct of our developing careers as successive generations reach for the fruits of middle age? Who is maturing, the discipline or us? And how will our future biographers view this confusion between the history of ideas, our intellectual development as individuals, and our academic rivalries? Beyond this, how will future generations of Maa-speaking scholars view earlier attempts to understand their society by outsiders who write for a non-Maa audience and are biased by personal experience and the influence of contemporary theories? How will our anthropological models of their society compare with their perceptions of colonial history?

3 Harris: 1969: 409-14;. Kuper 1973: 34-7; Langham 1981: 244-300.  Part I: The Maasai Age System (1976-77) 2 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai1

Forms of social organization based on age have been reported in many regions of the world, ranging from classical Greece to the Plains Indians of North America. However, this type of system only survives in any number and variety among the nomadic pastoralists of East Africa where they provide insights into aspects of age and ageing. Ageing as a topic concerns a dimension that has been largely taken for granted by social anthropologists, although clearly it has relevance for all societies. Here, I would stress that my concern is not with any specific age category as such, but with viewing the concept of age in the context of a total profile of maturation and ageing. Rather as the issue of gender has to be treated in terms of the relations between men and women, so age from an anthropological point of view is concerned with relations between people of different ages; and this has relevance for understanding social systems based on age. In East Africa, these are male age systems, but they involve relations with and through women. By extension, any contrast between the patterns of ageing for men and for women has to be seen in terms of their bearing on one another. The argument here, however, begins with the topic of the ageing process in quite another setting.

2.1 Primate Behaviour and the Male Arena

One approach to the biological basis of society argues that any behaviour pattern shared by all species of non-human primate may well have relevance for humans, for we belong to the same genetic family. The counter-argument is that this approach trivializes the massive jump in the transition to humanity with the development of language and social institutions, which place humans in a very different category. Nevertheless, it remains that if there are distinctive parallels between primate and human social behaviour, then these could provide clues of some very fundamental characteristics embedded in our being from which the earliest hominids and human society more recently developed. Thus, a general pattern observed among primates indicates that aggressiveness and hierarchies of dominance increase in confined situations, whereas mating patterns are more specific to each species, although with a certain latitude for variation with circumstance. The inference is that human mating patterns are more open to cultural influences, whereas competitiveness and

1 A previous version of this chapter has been published in Sauvain-Dagerdil, C. et al. (eds.), 2006, Human Clocks: the bio-cultural meanings of age, Peter Lang, Bern. (pp. 225-244). I am grateful to Peter Lang AG for permission to reproduce it here.

inequality are inherent characteristics that are intensified by population pressure: a feature of human society that is sometimes referred to as circumscription.2 A similar argument has been put forward concerning parallels in the stages of behaviour associated with the life course among non-human primates, with distinctive differences between male and female profiles. The duration and characteristics of each stage may vary between species, but the sequence is widely shared. Among males, following a period of infant dependency, juveniles have considerable freedom to indulge in rough play and to test one another and the tolerance of older males as they cultivate social and physical skills. Once they are too large to play with more dependent juveniles (‘immatures’) but still too weak to compete with adults, they become peripheral to the group and enter a phase of ‘adolescence’. This may lead to a more solitary existence, or they may group together as peers, and even fulfil a pioneering role in testing out areas that are marginal to the parental group. They remain in this limbo until they are physically strong enough to contest with mature males as they work their way back into the group, or they may leave it altogether. Females, on the other hand, are less peripheral to the group as they develop. While still juveniles, they tend to display an increasing interest in immatures and in such activities as grooming; and then they become sexually receptive several years before physical maturity, assuming the status of adults in the adult world after only a brief adolescence.3 A feature that characterizes studies of adult primate society is the unremitting assertiveness of males in their contests for dominance over females and over any rival male when their position is challenged. More uncertain is the evidence of matrifocal networks of support, building up to shallow and ranked matrilines, and underpinning the competition for status among both sexes. This appears to be common among most species of monkeys where adolescent males tend to disperse to other groups while the females tend to remain, and this has also been observed among captive chimpanzees. More generally among apes, however, and especially in the natural state, it is the females who tend disperse to join other groups following their adolescence, and to the extent that the males remain with their natal group, it is the male bonds of kinship that are more significant, notably among non-captive chimpanzees. Thus the evidence of underlying matrifocal bonds in the general competition for status is ambiguous and diverse, like the variety of mating patterns. Chimpanzees happen to be altogether more closely related to humans than to any other primate, and the contrast between those in the wild and those in captivity suggests that matrilines arising out of the

2 Reynolds 1973: 467-8. 3 Dohinow 1984: 66-9. .See also Jolly 1972: 261-3; Caine 1986: 338-9, 345; Quiatt and Reynolds 1993: 220. 24 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai community network are incipient, depending on the situation, which may suppress matrifocal bonds in the wild or encourage them in captivity.4 As they age, primates are protected up to a point by group membership, especially when there are close bonds of kinship, but less so among those species that are by nature solitary. However, natural selection takes a heavy toll in the wild, with few surviving long beyond their physical prime. Females normally continue to breed until overtaken by death; while ageing males tend to slip once again towards the periphery where they are at risk. Once they can no longer keep up with the group as it moves around to forage, whether because of accident or natural ageing, they become easy victims for predators.5 The parallel between this broad model and human development is evident. It is close enough to human experience to project our own concepts of maturation and ageing in describing successive stages among non-human primates, endowing them with human social characteristics. This is also to assume natural characteristics in human ageing where mature adulthood is similarly bounded on its margins by the anomalies of adolescence and old age, especially among males: those that have difficulty in entering the central arena and those that are edged out. The gender distinctions of this model have also drawn attention to the natural and ascribed aspects of womanhood whereby girls are absorbed into the activities of child-care from an early age, preparing them for the continuous role of motherhood. This has been contrasted with the male emphasis on achievement within the assertive milieu of their peers, first as peripheral adolescents and then again when they contend as adults.6 A celebrated attempt to bridge the gulf between primate and human behaviour may have missed the mark by focusing on just one of a variety of mating patterns, but it does have a particular relevance here. This was Charles Darwin’s vision of the lifestyle of our hominid ancestor, taking a cue from the observed behaviour of gorillas. In this evolutionary model, Darwin (1871: 590) suggested that this primal ancestor was a polygynist who jealously guarded his hoard of wives and expelled younger males from the band until they were mature enough to challenge him in the contest for partners. This scenario may well have been influenced by patriarchal fantasies in Victorian England, and it certainly caught the imagination of intellectual circles of Darwin’s time. However, it also has an apt relevance for a common pattern in traditional Africa, where the rate of polygyny is higher than in any other continent. This is achieved by depressing the age of marriage of girls compared with men. The wider the relative age

4 Hamburg and McCowan 1979: 137, 192; Fox 1975: 15-18; Caine 1986: 343; Walters 1987; Pereira and Fairbanks 1993; Quiatt and Reynolds 1993: 149, 213-5, 220; Lee 1994: 292; Wrangham, McGrew, de Waal and Helte, 1994: 252; Foley 1995: 62-6, 178-9; Wrangham and Petersen 1996: 127-52. 5 Dolhinow 1984: 72-4. 6 Chodorow 1974: 49-52; Pereira and Fairbanks 1993: 330, 350. Maasai Polygyny and the Social Construction of Adolescence 25

difference at marriage, the greater the scope for polygyny; and this in turn depends on the means available for older men to prevent their younger rivals from entering the market for younger women. Figure 2.1 illustrates the demographic profile of this type of array with reference to the Maasai of East Africa, comparing them with a similar profile among certain primates. The aptness of this parallel raises some more general points.

PRIMATES MAASAI

Figure 2.1:F Comparisonigure 2.1 of. demographicComparis ageon structuresof demographic age structures

2.2 Maasai Polygyny and the Social Construction of Adolescence

As the Maasai see it, their nomadic lifestyle is essential for obtaining the best grazing for their herds in an unpredictable environment with erratic seasons. This encourages widespread polygyny, since a monogamous family is normally too small to be viable as an independent nomadic unit. Polygyny on any scale inevitably creates a shortage of marriageable women and a surplus of unmarried men. This is a widespread problem throughout rural Africa and is resolved most often by delaying the age of marriage for men substantially as compared with women, creating tensions within the family. However, among the Maa, it is their age system that controls the age of marriage of young men rather than their fathers or older brothers, and this protects the family by diverting competition for wives. While this may be seen as a functionalist argument, the persistence of this institution over a period of radical change leads one to search for some kind of stabilizing mechanism such as this. Functionalism ignores the possibility of change, but it does provide an insight into resistance to change, and the Maasai are renowned for the tenacity of tradition. While grazing his cattle, a Samburu elder once drew my attention to two herds of gazelle nearby. He pointed out that one of these was the herd of the ‘elder’ and his ‘wives’, while the other, in which several gazelle frisked with one another, was the herd of the young ‘warriors’ (moran) who were not allowed to mix with the females by 26 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai the gazelle elder, because he was stronger than they were. The elder was, of course, describing the rudimentary organization of his own society, endowing the animals with Samburu characteristics and a familiar array of roles, although clearly, the parallel with the gazelle model has to be treated as an analogy, which switches the focus from the notion of a single dominant male and his harem to the elders and their wives at large. This model would be equally familiar to the Maasai, who have a similar age organization to the Samburu. Maasai moran were notorious for various deviant activities, such as sporadic raiding and fighting, stock-theft, surreptitious adultery with the wives of elders, and a general lack of respect that placed them in a class apart and absorbed them in a subversive subculture of their own. With the curtailment of intertribal warfare, they were no longer ‘warriors’ in any strict sense, and a considerable number of elders argued that the institution of moranhood should be scrapped. Yet at the same time the elders at large were reluctant to upset the balance of gerontocratic power, and half-hearted attempts to curtail the period of moranhood foundered under popular resistance (and the occasional flare-up of intertribal raiding). Real power lay with the elders, notably through their ultimate control over all women, and it was in their interests to maintain sole rights over marriage through a regime that peripheralized the moran, as implied in Figure 2.1. In due course, the elders had to bow to the increasing maturity of the moran, but in playing for time – denying younger men a share in the marriage market for as long as they could – the older men were also playing for wives and maximizing the scale of polygyny. Table 2.1 shows the profile of polygyny with age among the Samburu, grouping men according to their age-set.7 The table excludes widows from earlier marriages, since these were not allowed to remarry. When my informant was observing the habits of gazelle, he was herding his cattle, and he could have extended the parallel to similarities among his own stock, and especially to the periodic change-over in which the reigning bull is outfought by a more powerful rival who acquires supremacy over the females. This corresponds among the Maasai to the point in the age cycle when elders are obliged to allow mature moran into the competition for wives, typically around the age of 30. However, there is a crucial difference between the state of raw nature and polygynous societies in Africa. The gazelle-elder, like Darwin’s primal ancestor, retained his females and held younger males at bay by brute strength; whereas his human counterpart in societies such as the Maasai is an ageing polygynist, and it is the cast-out younger males that are physically in their prime. With enhanced chances of survival into

7 Tables 2.1 and 2.2 are based on a census of Samburu (Pardopa clan) in 1958, four years before the initiation of a new age-set. In 1973 (just one age-set later), 485 males of the original 566 were still alive. In descending order of age-set, these survivors were 0/2, 0/13, 24/41, 87/114, 92/102, and 282/294. No comparable figures are available for Maasai. Maasai Polygyny and the Social Construction of Adolescence 27

Table 2.1: Variation of polygyny with age (Samburu 1958).

Age range of successive age-sets of men (years) Total Total living living men wives

Number of 17-30 31-41 42-56 57-69 70-86 87+ wives moran ex-moran patrons patrons of (warriors) (novice elders) of moran ex-moran

6 1 1 6 5 1 1 5 4 4 5 9 36 3 5 11 13 3 32 96 2 29 46 8 6 1 90 180 1 1 61 48 13 2 1 126 126 0 293 7 5 - 2 - 307 - Total men 294 102 114 41 13 2 566 Total wives 1 134 189 99 23 3 449 Polygyny rate < 0.01 1.31 1.66 2.41 1.77 1.50 middle age among humans, there is a shift from the physical supremacy of mature adults – an ability to contest in direct encounters – to the moral supremacy of older men. The Maasai elders maintain their position by asserting their authority, based on the mystical protection that they claim over younger men, underpinned by a belief in their power to curse. Their regime is maintained by a ritualized display of hidden power that substitutes for the more open animal display in the primate model. The elders’ power depends on their ability to maintain this mystique, to persuade the moran that they are little more than dependent children in the process of socializing them. It is this moral dimension, whatever values it perpetuates and however these are expressed, that raises (male) society above brute physical strength and the jungle of perpetual war as perceived by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan (1651). Extending the argument from the elders at large to the family in particular, the Maasai father towers as a patriarch above his children in status, demanding total obedience. His sons of any age should ‘run away’ from his anger rather than face him and risk his curse. Yet there is a softer side to this relationship, revealing unquestioned loyalty to the father and protection for his children. This is expressed in terms of faith that he will arrange the best possible marriages for his daughters. A mature woman must avoid her father especially, but she will remain devoted to the idealization of his judgment, even in an unhappy marriage. Similarly, a father will protect his sons from intimidation by his ‘brothers’, who have a potent curse over them and covet his herds. Even a mature elder is said to dread his father’s death, which will leave him exposed 28 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai to coercive threats from within the extended family. There is no parallel to this notion of family loyalty in the Darwinian model of primitive patriarchy. The model of primate ageing (and Darwin’s variant) provides a metaphor rather than a biological template for Maasai society. This is well illustrated by contrasting adolescence in the West, popularly associated with teenage pubescence, with the age of Maasai moran, who are typically in their twenties. Again, these moran are required to submit to the discipline of their warrior villages (manyat), espousing past traditions of warriorhood on the one hand, but in a culture that encourages individualistic bravado and vainglory on the other. By the time they marry and settle down, they are already passing their physical prime (Table 2.1). If one accepts that moranhood among the Maasai has features of adolescence – they are more than children but not yet accepted as adults – then this draws attention to the social construction of their position. The moran are held in a state of social suspension for up to fifteen years beyond pubescence. They are confined to a prolonged adolescence, and their moods and eccentricities have to be viewed against this background. From once being warriors, they are now angry young men. They are recognized to be under a certain stress: there is high expectation of them from all parts of the society, yet to no purpose except that they should continue to be moran and no more. Adolescent defiance is not simply an urban phenomenon as has been sometimes suggested by sociologists, nor is it a genetically programmed stage as the behaviour of primates might at first suggest. In such societies as the Maasai, it shares some characteristics with adolescence elsewhere, but the form that it takes is distinctively moulded by the Maasai social context. This offers an explanation for the persistence of anachronistic warrior ideals in times of relative peace that followed the colonial conquest. The fact that these young men have continued to adorn themselves and behave as moran has to be seen in the wider context of the interests of older men, who can retain their monopoly in polygyny only by delaying the marriages of these young men. In maximizing their advantage in this respect, a certain loss of control over the activities of their juniors is the price that the elders have to pay. In terms of the distribution of power with age, control over women, cattle and marriage is concentrated towards the upper end of the age pyramid (Figure 2.1), and this creates a power vacuum lower down the scale, within which moran have their own lifestyle and ideals. These are associated with warrior virtues, close identity with their peers as a society apart, and concern for notions of honour and prestige. The parallel with the primate model can be approached at another level by shifting the focus and considering the arena of moranhood as the centre of competition. In this context, immature Maasai boys emerge as the peripheral males. In other words, this is to compare competition and maturation among adult primates with the sub-culture of the Maasai moran, who are also in their physical prime, drawing a step closer to a more strictly biological interpretation. Maasai Polygyny and the Social Construction of Adolescence 29

The moran besport themselves in their distinctive regalia, always aware that they are the focal topic of interest and concern. They are thrust into the foreground as the most spectacular and controversial sector of the society, an army in reserve who retain at least some of the glamour of their traditional role, colourfully adorned, keeping their own company, braving the dangers of the bush, freed from their fathers’ control, unpredictable in their behaviour, and (with good cause) suspected by the elders of adultery with their wives and filching their small stock. The widespread bemusement in their status as moran extends to the total array of their activities. The arena of moranhood provides a widely admired display of masculine assertiveness, ranging from spectacular dances to the right to associate with unmarried girls and become their lovers and protectors, although they are not allowed to marry and pregnancies must be avoided. Uninitiated boys covet the flamboyant arena of moranhood. However, as boys, they are systematically refused access to girls or to the affairs of the moran. They are obliged to herd during the day and to keep their own company at night. From the point of view of younger people, it is the boys who are peripheralized from the arena and sub-culture of moranhood. During their physical prime, the moran are without peer. However, this is ultimately a passing phase, and meanwhile there is a growing body of physically mature herdboys who cannot be bullied into submission indefinitely. They aspire to be initiated to become moran in their turn, and they will then displace their older brothers and form their own arena and attachments to those younger girls who are still unmarried. The strength of the position of the moran is expressed by the Maasai with reference to certain warrior privileges (enkisulata) that they alone display as symbols of their physical prime, proclaiming their right to ‘rule’ (a-itore) in a physical sense. Only they may wear their characteristic adornments and hairstyles, place certain patterns on their shields, put dark-wood in the hafts of their spears, make assertive grunts before entering a hut, yelp at night in the bush, perform certain dances, go on lion hunts, wear thigh bells associated with raiding, assume the right to treat unmarried girls as play-things, and above all abscond with their mothers to form separate warrior villages without regard to any protests from their fathers. The climax of moranhood occurs when the warrior villages of a tribal section converge to perform their flamboyant eunoto ceremony. During this celebration, each moran has his long red-ochred hair shaved by his mother and then he leads her back to his father’s home and regime, and the warrior villages disband. This represents a major step towards elderhood, but only in the sense that the moran are now held to be more responsible. They retain their ritualized lifestyle and especially the privileges of moranhood for a number of years yet, even after older boys are initiated to form a new age-set. 30 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai

Plate I: Maasai moran process to the ritual enclosure at their eunoto (1977).

Meanwhile, if boys dared to filch any of these privileges, or just walk into the middle of a village when moran are around, they would be beaten into submission – until they are strong enough to hold their own. According to Maasai tradition, the classic way in which the privileges of moranhood were handed over was when young initiated youths, having unsuccessfully attempted to filch the privileges from time to time as boys, eventually become strong enough and numerous enough to beat the moran. They then would usurp the privileges, and the reigning moran, with or without a decisive fight, would retire humiliated to elderhood, while the youths could claim to be reigning moran, physically supreme, fully able to defend the country, and sporting the privileges of moranhood as a token of their supremacy. In practice, the more usual mode of transition has been for the elders to prevail on the moran to save face by abandoning their privileged position diplomatically before the youths can humiliate them in an open contest; in other words, to climb up to elderhood voluntarily, in order to avoid being forced to climb down from the supreme pinnacle of warrior virtuosity. They can then always claim that they retired as undefeated champions and are still in a position to take up arms again to beat their juniors if they abuse the privileges. Correspondingly, the youths would now be recognised as the new age-set of moran, but they can never truly boast that they actually took over the privileges in a classic coup. Today, there is an element of this competitiveness in the rhetoric of both sides, and it seems likely that there has always been an indeterminate balance between a display of bravado on both sides and resort to violence. In this way, the primate model of juvenile adolescence, poised to contest mature brute strength, is echoed in the competition over the privileges of moranhood at the formation of a new age-set. To this extent, there is evidence of a certain biological underpinning based on sheer brawn. The contest between moran and boys is clearly a matter of prestige and ultimately of power, but this is limited. Their rivalry over access The Arena of Elderhood and the Social Construction of Old Age 31

to girls is overshadowed by the higher authority of the elders, who can take away any of these girls for redistribution as brides among themselves at any moment of their own choosing. Boys who battle with their seniors to gain the privilege of being moran only enter a peripheral arena. This is their apprenticeship to the real competition over women and polygyny that takes place one age-set later, when they in their turn will be dispossessed of their moranhood and poised to become married elders. In the primate model, there is just one arena, whereas among the Maasai there are two, and these are encountered as successive stages of age organization. Boys are at first denied access to girls by moran, while the moran in their turn are denied access to marriage. The spectacular contest is among youths for possession of the arena of moranhood. So long as this spectacle absorbs the attentions of younger men, and indeed of the community at large, the true arena of power and control over women vested in the elders remains out of focus. In the final analysis, the elders regard rivalry among moran over their privileged position and over immature girls as ‘children’s play’. So far as they are concerned, it is their own dealings in the marriage market and the possession of mature women and their fertility that is the essence of power. Sexual play among juvenile members of the community is regarded as a shadow of the real thing. From this point of view, the critical issue in the age cycle is not the act of admitting boys to a new age-set through initiation, but the consequence of this act in freeing moran from their pseudo-warrior role in order to enter the marriage market. For the elders at large, the primate (or rather gazelle) analogy is more meaningful at the higher level in the age hierarchy, shifting the focus from the peripheral side-show of moranhood to their own more covert dealings.

2.3 The Arena of Elderhood and the Social Construction of Old Age

Age systems in East Africa can usefully be regarded as steps up a ladder, leading from one rung (or age grade) to the next as individual age-sets move up through a series of statuses, defined in terms of their changing relations with older and younger men. Among the Maasai, boys are placed on the bottom rung at initiation, moran step up to the next rung, and elders move up still further. This is not an orderly procession as in the annual cycle of school promotions from form to form in the West, but one that responds to demographic pressures. It is the upward movement and pattern of age relations that are certain rather than the exact timing of each transition or the span of this recurrent cycle. There is a certain jostling between age-sets, as between aspiring boys and ageing moran, and this may also occur for privileged positions at higher echelons of the ladder. Thus, while peer bonding may inhibit competition within each age-set, relations between age-sets are concerned with patterns of dominance and competition over privilege. As moran become elders, they enter a new domain that contrasts with the panache and physical assertiveness of their former lifestyle. Older men encourage them by pointing out that the privileges over which they have contended are no more 32 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai than children’s games that are simply not worth the risk to life and limb. In this way, the physical premise of moranhood is trivialized by relegating it to the periphery of a more fundamental truth associated with the knowledge and wisdom that can only come with elderhood. A retiring moran has to adapt to this role as a novice elder before he can play an active role among elders politically. After his first marriage, his involvement with the development of his family and herd may take up much of his energy and leave little time to learn from close company with older men in their leisurely gossip and discussions. The rules of the Maasai age system force the age-set of novice elders to remain on this rung for a complete age cycle of fourteen years or so until yet another age-set of moran (two below their own) is initiated. At this point, now in their mid-forties, these elders become ritual patrons of the new age-set with the power to bless or curse them. They are known as ‘firestick patrons’ (ilpiron), because they generated the fire that first brought the new age-set of moran to life. This endows them with moral and ritual authority as they enter their political prime. Increasingly, with growing sons that can take over the family herding, and often with further wives, these patrons of the moran are now in a position to associate more closely with older men and the affairs of elderhood, conducted through debating and the awe-inspiring panache of stage-managing ritual for the moran. After their long experience as moran and as novice elders, and with ample time to appreciate the skills and qualities of leadership among their peers, they are now principally responsible for maintaining a regime that protects the community at large from the erratic delinquencies of their moran protégés. It is the moran who are a focus of popular concern, and it is the duty of the age-set of their ‘firestick’ patrons to instil them with respect amounting to fear, overawing them into submission. The ‘firestick’ patrons of the ageing moran maintain this position until a new age-set is initiated, precipitating the next movement up the age ladder. Their protégés become novice elders, and they in turn step up a further rung, while their successors (until now the age-set of novice elders) enter their prime and become the ‘firestick’ patrons of the new age-set of moran. The retiring ‘firestick’ patrons are typically in their sixties and as their numbers and will to assert themselves decline, so they lose the initiative in public affairs, and this initiative is taken up by the succeeding age- set: the new ‘firestick’ patrons. One age-set later still, as some of their wives prede cease them, they are less likely to replace these with new wives. The intensity of their network of mutual support inevitably declines and with it the hub of their political awareness. The anomaly of old age is that while the most senior age-sets are highly respected for their age and experience, they cease to have a clear role in community affairs once they lose credibility as a political force. Thus, the waning of ageing primates with increasing disability corresponds most closely to the retirement of the moran when their physical decline forces them out of their prized arena. While the elders’ regard this as a short-sighted view that overlooks the thrust and responsibilities of the next phase of their careers, there is a further The Maasai, the Samburu, and the Primate Model 33

parallel between the primate model and their ultimate destiny. This parallel concerns the social construction of old age, when elders are ultimately edged out of the arena of public affairs with an uncertain moral authority and no future. Clearly, this has relevance for the span of each age-set, linked to the age-set cycle of about 14-15 years, for the rules of the Maasai age system interact with the natural process of ageing. Figure 2.2 summarizes the argument indicating the two successive arenas in the course of active adult life among males, each with its own sub-culture. Four successive age-sets span the prime of moranhood, novice elderhood, the prime of ‘firestick’ patronage, and declining strength among retired patrons respectively, typically from about 15 years old until about 70. If the natural span of physical and political resilience were longer or shorter among the Maasai, then these rules would increase or reduce the typical span of 14-15 years.

boys moran novice ‘firestick’ ex-patrons ageing elders patrons of ex-moran elders (ex-moran) of moran

Figure 2.2: AgeF andigu there two2.2 male. Ag arenase and the two male arenas

2.4 The Maasai, the Samburu, and the Primate Model

The Maasai proper are closely related to the Samburu, and there are clear parallels in the relationship between moran and elders in each case. There is a similar exasperation among elders over the stock thieving by moran, amounting to a simmering fury over moran adulteries with their wives. There has also been a similar resistance to attempts by administrators to tame the moran by curtailing the age-set system. Significantly, the span of successive age-sets among Samburu does not appear to have altered throughout the twentieth century. Again, the average rate of polygyny is very close in both societies, implying a similar delay in the average age of marriage of moran when compared with the age of their brides (Figure 2.1). On the other hand, the rules of age organization are slightly different, and this is reflected in the data shown in Tables 2.1 and 2.2, which were collected among the Samburu, where the span of age-sets is slightly lower. 34 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai

The Samburu refer to the age-set of retired patrons as ‘fathers of moran’, since only from this point can their sons be initiated to become moran, while the sons of ‘firestick’ patrons have to wait a further age-set before being initiated. The Maasai do not have this restriction, whereas among the Samburu it highlights the distinction between ‘firestick’ patrons and their predecessors – the ex-patrons of ex-moran – whose sons may now be initiated. The Samburu ‘firestick’ patrons are expected to be disciplinarians, while the ‘fathers of moran’ are expected to assume the role of defending their ‘sons’ against the overzealous threats of the newly promoted firetick patrons and to use their greater experience to argue for moderating any punishments imposed by the new patrons on the new moran. Moranhood among the Samburu differs from the Maasai in three other significant ways. First, each Maasai age-set is divided into a senior (right-hand) side and a junior (left-hand), and this corresponds to a staggered process of advancement, with the right-hand taking an intermediate step towards elderhood and beginning to marry, even before the left-hand are initiated. The Samburu do not divide their age-sets between right- and left-hand sides, and there is no intermediate step for older moran, and this extends their ‘adolescence’ into their late twenties. Secondly, while Samburu moran espouse altruistic ideals of warrior integrity, they do not build warrior villages and lack the overshadowing demand of manyata discipline as an overarching virtue during their critical years of development. By contrast, Maasai manyat are dominated by ideals of age-set unity as the supreme virtue, reining in any streak of individualism, and they are encouraged by elders to resolve their differences by cultivating the art of debate. Any Maasai morani must attend all manyata debates and must obtain manyata permission before absenting himself for more than the odd night. Such intense experiences of peer-group discipline and loyalty are moderated among the Samburu, and their path towards elderhood is slower. Thirdly, clanship plays a major role in Samburu life. Villages and clusters of villages tend to be associated with particular clans, dispersed throughout the region. There is a background of mistrust between elders of different clans, and one of their tasks is to prevent the build up of local feuding among moran over issues of clan honour and prestige. Among the Maasai, on the other hand, moran of different clans share residence in the same manyata villages and are subject to manyata discipline, which precludes such feuding. It is his clan that guarantees each Samburu moran a wife eventually, whereas the marriage market is more competitive for Maasai moran and some never marry.8 Clan exogamy appears to have weakened among the Maasai

8 Table 2.1 shows the extent to which Samburu moran were not allowed to marry, whereas most of the unmarried elders were actually widowers who had previously married. Average polygyny rates are quite similar for the two societies, but there is greater variation among the (Matapato) Maasai (Spencer 1997: 88). The Maasai, the Samburu, and the Primate Model 35

during the twentieth century, and there is other evidence that there was a stronger sense of clanship amounting to a pecking order in clan rivalries in the past.9 It follows that Samburu moran are less disciplined than their Maasai counterparts. They are divided by clanship rivalries, they are without the finesse of manyata discipline, they are more footloose and less accountable to their age-set peers, and they may be compared more directly with outcast juveniles in the primate model. The differences between Maasai and Samburu in this respect are a matter of degree: Maasai moran too have brittle notions of honour, and rivalries between manyat may occasionally erupt in intense fighting. Again, cattle theft and reprisal raiding may occur across the sensitive borders that separate neighbouring tribal sections. The rivalries over the privileges of moranhood between Maasai moran and boys appear more severe than among the Samburu. This rivalry is repeated in elderhood when the novice elders harry their seniors for possession of the dominant ‘firestick’ patrons’ rung. The seniors resist this, for there is no distinct role for them once their moran protégés have become elders: there is only old age. Once they are displaced from their rung and lose credibility as a diminishing and ageing age-set, they experience humiliation and a sense of crisis, rather than a more gradual decline, as among Samburu, where they are respected as ‘fathers of moran’. Like retiring moran, ex-patrons among the Maasai proper feel that the integrity of their age-set has been damaged by confrontations with their immediate juniors, who should respect them. From this point, they are still respected for their age, but they have lost the political initiative to younger men; and as they lose the will to persist, they gradually retire from active political life. This appears to account for the slightly longer age-set cycle among the Maasai where ‘firestick’ patrons resist their impending retirement – as they did thirty years earlier as ageing moran. The span of adult activity seems to be similar to the Samburu, but the shift in the Maasai rules retards the changeover and there is a more pronounced sense of crisis as old age approaches. They may try to maintain some influence as assertive individuals, but they are cut off from political

9 Merker (1904: 79-80, 87, 97, 208-9) recorded that in precolonial times a clan that was numerically dominant within a district would assert its power over lesser clans. In settling any grievance or homic- ide, they would bias the outcome, paying less compensation or demanding more; their moran would display a clan emblem on their shields and take a larger share of the plunder after a raid; the principle of ‘Might comes before right’ generally prevailed. Merker also noted that duels between moran became more serious if they belong to different clans, leading to an affray between clans. Such affrays could occur among the Samburu in 1960, but they were incompatible with the ethos of manyata life among the Maasai in 1977. This raises two possibilities. First, the imposition of indirect colonial rule may have shifted this ethos away from settling local grievances by force. Or prior to that, there was the power of the iconic Prophet and warlord, Mbatian in the latter part of the nineteenth century. When Mbatian reorganized the Maasai into a concerted force to fight their Maa rivals, he may not only have persuaded different Maasai tribal sections to unite, but also he may have effectively curbed the divisiveness of clanship to underpin this unity. 36 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai life as an age-set with no clear role once they have lost their formal position and any effective support from the elders at large. The shift in emphasis is from a greater concern among Samburu ‘firestick’ patrons regarding control over delinquent moran, to an ambivalent mix of concern offset by an alliance between patrons and moran among Maasai proper, which is fanned by the rivalry between adjacent age-sets. This leaves the oldest men marginalized from the arena of community affairs, although still highly respected. The last few survivors of any age-set may reach the point where so many of their age mates have died that they feel that they have outlived their time, and they wholly disengage from public life. In this way, the firestick relationship develops during each age-set cycle with an emphasis on an alliance between patrons and moran during the period leading up to the change-over to a new cycle. This corresponds to rivalry between adjacent age-sets and this becomes particularly intense after the older boys have been initiated into a new age-set of moran. A significant cleavage within the age-set system now involves four age-sets: two rival sets of firestick patrons as well as two of moran, senior and junior. This lasts until the junior moran are able to wrest the privileges from their seniors, who now retire as novice elders. From this point, there is a certain loss of control over moran in mid-cycle, when rivalries between adjacent age-sets subside and moran delinquencies mount up. Figure 2.3 illustrates the shift in the major line of cleavage during this cycle.

______

RULING LATENT FIRESTICK FIRESTICK ALLIANCE ALLIANCE

Figure 2.3: Shifts in the line of cleavage during an age-set cycle

The Life-course of Women and the Quasi-matrifocal Network 37

This contrast between the lines of cleavage is a matter of degree and it is echoed in differences in emphasis from north to south. In the north where the Purko Maasai are the dominant tribal section, the firestick alliance prevails at an ideological level, but the manyata system ensures that the moran can assert considerable independence, and they posed an unresolved problem for the colonial administration. In the south where the Kisonko Maasai are dominant, the firestick alliance is stronger and the rivalry with the opposed (latent) firestick alliance is more intense at the time of change-over. The Kisonko model lays more stress on the opposition between age- sets, whereas the Purko model lays more stress on the opposition between age grades (moran vs. elders in general). Among the intervening tribal sections, there appears to be a balance between these themes, shifting from north to south with the oldest men more marginalized in the south. The Samburu in the far north are clearly associated with the northern pattern, although the moran pose a less intractable problem than among the Purko.10 Thus, as between Maasai and Samburu, it is the Samburu moran, with no restraining manyata organisation who appear closer to the primate model in terms of their extrusion from the community of adults. Whereas in terms of the loss of status in the process of ageing, it is the Maasai who correspond more closely to the primate model, especially in the south.

2.5 The Life-course of Women and the Quasi-matrifocal Network

Just as Maasai elders dominate age-set and community affairs collectively, so they control their wives and families individually within their own households. Women are treated as chattels for arranged polygynous marriages, where they are expected to produce sons as heirs and daughters for further arranged marriages. Apart from a mother’s continuing dependence on her sons, there is no matrifocal tendency in this practice, and even her unmarried moran sons assume authority when their father is absent, treating their mothers as dependants and referring to them as ‘children’ (inkera), a generic term for women in general. This sharp demarcation between male and female domains corresponds to quite different career profiles. A girl’s close link with her mother ends with her marriage. Neither mother nor daughter are consulted regarding the choice of husband as this

10 While there may be a historical explanation for this shifting emphasis of the firestick relationship between north and south, it cannot be explained in terms of contrasting colonial policies over the Maasai in Kenya (north) and Tanzania (south). Thus the Loitokitok are a Kenya branch of the Kisonko and their firestick relationship has its roots in Kisonko (south) and not in the northern (Purko) pattern. Similarly, the intermediate patterns refer to tribal sections that are in Kenya and were subject to Kenya colonial administration. 38 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai is not regarded as their business, and elders insist that women as ‘children’ simply would not understand. It is elders, they argue, whose knowledge and wisdom extends to arranging ‘good’ marriages. After consultation with other elders, a father can marry off his daughter when it suits him and on any pretext, especially if she causes trouble among moran. She may have a morani lover, but their relationship should end with her marriage: the freedom enjoyed by girls with their moran friends is seen as incompatible with the subservience demanded of a wife. The daughter’s marriage is to an elder who is normally two or more times her own age. She is brought up to accept a marital regime that will offer only a restricted range of opportunities and the prospect of widowhood at some point, with no possibility of divorce before then or of remarriage afterwards. Table 2.2 draws on the same sample as Table 2.1, estimating the ages of women from the age-set of their moran lovers before marriage. This indicates that probably more than one half of the women who had survived beyond the age of 40 were already widows, and this rose to 70% by the age of 50.

Table 2.2: Distribution of age differences between spouses (Samburu 1958).

Age range of Age range of living husbands (years) Widows Total living women women

17-30 31-41 42-56 57-69 70-86 87+

79+ 5 5 61-78 1 30 31 50-60 21 14 3 56 94 36-49 68 32 5 - 43 148 24-35 81 71 21 3 - 14 190 17-23 1 53 50 25 - - 2 131 Total 1 134 189 99 23 3 150 599

Marriage is a particularly bleak point in a Maasai girl’s life, but it is the first step towards building up her personal network of friendships which accumulates as her family grows and her children marry to produce children of their own. Following her marriage, a woman’s closest associates are typically her husband’s mother and her co-wives, and as she ages these will be replaced by the wives of her sons, none of whom should be her own kin. Not only is she deprived of her earlier maternal links and then her daughters as these are married off, but her ability to build up a network of friendships with women outside the family is disrupted by their nomadic lifestyle in which each migration is determined by the elder of each individual household, changing the configuration of neighbours with each move. It is the men as family heads who make decisions to migrate and may choose to live near friends of their own choosing. The Life-course of Women and the Quasi-matrifocal Network 39

Women must operate within this male dominated regime. To the extent that there are underlying patterns and preferences in her husband’s nomadic choices, these provide a framework within which she can build up a more extensive network of her own in the longer-term. There may be sporadic reunions as nomadic paths converge, extending even to past family links with her mother or married daughters as the opportunity arises. The scope for maintaining these friendships is enhanced by periodic festivities that attract women from over a wide area, notably weddings. An exception to this routine occurs when a woman is co-opted to her moran son’s manyata village for up to seven years. There, she is under the authority of the body of manyata moran until they take a step towards elderhood at their eunoto ceremony, when she shaves off her son’s moran hair. She then is accompanied back to her husband’s home, and is once again under his authority. However, the manyata episode is also an opportunity to extend her network to other manyata mothers-of-moran, sharing a particularly vivid and proud experience with these for the rest of their lives.

Plate II: A Maasai mother-of-moran shaves off her son’s hair at his eunoto (1977) 40 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai

A woman’s future hinges on her ability to bear children that survive into adulthood, for once she is a widow, she looks to her married sons for support. As her remaining children grow and especially with widowhood, the restrictions of her reproductive years are eased. She acquires a new freedom to consolidate and expand her network among women and through her married children. In this way, the life career of women displays a certain reversal compared with that of men. While men peak in the prime of youth and again in the prime of middle-age, women start from a depressed point at marriage, when they rely heavily on the support of other women. However, there is a steady rise in their confidence and network as they have increasing scope for giving support to others, notably their sons’ growing families, and this continues into old age, whereas the networks of men tend to tail off after the prime of their middle-age. A man’s ‘peer-group’ is his age-set, which shares the fragility of ageing. For a woman, her ‘peer-group’ is her evolving personal network that spreads across the spectrum of ages and remains resilient as she grows old. Male elders tend to become more passive and docile once their age-set has been edged out of the political arena by younger men. With widowhood especially, women may become more autonomous, confident and even dominant within the community of women, enjoying a freedom that was denied them before middle-age. The exclusion of women from male dominated affairs creates a niche for the separate involvement of women in their own networks in the process of child-rearing and mutual support. These display a quasi-matrifocal slant in which a woman’s mother-in-law substitutes for her own mother, and her daughters-in-law substitute for her daughters, but the similarity with primate behaviour lies more in the female bonds of support within an extended domestic domain, transcending the disruptions caused by the dominance of their men-folk. The persistence of these women’s networks contrasts with the more dramatic ebb and flow of fortune in the male political arena. For males, active adult life is sandwiched between the anomalies of adolescence and of old age. They are in a stronger position during their active years, but as they grow old they find themselves increasingly marginalized. For females, there are disruptions due first to their marriages arranged by their fathers and then to the unquestioned authority and nomadic whims of their husbands. However, in the longer-term there is continuity, building up with each successive child in a sustained network of support. By the time a married woman emerges as a granny, she will have moved many times, renewed many friendships, and had a good chance of establishing herself as a pillar of the women’s domain wherever she goes. Unlike her husband, from a position of subservience at marriage, she reaches her full potential in old age. Conclusion: The Nature and Culture of Ageing 41

2.6 Conclusion: The Nature and Culture of Ageing

The perception of personal development as a civilizing process, from the uninhibited innocence of childhood through a series of stages of socialization, is widespread. However, to compare this with the life-course of non-human primates and to invoke Darwin’s view of the primeval family, as I have done here, is to imply some evolutionary parallel whereby the childhood experience of growing up replicates the development of human society, rising out of its most primitive biological origins. This was a common theme in nineteenth century theories of social evolution, inspired in part by a moralistic concern over promiscuity, and based on the premise that the transition from primitive savagery, like the upbringing of children, was a process of cognitive development (E. B. Tylor), increasing altruism (Herbert Spencer), and redemption (John McLennan), leading towards the emergence of modern humans (and notably educated males) as the dominant species commanding the moral high-ground.11 Freud followed this line of argument when he embellished Darwin’s model of a primeval hominid ancestor defending his captive horde of wives before he was overthrown by his sons as rivals, whose sense of guilt led to the development of conscience. Freud too used a metaphor of upbringing (the oedipal socialization of the child) to hypothesize the transformation of humanity from nature to culture. In these various models, the Hobbesian dilemma – that personal self-interest undermines collaboration – is averted by a higher moral awareness. The possibility of competition for power based on self-interest remains, but with cognitive and emotional development it is displaced to a more altruistic level, where it is subject to a social discourse instead of endemic violence. In an attempt to pitch this argument at a deeper level, Lévi-Strauss attributed the superiority of culture over nature in tribal societies to institutions of exogamy that transcend the family as a biological unit and lift it above a natural tendency towards inbreeding.12 Because it is men who almost invariably control the exchange of women in marriage, and it is the women who have a natural capacity to reproduce and nurture their offspring, this approach has been summarized as:

nature : culture :: women : men

In a neat twist to this formula, Sherry Ortner has pointed out that during the process of childcare, it is the women who transform ‘animal-like infants into cultured beings’. Thus women should not be equated with nature as such, but should be seen as the principal intermediaries between nature and culture. They perform a vital role in perpetuating culture that is more than merely biological.13 This effectively shifts the

11 Spencer, H. 1850; McLennan 1865; Tylor 1871; Freud 1913. 12 Levi-Strauss 1969: 62-3, 479. 13 Ortner 1974: 84; Levi-Strauss 1966: 128. 42 The Natural Substructure of Age-set Systems and the Social Construction of Ageing among Maasai nature-culture dimension from a matter of gender to one of ageing. It is children who are closest to a state of nature. In other words, this returns us to the earlier theme without the evolutionary speculation:

nature : culture :: children : adults

The argument in this chapter has followed a similar path, but projecting it beyond the formative years of childhood to successive stages in the adult world. Starting with evidence of the behaviour of non-human primates, this draws attention to a broad distribution of power with age, based on physical strength and according to gender. In human society, however, the social environment is transformed from one that relies on narrow self-interest, physical ability, and internecine competition for survival, as Hobbes perceived it, to one that relies on a consensus. The comparison poses the stark contrast between short-term physical solutions that would favour the strongest in their prime, and collective solutions that hold greater security in the longer-term for everyone. Ultimate power shifts from fully grown young males displaying their natural abilities and towards older men who have to impose a moral authority on each new generation in order to maintain their position. This is to redirect attention from the nineteenth century premise of civilization as an achievement of contemporary society to an ideal that is achieved with age as social skills build up with collective experience, imposing an ethical superstructure on any natural display of youthful energy. It is a premise that is strikingly illustrated by a group of very age-conscious and male-dominated societies in East Africa, among whom the Maasai are broadly typical. The primate model has a physical parallel with the career of an age-set as it passes into and out of ‘warriorhood’. However, this leads on to a second career that echoes the profile of the first but follows a more diplomatic trajectory, maturing later, lasting longer, and generating a climate of ultimate authority. It is those whose physical strength is waning that have most to gain, and the basis of their success is the development of human institutions that they control. The institution of age organisation is at the core of this work. Tradition in the hands of older men is an instrument of power and of vested interest. The evidence of the primate model suggests closer parallels with the physical peaking in youth and hence a stronger element of nature at that end of the life-course. The wisdom of middle-age is further from nature and hence is particularly subject to cultural variables. Among gerontocracies, such as the Maasai, tradition in general is a powerful tool wielded by older people – notably men – claiming the moral high- ground against the insolent subversions of younger people – notably youths. In the process of ageing, the exuberance of youth and the dilemmas of frailty in old age are very general, and in illuminating these in a particularly striking way, this example raises issues that have a more general relevance in other cultures. 3 Stratification and Social Mobility: Patterns of Inequality among Maasai and Hindus1

East African pastoralists on both sides of Lake Victoria share a broad tradition of the northern origins of tall light-skinned ancestors who drifted southwards and came into contact with dark-skinned Bantu agriculturalists with different physical characteristics. In these traditions, those pastoralists who settled to the west of Lake Victoria imposed themselves as the ruling elites of ethnically stratified kingdoms. Among the Ruanda, for instance, Jacques Maquet identified four strata.2 These were firstly the ruling dynasty who claimed divine origin, secondly Tutsi pastoralists who provided the army and an aristocratic elite, thirdly Bantu Hutu agriculturalists who formed the majority of the population, and finally scattered Twa hunter-gatherers who were the aboriginal inhabitants of this area. The historical accuracy of this tradition is open to question, given the apparent degree of cross-breeding between these strata and the elitist influence of colonial rule prior to Maquet’s study. However, the tradition was widespread among other kingdoms of the region,3 and it provides an alternative model of stratification to that of the Maasai. On the other side of Lake Victoria, the plains towards the East African coast were ideal for cattle rearing, and successive waves of pastoralists from the north asserted their military superiority by edging one another out to take control of this valuable niche. The Maasai appear to have been the most recent wave of pastoral immigrants to occupy the area before this ethnic succession was frozen by the incoming colonial authorities at the end of the nineteenth century. Unlike Tutsi pastoralists in Ruanda, the Maasai held themselves aloof. Such links as they developed with their agricultural and hunter-gathering neighbours tended to be tenuous and sporadic rather than institutionalised. Their social order was based on a democratic principle according to men’s age rather than on any notion of ethnic descent. Rather than compare the Maasai age system with stratification in the inland kingdoms of East Africa, I propose here to direct my discussion to the classical Hindu system, offering a more reliable and wider variety of themes for comparison. This relies primarily on Louis Dumont’s detailed analysis (1972), which suggests some

1 This chapter is an abridged and revised version of the English original that was translated into French and published as ‘Homo Hierarchicus et Homo Ascendens’ in Abéles, M. and Collard, C. (eds.), 1985, Age, Pouvoir et Société en Afrique Noire, Karthala, Paris. (pp. 171-195). I am grateful to Karthala Presse for permission to draw on this here. 2 Maquet 1961: 10-12, 109, 124-5 3 Southall 1953: 5-6; Fallers 1956: 27-30; Hertefelt, 1962; Taylor 1969: 13-16; Beattie 1971: 23-26. Smith (1992: 77-98) outlines the archaeological evidence for the expansion of pastoralism into East Africa from the north.

© 2014 Paul Spencer This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. 44 Stratification and Social Mobility: Patterns of Inequality among Maasai and Hindus

fundamental parallels despite his claim concerning the incomparable uniqueness of the Hindu system and the fact that his attempt at cross-cultural comparison is confined to the contrast between Indian and Western – homo hierarchicus and homo aequalis – leaving other forms of social stratification outside his scheme. This is to use comparison as an analytical tool in its own right, showing how a number of component parts of Dumont’s model can be rearranged, rather like pieces of a jigsaw, with the addition of some new pieces. This leads to a model of a very different type of society where age organisation is as important to an understanding as varna and caste are in India. While the Maasai are considered as my prime example of age stratification, the argument could extend to other age-based societies in region more generally, including the Samburu.

3.1 Comparing Incomparables

Initial comparison provides a contrast of principles. As a first approximation, caste in India involves a system of stratified groups characterised by fundamental immobility. From the male point of view, every man is constrained during his lifetime to remain with his caste group at the level into which he was born. Whereas age organisation entails a system of stratified groups with inevitable mobility – every man who lives long enough is promoted systematically with his age peers from the lowest group at initiation to the most senior, rather as classmates in a school are systematically promoted through successive grades as an undifferentiated group. To revert to the earlier analogy, each age-set of peers may be seen as passing in a queue up a ladder, and each rung is identified with a certain status or age grade (warrior, elder, etc). It is when one turns from the fundamental contrast between caste and age systems to the elaborations of each system, that one may also discern some intriguing parallels. The argument, then, is not that age organisation in East Africa should be regarded as a ‘caste’ system, but rather that it is an alternative type of hierarchy in which men ascend in their own lifetime, and it deserves as full a consideration in its own right as others have devoted to the caste system in India. In the first instance, one may compare varna – the basic divisions of the Hindu hierarchy – with age grades among such East African societies as the Maasai. For Dumont, varna is an ideal type, a model that is universal throughout Hindu society and provides the ideological firmament upon which the caste system developed with regional and local variations. Its structure is expressed through a set of ascending binary oppositions that distinguishes each level from its superiors in terms of increasing purity: the Untouchables were outside the classical varna and their superiors were all inside; at the next level, the Shudras featured in the classical system, but contrasted with their superiors in having no ‘dominion over animals’ and Comparing Incomparables 45

not being ‘twice born’; at the next level the Vaishyas enjoyed these privileges, but had no ‘dominion over men’, and so on.4 Age grades in East Africa may be similarly characterised by a ranked series of oppositions. Uninitiated boys are regarded as untamed and outside the age system. They only place their foot on the bottom rung of the age ladder at initiation. The Karimojong (distant neighbours of the Maasai) provide a striking example where an extended delay in initiations led to a serious build-up of lawlessness among ‘boys’ who could not be controlled by their seniors. It was this crisis that precipitated the initiations that brought them into the system and more firmly under the control of the elders. They were now actually on the age ladder.5 Among Maasai, boys as individuals are the principal and trusted family herders, but when they meet in pairs or small groups, they are popularly characterized as liars, thieves, and lacking any sense of respect. No boy would be allowed to control the cattle he inherits from his dead father until his initiation into warriorhood as a morani. From this point, he is at least on the lowest rung of the age ladder and may manage his own inherited stock. Associated with the glamour of warriorhood, he is expected to cultivate a certain finesse and a sense of responsibility and is under the more direct control of the elders. In Dumontian language, a morani enters fully into the system, and he acquires a qualified ‘dominion over animals’, which is denied to uninitiated boys. However, he is still structurally opposed to the elders on the higher rungs, who may marry and shoulder domestic responsibility. As a warrior, a morani remains a bachelor associated with the bush and he avoids the elders’ villages in specific ways. Further elaborations of the system expressed as a series of structured oppositions will become evident in the course of the argument. At this stage, I would simply note that the more elaborate ceremonies for which the Maasai are renowned may be regarded as transitional rites that mark promotions up the ladder and a transformation across some binary opposition: boys leave boyhood on initiation to become moran, and so on. However, unlike herd ownership, the task of herding cuts across the age and sex divisions of Maasai society. The small Maasai herdboy learning his craft among the calves close to the village, moran visiting their father’s homestead, elderly men meeting their homecoming herds in the evening – and even women when necessity demands – may all share in this domain. This compares directly with agriculture in India, which is accessible to virtually everyone because it has a ritually neutral position and no association with impurity.6

4 Dumont 1972: 106 5 Dyson-Hudson 1966: 198-9 6 Dumont 1972: 137 46 Stratification and Social Mobility: Patterns of Inequality among Maasai and Hindus

3.2 Maasai Concepts of Purity

Dumont’s analysis hinges on the Hindu concept of purity as the ideological base of their caste system, which extended to a sophisticated division of labour. This is not an unfamiliar concept among the Maasai. Their blacksmith families were despised for the filth of their occupation and they were segregated in separate villages, intermarrying among themselves. However, they comprised only a fraction of one-percent of the Maasai population, and to this extent their position can hardly be compared with more fully developed Hindu caste system where untouchables occupied a similar pariah status. Beyond this, the division of labour associated with Hindu caste distinctions was of a quite different order to that found among the Maasai, where it was confined solely to the distinction between nomadic pastoralists and settled blacksmiths in an otherwise undifferentiated society. The notion of purity does not define the Maasai age system. However, it does have an oblique relevance. Among adult Maasai men, and especially among moran, there is a general distaste of domestic filth associated with married women. Women are felt to contaminate meat when they prepare it in their huts, and they are allocated certain cuts that are generally despised by men. Child-bearing women in particular are thought to smell, partly because of the fat that they smear on their bodies, but especially from the excreta of their infants which foul their cloths. In the months following birth, this pollution is exaggerated by the custom that prohibits mother and child from washing, and this practice is repeated in the months following initiations for either sex. In this state, they are what may be described as ‘ritual weaklings’, especially vulnerable to vaguely defined dangers, and yet enjoying a unique closeness to God and a divine protection. There is a general belief that to wash during this period would wash away this protection and expose them to unnecessary danger. Thus at the most polluted end of a scale of purity, one has the notion of weakness, vulnerability, and ritual separateness. At the other end, the extreme of purity encompasses the ideal of moranhood. The association of the moran with the bush is partly expressed as an avoidance of the pollution of married women and ritual weaklings, especially where eating meat is concerned. Moran would not eat meat that has been seen by a married woman, and wives are expected to avoid areas where they might stumble across a group of feasting moran. Girls may accompany the moran, but they must keep their bodies and their cloths fresh and uncontaminated from the sort of organic by-products that pollute married women. It is sometimes said that the mere smell of a married woman would make a moran want to vomit. There is an underlying contradiction in this ideal of purity. Moran are popularly held to have a penchant for adultery and hence for the most intimate bodily contact with married women. This is a controversial issue, thoroughly disliked by the elders, and despised by the girls who resent this hypocrisy among their boyfriends, and they will spurn the adulterers if they find out. Not every moran indulges in this polluting pursuit, and those who wish to display the supreme virtues of warriorhood will avoid married Maasai Concepts of Purity 47

women in every respect, and even avoid less fastidious moran, claiming that they can smell the bodily contamination of their adulterous colleagues. These pure or chaste moran prefer to keep their own sweet smelling company, and even try to avoid intimate contact with their girls, sleeping beside them, but separated by a log. They associate their chaste and unadulterated purity with virility in war. The romantic self-gratifying adulterer cannot at the same time sport himself as the supreme, renouncing warrior. With the advent of elderhood, when men marry and reconcile themselves to a measure of domestic pollution, those with more pride never quite relax into this condition, and all of them retain a certain aversion for meat cooked by women. However, they can no longer claim the purity of warriorhood nor its physical supremacy ever again. The profile of pollution for each sex is represented diagrammatically in Chart 3.1 with reference to a scale of ‘purity’, with boys and old women somewhere in the sexless middle of this range.

Chart 3.1: Maasai notions of purity associated with age and sex.

MALE DOMAIN FEMALE DOMAIN

Pure chaste moran (true warriors)

moran who associate with girls girls (who associate with moran)

adulterous moran

↑

(boys) (old women)

↓ Elders who freely cohabit with sexually active wives married women

Polluted male ritual weaklings (infants female ritual weaklings (infants, and initiates) initiates, and their mothers)

In this diagram, the path along the pure-polluted scale for either sex in the course of a lifetime would trace out a series of loops (from infancy to boyhood, back to initiation, up to warriorhood, and so on). In terms of relative status there is a clear pattern whereby purity is associated with physical strength. Those moran with the strongest claims to warriorhood are at the summit; and at the other extreme are the weakest and most vulnerable sectors of society who are treated as ritual weaklings. Blacksmiths and their wives and families might also be placed at the foot of this chart. However, this polluted status relates to their craft and not to age, and it can only be reversed over several generations when their descendants abandon blacksmithery. 48 Stratification and Social Mobility: Patterns of Inequality among Maasai and Hindus

This scale is reflected in a variety of associated beliefs. With reference to Maasai concepts of health and disease, there is a prevalent notion that illness can be cured by purgatives and emetics to discharge the polluting substance from ones inner system. In this way, invalids, another weak and vulnerable sector of society, are felt to have some impurity that has to be discharged. At the other end of the scale, the moran are highly regarded for maintaining their inner systems in a constant state of expurgation by means of various roots they put into their soups, and they are regarded as the most evacuated and uncontaminated sector of society. Expressed in religious terms, this scale is reflected in a widespread convention in warfare that extends to other language groups in the area and is probably unique in its extensiveness in the region. This is a tenet that no warrior should kill a ritual weakling – that is any initiate or a nursing mother and her child or any women who might be pregnant. To do so would be to face the threat of unending disaster: they are protected by God. It is once again an opposition between the dangers of the bush, primarily associated with the warriors, and the protection of the village to which ritual weaklings and human reproduction tend to be confined. At a very pragmatic level, one has a cluster of beliefs that serve to protect the weakest sector of society on whom the future rests, and to keep amorous moran away from receptive wives. It is the elders, with most to gain from peace and warrior chastity, who are the principal guardians and propagators of these traditions. The Maasai of each tribal section have their own Prophet to advise them on ritual precautions to thwart sorcery, notably by some unbelievably perverted elder. In the past, it was held to be the successful Prophets who were behind the successes of moran in their raiding. The link between these persists, and the Prophet now requires moran to help him root out the sorcerers. Moran are pure and gregarious, and they would never be suspected of sorcery: the image of a sorcerer is one of utter isolation. However, like the grazing cattle given to the Prophet, moran are held to imbibe the secrets of the bush and of sorcerers hidden in the bush as they traverse their manyata territory in all directions. They are too pure to understand these mysteries, but the secrets of these mysteries are revealed in their singing before the Prophet, enabling him to advise his clients on ritual matters. In terms of the scale of purity, disgruntled sorcery is located towards the bottom of the scale, while holding it in check is located towards the top, associated with the innocent ‘play’ of moran.

3.3 The Two Arenas as Alternative Modes of Production

The purity of the moran and their association with warriorhood is reminiscent of the Kshatriya caste who could claim ‘dominion over all creatures’ – except the Brahmans at the summit of the Hindu hierarchy. Certainly, the Kshatriya elite correspond broadly with the Tutsi, who held a similar military and administrative role in Ruanda. However, among the Maasai this combination of roles is divided between two sets of The Two Arenas as Alternative Modes of Production 49

values associated respectively with the arenas shown in Figure 2.2: warriorhood and short-term gains, as opposed to elderhood and long-term interests. Military prowess is associated with past claims to glory, and it remains an ideal in Maasai self-presentation. Rather than posit some ‘pastoral mode of production’, which has always proved elusive, it is useful to identify two modes with contrasting notions of property and relations through property: a predatory mode that relies relying on cattle raiding, and a herding mode that relies on peaceful husbandry. The analysis then hinges on the articulation between these two modes, notably the defence of their herds from raiders which is a prime responsibility of the manyat warrior villages. So far as the pre-colonial scene was concerned, there is little doubt that the Maasai were successful predators; however peaceful husbandry would appear to have been a more efficient manner of increasing their herds. At a guess, each morani would have had to acquire 20 cattle each year to compare with the more successful years of peaceful breeding, whereas it would have been a quite outstanding warrior who managed to acquire even half that number by raiding in his whole career as a morani.7 In fact, while the image of predatory Maasai moran evidently dominated the wider region during the nineteenth century, most of our knowledge of that time concerns their civil wars, when the gains of one Maasai tribal section would have been the losses of another, and the overall benefits of warfare for the Maasai as a whole would have cancelled each other out. Altogether more significant would have been the role of the moran as diligent defenders of their own territories and herds, and it is this role that is stressed by the Maasai today. It seems that the predatory mode of production, especially at times of famine, epidemic and territorial expansion, would have cast the moran as controllers of the means of production and would have diminished the status of elderhood. Certainly, at times of unrest, the elders had less than firm control over the moran. However, in terms of its material promise, it appears to have been the herding mode of production that was dominant through peaceful husbandry. It was clearly the elders who asserted their control both as stock owning household heads and as the puppeteers of the age system. The moran, it is true, regarded their defensive role as vital in this mode; but the elders’ ready response was that they too had fulfilled this role in their time, and without them there would now be neither territory nor herds to defend. If the moran could claim to share in the ‘dominion over animals’, and even to have a commanding position when it came to captured animals, it was the established elders who had sole claim to ‘dominion over all creatures’, that is over their wives and children as household heads, and over the age-set of moran through the firestick

7 Using data collected among the Samburu (Spencer 1965:320, 1973:10), I estimate that each fully active age-group of moran (ie. right or left-hand side) would comprise about 6% of the total population. With, say, about 12 cattle per person and a maximum growth rate through husbandry of about 10% p.a., the natural growth rate per active moran would be 12 x 10% ÷ 6%, or 20 cattle per year. 50 Stratification and Social Mobility: Patterns of Inequality among Maasai and Hindus

relationship. In the hierarchy of symbolic oppositions, this places firestick patrons on a par with the Kshatriyas of the Hindu system.8 Thus, just as it is not possible to equate Maasai concepts of purity with Hindu purity, so one must avoid equating Maasai moran parading their privileges with the Kshatriyas as an equivalent warrior stratum whose legitimacy to rule relied on superior force. It is the Maasai elders and not the moran that form the ruling elite with judicial authority, wealth, and control over the dominant mode of production to an extent that the moran with their subsidiary mode only rivalled in legend. Whatever the articulation between these two modes may have been in the unsettled past, the authority of the firestick patrons remains a central theme of the major age rituals of the present. In other words, age-set ceremonies tend to focus on the unquestioned and ultimate power of the older men, imposing their will on young men in their physical prime, taming them by degrees into elderhood. There is a moral boundary between the two modes, as between rungs on the age ladder, which is bridged through ritual – under the control of elders.

3.4 Rivalries between Adjacent Age-sets

In considering parallels between the two societies further, it is necessary to extend the discussion from age grades to age-sets, and from varna to caste.9 As a reasonable approximation one may point out that:

age-set : age grade :: caste : varna.

Up to this point, the Maasai system has been presented primarily in terms of age grades, in other words as rungs on the age ladder that provide the hierarchy of statuses for age-sets of men as they climb upwards. Most societies have some form of age grading. Where there are age-sets, however, then this implies that people (males in this instance) pass up from rung to rung as groups in succession, and not separately as individuals at different speeds. It is the existence of age-sets among the Maasai that makes them so readily comparable with the castes of the Hindu system; and beyond this there are the corresponding divisions into sub-age-sets and sub- castes and local variations. One may first consider the distribution of power. Dumont notes that a man can only hold uncontested authority in relation to inferior castes. Within a caste, there is an ideal of equality that does not preclude the factionalism noted in various Indian studies. The premise of equality is also basic to the concept of age-set unity among the Maasai, with an emphasis on sharing food especially in moranhood and even

8 Dumont 1972: 107 9 Dumont 1972: 112 Rivalries between Adjacent Age-sets 51

extending in elderhood to certain sexual rights in each other’s wives. Factionalism as such is not a marked characteristic of age-sets in elderhood, although among the moran at least, there is a certain competition for prestige and the occasional eruption of feuding. However between age-sets, as between castes, the senior can always claim a higher status and authority.10 This authority, however, may never be wholly conceded between adjacent age- sets and a residual rivalry between such age-sets may be compared with local rivalry between adjacent sub-castes in India. Unlike the caste system, there can be no question of one age-set jostling its predecessor for seniority, but a similar ambiguity exists. From different positions on the age ladder, it is as if they are kicking at one another for moral advantage and for possession of the rungs rather than seeking to draw level or to overtake. A good example of this occurs when boys try to harry the moran for the privileges of moranhood. Then as youths after initiation onto the lowest rung, they covet the privileges attached to the second rung, while the moran who sport the privileges refuse to be harried for as long as possible. When the moran retire from the limelight as outworn warriors and become novice elders, the rivalry with their successors does not end at this point. Because moran respect their immediate predecessors less than more senior men, they are less discreet in their adulteries. Suspicion and fury build up among the novice elders who become increasingly aware that their successors are still harrying them by trespassing on their domain, seducing wives who were previously lovers of the moran before being snatched away in marriage. Rivalry between adjacent age-sets persists into elderhood. While the novice elders resent the trespassing moran, they are poised to challenge the authority of their adjacent seniors who, as ‘firestick’ patrons of the moran, occupy a commanding rung higher up the ladder. The more they can discredit the competence of these patrons to control the moran the more convincing their desire to speed the movement of age-sets up the ladder. Thus, while age-sets do not degenerate into factionalism after moranhood, relations between adjacent age-sets are characterized by respect for seniority tinged with suspicion, jealousy, barely concealed abuse, and even veiled gossip hinting at sorcery. A pattern that was established when the boys first filched the privileges of moranhood persists. As youths they eventually snatch the privileges of moranhood from their seniors; as moran they seduce the seniors’ wives; and then as novice elders they still regard themselves as more virile in challenging the competence of their seniors on the firestick patrons’ rung. The idiom of respected elderhood as opposed to virile warriorhood is expressed in a variety of domains. Ritual belief points to the power of age seniority associated with a potent curse, but also to the vulnerability of old age and avoidances that are haunted by the fear of premature senility. In gossip, there is on the one hand the

10 Dumont 1972: 207, 228-9 52 Stratification and Social Mobility: Patterns of Inequality among Maasai and Hindus

constant grumbling at the gross disrespect shown by ‘boys’ and ‘moran’ as terms that may be applied disparagingly to any male younger than the speaker. On the other hand, there is a recurrent joke depicting some trivial incident in which the butt is imitated with a high piping voice, like some bewildered old man, losing control, losing his head, and hence losing face. These two idioms are the thesis and antithesis of daily life, and apply especially to relations between adjacent age-sets. More specifically, there are two rungs of moranhood on the age ladder: the lower rung is occupied by the age-set of initiated youths who are still denied the privileges of moranhood; and the upper rung is occupied by the age-set of senior moran who parade these privileges. Correspondingly, there are two age-sets of firestick patrons responsible for these age-sets of moran, junior and senior, and these occupy adjacent rungs higher up the ladder. In the course of the age-set cycle, rivalry between these age-sets becomes marked when each of these rungs is occupied by an age-set, with junior moran harrying senior moran, and junior firestick patrons harrying senior firestick patrons. Once the junior moran seize the privileges, promoting themselves onto the next rung and forcing the senior moran to climb up to novice elderhood, the more senior age-sets of elders step up to the next rung. From this point, the rungs associated with junior moran and junior firestick patrons remain unoccupied and rivalries between age-sets become dormant until the next age-set cycle (Figure 2.3). This pattern varies between tribal sections and appears especially a characteristic of southern Maasai more generally, with rivalries between age-sets that encourage a tacit alliance between moran and their firestick patrons – a ‘firestick alliance’ defending their positions on the ladder. This is so intense among the Kisonko Maasai in the south that each firestick alliance has a separate Prophet to protect them from the sorcery of the other during periods of change-over. Whereas in the north (and among the Samburu), there is a closer adherence to a gerontocratic model that focuses especially on a contest between age grades and the problem of controlling the moran. Here, the firestick patrons assume their role as feared disciplinarians on behalf of all elders rather than as natural allies of their moran protégés in the jostling between age-sets. Paraphrasing Dumont: ‘Each [age-set] will try to manipulate this situation to its own advantage, but other [age-sets] may be of a different opinion.’ While with regard to the total pattern: ‘It can be seen that a fundamental opposition which is conceived as the essence of a whole series of concrete distinctions really underlies the hierarchical order.’11 The present analysis takes the argument one step further by extending the principle of opposition beyond focusing on a single polarised ideology to a model in which there is interplay between two ideologies that are opposed as inversions of one another. It presents a pattern which among the Maasai highlights

11 Dumont 1972: 81, 95-6 Status, Power, and the Premise of Respect 53

the contradictions of ageing, for youths on the one hand and for mature elders on the other.

3.5 Status, Power, and the Premise of Respect

The principal thrust of Dumont’s argument relates to the separation of status and power in the Hindu system. The Brahmanic priests rise above the jostling for power at lower levels, and in this respect they may be compared with the oldest Maasai men who retain a venerable status as the prime repositories of Maasai tradition and have the most potent general blessing. They also have an informed detachment that often gives an air of absolute wisdom to their advice. Maasai is a society where one can speak of the charisma of old age. Just as Dumont suggests that the Brahman transcends the administration of this world and by detaching himself from power and the murk of politics, legitimizes his own superior status, so the oldest Maasai men, whose age-set has retired from active participation in local affairs, enjoy a similarly enhanced status.12 Thus while Dumont notes the separation and subordination of power to status as though it is an unusual features that characterises the caste system, this feature also applies to the Maasai. To Dumont’s argument, one might perhaps add that at each level, the seniors seek to maintain status superiority over their juniors, only to find themselves obliged to fight in a power struggle that belies their claim to status. Only when they finally and irrevocably lose in the struggle for power with the onset of old age do they acquire an incontrovertibly superior status. Returning, then, to the ideological base of the Maasai system, one may say that their concept of purity (Chart 3.1) is closely associated with the predatory mode of production in which the moran have a commanding role, and while this may not have been the dominant mode traditionally, it retains its glamour. In so much as the herding mode of production was dominant, one has to turn to a different ideological base that underpins the primacy of elderhood and it is this mode that bears the more striking comparison and contrast with Dumont’s analysis. This is illustrated in Chart 3.2 . If it is necessary to begin with the ideological premise of purity in order to understand the Hindu varna, then in order to understand the dominant Maasai model one has to begin with the premise of respect. The Brahman transcends the remainder of society by having greatest purity, while the oldest men among the Maasai are held to have the most respect. This is no mere façade of ‘respectability’. Rather it is envisaged as an ingrained ‘sense of respect’ which leads older men in particular to respect one another and their social obligations generally, and

12 Dumont 1972: 114, 212 54 Stratification and Social Mobility: Patterns of Inequality among Maasai and Hindus

Chart 3.2: Ranked scales of status among the Maasai and Hindus.

MAASAI SYSTEM HINDU SYSTEM

Age-set feature Status ranking Caste feature Status ranking

Supreme respect Oldest surviving age- Supreme purity Brahmans as priests sets

[Jostling between ‘Firestick’ patrons [Local jostling between Kshatriyas as rulers adjacent age-sets adjacent sub-castes] Novice elders Vaishyas during change-over] Moran Shudras Gross disrespect Boys [excluded from Wholly polluted Untouchables the age- set system] [excluded from the caste system]

envelops them in an aura of greatness that elicits the respect of all other sectors of society. To say in Maasai that an old man has ‘respect’ (enkanyit) is synonymous with saying that ‘he is great’ (e-kitok). It is the oldest Maasai that are held to be closest to God; and following a decision at any formal meeting of elders, it is a survivor of the most senior age-set present who leads the blessing. The two poles of the Hindu system of extreme purity and extreme pollution are associated with the Brahmans and the Untouchables respectively. In the Maasai example, the two poles of extreme respect and extreme disrespect are associated with unflappable old age and untameable boyhood. The two intellectual systems, which in other ways have so little in common, are both in a sense pegged down firmly at their two extremes, while the dynamics of day to day existence, the political and economic realities, which are secondary for Dumont, take place in the jostling for position in the middle.13

13 Dumont 1972: 38, 84, 115; Bailey 1957: 266-7. One is reminded of André Gunder Frank’s (1967) analysis of underdevelopment in South America, in which the system of exploitation and rebellion is perpetuated by the power of international capitalists at the top and the sheer impotence of impoverished peasants at the very bottom. Between these extremes is the fruitless struggle among middle classes who can never surmount the basic system of inequality. Conclusion: Fundamental Structures and the Premise of Holism 55

3.6 Conclusion: Fundamental Structures and the Premise of Holism

This comparison between the Maasai and Hindu political systems is an attempt to discern similarities at a deeper structural level, suggesting a more fundamental model of stratification. The obvious contrast between a social system that was essentially immobile and one that had a programmed mobility built into its very core corresponds to two very different premises of inequality: by age and by descent, each strung along a ladder from top to bottom. Jostling for position on the Maasai age ladder challenges the principle of gerontocratic order, just as jostling on the Hindu caste ladder challenges the principle of ranking and suggests the possibility of a degree of mobility. However, the fact that it is as age-sets and as castes and not as individuals that they jostle confirms the basic hierarchical divisions of each society. Again, the fact that the highest status in each case is firmly pegged on the highest rung of the ladder and that the most despised status is firmly pegged even below the lowest rung provide an overarching perspective to the jostling on the intermediate rungs. They give the jostling a sense of purpose, sustaining the principles on which each ideology is based. The premise of caste hierarchy in the Hindu case and of gerontocracy in the Maasai case underpin the relevance of the jostling for position, which in turn heightens the awareness and importance of status. Along the Maasai ladder, there is no struggle for the rung occupied by the novice elders while they seek to build up their families and herds. They are in a quiescent period following the struggles for retaining the prime of moranhood, and they are not yet poised for the struggle for firestick patronage. On the other hand, the jostling in the arena of moranhood is so intense that it provides an alternative premise, highlighting the virtue of force over that of diplomacy as a political instrument. While in the longer term, it is the elders’ arena and the premise of age inequality that ultimately dominates, there is a third ideology that is becoming increasingly important. This focuses on the wealth of individual elders, whether by luck, good herd management, or opportunism. Wealth is coveted, while the self-induced poverty of wastrels is despised. This is quite independent of the age-set system. Differences in wealth breed jealousy and a concern over sorcery as the epitome of individual greed. Corresponding to the unorthodoxy of moranhood and inequalities of wealth among the Maasai, alternative hierarchies also colour the Hindu system such as those premised on asceticism or on wealth.14 Similarly, there are parallels between other treatments of the Hindu and Maasai political systems. Thus the distribution of power for both the Hindu caste system and the Maasai age system has been explained

14 Burghart 1978 56 Stratification and Social Mobility: Patterns of Inequality among Maasai and Hindus

coining the principle that ‘Might is Right’.15 Or in terms of more subtle manipulation, playing down ideological constraints of the traditional systems.16 Or in terms of a Marxist model of exploitation.17 These approaches contrast with Dumont’s plea for holism in the analysis of the caste system, which he maintains has so often been lacking.18 This can be matched with a plea for holism in the study of East African age organizations. There is adequate evidence to suggest that the model presented here applies very generally to other pastoralist societies in East Africa. Yet it is curious that regarding these societies, which so often are among the most resistant to change, we are normally told very little of the way in which each age system relates to other institutions, notably those associated with kinship, marriage and the position of women. It is curious, because the very fact of stability suggests that here at least one may be faced with a system whose parts articulate functionally to form a whole, or at least something as close to a functional whole as we are likely to encounter. Certainly, there has been change with increasing opportunism, but the persistence of the Maasai system throughout the colonial period and beyond (at least for a number of decades) suggests the need for a holistic treatment of the traditional system. The route to elderhood has dominated, step by step, rung by rung, in an endless succession, but taken by itself this evades the problem of explaining how the present has reproduced itself to account for the stability of the traditional system. The next chapter looks more closely at relations within each age-set in an attempt to address this problem.

15 Srinivas 1959; cf. Merker 1904 16 Bailey 1957; cf. Gulliver 1963 17 Beidelman 1959; cf. Rigby 1992 18 Dumont 1972: 75 4 Anger, Comradeship and Age-set Exogamy among Maasai: an Elaboration of Alliance Theory1

The enthusiasm of Maasai for every loving detail of their culture displays a flamboyant confidence in their way of life, and this is echoed in the wider reputation of the Maasai throughout the region. There is an exuberant pride in togetherness that unites men and women of all ages. To be a Maasai is to share in this sense of comradeship, ranging from membership of a particular grouping to their society at large. However, this euphoric display is tinged with an underlying anger that suggests fundamental shortcomings to this ideal. The Maasai reputation as a highly egalitarian society is an age-set ideal among moran, but it overlooks gross inequalities that are at the roots of their anger. Within the family, there are great differences in wealth and fortune. Between age-sets, there are rivalries that can build up to heated disputes. Above all, the rigid straitjacket that confines all women to a life of bondage displays the supreme inequality. Comradeship at one level is bolstered by inequality and a shared anger at another. These may be viewed as the opposite sides of a coin that has been shaped by the cultural premise of being Maasai.

4.1 Comradeship and Anger among Women

Women’s dancing is a highlight of their generally confined existence in which for the most part they are dispersed and tied down by domestic responsibilities under the heavy-handed control of their husbands. When gathered together in dance, this may reveal an element of play and of rivalry between them, but above all a sense of comradeship that can verge on an intimidating challenge to the dominance of the elders. The most common venue for women’s dancing is a local wedding ceremony. As they process to the celebration in small groups, they chant in a prayer to God for children with gleefully obscene allusions to their own sexuality coupled with pointed insults regarding the peccadilloes of elders in general as dirty old men. Their song is an inviting call to other women, promising a measure of temporary freedom from domestic drudgery. This sets the tone for the dances that follow once they are

1 The sections on women’s dancing in this chapter were previously published in Spencer, P. (ed.), 1985, Society and the Dance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. (pp. 157-61). I am grateful to Cambridge University Press for their permission to reproduce these sections here. Some other parts of the chapter derive from an unpublished paper that was submitted in 2002 for a conference on ‘Friend- ship, Descent, and Alliance’ at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Halle, and this is due to be published in its original form by Berghahn Books.

© 2014 Paul Spencer This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. 58 Anger, Comradeship and Age-set Exogamy among Maasai: an Elaboration of Alliance Theory

gathered together, marking out an inviolable domain that firmly excludes all males as the principal butt of their joking. During the brief period of an unusually good wet season, the women’s dancing may become an everyday event, and then it can acquire a new significance. During such a season, a vague rumour may spread among the women of some malignant presence affecting their fertility. The pressure may then build up to marshal their numbers and perform their fertility dances. They may process for a few days or even (it is claimed) weeks, dancing from village to village, coercing elders for food and gifts, blessing them and their wives when they comply, but with the power to vent their anger and in effect curse any man who refuses them or prevents his wife from joining them. Away from the village, no man would want to cross their path. If they catch him in the bush, they may mob, manhandle, and even rape him in the belief that this could cure their barrenness.2 The collective power of women during the wet season is most formidable when they sense that their fertility has been put at risk by sexual misconduct that violates the avoidance between ‘fathers’ and ‘daughters’. This extends to intercourse after any pregnancy has been established, for it could bring a husband or lover into sexual contact with his unborn daughter (or son). It is believed that a series of miscarriages suffered by any woman implies that she has violated this prohibition, posing a threat to the fertility of all women. At first it may be just speculation, but in the wet season when domestic pressures are eased, the rumour may build up with a welling anger that spreads within the region. This triggers a mass gathering of angry women, dancing and calling on those who are not pregnant to join in mobbing the homestead of the suspect wife to safeguard their own fertility. They catch hold of the victim, beat her and slice skin off her forehead, scarring her face for life. They wreck her hut and slaughter a fat ox from her family herd. Then they cover her head and shoulders with chime, which mixes with her blood, and drive her from her home in order to absolve her. If they can catch her husband or some lover who is suspected of violating the avoidance of ‘daughters’, then he too will be beaten by the mob. The women are united in their anger against a threat to womankind in general. Their sense of comradeship is one of belligerence against unseen forces, while the taunts in their songs are directed against the elders at large. On their sorties, they make explicit the parallel with moran who are angry and united in battle as comrades and defy anyone to stand in their way, calling on one another to join the gathering. The aim of moran is to protect their herds when they are threatened, or to add to them

2 Samburu women refer to similar dances as ntorosi, which is identical to the Maasai term for a vow among diehard moran to outshine all others in battle against their enemies. Among Samburu women, there is a similar element of anger and coercion implicit in their ritualized confrontations with elders and the general premise that gifts to the dancers bring God’s blessing. Seasonal Influences on Interaction 59

when they undertake a raid. The aim of a women’s mobbing is to protect their right to bear children by defeating malignant forces that have invaded their domain. As they express it:

mobbing women : preserving fertility and gaining babies

:: fighting moran : preserving herds and gaining cattle

Elders remain aloof from such a mobbing, apart from displaying their support for the gathering by preparing the ox’s carcase for the women’s meat feast, for it is held that the women do not have the finesse to cook the ox for themselves. With this feasting, the women are pacified and the perceived threat to their fertility is lifted. The victim is taught a lesson, and they disperse to their homes, singing as they go. If any elder dares to punish his wife for taking part in such an activity, he risks provoking a further mobbing by angry women, who may beat him if they can catch him and slaughter his favourite ox – and leave the carcase to rot. This can be illustrated by four reported incidents. In the first, a woman was mobbed after a series of miscarriages, and she and her lover were blamed for continuing to have sex during her pregnancies. As the mob approached his village, her husband drove out a particularly fine ox to offer them before they seized it from his herd. In exonerating himself from any blame, he was spared. In a second instance, an elder suspected of raping the daughter of an age mate (and hence ‘of his age-set’) tried to protect his favourite ox from a women’s mobbing. They caught him and beat him so viciously that he was maimed for life. In a third, another elder was suspected of incest with his own daughter. When he heard that women were collecting together to mob him, he migrated with his family and herd to another tribal section. Other elders were convinced of his innocence, but this was no protection once the rumour had become established and the women had made up their minds. In a fourth, a habitual drunkard was criticized by other elders for pawing an age-set daughter on several occasions. In their gossip, his age mates strongly disapproved of his behaviour, but they felt that this was a matter for women to settle rather than for them to impose an age-set curse. They assumed that it was only a matter of time before rumours would spread and the anger of women would lead to a mobbing.

4.2 Seasonal Influences on Interaction

The intriguing feature of women’s dancing and mobbing is the condition under which their anger or even a rumour of misfortune spreads, threatening the one affliction that they all dread – barrenness. This is the height of the wet season, which brings a whole range of disturbances after months of drought and hunger. The expected reaction is one of relief; but there is also a surplus of nervous energy as people turn their attention from the rigours and anxieties of day to day survival to broader issues. Elders are freer 60 Anger, Comradeship and Age-set Exogamy among Maasai: an Elaboration of Alliance Theory

to go visiting, staying away from home, calling in cattle debts, broking marriages, and so on. The rain can cover the tracks of stolen cattle, and hence this is a time when outbursts of raiding and counter-raiding for cattle may be expected between tribal sections, and the moran too have a role to fulfil as the traditional defenders of their herds. The Maasai also recognise that the rains can bring a certain irritability and an unsettling feeling that all is not quite well despite the good times. My own personal impression was of a spate of requests for medicine for headaches and vaguely defined disorders, especially from women. It was as if people were disoriented by the sudden change of fortune, and they did not immediately adjust to this. Unlike the dry season, which builds up slowly and relentlessly, giving Maasai time to adjust themselves mentally and physically, the onset of the wet season has an immediate impact. Milk is not at first plentiful, but it is assured; the long trek for water involving both men (for the cattle) and women (for domestic use) is ended; options for migration open out. For the women, however, there are no new options, and they remain subservient. They are in no way consulted by their husbands during their flurry of visiting, which may concern the marriages of their daughters, the introduction of a new co-wife and potential rival into their homes, or giving away cattle previously allocated to a wife. These are men’s affair and there is no call to involve their wives. The gulf of inequality that divides the sexes seems to widen. At least during the prolonged dry season, with the survival of the family and herd at stake, there is a spirit of cooperation; but this spirit does not appear to carry over to the easier times of the wet season. The rumour of a threat to women’s reproductive powers at this time, even among those who already have children, threatens their whole future, which hinges on bearing children. It may be a rumour that arouses their anger because of a woman’s indiscretions during pregnancy or more vaguely a rumour of some mystical threat to their fertility that expresses a more diffuse sense of anger. If it is to be explained at a symbolic level, the credibility of this rumour seems to indicate a loss of confidence among women in their domestic status. Within each household this loss of confidence may appear at first as an idiosyncratic domestic issue. Repeated over a whole region at this time, and a sense of crisis gathers momentum, suggesting a breakdown of normal communication and a widening of the gulf between the sexes. The rumour appears as an apt expression of this crisis, raising the whole issue to a supernatural plane and challenging the women to recover from their inertia and to assert their rightful role as the reproducers of Maasai society, rather as moran have a rightful role in asserting themselves against any threat to their cattle herds. As the rumour gains credibility, it builds up to a force that legitimises the women’s response. From their situation of semi-isolation and domestic discord, their dancing or mustering as a mob bring large numbers of women together, where in militant mood they act in concord. Their consciousness awakened beyond their domestic subservience, the notion of a direct contact with God, and the widespread compliance they demand from the elders, seem to revive their spirits and give them renewed confidence to re-establish themselves with greater self-respect in their own Group Indulgence and the Restrictions of the Age-set System among Men 61

households. The women’s dancing and mobbing, in other words, build up their confidence and this is perceived as an interaction with cosmic forces that lie beyond the power of elders to hold them in total subservience. Seen from this point of view, the women’s dancing is more than a mere safety valve for domestic claustrophobia, and the women are more than passive invalids needing to pamper one another. They are mobilised as a social class, fully conscious of their position and temporarily asserting their right to an independent arena from which even the elders cower. Ritual reversal and a notion of impending ill-fortune may thus be linked to ritual rebellion in a system of oppression. Through a ritualised expostulation, a slump in morale among women is reversed. Moreover it is not just the women who are purified, but the whole atmosphere in this reassertion of the importance of womanhood. Their dancing has a brief reality of its own, which readjusts the balance of power between the sexes, and is felt to bring with it a diffuse blessing on their fertility and on the birth of future generations.

4.3 Group Indulgence and the Restrictions of the Age-set System among Men

As previously noted, the Maasai area is divided into sixteen ‘tribal’ sections, and within any section there are typically three or four manyata villages, sited strategically to defend their territories. These are set up at the beginning of each new age-set when novice moran claim possession of the privileges of moranhood. Once they have secured these privileges, small bands of novice moran scour their territory to recruit for their manyata, and they take along their mothers. Their fathers are expected to comply with this and to want their sons to develop within the discipline of the manyata. Occasionally, a father may try to make a reasoned plea for dispensation, claiming that he needs his wife for domestic reasons and his morani son to help with the herd. This will not stop other moran from snatching away the woman, and her morani son will follow. If the father tries to put his weight as an elder behind his request, he will be forcibly held down by the other moran. Exceptions to the rule of manyata recruitment are made on their merit – if there is good reason to avoid this duty – but it is the local body of novice moran who make the final decision. Elders (and fathers in particular) are highly respected, and even feared for their power to curse. But in the context of manyata recruitment of their sons and senior wives, they are obliged to respect the physical assertiveness of the body of moran. With their public role focused on building up their manyata as the supreme privilege, the moran are the most flamboyant and ritualized sector of Maasai society. At the same time, the years that they spend together at the manyata are a critical period for inculcating the bonds of loyalty that characterize the age-set system. The glamour of moranhood centres on the manyata and it is there that they cultivate and parade an ethos of sharing. They shun any form of self-indulgence in public and should always 62 Anger, Comradeship and Age-set Exogamy among Maasai: an Elaboration of Alliance Theory

seek the company of other moran. They cannot drink milk by themselves and, because of other food prohibitions, this means that they must go hungry on any morning or evening when they happen to be alone, until they have found the company of at least one other morani to offer them milk. Away from the family dominated by the father, manyata moran build up a rich store of experiences that they continue to share anecdotally in later life. These extend throughout the territory defended by the manyata, and even to diplomatic visits to neighbouring manyat and beyond. Intense bonds of friendship between age mates grow out of their years at their manyata. This is characterized by an excessive display of ‘group indulgence’, opposed to any suggestion of self-interest. This male age-bonding is expected to form the basis of friendship for the rest of their lives. An extreme expression of friendship would occur when two moran shared a joint pledge in battle. They would defend one another to the end, and if one was killed, the other would risk his life to lay out the corpse properly. However, the notion of such ‘friendship’ should not imply any sense of pairing or cliquishness, excluding others. Thus ‘comradeship’ would better express the ideal of the manyata, with the emphasis on unity and sharing. In a similar vein, no morani should claim exclusive access to any girl who is his lover, for this would be to display jealousy towards his peers’ right to share. Inevitably, some friendships may be closer than others, but such intimacy should not be displayed in public: no other morani should be excluded from their company. Exclusive pairing between lovers or between moran is anathema to the manyata. It is disloyal and a denial of sharing. After an extended period, the manyata is disbanded. This is followed by a significant step towards elderhood when each morani is made to drink milk offered by an elder and not by an age mate. Moran who have performed this ceremony say that they have difficulty in swallowing the milk, and for some time afterwards they lose their appetite and age visibly. They may even seek out age mates informally to share milk as they did in the past; but they no longer enjoy the experience and find that the spell of moranhood has been broken. Whereas the ideal of equality among moran was enacted through sharing company, milk, girlfriends, and anything else that could be shared, this ideal is compromised when they become elders. This is a time when they begin to marry, around the age of thirty, and build up their families and herds. As elders they continue to share food and the sexuality of their wives with their age mates. As fathers whose children may have been (visibly) begotten by an age mate, they should show a delight and gratitude that these sexual liaisons have produced offspring that are an asset to the family, regardless of paternity. They should show no jealousy or discrimination towards these children, supporting the ideal of age-set unity above any notion of personal affront. However, the sharing – even the attractions of sex – is of consumables. Age mates share milk, meat and the marital bed, but their cattle and children remain their own as individuals. As against the egalitarian ideal of moranhood, the independence of elders creates differences in wealth, and dedicated herding practices coupled with luck can increase these Group Indulgence and the Restrictions of the Age-set System among Men 63

differences. While this is softened by the continued emphasis on the strength of age-set bonds, it is consumption and not ownership that is shared. After they have married, age mates do not necessarily live together in the same village, and of course they too move around. But there are always age-mates in the vicinity, and it is with these that they tend to look for company in their leisure time, which increases as their sons become old enough to manage the family herd alone. The very fact of their nomadism brings age mates constantly into touch with one another; and so do feasts on various ritual occasions, when they again share meat together. As dispersed elders, they are scrupulous in maintaining bonds within the age-set as a whole, but the fact that they acquire the power to curse with elderhood gives this bond a sinister edge. The belief in this curse lays bare the frustrations elders experience as they age and as the egalitarian restrictions of moranhood give way to the competitive opportunities of building up their own households and herds. The contradiction between egalitarian ideals and unequal shares of fortune may relate to a haunting concern that casts a shadow over elders’ ritual feasting when each age-set sits together as a separate group of jovial comrades. This is a belief that jealous sorcerers could be lurking in the bush nearby, bent on sowing havoc among the feasters by interfering with their ritual. At a time when age-set loyalties prevail in their sharing and self-indulgent cravings are formally banished, it is as if these emotions re-emerge as shadowy projections of their malcontented other selves, jealously aware of the unfairness of the inequalities. While jealousy contradicts the ethos of Maasai society, anger plays a legitimate role. The elders’ power to curse is held to emanate from the gripping anger following a slight by someone who is expected to show respect. It is maintained that in learning how to control and direct this anger, an elder’s curse has a potent effect, even if it is just felt rather than uttered. As individuals, elders may try to stifle their anger by responding diplomatically to some slight by a younger man, and they would retain general respect for their moderation. As an age-set, any anger that is shared among age mates does not require diplomacy. A curse by his age-set leaves a man totally isolated from his age peers. At any elders’ meeting that involves all age-sets on some local issue, the aim is to arrive as a unanimous agreement. If just one individual refuses to comply with this aim, the only sanction against him is through members of his age-set. He is not obliged to submit to a majority decision by elders of other age-sets, but he cannot defy pressure from within his own. Even if just two age mates make a reasonable request to a third, then they act as representatives of the age-set and their request has a coercive power. Men are bound by their age-set. In the view of women and younger men, elders are self-indulgent and mean hypocrites, who put their own selfish interests above those of their families and have a terrible curse over younger people. But the view from within the age-set is that loyalty to age mates is still the highest virtue, and this reveals a strong sense of group-indulgence, which lasts for the rest of their lives. 64 Anger, Comradeship and Age-set Exogamy among Maasai: an Elaboration of Alliance Theory

As members of an age-set die off in old age, the age-set loses its vitality, but the notion of age-set comradeship persists to the end. In addition to the sinister power of the curse that characterizes elderhood, there is a further ambiguity that undermines the idyllic image of the peer-group in later life. The activities of moran are centred on the territory that their manyata is pledged to defend. This comprises just one part of the total tribal section, whereas elders migrate freely with their homesteads across the whole of this section, and very occasionally even across the border into a neighbouring section for a while. This brings these elders into regular contact with age mates whom they do not know so well, because they had been moran at different manyat. Over time, they may come to know one another better, especially when they find themselves allied politically against other age-sets at formal gatherings. But they do not share the same manyata experience and this leads to a more formal relationship that tends to stress the element of age-set obligation and duty. The relationship lacks the spontaneity of comradeship stemming from a shared youth. Thus when elders visit their age mates, the host is obliged to vacate his wife’s hut for the night, in effect offering his wife – if she consents. This is a punctilious obligation, but a visiting friend from manyata days may invite the host to remain in his hut, so that they can continue to share one another’s company overnight. So long as such lapses are in the spirit of age-set unity, no harm is done, but it is a very private arrangement. If an elder were to avoid this obligation in any other circumstance, then his age mates could raid his village, kill a prized ox for a feast, and force themselves on his wife. The host is then expected to show his gratitude, for this would be undertaken with a view to quelling their anger and avoiding their age-set curse. Worst of all would be if a visiting age mate from another tribal section is denied full hospitality in any way, for his resentment would have the automatic effect of an age-set curse. The stranger who is also an age mate is one of the most threatening anomalies of Maasai elderhood, and observing age-set obligations and generosity are more than just scrupulous, they become almost obsessive. This reveals a spectrum of relations within the age-set. The closest lifelong friendships tend to relate back to the manyata experience and age-set obligations as elders may be relaxed in a spirit of total trust. At the opposite extreme, obligations towards the stranger age-mate from across the section border become excessively rigid with the bleak spectre of an age-set curse. As a stranger, he is dehumanized and represents the faceless age-set at large.

4.4 Marriage Bonds and the Fundamental Premise of the Maasai Age-set System

Sexuality among the Maasai is characterized by institutionalized adultery with the wives of age mates and discreet adultery between men and women in general. Weak clan exogamy and the absence of strong corporate lineages correspond to a lack of Marriage Bonds and the Fundamental Premise of the Maasai Age-set System 65

serious concern over sexual encounters between distant kin. Intercourse between a distant ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ arouses a sense of ridicule rather than horror; seducing the wife of a ‘father’ is thought to be dangerous because of his potent curse if he finds out, but not because it is ritually dangerous in itself. Admittedly incest with a close ‘sister’ or ‘mother’ would be repugnant, but at the same time almost inconceivable. However any suggestion of incest between an elder and a woman who may be classified as a ‘daughter’ does evoke horror. Even a hint of intimacy between a man and a ‘daughter’: would arouse gossip and risk his being manhandled by an angry mob of mature women. Because daughters of his age mates (‘age-set daughters’) are more numerous than any other category of ‘daughter’, this avoidance is an especially sensitive issue. Any younger women that he meets for the first time could be an age-set daughter, and he should be circumspect in even addressing her until he has established her paternity. To appreciate the significance of this particular relationship, it has to be borne in mind that a Maasai woman is uniquely linked to her father’s age-set. As a ‘daughter’, she can have only one father, whereas as a mother or sister, she can have sons or brothers in two or even three different age-sets. Similarly, elders of an age-set can assert exclusive possession over a category of marriageable women – their ‘daughters’ – whereas they have no such claim over their ‘sisters’ or ‘mothers’, who are also ‘sisters’ and ‘mothers’ of other age-sets. The term age-set exogamy may be coined in relation to marrying ‘daughters’ only to men of other age-sets, corresponding to the notion of clan exogamy in relation to clan ‘sisters’ among other peoples, including the Samburu. In a curious way, this is reminiscent of Lévi-Strauss’s treatment of incest and exogamy. This argued that to show less than complete sexual avoidance of the ‘sisters’ of ones own descent group threatens the system of alliances between lineages through intermarriage: it is the exchange of women between lineages within the wider society that forms the fundamental bonds and the basis of social solidarity. In this way, Lévi-Strauss viewed the horror of incest as an expression of outraged public morality reflecting these close bonds. This was an elaboration of Tylor’s earlier suggestion that extended families were too small to survive without exogamy – they faced the practical alternative between ‘marrying out and being killed out’ – and of Mauss’s notion that gift exchange (in this case of women) underpinned society as a moral force.3 Lévi-Strauss’s theory has been treated as an odd episode of anthropological history and inferior to his more mature structuralism that followed. He has been accused of conflating incest avoidance and exogamy, and to this extent of confusing sex with marriage.4 However, a point I would note is that the Maasai quite explicitly

3 Lévi-Strauss 1969: 62; Tylor 1889; Mauss 1924 4 Leach 1970: 103 66 Anger, Comradeship and Age-set Exogamy among Maasai: an Elaboration of Alliance Theory

link these together, and they are particularly unprudish on the issue of marriage and sex, except that a man must not marry any woman whom he would avoid as a ‘daughter’, and this involves a considerable proportion of all women. Lévi-Strauss regarded the elaboration of his theory concerning prescriptive forms of marriage as largely irrelevant to African societies, which only rarely have precisely defined rules of exogamy. However, among the Maasai one appears to have an oblique confirmation of this theory. The pattern of age-set exogamy corresponds exactly with the intense horror of incest with age-set daughters. One may also note the unilateral aspect of the Maasai system. Brides are consistently married downwards – from older fathers to younger husbands. In age-set terms, this may be compared with Lévi- Strauss’s tantalizing model of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. (Whereas a delayed exchange of brides, echoing his model of patrilateral cross-cousin marriage, would imply marrying age-set daughters upwards to older as well as to younger sons-in-law, and this has no parallel in the Maasai age-set system.) This leads one to attempt to transpose Lévi-Strauss’s argument from the bonds that unite corporate descent groups into the wider kinship system, to bonds that unite age-sets into the wider age-set system. The theory has to be modified to adapt it to the Maasai context. It is the strict avoidance of each ‘daughter’ by all members of her father’s age-set that structures the system of marriage. They are the wife-givers, and her husband’s age-set are the wife-receivers, sharing certain rights in her hut and sexuality. Basically the argument would run as follows. Unlike lineages, age-sets are not self-perpetuating groups. They dwindle into old age, and the flow of ‘daughters’ is towards more junior age-sets. This provides a basis from which the more senior age- sets can exercise power over their juniors, demanding respect as potential fathers- in-law with the power to withhold their ‘daughters’. Given the competition for wives between age-sets and the strong bonds of comradeship within each age-set, one may ask: what if age mates were allowed to marry each other’s daughters, consolidating age-set bonds by bestowing these ‘daughters’ as wives?5 A system of exchange of ‘daughters’ within the age-set would then be possible. In the spirit of age-set sharing and loyalty, a father could be under irresistible pressure from age mates to give them priority over suitors from junior age-sets. To prefer some other suitor could be construed as an act of disloyalty to his own age-set, and it could even provoke an implicit age-set curse. Such a request would be dangerous to refuse. This would then encourage ‘in-marriage’ and ‘daughters’ would accrue as wives of the most senior age- sets instead of being handed downwards. In such a system, older men would accumulate large harems while mature bachelors would find it even harder to marry in the foreseeable future. Deprived of the opportunity to marry, this could even drive older moran to rebel against the elders’

5 Cf. Lévi-Strauss 1969: 41 Marriage Bonds and the Fundamental Premise of the Maasai Age-set System 67

regime, reminiscent of the change-over of generation-sets in northern Uganda on the one hand and Freud’s scenario in Totem and Taboo on the other.6 The practice of age-set exogamy ensures that this situation does not arise, and indeed it provides a bridging in a system that precipitates perpetual rivalry between adjacent age-sets. Paraphrasing Tylor, each Maasai age-set is faced with the simple practical alternative between marrying ‘daughters’ out (and down) and families dying out. In forbidding ‘daughters’ to one another as age mates, elders are ensuring the succession of their families as fathers. Following through Lévi-Strauss’s argument suggests that the horror of incest with a ‘daughter’ is an indication of the extent to which age-set exogamy provides the bedrock of social morality. The gifts of women cement the bonds that unite different age-sets into a more comprehensive age system. Bearing in mind the jostling on the age ladder, the tensions between age-sets should not be underestimated. The ideal of loyalty within an age-set corresponds to an undercurrent of rivalry with adjacent age-sets, contradicting the outward display of respect for older men. Young elders, whose wives have been repeatedly seduced by adulterous moran, are especially angry. They may convene as an age-set and threaten a curse over any ‘daughter’ who is given away in marriage to any morani. This threatens to break down any marriage negotiations between the two families. But the threat cannot be sustained, and elders of more senior age-sets try to mediate, encouraging the junior elders to accept compensation without loss of face and to lift their threat. The adulterous moran then find themselves obliged to offer very substantial gifts of cattle and other commodities to the offended elders. The asymmetrical system of alliance is restored, and the age-set of moran have transcended a serious obstacle on their path towards elderhood. The junior elders then become their ‘fathers-in-law’, a popular Maasai term for the next age-set up. Possibly over one quarter of all marriages are in fact with daughters of the senior adjacent age-set. Thus, through the marriages of daughters, one has the first rapprochement between the two age-sets since the time when they were first confronting one another over the privileges of moranhood, and later over the adulterous activities of moran. With elderhood, regardless of subsequent struggles, these two age-sets are related through their daughters-wives, and this provides a permanent link between them with all that this implies for affinal relations. This avoidance also has implications for the maturation of young men. Before the entry of moran into elderhood, they display a casual abandon in their treatment of women. They tease the girls as playthings, they regard young wives as potential objects of their adulterous opportunism, and when they too marry as young elders, they treat their own wives in a very high-handed manner and continue to show an interest in the young wives of other age-sets and even in unmarried girls. It is only when they begin to marry and their wives bear them daughters that for the first time in

6 Dyson-Hudson 1966: 155-206; Freud 1950: 141-2) 68 Anger, Comradeship and Age-set Exogamy among Maasai: an Elaboration of Alliance Theory

their lives they encounter a category of unrelated women that they should avoid – their age-set daughters. This is a significant stage in their domestication, and it builds up over the years to the point when these daughters start to marry. Now, when they meet a young attractive woman whom they do not know, they cannot automatically assess her bedworthiness. She just might be a ‘daughter’ and they should avert their gaze, or at least address her distantly until they can ascertain that she is not a ‘daughter’. With the acquisition of ‘daughters’, the notion of respect acquires a new dimension, and with it the formal reserve that characterises elderhood.

4.5 Conclusion: Elders as Controllers and Women as Custodians of the Age-set System

Among the Maasai, moran and women are confined to their roles in cultural straitjackets. For moran, this confined role is idolized and ends with their promotion to elderhood. For women their role as wives is a binding commitment from which they are only partially released in old age, as widows under the protection and control of their sons. For both sexes, their cultural confinement has a bearing on their simmering anger. Anger is an aspect of the ethos of moranhood. As warriors, they are expected to be primed to defend their herds and to go on raids in a spirit of controlled anger that has no mystical consequences. Following from the discipline of moranhood, an aspect of their maturation as elders is that they must learn to control their anger, directing the cosmic forces that are now felt to emanate from the grip of this anger. This contrasts with the implications of women’s anger during their fertility dances and mobbings. Their anger is held to be beyond control. In responding to mystical forces that threaten their fertility, their mass anger is in danger of triggering random destruction. The ideal of age-set loyalty persists into elderhood, and this is fanned by disruptive rivalries between age-sets, leading to a problem of continuity over time. In this respect, Lévi-Strauss’s alliance theory has an unexpected relevance. With only shallow corporate lineages, marriage bonds among the Maasai might seem irrelevant to this theory. However, once the theory has been transformed to match a social organization based on age rather than descent, this turns out to be an impressive vindication of the theory. The intense rivalries between age-sets are held in check by a unilateral network of bonds through marriage and the transition of women from being ‘daughters’ of a more senior age-set to becoming ‘wives’ of a more junior. The way in which the horror of incest is expressed is consistent with the social solidarity of the ‘connubium’ of age-sets. This involves a type of hypogamy, with the avoided daughters married downwards to younger men, who in order to qualify as eligible suitors are obliged to show respect for their seniors. ‘Age-set exogamy’ ensures the marriage market for moran as they settle down, which is essential for the perpetuation of the age-set system. One is not therefore just concerned with the morality underlying Conclusion: Elders as Controllers and Women as Custodians of the Age-set System 69

social solidarity among men of all ages, but also with the reproduction of this morality that runs in parallel with the biological reproduction of society and hence with the reproduction of the age-set system itself. The avoidance of age-set daughters is very common among neighbours of the Maasai, such as the Samburu but also beyond Maa. However, the pattern is obscured by clan exogamy, which is altogether more pronounced elsewhere and with it a more extensive range of sexual avoidances. In these other societies, the avoidance of ‘daughters’ does not stand out as a category that is in a class of its own, whereas the Maasai case appears to be pronounced, because it is so clear-cut. It is the women, without age-sets of their own, who form a vital link between men’s age-sets through their marriages. Frustrated by the restrictions of their domestic subservience, women’s fertility dances accompany songs with ribald allegations against the elders at large and obscene references to their own sexuality. These amount even to quasi-sacrilegious jibes against their own avoided fathers. Further to the extreme of asserting their independence, women take the law into their own hands as infuriated viragoes when they retaliate against any elder who violates a ‘daughter’. Such a violation is felt to release mystical forces that threaten women’s fertility generally. They convene as a rampaging angry mob, bent on up-ending the normal social order. The implication is that by matching cosmic chaos and venting their anger in a collective reversal of normal behaviour, they will restore their fertility. That cheating elders and especially the most culpable are the ultimate butt of women’s outbursts links the hypocrisies of elders in general with a sense of cosmic chaos, just as responsible behaviour by the collectivity of elders in normal times is assumed to be in harmony with the charm of a cosmic order that protects Maasai society. The elders are apprehensive of women collecting together to dance and rampage, but they are powerless to intervene. They can only hold their wives in subjection up to the point at which women’s anger finds expression collectively and becomes an unstoppable force. This endows women with a formidable role that in the final resort serves to maintain the age-set system at the heart of the men’s domain. Ultimately, it is their wives who are the guardians of the moral code associated with sensitive sexual avoidances. As such, angry women are bastions of a regime that holds them in subjection.

 Part II: Samburu Ritual and Cosmology (1957-60, 1962) 5 Arenas of Dance among Samburu1

The general avoidance of dance as a topic for anthropological study reflects the problems of interpreting the art-forms of other cultures, let alone expressing these forms in terms intelligible to our own. Adepts find it difficult but also unnecessary to articulate their feelings or any inner meaning, except through the medium of dance itself. Choreologists have argued that the anthropologists should learn notations for recording body movement as a preparation for fieldwork, yet the aim of such training is to record dance as a museum piece rather than as a performance. It offers no bridge towards an inner understanding that breaks through the cultural barrier on the one hand or resolves the problem of articulating inner feelings on the other. The distance between observer and performer is preserved and dance remains unapproachable for social anthropologists in general, neglected in their training, thereby perpetuating the neglect of this topic and encouraging the field-worker to look elsewhere for significance. Yet dancing is frequently a central spectacle of ritual and other public occasions, and to search elsewhere is to overlook this point, like the proverbial psychologist who turns in his seat at the theatre to peer at the audience. The central preoccupation of the participants is problematic, and the lateral approach, looking elsewhere for significance and understanding, becomes mainstream. This expedient has certainly paid dividends, but there remains the incongruity of Hamlet without the prince. There is in dance a certain autonomy that can be perceived as an expression of the inner self rather than as a product of interaction with others. This was most explicit in Curt Sachs’s monumental World History of Dance (1933), which treats the development of dance as a form of degeneration. In its pristine state, Sachs saw dance as the purest and most private form of religious experience, wholly devoid of society or social context, rather like Colin Turnbull’s description of a lone Mbuti pygmy dancing in the forest or a popular view of a child wrapped up in its own play. Other books on the social significance of dance often have an early chapter on its primitive origins – the title deeds as it were – leading up to the present, suggesting a sterile parallel with the early history of anthropology.2 Before dismissing this approach as unrewarding conjecture, it is worth pointing to one attempt of this sort that has had great influence on the development of social anthropology: Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915). In

1 In its original form, the first part of this chapter has been previously published as ‘Dance and the Cosmology of Confidence’ in Parkin, D.J., Caplan, L., and Fisher, H. (eds.), 1996, The Politics of Cultural Performance. Berghahn Books, Oxford: (pp. 181-191). The remainder of the chapter was published as ‘Dance as Antithesis in the Samburu Discourse’, in Spencer, P. (ed.), 1985, Society and the Dance. Cam- bridge University Press, Cambridge. (pp. 143-64). I am grateful to both publishers for their permission to reproduce these pieces here. 2 Sachs 1933, Rust 1969, Lange 1975, Royce 1977

his search for the essence of religion, Durkheim drew attention to what he regarded as the most primitive form. Dance as such is scarcely mentioned in his account, yet if one considers the most memorable passages of this work, concerning the effervescent euphoria of collective gatherings among Australian aborigines, and then turns to the sources on which he relied, one finds that incessant dancing, singing and processing were constant features.3 In other words, dance as a form – even an elementary form – of religious experience has its place implicitly in these passages. In looking beyond the dancing, like so many of his anthropological successors, Durkheim’s argument comes close to an interpretation of inner understanding. He did not see the rhythms, stamping and the build-up of dance itself as relevant enough for his argument to elaborate on these; but dancing seems to have been a necessary vehicle for generating the collective sense of occasion that he wished to convey. Durkheim’s insight becomes memorable in drawing attention to the collective source of energy and experience vested in the interaction of the group – through the dancing. The point I wish to pursue is that the success of Durkheim’s work was that the thrust of his argument did not rest on evolutionary speculation. He was looking towards relatively undifferentiated societies for an understanding of religion rather than towards some hypothetical ancestor. In doing so, his work provides us with a penetrating model for approaching performance generally, which is embedded in its social context and extends beyond inner feelings to a shared awareness of the powerful forces of collective gatherings. Dance performances may be considered as collective representations in a Durkheimian sense. They express and promote the growth of confidence, a mutual credibility, a gathering will to succeed that is as relevant to appreciating subversive popular movements as it is to understanding the dynamics of normal community existence. Performance impinges on the popular perception of time, space and cosmic forces, and ultimately it reaches towards the fundamental experience of society itself.

5.1 The Initiation Dance

In the Maa language, ‘play’ (enkiguran) is often used as a term for dancing or singing. This is consistent with the apparent triviality of the words of the songs, and the readiness with which a half-muttered song merges into an informal dance movement. On more formal occasions, however, there is a concentration of interest and a sense of power expressed in the compulsive throb of the rhythm generated by the wordless choruses, and body movements characteristic of each dance. It is more than mere play or gossip: it expresses the concerted force of a suppressed sector of their society that has relevance for all.

3 Durkheim 1915: 218; Spencer and Gillen 1904: 375-92. 74 Arenas of Dance among Samburu

This is well illustrated by the role of a particular dance in cultivating an awareness of the development of each age-set cycle among Samburu, which typically spans about 14 years. A new age-set of moran or warriors is established by the initiation of boys in their mid to late teens, and sometimes even in their early twenties. Years before their eventual promotion to moranhood, their dancing is an expression of this desire, as they begin to flex their muscles in anticipation. The moranhood to which they aspire has a unique charm for all Samburu. During the earliest years of childhood, parents may play with their sons on their laps, crooning moran songs, dancing them through the motions of the chorus, and fondly addressing them as ‘moran’. As they grow, the education of boys focuses on acquiring basic cattle skills. They may be on cordial terms with their older moran brothers, but outside the family they are despised by moran for their juvenile gaucherie. They are typically 14 years younger than the moran that they will replace, and the moran jealously guard against any attempt by these boys to usurp the privileges of moranhood: their close association with girls, their postures, their songs, their hairstyles and adornments, and the right to shiver in a display of anger. The unfolding of events leading to new initiations is geared to the rate at which boys mature and at which seasoned moran are prepared to settle down, and this in turn is geared to the rate at which elders are prepared to relinquish their monopoly over marriage by granting them wives. There is no exact synchronisation of this process and no counting the years. The period of transition is one of adjustment to the inevitable in which the boys’ performance provides one of the more significant signals. The first intimations of a new age-set occur when there is restlessness among the older boys. At this stage, there would be no question of openly defying the moran in a premature display of warriorhood and risking a beating. However, a number of boys may muster to dance at night in villages where they are well represented, and the spirit of restlessness spreads. They process around the countryside from village to village after the day’s herding, singing and dancing their initiation dance, lebarta. As it is already dark the salient aspect of their performance is in their singing and this can be heard throughout the neighbourhood. The physical assertiveness projected in this vocal display is an aspect of their performance as a group, which also implies dancing: Samburu terms for song and dance are interchangeable. In the boys’ experience, lebarta would not have been performed since the last initiations, and the tune and rhythm will be uncertain and variable, only half remembered from an earlier period of their childhood when they were mere onlookers. At first they are unpractised in the idiom and few have voices deep enough to convince the community at large that they are yet fit for moranhood. Displaying themselves hesitatingly at too early a stage merely exposes their immaturity and risks general ridicule. But it is a beginning, and as the boys’ voices, confidence, and style develop, so they take heart and use this song and processional dance to recruit other boys to join them. Their numbers swell and they become an increasing presence. During this period, the developing The Initiation Dance 75

timbre of the singing combined with the panache of their dance display is a measure of the mounting strength of feeling and unity among the boys and an indication of the passage of time. The boys have to demonstrate their credibility as potential moran before they are allowed initiation, and they can only do this by performing their dance and achieving a convincing degree of coordinated self-confidence. The words of the circumcision song hardly change, but there is a hint of mounting tension in its delivery, an irrepressible demand addressed to the elders to recognise that a new set of future moran are proving their mettle. It is the elders who they need to impress in order to hasten their initiation. Ultimately, as the pressure increases, there are incidents of defiance from the oldest boys. With mounting expectations, some leave their homes and herds and wander in pairs or small groups in the bush, impatient and footloose, even pilfering food. Responding to the changing mood, fathers increasingly allow their eligible sons to free themselves from herding, and it then becomes possible to build up a visible and concerted performance during the daytime as they tour the region, processing and dancing, mustering their numbers. For the moran of the previous age-set, the gathering assertiveness of this dance is a signal of their impending elderhood. Younger moran who were initiated at the tail-end of their age-set may wish to delay any change-over. They therefore assiduously keep the boys in their place and discourage them from any thoughts of an early initiation. Surreptitiously, boys may begin to practise the songs and dances of moranhood and to flirt with the younger girls. Sooner or later the boys will be able to stand up to their seniors physically and at that point they are fit to take over the coveted role. The older moran do not want to risk the humiliation of having been hounded into elderhood by mere ‘boys’, and it is in their interests to stand to one side before this point is reached, resigning themselves to a less colourful future as the limelight switches to a new age-set. The elders too realise that they cannot hold onto their monopoly over marriage, denying the moran wives indefinitely. Even less do the elders want to be seen to have aged to the point where they have lost control over the situation as fighting breaks out between ageing moran and overgrown boys. The timing of the change-over with a new spate of initiations is therefore a matter of widespread concern. Many factors are relevant and give clues to the timing, but it is the display of the boys’ dancing that is particularly telling. The calibre of this dancing informs popular opinion of the passing of time during this crucial phase of the age-set cycle. In one particular cycle, confidence among the boys may be slow to build up and the period will extend well beyond its normal span. In another cycle, the period may be reduced. Either way, it is the boys’ dancing that substitutes for a precise time reckoning. It evokes the growing into manhood of a new age-set with all that this implies for more senior age-sets. Insofar as one can write of the ‘meaning’ of lebarta among the Samburu, its sight and sound evoke a range of vivid associations extending from a sense of the aesthetic charm of moranhood as a phase of carefree display to a popular awareness of the passage of time. The process 76 Arenas of Dance among Samburu

of ageing, and ultimately the progression of generations are marked by the role of moranhood slipping from one age-set of youths to the next. At a higher level power slips from the age-set of firestick patrons to the next age-set of younger elders, who are increasingly confident of their ability to take over responsibilities for the new age-set. Even rather young girls play their part in this process. Normally, all unmarried girls share in the general admiration for moran, who may be two or three times their age, joining in their dances and pairing with them as lovers. However, as the boys mature and older girls are married off, so the younger girls begin to hold back. The established moran are now on the brink of marriage and elderhood, and this breaks their charm over these girls, who dread the distant prospect of an arranged marriage to a much older man. The girls are aware of a growing body of maturing youths closer to their own age and poised to take the central arena, and they expect to look towards these for their future companions and lovers. In this way, as the dancing of the boys builds up in confidence, so the dancing of the established moran loses a measure of support from a dwindling number of girls, and this loss of admiration brings their realisation of the inevitability of elderhood another step closer. Initiation among the Samburu has various symbolic similarities with birth, as though the initiates are ‘reborn’ in moranhood. Correspondingly, there is a deeply held belief that like unborn and newly born infants, initiates are especially close to God as the ultimate giver of life. As the time of initiation approaches, boys can perform their lebarta further afield with impunity, even beyond the boundaries of Samburu. At such times, it is held that no request should be refused them and anyone who harms an initiate would risk divine retribution. This is shared even by some former enemies of Samburu, such as the Oromo (but not the Turkana, who are seen as relative newcomers to the area). In this way, the time of change-over to a new age-set becomes tinged with a sense of religious awe.

I first became aware of the lebarta dance building up during the spring rains of 1958. This was in an area where the Samburu clans were interspersed, but each village and cluster of villages tended to be associated with just one clan, and the clan above all was the focus of social dis course and identity. Here, it was Pardopa clan in particular that were well represented, and their local network of affiliation became the focus of my study at this stage. The brunt of the daily herding was undertaken by boys, and they would be dispersed with their family cattle for long hours without respite. In the late evening, when the scattered pastoral villages seemed to have settled for the night, spells of dancing with singing could build up among boys or at other times among moran and girls. The moran were not tied down to herding as the boys were, and the locus of moran activity and their dancing tended to shift around the area, reflecting their image as itinerant warriors who were expected to range widely and remain generally vigilant, avoiding involvement in village life and keeping their own company. It was during the late evenings, especially when moran activity seemed quiescent locally, that the boys would dance among themselves. Then as a spirit and cohesiveness built up, they might start singing lebarta, with less emphasis on rhythmic dancing and more on the assertiveness of their singing, voicing their claims to warriorhood, and throwing an implicit challenge to an unseen audience. The Initiation Dance 77

One night, a contingent of perhaps twenty boys from elsewhere processed through the area performing this dance and creating a greater sense of occasion and confidence than I had heard previously, and other boys from the locality joined them. In the days that followed, the moran of Pardopa clan locally discounted the event. They had been involved in their own affairs elsewhere, and the boys would not dare to sport their dances and certainly not lebarta when moran were around, I was told. As matters stood, the initiations of these boys still seemed quite distant. Popular attention was still firmly fixed on the moran, who still had to perform a major ceremony (their ‘ilmugit of the bull’) before there could be any new initiations, The elders of Pardopa clan, however, were more sensitive to the significance of these boys’ dances. They pointed out that the boys were building up a sense of their own strength. The visiting performers had been from other clans, and rather as initiating a new age-set was expected to be a pan-Samburu event, cutting across all clans, so the mustering of the boys was conducted in this spirit, in contrast to the parochial concern for clanship among moran.

Over the next few weeks, I heard lebarta performed on this scale perhaps three more times, brea- king the stillness of the night and aware of what appeared to be a gathering momentum. The elders pointed out that the moran would soon perform their ilmugit, and then it would be the boys’ turn. It was as if a change-over to a new age-set was imminent. The boys had created a sense of expectation, or at least an awareness that their time would come. However, the apparent momentum behind the boys’ lebarta was not sustained during the dry season that followed, and the boys’ initiative faded. It was a further four years before the new initiations took place in Pardopa clan, while the existing age-set of moran held their position for a full fourteen years.

Ostensibly, it was a prolonged drought that delayed new initiations, but beyond this, it was the elders who prevaricated. Delay was always to their advantage: both in keeping the moran as just ageing moran, and the boys as just herdboys. In 1958, individual elders locally expressed a willingness to contemplate early initiations, encouraging the boys with assurances (and indeed encouraging the anthropologist to stay longer to see these initiations). However, collectively in delaying any decision, the elders were playing for time and for wives. They had lost their own youthfulness, but it was in their interests to hold high the ideals of youth, encouraging the boys as they also encouraged the moran. The persistence of tradition in Samburu society, in spite of the demise in intertribal warfare, was the persistence of the gerontocratic ideal of polygyny among elders. This ideal brought the vigour of youth, notably through dance, to the centre of the popular stage. It punctuated the sense of time among Samburu, but it also remained geared to the ultimate interests of elders. Of the various signs that indicate this transitional stage of the age-set cycle, it is the boys’ lebarta song and dance in particular that serve as a barometer of the pressures that are building up towards the new set of circumcisions; and the atmosphere becomes filled with an expectation of change-over. This dance is a motif with mixed associations. For the boys’ parents, there is pride that their status will be enhanced and the family honour put to the test. For the elders, it anticipates the time when there will be a redistribution of power between the various age-sets that requires careful handling. For the moran, it is an early reminder that their commanding position as 78 Arenas of Dance among Samburu

the centre of popular attention is drawing to an end. A further impressionable group in this process are those boys who are still too young for circumcision even though they may join the periphery of the dancing. A feature that they learn is not just the circumcision song itself (which they may half forget), but also the notion that it is a song and dance of assertiveness against their seniors by age, and that in due course circumcision will only be theirs by uniting to demand it. Through the older boys’ lebarta, the seed has been sown for initiations, but also for perpetuating the underlying aspirations of a future, as yet embryonic, age-set of younger boys whose time is not yet ripe. Between periods of initiation, the moran are suspended in an anomalous role that looks towards the past rather than the present or future, and time in a sense stands still. The boys’ lebarta dances are less spectacular than the dances of moran, but in marking the passage of time, there is a potent ring in the way in which they develop into a concerted performance. The period of change-over involves an end to the impasse. There is a general promotion in roles, for boys, for ageing moran, for their parents, and a radical shift in the pressures for marriage affecting girls, and men of all ages. Time is unlocked and social relations are in the throes of change. The passage of time catches up on itself, and with it the passage of ageing. To this extent, the experience of ageing moves fitfully, with the change-over experienced as a radical stride forward. The lebarta dance and the atmosphere it generates conjure up this sense of a special and irreversible event with the initiates at the centre.

5.2 Wedding Dances

Samburu elders measure success through their acquisition of wives and steadfastly deny that many of their problems concerning these wives and virile young bachelors stem indirectly from their pursuit of polygyny. It is the dancing at a wedding that brings all these features to a head. A girl is taken away from her moran lover in a marriage arranged by elders for elders. She is circumcised (clitorectomy) and then married in the same ceremony. The wedding is a collective representation of the power of the elders and the impotence of the moran and of the girls and of wives, wrapped up in celebration. Women’s dancing plays a major role in the initial part of the celebrations. Their fertility dances seem very similar to those performed among the Maasai, where the women also sing ribald songs targeting licentious elders in general, and coercing them individually for gifts in exchange for a blessing on their wives. At a wedding, the women dress up in their finest clothes and adornments. Accompanying their dancing, they taunt the elders in hilarious tones of enjoyment, alluding to their sexual hypocrisies, the impotence of old men, and to outspoken aspects of their own sexual affairs, collectively upturning the subservience of their sex. These songs are mixed with prayers to God for children, with their blessing for the Wedding Dances 79

fertility of the bride as the central feature. The two aspects of these dances – taunting and praying – are both parts of the same general celebration, and they are held to bring God’s blessing to the whole occasion. By universal acclaim, the principal dances among the Samburu are those of the moran. When the moran appear and start dancing in another part of the wedding village, the women’s dancing peters out and attention switches to the moran dancing from that point. Girls too stop their dancing and become the principal spectators of the moran dancing. With their ostentatious norms of clothing and behaviour, the moran are quite the most colourful feature of Samburu society, and general attention is focused in their direction. Elders recall their earlier period as moran with affection, while regarding the moran with mistrust, amounting at times to a fury over their lapses. Women of all ages dote on the idea of moranhood: as girls with moran lovers, as mothers with moran sons, and as younger wives who should avoid moran but are constantly suspected of adultery. The moran play up to this attention, conscious that their every movement is watched and interpreted by the onlookers. Compared with the Maasai, the principle of the unity of each age-set is compromised by clan loyalties. Each small village tends to be associated with a clan, linked by clanship to other villages in the same cluster. Elders of a locality convene meetings as autonomous clansmen and arrange clan ceremonies. Moran of a clan form a dispersed peer group over a wider region, and the incipient rivalry between Samburu clans erupts in a form of sporadic gang warfare. This tends to centre on their possession of the girls within each clan as sexual playthings. Any moran can have one mistress from among these girls, and unlike the Maasai, who openly share their lovers, he expects strict fidelity on her part. Because she is a clan ‘sister’, he may not marry her when he becomes an elder, and he is bound to lose her eventually. But so long as she remains unmarried, his standing among other moran and girls hinges on their relationship. He would be expected to attack any other moran who makes advances towards her or molests her, and if this moran is of some other clan, then feeling may mount and the incident may develop into an inter-clan affray. The significance of their dancing is that dances form the arena in which girls and moran of rival clans may meet in peace. One has, in fact, a situation very similar to the musical drama West Side Story, in which two ethnic gangs of youths keep jealous possession of their girls, but they all meet on ‘neutral territory’ at dances, where fighting would be a breach of discipline. However, a spontaneous flare-up of hostilities precipitated by some minor incident can never be ruled out. What constitutes reality for the moran, holding so much glamour and absorbing their energies, is treated by the elders as a mere game among ‘children’, and they do not readily admit that such affrays are the price that they have to pay for their monopoly of formal power and the destinies of nubile girls. Their ultimate weapon in reining in the moran is their control over the marriages of their daughters, which override the more transient claims of the moran over these girls. It is the elders who 80 Arenas of Dance among Samburu

decide when each bond between lovers should terminate by marrying the girl off to some other clan, where she will start a new life in a position of total subservience. Thus each wedding is a sharp reminder for all moran and girls of the elders’ power to interfere in their affairs, and significantly, the most prominent feature in the ceremony is the dancing of moran, bringing the ultimate impotence of moran to a head, while the elders look on from a discreet distance. Foremost among the spectators are the girls, who are also adorned – even shackled – with multiple coils of bead necklaces and heavy brass coils round their limbs. It is the presence of the girls that makes the moran especially sensitive to any slight or insinuation. They are in an assertive mood with less than total control over themselves, and this adds an undercurrent of apprehensiveness. Their feelings are brittle and no-one can predict exactly how the dance will develop. Events are beyond the immediate control of the elders. Preparing for a wedding dance, the moran take great care over their appearance, wearing clean cloths wound neatly around their bodies, and a fashionable selection of bead adornments. Glistening red ochre forms a clearly defined pattern around their faces and shoulders, and highlights their long twined hair which hangs loosely behind them. They carry their spears, with the polished, leaf-like blades pointing skywards. Self-consciously they gather at a short distance from the wedding village, snorting in moran fashion, tossing their heads to shake their hair into position, and glancing down at their own appearances. Then as a body they march to the village, watched keenly by everyone, and their dance begins. This dancing entails a succession of phases, each associated with a characteristic mood. I refer to the first phase, which may last up to one hour or more, as dances of display. In it, one of the more assertive moran takes the role of soloist, boasting in narrative form of his own or his group’s prowess and achievements in stock thieving or other exploits (but not their adulteries, for this would alienate the girls who are present). Other moran join in a wordless chorus and occasionally wrest the solo lead. As one worldly moran explained to me: ‘It’s like an auction, each man tries to bid higher than the last.’ Claim and counterclaim build up, while the girls look on. This altercation between ‘bulls’ (laingok – brave assertive moran) is a dominant feature of the first phase, structuring it up to a point. Each dance of this phase has its own musical form and pattern of movement. The first dance is invariably nbarinkoi in which the moran form a tight chanting group, and then move forward as a body with a rhythmic movement, twice raising their heels, bending their knees, thrusting their heads forwards and exhaling audibly – in fact not unlike bulls – and then straightening themselves and lifting their spears on the third beat. At certain points individual moran on impulse hop to the front of the dance and beyond. Increasingly others follow suit, and together may leap upwards with rigid bodies. The whole sequence is then repeated several times. Nbarinkoi is the keynote of the whole occasion. If there is a distinct lull during the later stages of the dance or some interruption, the dancers will normally return to nbarinkoi in an attempt to revive it and start anew. This dance appears to be quite invariable throughout the Wedding Dances 81

Samburu district so that any moran visitor from another clan or region will have no difficulty in participating fully. It sets the tone for the subsequent dancing, displaying the moran as an assertive body of dancers. There is at this stage some competition for the lead, but the soloists’ words are generally stereotyped, indistinct and drowned by the chorus. Another very popular dance of this phase is nkokorri, which gives greater scope for elaboration of the song and competition for the solo part. The loud assertions of the leader are more distinct, and the notion of a multi-sided auction becomes especially apt. A few girls and some rather small boys (too young to be out herding) may join the fringes of this dance, following its movements; but the moran, now facing inwards, take no notice of them. At certain points several moran may spring together in a succession of high jumps. It is in this dance that one may sense a gathering power and momentum as the rhythm quickens, and sometimes, if guided by a skilful soloist, its rhythm may be elaborated. While it is hard to pin down any precise jealousies aroused by the boasting and counter-boasting, the moran claim that it is at this point that their rivalry and anger come to a head. If a fight breaks out during the dancing, it is likely to be at this stage. Inadvertently one moran may jostle another whose nerves are on edge, and he will react violently. If they happen to be of the same clan and surrounded by their kinsmen, then others may attempt to seize them to prevent a more serious incident. However, if the incident is misconstrued, or there is a score to settle, or they happen to be of different clans, then almost in an instant the dance can be transformed into a general affray. The possibility of fighting is very real and adds to the tenseness of the occasion, but it is no more than an outside chance. More usually the climax is reached when a number of moran with taut expressions begin to shiver. This is described by the Samburu as a symptom of their anger, a desire to lash out at almost anything, although knowing that they must restrain themselves. In battle, a moran is said sometimes to shiver beforehand until he can release his aggression in the actual fighting, and then he stops shivering. In the dance, his shivering displays his urge to fight and his manliness, but to give way to this urge would show a lack of self-control. It is in this ambiguous and tense situation that one or two moran can be expected to break down in an insensible fit of convulsive shaking, held firmly by their fellows to prevent them from hurting themselves or others. The larger and more successful the dance, the more likely it is that as many as five or more moran will break down in this way, following one another in relatively quick succession. Then after the shaking subsides and they regain their composure, they return to the dance apparently cured of their bout of anger as they merge almost passively into the main body of dancers. The climax of shaking does not necessarily end this display phase of the dance, but it takes away the sense of melodrama, and the moran more obviously enjoy sporting themselves with less compulsion to compete and a greater chance to concentrate on the actual dancing. 82 Arenas of Dance among Samburu

When the dances of display seem to have run their course, moran start to perform dances of the second phase. The girls now join in the dance as a compact group, facing towards the group of moran, and they perform a similar rhythmic thrusting action towards one another. I refer to the dances of this phase as clan dances. The moran and girls of each clan build up a repertoire of songs for those dances (sesiei), generally relating to cattle rustling as in the previous phase, but with a new and more gentle note of competition. They indulge in a game in which the moran tease the girls for their limited knowledge with riddles: ‘What is iron that writes?’ [Answer – a taipiraita]; ‘Who are descended from monkeys?’ [Answer – Europeans because they are hairy all over]. The girls respond, taunting the moran for their shortcomings as would-be warriors. It is the skill of individual singers on behalf of their peer group that is now more important than the individualistic assertiveness of ‘bulls’ noted in the preceding phase. The tone and topic of this musical repartee is significant. The boundary between the sexes is firm and uncompromising; and there is in addition the vast difference between the worldliness and wanderlust of moran in their twenties and the domestic horizons of girls barely in their teens. In their sparring, based on moranish ideals and sexual attraction, they have little in common outside the idiom of their songs and dances. There is, however, their shared misgiving concerning their subordination to the control of the elders, which expresses itself as a scorn for self-indulgent elderhood tinged with fear of the elders. So long as the moran are footloose and causing trouble through stock thieving they are indirectly provoking the elders, while the girls’ encouragement is also an expression of defiance. Just as each wedding is a reminder for the moran of their ultimate powerlessness against the elders who take away their girls, so stock theft has become a symbol of their unwillingness to submit completely. It provides a central topic for the songs of their clan dances. The moran are amused when the girls with their limited experience sing of exploits in a garbled world that they have hardly seen; but there can be little doubt of the effect of the girls’ taunting on the moran. Thus a girl may sing: ‘If you’re a coward who goes out to steal stock and returns with nothing, then you may as well go and dance from village to village [ie. do not return, for the girls will not be impressed]’. Describing the effect of such goading, one moran claimed: ‘You are standing there in the dance, and a girl starts to sing. She raises her chin high and you see her throat. And then you want to steal some cattle for yourself. You start to shiver. You leave the dance and stride into the night, afraid of nothing and only conscious of the fact that you are going to steal a cow.’ However, one should not underestimate the respect and even fear that the moran have of the elders. Stock theft is a serious problem in the area, but a considerable proportion of moran are thought to go from village to village, goaded by the girls, perhaps even joining in some half-hearted sorties outside the district, but deferring ultimately to the elders. It should also be emphasised that shivering is not common during this phase, and (in my experience) never serious enough to lead to shaking. Wedding Dances 83

After a while during this phase, a morani may detach himself from his group, go up to one of the girls, and toss his head and flirt his twined hair over her face, or he may just place a hand on her head, and then as the girl shies away from his advances he returns to the body of moran. Other moran follow suit. These sorties gradually become more frequent and dancers on both sides begin to relax. One or two moran may draw some of the girls aside from the dance in conversation. Each sex maintains a certain reserve, remaining as small groups, some silent while others converse by innuendo, adopting the stilted idiom of the singing, teasing, and taunting with well-worn clichés. Yet despite this reserve, one senses a progressive loosening of the atmosphere from the earlier period when the moran ignored the presence of the girls altogether. This leads to the third phase, which the Samburu term boys’ dances. These are not the initiation dance, but a wide selection of dances that the moran performed as boys, and these have remained in their repertoire since they became moran. They are altogether more tuneful than the earlier dances, and the words have a lilt rather than any meaning. The dancing consists of an outer ring of dancers who sing catchy rhythms and beat time, and an inner core who stand in a circle and jump in time. The sexes are mixed to a considerable extent, and small groups beyond the circle of dancers, even pairs, chat and laugh. There is a growing hilarity as the process of thawing out continues. Someone starts to chant to a rhythm that appeals to them all. As one of the dancers once said of this phase: ‘When someone beats out the right tune, you find yourself jumping higher and higher and you can’t stop.’ It is during this phase that moran may make surreptitious advances towards the girls, arranging to meet them at some less public venue, and, if they are not careful, sowing the seed for some future confrontation between rivals. The transition from one phase to the next appears to depend on the judgement of any skilful singer. At an appropriate point, he may start to sing the first measures of the next phase, and the success of his initiative will depend on the response he gets from others. If they do not share his confidence then the initiative will quickly lapse and the earlier phase will continue. This succession of phases is well illustrated with several examples.

Example 1. Weddings should take place at the time of full-moon; and hence it is common for a number of weddings to take place simultaneously within any region, especially during a wet period. The wedding of Leparit’s sister coincided with another wedding nearby that attracted many of the moran from Leparit’s clan and left only about ten to attend the wedding dance at his village. They were hopelessly outnumbered by visiting moran, including an impressive contingent from the bridegroom’s clan who, with expert singers and dancers, dominated the first phase of the dance and out- displayed their hosts in front of the girls of the hosts’ clan. Leparit and his close friends had been apprehensive of this prospect beforehand, and during the dance itself they were demoralised. At the height of the dance, in quick succession, four of the host 84 Arenas of Dance among Samburu

moran including Leparit broke down and shook, held by their remaining clansmen. The visitors continued to dominate the occasion and none of them shook. Eventually the hosts rejoined the dance, and it proceeded smoothly to the second phase. Although this entailed clan dances, it no longer provoked serious rivalry between the various clans, and the hosts clearly recovered their nerve. The girls only knew the songs of their own (Leparit’s) clan, and in singing verses from them they were indirectly lending moral support to their moran kinsmen. For the visitors, the dance had moved on, and any rivalry between versions of this phase became an aspect of the rivalry between the sexes. This second phase was prolonged, and by the time it gave way to the boys’ dances of the third phase, many of the visitors had left to return to their own homes, and this became more of a local event and did not last long.

Example 2. Moipa discarded his mistress in disgust after she had been seduced by a moran of another clan. Later, during the display phase of a wedding dance, an affray broke out between the two clans, and Moipa was later accused of having precipitated it by jostling a close clansman of the seducer. The affray was quickly quelled as the local firestick patrons asserted their authority and the dance was abandoned. Subsequently, Moipa’s mistress was married off to avoid further trouble, and the elders of the two clans met and agreed to order their respective moran to avoid each other by not attending the same dances until the issue between them had been resolved.

Example 3. At the wedding of Legilan’s daughter, several attempts were made by the assembled moran to generate a dance; but for some unexplained reason they lacked the necessary spirit and the dance was unable to develop. Some of the moran started to leave, attracted by the prospect of another dance elsewhere. Those remaining, somewhat dispirited, made a further half-hearted attempt to start the dance, but with even less success. At this point a new contingent of moran, splendidly embellished, arrived and immediately began their own dance in another part of the village. The girl spectators immediately flocked towards this new dance, and the earlier attempt faded out. All the moran now joined the second dance, which proceeded smoothly through each of the phases. Some of the moran shook, but no clear-cut pattern underlay their shaking as had occurred in the first example.

Example 4. At another wedding, a dance had proceeded smoothly through the display dances to the clan dances of the second phase. Then there was a lull, and unaccountably the momentum was lost and the dance stalled. Several attempts to renew this phase found no response among the dancers. The dance then reverted to the display phase, beginning again with nbarinkoi, and on this second occasion proceeded more smoothly through the subsequent phases. (I cannot say whether the initial transition to the phase of clan dances had been premature, but this reversion to the first phase and nbarinkoi following some interruption appears to be the normal pattern.) Wedding Dances 85

Example 5. (as described by elders). Following the first circumcisions of a new age-set in 1960, two sets of moran dances took place at weddings simultaneously: that of the senior moran due to retire and that of the new age-set of juniors. The junior moran had no established repertoire beyond their boys’ dances and they lacked the panache and spectacle of their seniors. Yet time was on their side, and many of the younger girls who had previously been drawn towards the dancing of the senior moran now deserted them and switched their attention to the juniors, whose lack of accomplishment was offset by new hope, high spirits and the remoteness of their own elderhood. With this switching of the limelight away from them, the senior moran began to reconcile themselves to elderhood and lost the incentive to compete or to dance. There was now a radical shift in the type of dancing and singing to be seen at weddings: a fresh unruly spirit mixed in with the various dances that could be expected to lead to a spate of trouble as rivalries built up. But there was also a shift in their language in song. The junior moran sought to establish a new set of songs that they could identify as their own, and up to a point a new slang and double entendre in these songs, a secret language of their own to tease and ultimately share with the girls and to keep hidden from their seniors. Yet despite their efforts to be different, the past experiences of successive age-sets indicated that they would unwittingly continue to follow the basic pattern of dances and of phases as their predecessors.

Example 6. Evening dances begin more spontaneously than wedding dances which always take place during the afternoon, and they are very common. With only moonlight to see by, there are no display dances, and the occasion is marked by informality. In a typical evening dance, a group of moran gather together and call to the girls of the village to come and join them. The idiom of this invitation (ntemerr) is very similar to the clan dances which shortly follow, and thus the dancing may be said to begin with the second phase. This is generally a very local clan affair and the clan dances may last for some time, before the boys’ dances of the third phase are attempted. There is in these dances a certain hilarity normally missing from the afternoon sessions. Gradually a fourth phase may emerge, which I would describe as play. The boys’ dances begin to lose their form and become mixed with an element of horseplay, which merges into the general babble. Boisterousness increases further and some of the less skilled singers, having lost their earlier inhibitions, may try to take the lead for the first time. The result does little to dampen the high spirits of the dancers. Small groups, or even individuals, begin to jump and dance and beat time, without establishing a rhythm. There is general mirth, and playful skirmishes between moran and girls. Nothing, it seems, can spoil their enjoyment, and the general atmosphere of intoxication may last until the small hours.

As play, this phase is comparable with the attempts of smaller children who earlier in the evening may have mimicked dances that they do not really know, mixing them in with their play. Thus the evening dance starts at a later phase than a wedding 86 Arenas of Dance among Samburu

dance, but progresses in the same direction and, under the discreet cover of darkness, unwinds further. As the dancing progresses in these examples, one may note a shift of emphasis from the provocative thrusting movement with assertive bull-like grunting that tends to predominate at first, to the leaping movement later on as the rigid bodies of the dancers rise and fall, keeping absolutely together. This is a trend within the first phase and also within the dance as a whole. The horizontal thrusting expresses and even precipitates individualistic competition, whereas the vertical leaping in concert appears to reflect their unity. Increasingly, there is greater emphasis on dances that have more vertical movement, more compulsive rhythms, less grunting, and less competitiveness in their singing. This development suggests a rather obvious sexual symbolism, even if the Samburu themselves do not emphasise this aspect. ‘Bulls’ vie assertively in the first phase before an audience of females. They approach these females in the second phase, and the two sexes thrust (their faces) rhythmically towards one another. In the third phase, hand in hand, they spring up and down together as the rhythm grips them, rising to a climax. And then, relaxation. This process may be summarized as thrusting : competition → springing : unity → unstructured behaviour : relaxed informality.

At a less obvious level, the development of the dance can be taken further. Figure 5.1 depicts the evolution of a moran dance, illustrating this as the reverse of the process of social development of the individual. The dance evolves from the dances of display, in which the moran are disunited and engage in a choral brawl that at any point could degenerate into a fight; the girls are not directly involved at this stage, except as spectators. With the clan dances, the moran are now united and the girls are brought into a game in which brawling gives way to repartee. The two sexes confront each other, at first as peer groups, but progressively as individuals, detaching themselves from the dance, teasing and flirting, while awkwardly maintaining a certain reserve. With the boys’ dances, this process of merging is taken a stage further. One is still conscious of small groups of girls clinging together and of moran holding themselves slightly aloof, but the peer grouping of the clan dances is broken up and the verbal play on the periphery rises to a general babble. Finally the last vestige of inhibition appears to evaporate in play and their consciousness of the social barrier that separates them lapses. Perhaps by this stage one should no longer think in terms of the evolution of the dance, but rather of its degeneration. The process of social development proceeds in the opposite direction. In infancy, the sexes are at first undifferentiated, but with childhood, sharp distinctions are made. Girls should be decently covered and taught to show an early respect for the elders, and boys are involved with a caring concern for stock as soon as possible. Wedding Dances 87

Figure 5.1: Dancing Famongigur morane 5.1 as. aD processancin ofg reversion among moran as a process of reversion 88 Arenas of Dance among Samburu

They emerge as separate sexes and long before puberty form themselves into self- conscious peer groups. This process is taken a stage further with their initiation following puberty. At this point the girls are married off individually to elders, and the boys become moran, separated from girls of their own age and frequently at odds among themselves as they are forced to bide their time and are left to create their own subculture over a prolonged period. This process of social development may be regarded as the progressive imposition of a boundary that separates the sexes and comes between their natural attraction for one another, and then for the men creates further boundaries that divide them among themselves. The moran dance, on the other hand, is a process whereby these boundaries are successively broken down and the shackles of upbringing are progressively shaken off. From this point of view, the dance is not even a degeneration, but rather a retrogression. Of the various types of explanation that might be put forward for the dances of moran, the evidence here seems to point towards a temporary release of the tension that is built up among young people associated with their restricted position: the moran suspended in a delayed adolescence and young girls with the dismal prospect of an arranged marriage to an elder of another clan. The process might be expressed in Freudian terms as a reversion to infancy; or in Lévi-Straussian terms as a transformation from culture to nature; or following Victor Turner (1969) as a transition from structure to antistructure, with the progression towards play seen as the development of communitas. The moran and girls do not merely release tension, but they also develop a camaraderie, united through the dance in a token protest against the regime under which they are placed. Bringing together these various ways of interpreting the moran dance is revealing. Freud’s theory of the development of the personality, conscience, and acculturation focuses especially on the oedipal relationship between children and parents – between inner nature and outer culture. This is a theory that has less to offer on the exposure of the child to other children in spontaneous play, which extends their experience beyond the authoritarian structure of the family and has relevance to the development of relations of equality between peers. Ostensibly the element of protest in their dances proclaims their autonomy and a challenge to the regime of the elders. Yet in a sense it reintegrates them into society, since it reduces them to the innocuous status of childhood. In this way, a major source of disorder in Samburu society, the threat from dispossessed warriors in their prime, is removed through dance, and order is re-established. Perhaps this is why a lively moran dance at a wedding is regarded as an auspicious event. It exorcises the frustration and anger that builds among younger Samburu and emancipates them. Dancing and Elderhood 89

5.3 Dancing and Elderhood

When the senior moran have settled down as elders, there are no new songs and dances to replace those of their moranhood. The elders are the only sector of Samburu society who do not in practice perform dances (although I was assured that they could and perhaps would), and they can never again wholly recapture the undomesticated charm of their past moranhood. The rift between moran and elders is emphasised, echoing the earlier rift between moran and boys. Reverting to the model of Figure 2.1, one might say that each of the dividing lines in this diagram indicates a social boundary in the distribution of power (by age and by sex), but they also highlight the polarity between complementary opposites. A Samburu definition of an elder would tend to emphasise that an elder does what a moran does not do, and vice versa. If moran dance, shake, and attract popular attention, then it is not appropriate for the elders to attempt these activities. Similarly, because Samburu elders make important decisions in debate, the moran are not encouraged to cultivate debating skills.4 The debating elder is as popular a stereotype as the dancing moran. Yet among elders, their rivalries are played out in debate in a way reminiscent of moran dancing, and one can discern a certain dance-like quality in their deliberations. Joseph Thomson was the first European to traverse the Maa area, and a highlight of his account is his lyrical comments on the visual panache of Maasai oratory, without even understanding their language.5 In a Samburu moran dance, a skilful singer can convert an otherwise flat occasion into a memorable one and stimulate others to respond. Similarly, a skilled orator among the elders can convert a meandering discussion into a lively debate. Wielding his stick deftly to make his points (cf. Thomson), he asserts himself as master of the space around him and of the time he takes to hold his audience in his spell. In building up his argument, he provokes other elders to respond and to exercise their skills, wresting the initiative as in an auction. Precisely as a successful moran dance is expected to proceed through the earlier phases of competition before unity is achieved, so the elders should debate, airing all points of view before they arrive at a unanimous decision. An inadequately attended debate, like an inadequately attended dance, does not fulfil its end. One could argue that this is more than a mere parallel between moranhood and elderhood: it is a transformation from dancing to debating, and an aspect of the transformation from protest to power. On becoming elders, moran enter a new arena, which consciously contrasts with their past in a number of ways. But inevitably there

4 This contrasts with moran among the Maasai, who are encouraged to develop debating skills in managing manyata affairs and this is regarded as a preparation for elderhood. Samburu moran have less encouragement in this respect, delaying their prospects of maturation. 5 Thomson 1885: 162, 433; 1968: 90, 253. 90 Arenas of Dance among Samburu

is a basic continuity, and at a very basic level one might argue that the moran dancers are learning to debate just as the debating elders continue to dance.

5.4 Conclusion: The Abuse of Power and the Inviolability of Play

A characteristic feature of Samburu elderhood is drabness of their apparel and their refraining from joining in any dancing, which is the most conspicuous part of Samburu ritual. Admittedly, an element of dance performance has been noted in the skill of oratory when elders are assembled for a debate, but this is most specifically not dance. The Maa term for ‘play’ (enkiguran) is also used for ‘dance’, whereas debating is the ultimate tool that elders have in resolving disputes and managing public affairs and in this sense it is the opposite of any form of play. The elders have ultimate authority also within their own households, over their wives, their sons who will eventually inherit from their herds, and their daughters whose arranged marriages will be principally determined by their fathers. The elders are in charge to an ill-defined extent that can border on the abuse of power, especially as perceived by their wives. Dance as ‘play’ on the other hand draws attention to dancing as a source of creativity, which stems from a rapport with God as the creator of life itself. In Samburu ritual, dance has a vital role, and where this has a cosmic dimension in popular belief, it endows the arena of dancing with a sense of inviolability. Dancing women are free to enjoy taunting the elders remorselessly. When the moran appear at a wedding dance, parading their finery, asserting their supremacy, outbidding one another in boasting of escapades, they tacitly undermine the authority of the elders. In their dancing as in their expected behaviour generally, the Samburu moran share a sense of unselfish group-indulgence as a virtue of their position. This is compromised when they step up to elderhood and are freed from the selfless constraints of moranhood – and exposed to the inviolable taunts of dancing women. Dance performance displays a very public message that goes beyond the content of their songs. It expresses the spirit of the occasion. Confidence has to be built up and cannot be taken for granted. Initiates have to reach a standard of coordination and assertiveness before their claim to initiation into moranhood becomes credible. Wives have to muster support from women in neighbouring villages as they gather for a performance at a wedding or for coercing elders of the locality to give them gifts in return for their blessing. The dancing of moran may be let down by under-performance and a failure to establish an empathy or to resolve the tensions between clans. It cannot be assumed that the dancing will always gather momentum or that the stages of a moran dance (Figure 5.1) will always unravel in the prescribed way, as the above examples show. Where moran vie with one another for the lead and start to shake in a fit of anger, or seek to move the dance on to the next phase, there is an element of uncertainty. A dance that peters out is a setback to the panache of the occasion, and Conclusion: The Abuse of Power and the Inviolability of Play 91

if this is a wedding, then it casts a shadow over the prospects of the marriage. The loss of spirit in dancing endows less than a full blessing on the occasion. In dancing, nothing succeeds like success, and confidence is built on success. Just as the elders show little insight into the source of their problems with wives and moran, so they do not suggest that these dances serve to alleviate tensions within the community. However, the elders’ explicit stamp of approval and acknowledgement of the central importance of these dances in ritual seem to reflect an intuitive wisdom. They may try to limit the worst excesses of some of the dances (as in the second example above), and realise that the topics of the songs dent the credibility of their regime, but they cannot and do not wish to eliminate the dancing. There is a general notion that these dances are a propitious part of Samburu life. The women’s fertility dances are a prayer to God and bring children. Boys’ dancing before their initiation has a similar coercive effect, when they are assumed to be protected by God. The spectacle of moran dances is the central feature of display at a wedding and a dismal performance would be regarded as a bad omen, threatening misfortune. These threats, I suggest, are not from malignant outsiders, but express an inner ambivalence concerning the excesses of the rule of the elders. Play is pitted against an over-zealous regime, emancipating the dancers from their shackles. Dancing among the Samburu is a display of the irrepressible antithesis to the shaky premise of gerontocracy. 6 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu1

‘… the antique religions had for the most part no creed; they consisted entirely of institutions and practices. [The worshipper] was often offered a choice of several accounts of the same thing, and, provided he fulfilled the ritual with accuracy, no one cared what he believed about its origin – the rules of society was sufficient reason why precedent once set should continue to be followed,’

[W. Robertson Smith, 1888-9, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites]

Various accounts of the Maasai have suggested a link with ancient Israel, noting the common feature of nomadic pastoralism and suggesting other parallels. The most concerted attempt was by Moriz Merker in his outstanding book on Die Masai (1904), suggesting that perhaps they were a lost tribe of Israel. This section of his book has long been discredited as a historical curiosity, and given the sheer span of time, no link between ancient Israel and the Maa today can be seriously considered. In one respect, however, a more general point can be made in relation to the above quotation. Robertson Smith was drawing on similar material to Merker, relating to the earlier books of the Bible, and his stress on the importance of ritual conformity over belief applies very aptly to Maa religion. Samburu elders discuss and argue about precedent rather than explanation when preparing for any ceremony. When they consult a diviner on some vexed issue, they are given magical substances coupled with ritual advice and some personal help, but only a vague explanation. Even powerful Maasai Prophets would diagnose any situation in oblique terms before giving crisp ritual instructions without claiming insight into some other sacred world. Smith’s generalization on the irrelevance of creed can be challenged in one respect among the Samburu and Maasai. They insist that any departure from established ritual practice could be punished by God (Enkai), and this is reason enough for strict compliance. One may argue that this is a creed of sorts at a very fundamental level: a vague belief in the mystical causes of misfortune. Compared with the Maasai, the Samburu have a relatively straightforward and transparent political framework, with no powerful Prophets or major concerns over sorcery. Their age-set system and associated ceremonies are clear-cut and less elaborate than the Maasai. It is against this background that one may note the profusion of ritual detail. The core details are broadly acknowledged, but the

1 An earlier version of this chapter was published under the title ‘The Function of Ritual in the So- cialization of the Samburu Moran’, in Mayer, P. (ed.), 1970, Socialization: the approach from social anthropology, ASA Monographs 8, Tavistock, London. (pp. 127-56). I am grateful to the Association of Social Anthropologists for their permission to draw on this article here.

profusion is assumed to be a matter that only senior elders understand. Older men with more experience are held to have a profound depth of practical ritual knowledge, and this is an aspect of the mystique associated with the charisma of ageing. However, the proverbial wisdom of old men goes no further than the length of their memories, and if there is disagreement when elders mull over the ritual preparations for each performance, there is a broad concern to strike a formula that will minimize the risk of unexpected misfortune. Sometimes disagreements over protocol can spark off dramatic confrontations at their assemblies with unseemly shouting between the age-set of firestick patrons, who are responsible for the moran, and elders of more senior age-sets who feel that tradition is being violated, courting mystical misfortune and discrediting the authority of their experience. Robertson Smith’s ‘choice of several accounts’ raises rather than resolves the concern for ‘accuracy’.

6.1 Perpetuating Gerontocracy

It is through their ability to control marriages that power chiefly resides in the hands of the elders, and they have every reason for seeking to maintain the status quo. At the beginning of their adult careers, moran have no overriding incentive for accepting a higher authority, and their firestick patrons have to focus their attention in order to retain the initiative. They have to ensure that younger moran accept the gerontocratic structure of their society in its pseudo-traditional form, and accept especially their marginal role within it. The system relies on moran accepting this situation and the attractiveness of remaining moran and regarding elderhood as an essentially colourless set of responsibilities. This provides the backdrop to the anomalous position of the moran. They are a sector of the society without a precise role. They are no longer warriors in the most literal sense, yet no alternative role has been assigned to them. The traditional imbalance of power in terms of wives, independent stock ownership, and participating in local decision-making, depends on the moran being kept apart from the elders. A critical period in the age-set cycle is therefore the transition from boyhood to moranhood. The older moran already have a stake in the total system, and therefore an incentive to settle down sooner or later to a peaceful elderhood, whereas boys have to learn. By the time that they are initiated – at ages varying from perhaps thirteen to twenty years or more – many of them are quite old enough to assume a warrior role, having identified themselves with this for a number of years. They have had both opportunity and incentive to acquire the notions and values of warriorhood, and have responded to the general expectation that they will in their turn become moran and the general focus of interest and attention. As boys, however, they have not cultivated a deep sense of responsibility towards their society in times of quasi- peace or of subservience to the will of the elders. In regarding themselves primarily as potential warriors, sensitive to notions of honour and prestige, they may be 94 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu

dangerously near the brink of anarchy. The years of waiting culminate with their initiation into moranhood, and this could potentially lead to sudden and widespread disorder. This is the point when their firestick patrons need to assert their control and bring the initiates to heel. They do not wish to destroy the boys’ incentive to become moran, but they do need to quell any desire to become complete rebels. The vital quality that the initiates are seen still to lack is ‘a sense of respect’. It is this above all that the patrons wish to inculcate into the younger moran. It is not simply that as warriors they may sometimes become involved in inter-clan affrays, but also that they may show their disrespect for society at large as self-centred adolescents, stock thieves and adulterers. Among moran, there is an element of prestige quite apart from personal satisfaction in such exploits, with boastful allusions to these in their songs. Potentially, the firestick patrons have a problem of delinquency on their hands. During the period of initiation when boys are promoted to moranhood, the main focus of concern is their circumcision. This four-minute ordeal is the supreme test to prove that they have the necessary courage for true warriorhood, and this critical test is anticipated in their lebarta song, vowing to endure the agony of the operation. Any flinch of a muscle or even the bat of an eyelid as primitive razor sears into flesh is interpreted by the Samburu as a desire ‘to run away’. Any flinch will violate the boy’s honour, and this can never be redeemed, and also that of his family, which will be tainted for years to come. The honour of his clan and circumcision settlement will be derided by other Samburu. The prospect of a flinch provokes anxiety, not merely among the initiates but also among their kinsmen and ultimately the whole clan. A timid boy would be made to wait for circumcision, rather than become a morani at the earliest opportunity. The following example illustrates the extent to which a collective circumcision ceremony may bring hidden anxieties to a head.

Among the Masula of Mt Ngiro, events leading up to the initiation of the Kishili age-set had taken their normal course and all the necessary ceremonial preparations had been completed in order to hold the first circumcisions in July 1960. Excitement ran high in the circumcision settlement where I was staying. A new age-set of moran would shortly be brought into being. On the 6th July, the firestick patrons agreed that two of the initiates should be circumcised on the evening of the 7th, observing their family custom, and the remainder on the morning of the 8th. Throughout the next day a major topic of conversation was whether or not any of the initiates would flinch. More and more elders and also moran of the previous age-set gathered carrying pliant sticks up to ten feet in length. These, they said, were to discourage any initiate who had thoughts of running away to hide himself in the bush before the operation. The initiates themselves stood around in small groups, apparently nervous at the prospect of the operation and aware of the general lack of confidence which the moran and elders had in them. On the previous evening their singing had been pointed out to me as distinctly unsteady, and now they were silent. Perpetuating Gerontocracy 95

They afterwards told me that it was the fear of flinching rather than of pain that had worried them most. The ordeal of the ceremony was not so much one of physical endurance during the operation itself as of maintaining confidence beforehand in the face of unknown pain. One elder saw them standing around in dejection and shouted at them. “Sing your circumcision song,” he demanded. “Show us that you are not afraid ... Or don’t you want to be circumcised?” One or two of the boys started to sing, and then another elder, the father of one of them, ran towards them and ordered them to stop singing. This, I was told, was because he was quite certain that his own son would flinch and he considered it better for him to be silent than to boast and then flinch afterwards. This general anxiety came to a head just before the two circumcisions of that evening were to take place. The two initiates had to drive their fathers’ cattle into the settlement, and one of them started to sing: “My light brown bull – roar! For I will not bring dishonour (nyileti).” This boast caused some consternation and the boy’s eldest brother, an elder, at first raised his whip to strike him and then checked himself. His gesture, coming at a moment when nerves were frayed, sparked off a general release of tension. One moran ran up to strike the initiate and was seized by an elder and thrown to the ground. Other men, both elders and moran, seized any person who showed signs of wanting to strike the initiate or to start an affray, and in some cases were themselves seized on this assumption. At least five moran broke down and had to be held firmly while they shook insensibly. The first two circumcisions were then carried out in a confusion of babbling and shouting, mostly aimed at the initiates undergoing the operation and the circumciser performing it, although the circumciser seemed to be the one man present who had a clear notion of what should be done and completed the operations deftly. Once these two circumcisions had been performed, there was less anxiety, and the other circumcisions were completed the following morning, still in an atmosphere of confusion and shouting, but without any signs of flinching from the initiates or fighting from the adult males.

Especially interesting in this incident was the reaction to the initiate’s boasting. His elder brother nearly struck him and his ageing father seemed on the point of having a stroke. The boast itself was made to the bull of the family herd – the same herd to which previous members of the lineage had boasted when they had been circumcised. If he had flinched then the herd itself would have been driven ignominiously through the thorn fence and so long as the event was remembered no future member of this lineage would dare to make a boast of this sort. This is the one context in Samburu life where there is a recognized way of openly shaming a person and his family, and a specific word for dishonour (nyileti). In retrospect, the elders did not criticize the initiate for showing too much confidence in himself before the operation. This boast was expected of him if he had any spirit, and as he kept his word and did not flinch, he brought credit to his family for his boldness. But they did criticize the father and 96 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu

the elder brother who had shown too little confidence in him, publicly betraying that they regarded it as quite possible that a member of their family might flinch during circumcision. Other persons in private admitted that they too had felt the same way about the circumcision of their own kinsmen, but would not want to betray this in public. The news that reached other circumcision settlements in the area was not that someone had actually flinched in this particular settlement, but that the elders had expected someone to flinch. The incident was a minor humiliation and it dampened the general elation once the ceremony was over. One of the moran who had been present told me afterwards that during the whole period of the change-over he had hated that day more than any other, but having now seen the circumcisions he had to accept that a new age-set of moran would soon replace his own in popular esteem. After the circumcision ceremony, the initiates spend a month under strict ritual prohibitions governing their behaviour and diet, and encouraging them to keep close company with one another. These prohibitions end with a further ceremony at which the initiates formally become moran; they start to grow their hair and embellish it with red ochre. This is the first of a series of ceremonies known as ilmugit, which are the principal gatherings that enable the firestick patrons to exert their authority. At their first ilmugit, each initiate vows to his mother not to eat any meat seen by a married woman. This is foremost among the various restrictions associated with the moran. Meat that has not been seen by married women is regarded as meat of the bush where the moran belong and where they share one another’s company. In the same vein, a morani should not drink milk except in the company of other moran. He should not be allowed to die inside a settlement. He should not take any form of alcohol or other non-traditional form of food. He should avoid all young married women. And he should always acknowledge his obligations towards other moran of his age-set. To ignore these norms would be sometimes a matter of shame (eg. to eat meat seen by married women – as if he were a child), sometimes a matter of unpropitiousness (eg. to die inside a settlement), or a matter of disrespect for his age-set (eg. to drink milk by himself), or a matter of disrespect for the elders (eg. to be familiar with their wives). All these can be broadly summarized in the general formula that the moran belong to the bush where they should keep their own company. At defined stages of their transition to elderhood, the moran perform an ilmugit ceremony, each of which has certain basic features that bear some similarities to their initial circumcision ceremony. Both circumcision and ilmugit ceremonies are performed separately by each clan; both entail the promotion of essentially the same group of moran, and both ceremonies are controlled by essentially the same group of firestick patrons. Both ceremonies systematically follow the order of birth of full brothers – the order of circumcision in the first instance and the order of slaughtering ilmugit oxen in the second. In both ceremonies, the huts are systematically laid out in order of genealogical seniority within and between all the lineages of the clan. The emphasis is on a prescribed order of precedence. Perpetuating Gerontocracy 97

Plate III: A Samburu morani takes his turn to slaughter his ‘ilmugit-of-the-bull’ ox (1958)

Altogether there are six of these ilmugit ceremonies associated with stages of transition for the moran, from the end of their initiation period to the time when they are on the brink of elderhood some sixteen years later, when a new age-set of younger moran will have been initiated for some years. Above all, the ilmugit ceremonies are regarded by the firestick patrons as occasions when they can collect the moran together, harangue them, and engender in them a sense of respect, thereby maintaining some form of control. The firestick patrons aim to instil into the moran not only a sense of respect, but also a sense of awe stemming from their power to bless or to curse them. A harangue will last for several hours as one patron after another hurls a tirade against the moran over their shortcomings and points to misfortunes – perhaps deaths among moran – which ‘prove’ the effectiveness of the elders’ power to curse. Actual cursing is comparatively rare, but it is a very apt topic for a harangue. These harangues end with a conditional blessing by the patrons. As an example of such a blessing, consider the following sequence during one of the more important ilmugit ceremonies performed by Pardopa clan.

For about ten days before the performance of the ilmugit ceremony, the elders and moran periodically held separate discussions; and the moran were given four or five harangues, each lasting several hours. While elders of all age-sets attended these harangues, it was the firestick patrons of the moran who played a leading role in all harangues, discussions and blessings. The main theme of these harangues was that the moran did not have a sufficiently developed sense of respect and that this retarded 98 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu

their progress towards elderhood. To the patrons, this was most apparent from the way in which they stayed close to certain settlements where there were attractive young wives and from the large number of accusations of adultery recently levelled against them. The patrons argued that it was dangerous for the moran to provoke the anger of the elders, tempting them to use their curse. They urged the moran to discuss the matter among themselves so that they could reaffirm their sense of respect. Spokesmen for the moran were nominated by the patrons and these played a major role in acknowledging the essential truth of the accusations levelled against the moran. At about 9.00 pm. on the evening before killing the first ox in the ceremony, the moran were called over to the elders’ enclosure for a blessing. There were about 25 elders and 40 moran. This was preceded first by separate discussions by the elders and by the moran, and then by a harangue. At each new stage of the evening’s activities a spiral kudu horn was blown by a morani at the instigation of the patrons. Finally, it was time for the blessing. To the sound of the horn an intense fire was built up between the elders and the moran. The elders protected their bodies from the heat by drawing up their blankets, but the moran only had short loin-cloths and were exposed to it. Two forceful patrons led the blessing invoking the protection of God on the moran. “May Nkai look after you . . . May Nkai give you life . . . May Nkai look after you . . . May Nkai give you peace . . . May Nkai give you good fortune ...” At each pause the other elders waved their up-raised staffs and chanted, “Nkai …. Nkai … Nkai.” rhythmically, and continued to do so even when the invocations were drowned by the general tumult. A morani was also blowing the horn in time with the rhythmical chanting. As they began their invocations, the two leading patrons splattered the bodies of the moran with a mixture of milk and water. The unexpected sting of the cool liquid on their bodies exposed to the heat of the fire caused some of the moran to squeal and jump. And immediately three started to shake and perhaps a dozen started to shiver. Relentlessly the blessing continued, and the gasps of the shaking moran and the chant of elders and the sound of the horn practically drowned the words of the invocation. Some shaking moran partially recovered, and others started to shake and had to be held. Eventually the morani blowing the horn fell shaking and had to be held by about five other moran. Another morani picked up the horn and started to blow, but he began to shake immediately, and the horn was taken over by a third morani who had some difficulty in keeping the time and just blew it continuously. After about six minutes, there were five shaking moran who were being forcibly held by both moran and elders, and a dozen other moran who were either shivering or shaking. There was no morani who was not either shivering or shaking or holding a shaking morani. At this point the blessing stopped. At dawn next morning, before the slaughter of ilmugit oxen started, the firestick patrons mustered the moran for a further blessing (Plate IV), inducing further shivering and some shaking on an altogether smaller scale. Perpetuating Gerontocracy 99

Plate IV: Samburu firestick patrons bless moran at an ilmugit ceremony (1958).

In this incident, the blessing started abruptly and there was a sudden and relentless build-up of invocations and chanting to the climax, which was maintained throughout. At one moment, the moran were standing half-naked before the blazing fire. Then their heated bodies were suddenly stung by the cool mixture of milk and water, invocations were hurled at them, and the horn was blowing almost deafeningly in time with the patrons’ chanting. It had much in common with the circumcision operation where each initiate had first to wash himself quickly with a similar mixture of milk and water, and then he was surrounded by a crowd of shouting elders while he passively submitted to circumcision. The repeated sound of the horn, only used at ceremonies or when enemy raiders are in the vicinity, added to the impressiveness of the occasion. The moran said that the sound of it, especially in the presence of the elders, made them want to shake. In other words, such features as the mixture of milk and water, the horn, the concentrated attention of the firestick patrons have potent associations. It also seems feasible that the extent to which the patrons managed to impress the moran with the weight of their powerful blessing would also engender a greater dread of their curse. Paradoxically, both the curse and the blessing over the moran are oppressive, and not as complementary as they might seem. At their harangues, the elders emphasized that they wanted to inculcate certain values in the moran, emphasizing the need for them to gain respect in order to attain full elderhood. But they behaved as though they really wanted to maintain the moran in their state of prolonged adolescence. It was not simply that they tried to teach 100 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu

the moran respect, but that they constantly accused the moran of being incapable of learning respect. Instead of inviting them to keep company more often with the elders, they would tell them to go back into the bush where they belonged and to stay there until they acquired this respect. In private, no-one seriously suggested that the moran could learn the true meaning of respect from other moran alone. Rather, this unconstructive haranguing could be seen as a way of ensuring a continuation of the status quo.

6.2 Interpretations of Shivering and Shaking

Shivering and fits of shaking among moran are popularly ascribed to the roots of certain plants that they stew in their soups. The Samburu claim that these excite their emotions and make them shiver. The Maasai have a similar explanation and this was confirmed by an early administrator who wrote that “I can vouch for the il kitoloswa [root], small doses of which do, in fact, produce a fierce and unbalanced state of mind”. In my own experience on the other hand, moran soups among the Samburu gave me diarrhoea, but I was not aware of any emotional response. This negative view was confirmed when extracts from four selected roots (including il kitoloswa) were routinely tested on laboratory mice, and this seems to tally with the ideal that moran should keep their inner bodies pure and expurgated (Chapter 3).2 An alternative explanation is that there is moral pressure on Samburu youths to become moran and behave in the ways that moran are assumed always to have behaved. In other words, this phenomenon is a form of conditioned reflex. It is expected of them as warriors and they assimilate it as part of their subculture. Among the Maasai, shivering is also associated with moranhood, but occasionally it extends to girls, older boys, young elders, and in one observed case to the mother of an initiate during his circumcision. The ‘conditioning’ appears more tightly restricted among the Samburu. Shivering and shaking were observed in the initial phase of moran dances, their dances of display (Chapter 5). Although the Samburu do not elaborate on this phase in clear analytical terms, they are aware of acute emotions generated in this climax by two opposed forces: constraint and assertiveness. The element of constraint is symptomatic of their whole moranhood and of the regime under which they are placed. This is a society in which loyalty to age-set and clan and conformity to the mores of Samburu society as a whole are supreme virtues. A man is expected to suppress private desires that conflict with public expectations, to show an aloof

2 Fox 1930: 454. For further details of the subsequent tests, see Spencer 1965: 270n. I am grateful to Dr John A. Lock of the Pharmacology Department at Makerere College for undertaking these tests and for permission to quote his findings. Interpretations of Shivering and Shaking 101

respect, and to stand on his dignity. This self-restraint is a social grace that the moran in particular cultivate and carry through to elderhood. In the dance, the moran have a uniform appearance, compactness in their grouping, and stereotyped movements that are synchronized with the collectively induced rhythm. This constraint extends to the expectations that they should comply with the peace of the dance, regardless of its competitive edge, and master any desire to fight. They associate their shivering and fits of shaking with the angry struggle within themselves to overcome the urge to attack some adversary. As their anger is aroused, they shiver and experience a tightness gripping their chests, inducing a sense of breathless suffocation as they sink into unconsciousness and shaking. When moran assert themselves aggressively at each rhythmic climax of the dance with boasting and loud exhalations from deep down in their chests, it is as if their anger is induced by the conflict between their own assertiveness and some external force pressing relentlessly inwards. In the grip of this extreme contradiction between assertiveness and constraint, they lose consciousness and achieve relaxation. They have no theory of possession by some spirit, yet at a metaphoric level a somewhat similar explanation suggests itself. In a society such as this, the collectivist slant of Durkheim’s sociology is particularly apt, and at times when moran shiver and shake one is led to suggest that this sense of suffocation is none other than their experience of society itself as a constraining force bearing down on them and taking possession as their anger and urge to break free mounts. This is to imply that Samburu society as a moral force is assimilated as a physiological response over the extended period that youths prime themselves for moranhood. It is in their dances during the display phase and at other times when they should control their desires to fight that shaking is actually expected of them. Shaking is a sign of their assertiveness and of their self-mastery, in other words a proof of their worthiness as warriors. When they become elders and are no longer expected to assert themselves, then shivering and shaking are inappropriate and are expected to cease. Samburu and Maasai associate shivering with an emotional state that they describe as en-goro. Dictionary definitions translate this term as ‘anger’, derived from a-gor, ‘to strangle’ and hence its reflexive form a-goro, which seems to imply a bottling up of emotions, but not necessarily just of anger. Shivering and shaking among Samburu moran appear to have wider connotations than just controlled anger. In the first of the above examples, the moran who shook at the initiations of a new age-set were confronted with a mixed concern: first, over the implications for family honour if an initiate flinched; and second, over the prospect of the end of their moranhood leading to an uncertain elderhood after years of suspended adolescence. This suggests a state of apprehension on various counts as much as anger at the prospect of being displaced from their pedestal as moran. In the second example, the moran were confronted with a tirade from their firestick patrons followed by their relentless collective blessing, and they shivered and shook. They later described their emotions as one of fear for their patrons and an anxiety over their power to curse. 102 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu

Interpreting shivering among moran as a state of apprehensiveness seems supported by the claim that they would shiver before but not during battle, rather as in their dances of display when their shivering is said to stem from controlling their impulse to fight. Switching to a Maasai context, when young elders express their sadness regarding the prospect of a father’s death, they use the terms a-iputukuny (to be afraid) and a-goro. While the second term suggests an element of ‘anger’ in their grief, they explain this in terms of losing someone who would protect them from the greed of predatory senior kinsmen. In this context, ‘to be apprehensive’ seems again a more fitting translation for a-goro. Clearly, the interpretation of intensely felt emotions and translation into English pose problems, and shaking among moran appears to be more than just an expression of anger. Here, it is the experience of apprehensiveness that I wish to pursue further.

6.3 Conditioning and Reconditioning through Ritual

When misfortune occurs in unusual circumstances or is unexpectedly severe then Samburu assume that it was caused either by a discourtesy that provoked a valid curse or by some ritual gaffe. Their concern for showing respect where it is due is matched by a concern for ritual correctness in conducting ceremonies. Ceremonies are the highlights of social gatherings and the rich detail of their ceremonial activities is a matter of public display and pride. Yet, ritual protocol is surrounded by a penumbra of uncertainty and conflicting notions. In the first example above, the element of confusion and shouting during the initiations illustrated this uncertainty. Even on routine occasions, such as weddings which are marked by celebration, the details of ritual correctness are not necessarily routine matters for the central performers. They are the focus of attention, and the principal performers can be embarrassed, confused, and sometimes visibly anxious under public scrutiny. The confusions add colour to the event and may be recalled as local anecdotes for a time. Every performance has its uniqueness, giving it character and distinction. But if some ritual gaffe or novelty can be linked to later misfortune then it is more serious and the penumbra of uncertainty gives rise to a penumbra of anxiety. The repertoire of anecdotes is matched by theories of mystical misfortune that arise from experience and raise questions concerning the popular consensus on tradition. Belief in the sanctity of tradition is fixed, but the details are more fluid and tradition evolves imperceptibly as events and theories unfold. The impact of elaborate public ceremonies on personal emotions touches on the realm of psychology. This raises the possibility that an understanding of the essence of ritual may stray beyond the pioneering work of Van Gennep (1909) and the established confines of social anthropology, which steer clear of psychological explanation. In Van Gennep’s scheme, changes in status are disruptive in societies Conditioning and Reconditioning through Ritual 103

where status differences are pronounced, and these changes tend to be enveloped in ceremony or rites of transition. He pointed out that these may consist of three stages that can be broadly classified as a process of separation-marginalization- reincorporation. Ceremonies that mark the career of Samburu moran fit neatly into this scheme. Thus, prior to their circumcision the initiates are obliged to keep one another’s company more or less constantly and are thereby separated from younger boys and from their older brothers who are moran of the preceding age-set. After their circumcision they are in a marginal state with defined ritual constraints and in a position when they are more than boys but less than moran in the fullest sense. And at the end of the month, they perform their first ilmugit ceremony and formally become moran: they are now incorporated into the age grade of moranhood. The subsequent ilmugit ceremonies may also be divided along the same lines, although less obviously, and each marks a phase in the promotion of the moran towards elderhood. In pursuing his analysis, Van Gennep considered early material available for the Maasai at length (ibid: 84-87). But unaccountably he failed to note that the whole period of moranhood can be regarded as an extended period of transition. Circumcision is a rite of separation from the initiate’s mother’s home; moranhood, with its prohibitions, association with the bush and ilmugit ceremonies, is a prolonged marginal rite; and the final blessing by the elders when a man is allowed to relax the food restrictions of moranhood is a rite of incorporation into elderhood. Van Gennep’s term ‘marge’ is particularly apt when referring to the separateness of the moran from the remainder of the society: they are marginal, and it is the colourful associations with their marginal position that makes them the focus of popular attention. In an elaboration of Van Gennep’s work, Chapple and Coon (1947) follow Radcliffe-Brown’s distinction between the transmission of new social sentiments through ceremony and the maintenance of existing sentiments. They suggest that in rites of transition, individuals are conditioned through dominant symbols to adapt to a new pattern of interaction that follows from a change in social relationships. Thus in the first example of an initiation ceremony, a new age-set is brought to life by patrons kindling a fire, and the firestick that they use can be taken as a symbol of their patronizing power over the initiates. On the other hand, Chapple and Coon label other ceremonies as rites of intensification, where the existing pattern of interaction is periodically reinforced, as in the second example when the firestick patrons’ power over the moran was reinforced through their harangues and blessing. More precisely, the elements of transition and intensification may describe separate features of a single ritual: routine ilmugit ceremonies mark stages in the transition of moran to elderhood, but the opportunity to gather then together and harangue them intensifies the firestick relationship between patrons and moran. In addition to routine ceremonies, the firestick patrons may mount other ilmugit ceremonies at times when the morale or the sense of responsibility and respect among the moran are at low ebb. These can be regarded as rites of intensification pure and simple. 104 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu

Radcliffe-Brown’s theory of social sentiments was neo-pavlovian, and Chapple and Coon highlight the relevance of Pavlov’s earlier experiments for understanding ritual. These had shown that certain behaviour patterns could be built up in dogs under controlled laboratory conditions as conditioned reflexes. However, Chapple and Coon do not extend this interpretation to Pavlov’s later experiments, which have further relevance for understanding ritual. Pavlov noted that during some floods in Leningrad, a number of his laboratory dogs were nearly drowned and some ceased to respond to their previously conditioned stimuli, but they were highly sensitive to the sound or sight of trickling water. This led to Pavlov’s later experiments that examined ways in which conditioned behaviour patterns could be removed and supplanted by new ones. He found that by submitting the dogs to abnormal mental stress, or by debilitating them in some way (such as by inducing excessive fatigue, fever, intestinal disorders or by castrating them) a breakdown – a transmarginal state – could occur which would interfere with their existing conditioned responses. Pavlov also found that while these dogs were in a transmarginal state, new patterns of behaviour might be induced in them which would remain after recovery, and these tended to be more permanent in dogs of an inherently stable temperament than in other dogs, and not vice versa.3 Pavlov evidently felt justified in applying his conclusions on animal behaviour to processes of human thought, and William Sargant, a ‘physician in psychological medicine’ who drew on Pavlov’s findings, had no hesitation in doing so from his own observations, equating positive and negative conditioned responses with positive and negative emotional attitudes.4 Sargant was primarily concerned with the physiological mechanisms that make it possible for the beliefs and attitudes of individuals to be modified or radically altered. He proposes that suggestibility is increased at times of abnormal mental stress, straining higher nervous systems beyond the limits of normal conditioned responses. When this leads to a transmarginal breakdown, it may accompany either a release of nervous energy (abreaction), or a change or intensification of attitudes among those concerned. These changes may remain when the cause of anxiety is removed. In such circumstances, brainwashing in both religion and politics and in eliciting confessions are quite practicable.5 Thus in the first case study above, taking Samburu circumcision as a time of abnormal mental stress for the initiate, this may be regarded as entailing pain and debilitation, but more significant is the prolonged mental ordeal of anticipating the pain and the devastating possibility of flinching. Following Sargant, the initiate is at

3 Sargant 1957: chapter 1. 4 Sargant 1957: chapter 2. 5 Sargant 1957: 88, 94, 97, 145, 158, & passim. Sargant considers the significance of initiation rites in West Africa and New Guinea. I had two opportunities to discuss my material with him in the 1960s, before and after his visit to the Samburu. Conditioning and Reconditioning through Ritual 105

the threshold of his moranhood and faced with a wholly new set of expectations. These extend to experiencing the full force of the power of the firestick patrons in managing the ceremony and overseeing the new age-set. The initiate’s increased suggestibility reorientates him to a new awareness of the regime that ultimately governs his moranhood. From the elders’ point of view this is practical politics, whether or not they are aware of the underlying psychological mechanisms. During the initiations, the dominant thought present in everyone’s mind was surely whether any initiate would flinch, and this entailed honour. Inasmuch as the anxiety created by the ceremony could induce any new attitude in the initiates, it might well be the association of this notion of honour with their new relationship to family, clan and age-set. Honour would not be an entirely foreign notion to them, but the gravity and intensity of the ceremony could introduce a new significance. Such incidents as this might, I suggest, explain to some extent why honour is of such importance during moranhood. By accident if not design, it becomes the crucial issue during circumcision, and the very fact that it is a crucial issue could (following Sargant) have a pronounced effect on the values accepted by the initiates after their circumcision. Family honour for them could have become what the sound of trickling water was for Pavlov’s dogs. My material does not seem to justify any pseudo-psychoanalytical analysis of circumcision as a symbolic form of castration to prepare the initiates for the years of impotent bachelorhood that lie ahead. But following Sargant, it is worth noting that circumcision is a form of debilitation which could be a further factor that drives them to a transmarginal state of mind where they are exceptionally suggestible to new ideas. The operation itself was instigated by the elders, and another aspect of the ceremony that might have impressed the initiates besides the notion of family honour was that it was under the control of the elders in every detail and at every stage. The elders brandished long pliant whips and a confusion of shouting conflicting instructions surrounded the operation. This could have instilled or reinforced the attitude that they belonged to a society that was controlled by the elders. As we have seen, it preceded a time when the initiates were to be subordinated to the will of the elders and especially of their firestick patrons. Turning to the second case study, Chart 6.1 lists some principal points in Sargant’s argument and matches these with selected aspects of the ilmugit ceremony. Sargant pays particular attention to John Wesley’s techniques of gaining converts to Methodism among his hearers, and certain aspects of his meetings resemble a harangue of Samburu moran. Wesley would first agitate his audience with threats of eternal hellfire (just as the patrons warned the moran of the unpropitious consequences of their curse) and then he would suggest to them that salvation could be gained through conversion (just as the patrons would persuade the moran of their general security from ill-fortune once they acquired a sense of respect). Wesley’s preaching would have a powerful effect on his hearers: ‘Some sunk down, and there remained no strength in them; others exceedingly trembled and quaked; some were torn with 106 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu

Chart 6.1: Evidence of brainwashing in Samburu ilmugit ceremonies.

PRINCIPLES OF BRAINWASHING (Sargant) ASPECTS OF SAMBURU ILMUGIT CEREMONIES

Subjects in preliterate societies may become The significance of the term ‘firestick’ as a sensitive to objects associated with their symbol relates back to the initiation fire of each initiation, endowing these symbols with an morani when he and his age mates are first emotional significance. subordinated to the will of their over-bearing ‘firestick patrons’.

In eliciting confessions, mental stress may be Any morani who is accused of some offence produced by fasting, ordeal, threats, prolonged faces the ordeal of a threat of the patron’s social isolation, debilitation or torture. curse hanging over him and also being singled out atthe next patrons’ harangue.

Induced change is liable to be more permanent The firestick patrons select spokesmen for the if the subject has a stable personality, and if he moran from among the most astute members to tries at first to oppose the change. represent their whole age-set.

To elicit a confession, it is only necessary to force In an ilmugit ceremony, firestick patrons a xictim to accept that he cannot resolve the harangue the moran and force their principal ordeal except by accepting his guilt and whatever spokesman to admit the tacit guilt of all the else is being indoctrinated. moran present – and he may then loyally reiterate this allegation to hisage mates subsequently.

Eliciting confessions can be effectively achieved The Samburu term for ‘to harangue’ also by finding a ‘sore spot’ in the victim’s experience translates as ‘to hit someone on a bruise or a and working away at it. sensitive place’.

Certain rhythms can build up abnormalities in the The firestick patron’s blessing builds up brain and induce convulsive fits in predisposed relentlessly and rhythmically, and leads to subjects. widespread fits of shivering and shaking among moran.

Anger and fear can drive subjects into a transmar- Moran suggest that their shaking displays a ginal state, and this increases their suggestibility. mixture of anger and apprehensiveness. The anger openly displayed by patrons appears to be in part genuineand in part contrived to overawe the moran.

New doctrines need to be consolidated through Extra Ilmugit ceremonies may be mounted from periodic re-inculcation, and through re-iterating time to time when relations between moran their basic principles at communal assemblies. and their patrons are at low ebb. Conditioning and Reconditioning through Ritual 107

a kind of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and that so violently that often four or five persons could not hold one of them.’ This seems very similar to the widespread shaking observed at the ilmugit blessing.6 In the ilmugit harangues, firestick patrons focus on the misdeeds of the moran, publically exposing known suspects: they are the ‘sore spot’ of the moran. If a few moran have been caught stealing stock, seducing wives, or showing less than full respect for the elders, then they are all held to be thieves, adulterers, and hooligans. In their advance towards elderhood, they are allowed to crawl only at the pace of the slowest and most unresponsive members. During the first seven or so years that follow the initiation of a new age-set, there are several minor initiations, and the older moran are joined by raw recruits to their age-set and are obliged to retrace their steps with them. In addition, they face the constant frustration of losing their girl-lovers as these are married off to elders of other clans. Meanwhile, they have to wait up to fifteen or even twenty years after their own physical maturation before they too can marry and qualify as elders. During this period, any show of disrespect plays into the hands of the patrons. Sargant’s comments on the greater effectiveness of brainwashing techniques on emotionally stable subjects tally with the Samburu patrons involving selected moran spokesmen as their predictable agents during a harangue. There are many Samburu elders who were once brave, influential, and irascible as moran and hence in some ways typical of a popular image of the moran, and yet they were unable to adapt themselves successfully to elderhood and tried in the debates and at other times to dominate rather than persuade, as though they were still moran. Such men tend to have signs of inflexibility in their temperaments and seem never to have quite achieved the transition from moranhood to elderhood, but they remain members of their age-set and as firestick patrons they can be superb at leading the angry harangues against the moran. It is the more docile patrons who may privately suggest that the moran are on the whole a decent lot, but that stressing their worst faults in harangues has always been standard practice, and that they in their youth had been terrified of their firestick patrons. The ordeal that Samburu women face on marriage is particularly telling. Every girl is strictly taught to avoid all elders and is afraid and overawed by them. As a girl-bride, she has to formally separate from her moran lover to be circumcised in her mother’s hut and meet her husband, who could be two or three times her age, or older. Then in the evening she is harangued by the avoided and highly respected elders of her father’s clan. During the harangue, she is forced to recant her associations with the moran and made to accept the wisdom of her father’s choice of groom in return for all he has done for her, or risk his curse. Intimidated by the occasion, she is expected to respond dutifully to the elders’ demands, while clearly confused by their verbal

6 Sargant, 1957: 82. Quoted from Wesley’s The Journal of John Wesley. 108 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu

bullying. Only when the elders are satisfied that she is prepared to accept that she has no alternative to this marriage would the pressure on her subside. On the following morning, she is docilely led away by her husband with no clear prospect of ever seeing her parents again. Some wives may run away from their husband’s home and their marriages break down. However, for those who remain, the pressure of their wedding appears to achieve its purpose, for most, if not all, mature women insist that they owe everything they have to their fathers’ care and wisdom in choosing their husbands. Elders, they insist, understand these things while women do not.

6.4 Conformity, Suggestibility, and the Assembly of Clan Elders

The optimistic outlook on social life among Samburu is not dogged by excessive concern with misfortune, but it is hedged in by pressures towards conformity with custom and avoiding any suggestion of some ritual lapse. The ultimate authority on these pressures is the ad hoc assembly of local clan elders, acting as the agents of the entire, widely dispersed clan. They are the repositors of tradition, and genuine anxieties within the community are ultimately their concern. Individuals who utter curses or violate ritual protocol are accountable to their peers and ultimately the community of clan elders. The moral authority of any elder within his own homestead is buttressed by the collective wisdom of his fellow clan elders, and he is answerable to them and may join them in any discussion at a locally convened clan assembly. These assemblies vary in size with the seriousness and immediacy of the problem that needs to be addressed. If, for instance, a wife is suspected of adultery with an unknown morani, she may be saved from her husband’s beating by local elders convening at short notice to restrain him. She will then find herself subjected to a harangue by these elders – this time of her husband’s clan – and they will agree on a suitable punishment, perhaps the confiscation of a cow from her allotted herd. The husband will then be under pressure to accept this decision by the shared concern to resolve an issue that would affect the reputation of his clan if this wife were to run back to her parents’ home. A more formal assembly of clan elders could take place at a convenient spot beyond earshot of any village and their deliberations are conducted in an aura of privacy. They are the ultimate authority on ritual protocol and they assume powers to bless or to curse, giving a reassuring protection to all their members. Moran are given their first direct experience of these assemblies when they are gathered together by their firestick patrons for a harangue and blessing, and they may be abruptly dismissed or recalled at any point. At other times, moran should avoid these assemblies. During the elders’ debating, serious disagreements may display a mixture of anger and anxiety. However, the pressure to achieve consensus appears to increase the suggestibility of elders as they emerge from heated discussion. Minority views that were expressed before and during the debate can be emphatically denied afterwards. The ultimate Conclusion: Ritual, Anxiety, and Evolving Roles 109

correctness of collective agreement is a guiding principle that shores up the unity of the clan. It is a self-fulfilling premise that underpins conformity and the suggestibility among individual elders. The pressure for consensus within the clan corresponds to conflicting interests between clans, notably over the ambiguities surrounding marriage. These include indefinitely extended marriage payments, clan responsibility for obtaining wives for even their most handicapped members, and above all a concern for clan reputation and eligibility for marriage. The credibility of the clan lies with their ability to rein in their least suggestible members as moran, and those who do not respond to coercion and suggestion will lose the support of their clansmen as elders.

6.5 Conclusion: Ritual, Anxiety, and Evolving Roles

Malinowski suggested that rituals are performed in situations where there is uncertainty and danger, and they serve to allay anxiety and give confidence. Responding to this, Radcliffe-Brown pointed out that the opposite may also be true: that the rites and associated beliefs may induce anxiety where anxiety is a proper and expected sentiment, as in childbirth (and rather as shivering while bottling up emotions among Samburu moran is both proper and expected). Radcliffe-Brown’s response fitted his general theory of the social function of ceremony: ‘to regulate, maintain and transmit from one generation to another sentiments on which the constitution of society depends’.7 Drawing on a psychiatrist’s view of religious and political indoctrination, this chapter argues that anxiety is not necessarily allayed or encouraged by ritual performance, but that it may be a response to the stress of changing relationships and expectations. It serves to increase the suggestibility of participants, challenging their existing sentiments so that they come to accept the changes. Among the Samburu, there is widespread agreement over the correct ritual procedures for each ceremony, but there is also a measure of uncertainty and minor elaborations that give each performance character and add to the wider perception of change. Unscheduled features may be fondly remembered as anecdotes, or give rise to gossip and even the possibility of mystical misfortune. Any of these irregularities may cause anxiety, especially among the key participants. To the extent that the ceremonies mark transitions and hence changing social relationships, it can be argued that the anxious concern for ritual correctness stems most immediately from the fact that the ceremonies are very public and are linked to the inevitability of change. To the extent that the wider public are not just passive onlookers but are related to the performers and affected by the evolving social relations as the ritual unfolds, they share up to

7 Malinowski 1948: 59 ff.; Radcliffe-Brown 1952: 148-149, 157. 110 Anxiety and the Interpretation of Ritual among Samburu

a point in this apprehensiveness. The real uncertainty that hangs over them is the future of developing relationships. Paradoxically, it is the anxieties aroused by more immediate concerns over performance that seem to be more relevant to the transition than firmly held beliefs in the possibility of mystical misfortune, which articulate these anxieties. The mixture of celebration with an undercurrent of apprehension is characteristic of Samburu ceremony generally. At times of weddings, women are involved in a ritual domain of their own, with similar concerns that raise and dampen their anxieties. However, where the ceremony concerns relations between male age-sets as participants step up to the next rung on the age ladder, then this involves a major adjustment within the society at large, and the possibility of anxiety increases to this extent. It is not just the initiates, moran, and their firestick patrons that have to adapt to the fact of promotion to a higher status. All Samburu are obliged to accept the changes of relationships that this implies, within the age system and within individual families. It involves everyone in the final resort in a process of adjustment to a new reality. The general sense of apprehensiveness with increased suggestibility is an aspect of accommodating to this fact. Once there is a clear consensus on this, the upgrading has been fully accomplished. The firestick patrons have achieved their purpose, and in this sense so has the ritual performance. The problem of accepting the transition as fact is resolved, and thereby it is legitimized in the unique memories of ritual performance. 7 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

Presented with two wholly incompatible accounts of Samburu religion, any reader is entitled to ask how these renderings might coexist or how the earlier version might have been historically transformed into its successor. This chapter examines the evidence as a step towards resolving this issue, taking seriously the possibility of a historical change in belief that has accompanied the transition of the Samburu from a protected colonial enclave to their exposure to a changing world in the course of one generation. The earlier account was first presented as a conference paper entitled ‘The Dynamics of Samburu Religion’. This was elaborated in my book The Samburu (1965). That volume and its sequel, Nomads in Alliance (1973), focused especially on the role of ceremonial behaviour in maintaining a traditionally structured society that showed little evidence of change in 1960.1 The more recent account is Bilinda Straight’s Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya (2007). Straight focuses on Samburu religious beliefs rather than ceremony as such. The account is based on extended periods of fieldwork, and it contains some original and detailed insights into Samburu perceptions of the family, contagion, and their responses to death in 2002. The two accounts were therefore effectively 42 years apart, or just three age-sets in Samburu terms – that is one male generation: those of Kimaniki age-set who were moran at the time of my fieldwork were ‘fathers of moran’ during Straight’s time. Whatever the explanation of the more extraordinary aspects of Samburu religious experience that are reported by Straight, they need to be examined for their relevance in the Samburu scheme of things.2

7.1 Misfortune and the Curse

7.1.1 Explanations of Misfortune among the Samburu in 1960

In 1960, the Samburu suggested that misfortune could be the result of a curse or of unpropitious forces that were only dimly understood. Each of these related in different ways to two dominant institutions that characterised Samburu society: the age system and clanship.

1 My principal fieldwork among the Samburu was conducted in 1957-60 with a revisit in 1962, and my account in this chapter reflects their society as it was in 1960. 2 Straight’s fieldwork was conducted in 1992-4 and 2001-2 with three briefer revisits in 2003-5. Of the 33 interviews that she records, 26 occurred in 2001-2, and only 3 before then. I therefore assume that her account reflects Samburu society as it was in 2002. (Straight 2007: ix, 22, 29).

In their age system, moran were grouped into an age-set that spanned about 14 years before the next age-set was formed to replace them. In the imposed peace of colonial rule, the moran were in a limbo between boyhood and elderhood. They were not allowed to marry and were effectively adolescents even into their late twenties, with their own notions of honour and prestige. A major source of tension was between moran and married elders, notably over stock-theft and adultery. Ultimate control over the moran lay with their firestick patrons who were two age-sets above them, that is elders in their forties and fifties. Social order hinged on the respect – amounting to fear – that the moran had for the powerful curse that these patrons held over them. Elders of more senior age-sets were to be respected because most of them were fathers of moran, and their age was held to give them a more general power to curse.3 The second institution was the division of Samburu society into ‘sections’ or patrilineal clans. The Masula section inaugurated each new age-set every 14 years or so, but beyond this, elders of each section or clan were autonomous in arranging their own ceremonial cycle of activities associated with the age-set system. Clansmen normally lived together in loose clusters of settlements, and kept close company. They might migrate to join their clansmen in another cluster, or occasionally settle temporally with another clan cluster, but essentially as outsiders. Loyalty within the clan was paramount, and this was fanned by the tensions between different clans. Among moran, inter-clan rivalries could build up to confrontations and even feuding, but this was held in check as far as possible by the firestick patrons on both sides acting in concert.4 Between elders of different clans, there was the irresolvable issue of unlimited marriage payments that could never be finally settled. While these debts were between families, the fact of clan exogamy meant that they were also between clans, fuelling their mutual mistrust and impinging on the status of women as sisters and daughters on one side and as wives and mothers on the other. The wife-givers could claim a powerful curse over the children of their ‘sisters’ and ‘daughters’ if their expectations for further marriage payments were disregarded by the wife-receivers, that is by the husbands of these women in the first generation and then by their sons in the next. Not all mother’s-brothers were viewed as predators in this way, but as a general category, they were mistrusted as insatiable scroungers.5 The premise of the curse of firestick patrons within the age system and of wife- giving mother’s-brothers within the clan system reflected the major lines of cleavages in Samburu society. The more general notion of cursing as an ability of older men characterised the Samburu as a gerontocracy. However, a spirit of moderation prevailed, extending to the society as a whole. All clans wanted to be seen as worthy,

3 Spencer 1965: 81-3, 107-11, 140, 148, 153; 1973: 149. 4 Spencer 1965: 20-2, 74, 113-17, 1973: 86. 5 Spencer 1965: 35-8. Misfortune and the Curse 113

and mistrust between them was mitigated by a concern for reputation. To be known as predatory wife-givers – constantly demanding further marriage payments with the lurking possibility of a curse – would deter other clans from seeking wives from this clan. It was therefore in the interest of the clan to be moderate in their demands and to restrain their more greedy members. Similarly, elders with grudges against younger men were expected to be reluctant to resort to their power to curse, except in extreme cases. A preferred alternative was to wait until their adversary proposed to marry a girl whom they could curse as a ‘daughter’ of their clan or age-set. The marriage would then be postponed until the adversary had settled the grievance with gifts, and good- will was then restored without direct resort to the curse. It was even permissible for a man with a serious grievance to oppose the marriage of an older man of the adjacent senior age-set. However to attempt this against an elder who was older still would risk his curse for gross disrespect. The restraint that Samburu claimed in avoiding resort to their curse was highlighted by their criticism of their Rendille allies to their east. The Rendille regarded the indirect threat of a curse as a sign of weakness, and were reputed to have a more powerful curse and to use it more readily.6 If a Samburu suffered unexplained misfortune, then this might suggest a hidden curse arising from some earlier episode of his life. If he could track this down, then it was possible to settle the grievance with the offer of gifts. The worst outcome would occur if the cursor had died and no restitution was possible. Misfortune would dog him and his descendants for the rest of their lives.7 An alternative source of misfortune was held to be an unpropitious object or action, such as mishandling some ritual detail. Thus misfortune that seemed to dog a particular age-set or family or individual might be the result of some ritual oversight rather than a curse. Individuals might seek the help of a local diviner (oloiboni) to diagnose the problem and to resolve it with suitable ritual and ‘medicines’. However, it was the clan elders (and not a diviner) who were more generally responsible for overseeing ritual affairs within the community.8 The Samburu recognised the possibility of sorcery as a cause of misfortune, where some malefactor might deliberately perform an unpropitious act directed at his victim. However, there was no general concern over this, and it was associated more with peripheral communities of hunter/gatherers (Dorobo), who did not share the same patterns of respect as Samburu. Another cause of personal misfortune could be the penetrating ‘eyes’ of certain people, such as their north-western Turkana neighbours, who felt jealous when they saw someone eating food.9 These beliefs followed a consistent pattern – neighbours of the Samburu were to be mistrusted for

6 Spencer 1965: 35, 193-206, 297-8 7 Spencer 1965: 187 8 Spencer 1965: 185; 1973: 114-5. 9 Spencer 1965: 185-6; 1973:117, 119 114 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

their mystical powers: Rendille for not restraining their more powerful curse; Dorobo for resorting to sorcery; and Turkana for causing harm through the greed in their ‘eyes’. Each of these was held to contrast with the moderate restraint displayed by the Samburu among themselves. The moral thrust of their social system maintained control over the high-spirited moran and set limits to the rivalry between clans. Their resort to the curse was seen as justified only as a final resort in an ultimate appeal to mystical forces.

7.1.2 The Anatomy of Fortune and Misfortune among the Samburu in 2002

Bilinda Straight’s more recent explanation of misfortune among the Samburu does not directly challenge the earlier model, but she expands it in some interesting ways that undermine the basic notion of gerontocracy. In her account, as in 1960, a curse is only uttered in anger as a final resort, and its effect may be immediate and terrible or the threat of misfortune may linger over the generations. However, the effectiveness of a curse is not held to stem just from the anger of older people but from anyone who has been wronged, especially through selfishness as occurs when a hungry person is refused food.10 In Straight’s analysis, a process is involved whereby the eyes of the offended person are said to witness the wrong and to alert the stomach. Anger builds up in the stomach and is transformed into a curse. This then erupts from the stomach to the heart, and then to the breath and saliva, culminating in the voice that utters the curse. This may be accompanied by inauspicious gestures that signal the strength of feeling. The anger then springs into the body of the wrongdoer where it invades every particle of his (or her) being, inflicting disaster. At other times, an unvoiced curse may emanate directly through a less explicit ‘form of anger from people or animals [that have been] cheated, murdered, or killed by another’.11 The only remedy following a curse is for the curser to pronounce a blessing. This too has its origin in the stomach, dispelling the festering anger and restoring normal relations. The blessing involves an invocation, with gentle spitting and a gesture with the herding stick. There is no other certain way of annulling a curse, and if the curser dies before pronouncing a blessing, the victim faces the prospect of unlimited misfortune, which is passed down to descendants over the next nine age-sets.12 ‘Anyone’ with a just cause can curse another person. Certain families who have migrated from Rendille are thought to have a powerful gift for cursing and blessing, but ‘almost every family’ has an affinity with some kind of natural object or species of

10 Straight 2007: 96-9. 11 Straight 2007: 96-9, 109, 158-9. 12 Straight 2007: 96-9, 103-4, 109. Misfortune and the Curse 115

animal that they can use in order to harm or help others. Particular types of relationship are associated with the ability to curse. The firestick patrons have a powerful curse over the moran [as previously noted], but the ‘most potent’ curse passes between close relatives who share food. ‘Many incidents of misfortune’ are attributed to the anger of dead grandparents who were neglected or mistreated in their lifetime. Even mothers and grandmothers, who rarely voice a curse against their own children, are thought to evoke an unvoiced curse with deadly effect. Again, young girls within the family may not understand why they have been denied food in times of hunger, and their curse is thought to be ‘especially dangerous’.13 Straight explains the potency of a curse within the family through a more general concept known as latukuny. This term refers to substances that people exude such as their breath, sweat and tears, and it may be figuratively summarised as their ‘smell’. This ‘smell’ is associated with each individual’s good or bad fortune. For a woman, it is intimately bound up with the fire in her hut, her fertility and health. She has to nurture these by acting in ways that ensure she continues to ‘smell sweet’, and sweeter still as she ages. Her ‘smell’ infuses her personal possessions, such as her neck beads, the charcoal that she uses to cleanse her calabashes, and the firestick that had kindled her first fire when she married. The charcoal and firestick are both made from the lorien tree, a term that also refers to her ‘luck’. Keeping herself ‘smelling sweet’ is especially important during the rigid restrictions that she must observe after giving birth, and her children are similarly restricted after their initiation. Otherwise, they will acquire a ‘bad smell’ diminishing their health and fortune. The potency of a curse that has been pronounced against a woman is the punitive effect it has on her latukuny – her ‘smell’ – and hence on her lorien – her luck. The situation is similar for an elder, whose good luck lies in generating wealth. This is his sobua, a term that is also used for the herding stick that he handles daily and waves aloft in any collective blessing (Plate IV). The same term extends to his face, his sperm, and to possessions infused with his ‘smell’ – his latukuny. He too has a ‘sweeter smell’ as his family grows and becomes well established with age.14 Taken together, the ‘smells’ of a husband and wife mingle with their herd. Their cattle respond to the good ‘smells’ that infuse the husband’s herding stick, and the neck beads worn by his wife when milking. This mingling of ‘smell’ and sharing milk is bound up with the integrity (seerr) – ‘the way of life’ – of the family as a unique entity, distinguishing it from other families. Beyond the family, there is a similar notion that infuses the collective integrity and uniqueness of each clan and also the separateness of the Samburu from other ethnic groups as a way of life. It is the sharing and trust within each family in particular that makes a curse between close relatives

13 Straight 2007: 19-21, 96-7, 100, 102-3, 167-8. 14 Straight 2007: 74-8, 80-1, 99. 116 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

so potent. The mingling of their latukuny makes them more vulnerable to the anger invoked by their acts of selfishness as the violation of sharing and trust.15 The link between this shared ‘smell’ and a family’s good fortune – their health, fertility and the growth of their herd – is reflected in a range of conventions. No-one outside the family should take an elder’s herding stick or a personal possession of his wife, or this could bring harm. To steal these out of malice is a form of sorcery [my term], designed to transfer the fortune of the owner to that of the thief, at least in the short term, although the thief also risks a lingering death. To purchase these personal possessions in order to resell them is dangerous for the owners and in the long term for the trader. Thus women’s mporo neck beads are increasingly attractive in the tourist market and fetch good prices, but they are also very personal possessions infused with their personal ‘smell’ and they should be worn at all times, especially when milking. To alienate them from the family by selling them to tourists or traders poses a threat along the chain of transaction.16 Death within the family undermines their ‘good smell’. The sense of integrity associated with this sharing is shattered by the contamination – the bad ‘smell’ – of death. The head of the dead person is shaved, and so too is the hair of those who shared their latukuny – their ‘smell’. However, there are degrees of unpropitiousness associated with death. The deaths of younger unmarried members are invariably regarded as unpropitious, and their personal possessions must be separated from the living. When moran die, they must be laid to rest far from any settlement, and their contaminated clothing and ornaments should be left with them. Married but childless adults may be laid to rest closer to their home. Those with living children closer still, and their possessions should be cleansed and shared within the family. If a son or daughter has been initiated, then the disposal of the dead parent may be yet closer to their home. Only with the death of those who have grandchildren is there any sense of a good death, and they will either be laid to rest very close to their settlement or even buried inside it, eventually ‘smelling sweet’ as they did when they were alive.17 In remoter areas, the dead are still laid out and left under a tree. If a hyena feeds on the corpse, then this is taken as a reassuring sign of a good ‘smell’ and hence a not unduly unpropitious death. Otherwise, when no hyena is tempted by the ‘smell’ of the corpse, there is a lurking suspicion that the body is tainted by an uncertain unpropitiousness. In the areas closer to Christian missionary influence, the dead are now buried. However in denying the hyena the possibility of a meal, burial does not resolve the possibility of an unpropitious death.18

15 Straight 2007: 78-9, 81-2, 96. 16 Straight 2007: 74, 84-91. 17 Straight 2007: 119-21, 125. 18 Straight 2007: 122-3. Misfortune and the Curse 117

The link between people’s latukuny and their ability to curse or to bless is quite explicit in this account, as are the effects of any curse on the latukuny – the good or bad fortune – of the victims. Their bodies, bodily workings, and interaction between their persons are intimately involved. So too are their feelings. Straight’s account presents an anatomy of feelings ranging from anger and resentment to the restoration of friendship and an aura of sharing and trust.

7.1.3 The Transformation of the Curse from 1960 to 2002?

Straight’s chapter on latukuny provides an especially valuable insight into Samburu thought. This notion of bodily exudences – the pervasive smell and sweat infiltrating personal possessions – is linked to the fortune of each family. The whole topic appears to have been overlooked in earlier ethnographies on the Samburu, and indeed on the Maasai for that matter. Its implications for the operation of the curse and responses to death within the family are equally valuable. The concept of latukuny could well have relevance also for the Samburu age system. Thus, an elder’s latukuny includes his sperm, and in effect he shares this sperm with his age mates, for in the normal course of hospitality, the bond between them extends to becoming the natural fathers of each other’s children. Again, a woman’s latukuny is intimately bound up with her domestic fire, and this links her to her husband’s age-set, for the fire was first kindled by his age-set’s firestick patrons.19 In my later study of the Maasai (1976-7), the Matapato provided two pieces of information that suggest a similar concept to the Samburu latukuny. The first referred to the occasion when the age mates of a dead man come to bless his widow’s hut and to brush out her hearth to make it ‘smell sweet’.20 The second (unpublished) was an elder’s response to my question concerning a father’s attitude towards a son who had been begotten by one of his age mates. He pointed out that the son would have grown up in the same home as his brothers and sisters, drinking the same milk, inhaling the same ‘smell’, and making his family membership indistinguishable from theirs. Clearly, I should have pursued the point. While Straight’s treatment of latukuny is illuminating, the differences between her account of the curse and my earlier account are striking. The Samburu in 1960 emphasised the relevance of the curse in maintaining respect for older people in what was essentially a gerontocratic society. By 2002 the justification for a curse had apparently shifted towards punishing selfishness and greed, with no suggestion that age or ritual authority were necessary ingredients. Thus ‘anyone can curse another if

19 Straight 2007: 74-5, 78-9; Spencer 1965: 82; 1988: 189. 20 Spencer 1988: 241. 118 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

there is a just cause’. Apart from the odd mention of the firestick patrons’ curse, the emphasis is on the family where even a hungry girl’s curse is dangerous.21 Jon Holtzman’s independent research on Samburu food memories lends clear support to (his wife) Straight’s view of the curse. He suggests that sharing food creates a bond through the proximity of the giver’s latukuny, and his ability to curse the receiver builds up with the extent of the sharing. Moreover this may be reciprocated if the receiver gives his labour (and sweat) in return. As Straight puts it, the most intense sharing of latukuny and a potent curse occur between close relatives.22 From this point of view, the ability to curse has now apparently shifted from an earlier emphasis on respect for age to a respect for anyone’s feelings, whatever their age, especially concerning food. This implies a switch from a society that was dominated by strong institutions in 1960 – clanship, the age system, and the patrilineal family – to one in which only the family emerges as of prime significance by 2002. Straight barely mentions clanship or clan-based ritual gatherings. The age- system and ‘firestick’ relationship between alternate age-sets are briefly noted, but apart from these snippets, the age system is largely relegated to a means of indicating men’s ages. There is no mention of reciprocal powers to curse within an age-set or between ritually bonded segments of the clan system. In other words, the wider social context of cursing (and blessing) seems to have lost its structure, a structure that was quintessentially Samburu in the earlier study.23 This implies a massive shift of attitudes over a period of just three age-sets – long enough for an ageing morani to grow into an ageing though still active elder. But how uniform has this transition been? During the first decade of post-colonial Kenya, when the Samburu were seriously threatened by Somali intrusions across their eastern borders, there were few pressures for change. In 1973 on a brief visit to the Ariaal near Marsabit, I came across a remote colony of families of my own adopted clan (Pardopa). The elders were able to supply me with a complete update of migrations and deaths among my earlier sample of 566 Pardopa elders, who were living up to 150 miles away, scattered over an area the size of Wales. Yet the same elders had no notion of current affairs in the neighbouring colony of a Masula clan. Clanship among the Samburu, it seemed, showed little sign of change. In 1976, a brief visit to Pardopa families living on the Leroghi Plateau revealed minor relaxations in the age system affecting marriage and initiation restrictions on moran, but no significant change. A revealing sign of stability in the Samburu age system has been the continuing age-set span of about 14

21 Spencer 1965: 300, Straight 2007: 96. 22 Holtzman 2009:73, Straight 2007: 96. Holtzman’s argument can be extended to relations between age mates, for each age-set is characterised by sharing food and each other’s company, and this bond is extended to the notion of an age-set curse. (Spencer 1988: 76, 189-90.) 23 Spencer 1965: 78, 88; Straight 2007: 29-32, 75, 96. At odd points in her text, Straight uses the term ‘generation’ as an alternative for ‘age-set’. Misfortune and the Curse 119

years from the earliest records up to the most recent initiations of 2005. The Samburu did not count the years, but pressures for new initiations would build up from all sides (Chapter 5), and this consistency in the span of age-sets suggests no apparent change in the demographic forces that govern their age system, despite the massive growth of population and other economic and socio-political changes.24 In the context of changing attitudes towards the curse, material from the Maasai is revealing. The Samburu and Maasai both claim a common origin, and Straight draws on Maasai data at intervals throughout her book. My fieldwork among the Maasai in 1976-7 revealed some striking differences from the Samburu. Clanship among the Maasai was barely significant by comparison, and without the constraint of clansmen the family seemed altogether more patriarchal. The age system and its ceremonial aspects were altogether more elaborate among the Maasai, especially in the organization of the moran as a preparation for elderhood. Elderhood was marked by an obsessive concern for solidarity between age mates, backed by physical sanctions as a means of avoiding a devastating age-set curse (Chapter 4). There is a clear contrast between the sense of belonging within each Samburu clan as against the unrelenting loyalties within each Maasai age-set. Again, while sorcerers and people with ‘eyes’ had been noted as marginal to Samburu society and attributed to their non-Samburu neighbours, these were very significant images that haunted the Maasai, notably over suspected sorcery. The Prophet for each of the 16 Maasai sections was a trusted father-like figure, a super-sorcerer who protected his people from the ravages of lesser sorcerers whereas the Samburu by comparison claimed to have only minor diviners with mixed reputations and very little sorcery. Yet, despite this range of differences, the Samburu in 1960 and the Maasai in 1977 were virtually identical regarding the basic principles underpinning their beliefs in the curse, although admittedly there was a more scrupulous concern to avoid an age-set curse between Maasai, and there was a greater fear of the mother’s-brother’s curse in Samburu. Among Maasai, it is not the mother’s-brother who has a bad image, but the father’s-brother. Without clan constraints, there is a general sense of rivalry within the Maasai extended family and a caricature of a guardian uncle who oversees his dead brother’s family portrays him as an unscrupulous sorcerer. In other words, whatever the historical processes that could account for clear differences between the Samburu and Maasai in the course of their moving apart, beliefs in the curse appear to have been remarkably resilient over time.25 While one may question the extent of change among the Samburu during the post-colonial period, there clearly has been change, and one cannot simply disregard Straight’s account of the curse. In a significant passage, she writes: ‘… in the case of a curse, one’s eyes may be the first to alert the stomach of another person’s

24 Spencer 1965: 320-1; 1973: 149; Straight 2007: 31. 25 Spencer 1988: 36, 103-7, 219-22, 225-6, 250-1; Spencer 2003: 98-123. 120 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

wrongdoing. A common cause… is the withholding of food from a hungry person. It is a terrible infraction to eat in front of a hungry person or to withhold food from such a person when the latter knows that food is available. As I heard many times, the hungry person’s eyes send a message to their stomach and a curse begins to form and be stored there.’26 This slant on the curse bears a striking resemblance to the (1960) Samburu belief in the ability of their Turkana neighbours to harm through their ‘eyes’. This is a theme that was elaborated by the Maasai (in 1977), who suggested that people with ‘eyes’ could ‘see’ inside other people. They could ‘see’ what food they had just eaten or the sex of a pregnant woman’s unborn child. They might be benign and fully accepted members of the local Maasai community, but if they became hungry or jealous, their involuntary greed could bring illness and even death to vulnerable victims, especially the young. Those ‘with eyes’ might be men or women, and as a matter of routine (as for a blessing) they would be expected to spit in order to annul the effect of their ‘eyes’. Children would be warned not to wander off into the bush in case they met someone with ‘eyes’, and they would hide behind their mothers’ skirts when strangers appeared in the village for the same reason. Initiates would smear chalk on their faces as a protection from the jealousy of people with ‘eyes’. When a stranger joined a local group of elders, he could be made welcome with the warning that he should spit if he had ‘eyes’. Unlike sorcerers, there was no suggestion of malice in having ‘eyes’, except in risking misfortune by concealing the fact. Maasai diviners and even Prophets claimed that they had no magic that could detect or cure the danger from ‘eyes’.27 There is a further possibility. The Maasai suggested that the danger of ‘eyes’ was not just from certain abnormal people, but also from any gathering of men or women. When those who had lost children saw initiates dressed up and parading, they might remember that their own dead son could have been among them. When they saw a pregnant woman or a young mother with her infant, they again could be reminded of their loss. At any public occasion with a crowd of onlookers, there were bound to be a considerable number who were grieving inwardly, and their collective grief could harm the vulnerable. Those who were aware of these feelings within themselves should spit.28 This touches on a world of symbols stemming from deep emotions and focusing on vulnerable forms of life. The young of any species were thought by the Maasai to be particularly vulnerable. Unkindness to a small child, harassing an initiate, or killing a pregnant animal were seen as unpropitious acts that could bring untold harm to the perpetrator. Conversely, all forms of play, including dancing among moran and their girls and also women’s dancing, were thought to have a benign influence on

26 Straight 2007: 96-7. 27 Spencer 1988: 43-4 28 Spencer 1988: 44, 60. Misfortune and the Curse 121

community life. Where Straight draws attention to mystical notions associated with hyenas, elephants, and certain species that have a rapport with particular families, she is touching on this other world with its propitious and unpropitious aspects. In this vein, it is quite feasible that withholding food between those who share latukuny is unpropitious and can bring harm without invoking a curse. The whole topic bears on a wide range of emotions that are beyond human control.29 More dramatically, Maasai women were perennially concerned with their fertility and sometimes gathered as an angry mob to punish anyone who had endangered this (Chapter 4). Their anger was thought to release dangerous forces that needed to be averted through an elders’ collective blessing. The Maasai saw anger as particularly dangerous. An angry moran would want to fight. Elders learned how to direct their anger in order to inflict a curse, or better still how to avoid excessive harm by suppressing this anger and vetoing a marriage instead. Fertile women were not felt to have the same control over their emotions and this made their collective anger dangerous, bringing uncertain misfortune to the community at large. This was a grey area that bordered on the unpropitious (kotolo) that was ‘hated by God’. Some might loosely refer to uncontrolled anger as a directed curse (ldeket), but others denied this because the harmful effects were more random. Straight appears to have focused on this grey area in her more generalized description of the curse among Samburu in 2002.30

Accepting the thrust of both earlier and later interpretations of the curse raises a number of questions. –– Could the concern over mystical misfortune caused by withholding food between those who share latukuny be another grey area where the specific notion of unpropitious behaviour (kotolo) overlaps the general notion of a curse (oldeket)? Could the distinction between these notions have merged over 42 years? –– Could it be that the Samburu belief in the deliberate harm caused by a valid curse has merged over 42 years with their belief in the involuntary harm inflicted by the ‘eyes’ of a hungry person? 31 –– Do the Samburu share the Maasai notion of a broader interpretation of ‘eyes’ as the unpropitious effects of suppressed emotion? –– Do the Samburu distinguish forms of cursing between those who share latukuny from curses invoked by elders beyond the family?

29 Straight 2007: 14-15, 18-19, 89, 105, 122, 131-2; Spencer 1965: 126; 1988: 39-43, 61-2; cf. 1973: 61-5. 30 Spencer 1965: 64; 1988: 120-1, 202, 205-7; 2003: 36-7, 76. 31 Straight (2007: 230 n. 10) clearly anticipates the problem, noting that Samburu beliefs in the power of the curse and in the hungry ‘eyes’ of Turkana (and of some Samburu) are distinctly separate. Turkana infiltrated into Samburu District throughout the twentieth century, and this may have increased the concern for people with ‘eyes’ in the post-colonial period (Spencer 1965: 186; Spencer 1973: 117, 158-60; 2003: 214-5 n 122 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

–– Within a family, can a disgruntled and hungry junior member really curse a senior member (eg. a father or older brother) who should otherwise be respected and even feared for his power to curse? –– Do Samburu age mates share latukuny? And is the ability to curse between age mates perceived in these terms?

In 1960, Samburu elders were quite specific regarding the operation of the curse, but the nature of unpropitiousness was obscure. They were sticklers for ritual convention because generations of usage had convinced them that this was propitious and therefore any departure could be mystically dangerous. On such matters, women sometimes claimed that the elders knew, but the elders claimed that no-one – not even diviners or Maasai Prophets – could know. As they said again and again in answer to questions on the subject, in a cosmos ordained by God, ‘It is only God who understands’ – or God knows (Enkai nayiolo).

7.2 God and Afterlife

7.2.1 Perceptions of an Unknowable God among the Samburu in 1960

In 1960, the Samburu believed in a benign universe under the protection of Enkai, their God. The same term (enkai) referred to rain and the sky. However, God was also in the world of nature around them as part of a grand scheme of things, inscrutable in the final resort, but generally benign nevertheless. When misfortune struck, this showed a more terrible side of God, whether it was lightning striking in anger from above or a fatal encounter in the bush. The most hopeful strategy towards appeasing God was followed by the elders in their formal meetings. These would be held beyond the earshot of any villages, which were places for women and children. The elders’ discussions were punctuated by collective prayers, invoking the blessing of God at key moments during their ceremonies or after a heated debate, when the compromises on all sides were sealed in a spirit of sanctified unanimity. The concerted throb of these invocations – ‘Nkai … Nkai …Nkai …’ – had an aura of power and authority. At such moments of climax, one is reminded of Durkheim’s analysis of the sense of some supreme external Being generated by large consensual gatherings, the awareness of a collective consciousness that dwarfs the self-centred senses of any single individual – a notion of God as a metaphor for the power of society at one with itself.32 The inference of all-male blessings seemed to imply a male God, even though Enkai had a feminine prefix. When I asked a Samburu elder if God might after all be female, he replied (as always), ‘We don’t know. It is only God who knows.’ Then

32 Spencer 1965: 177-8; 2003: 78; Durkheim 1915: 218. God and Afterlife 123

he added with a chuckle, ‘But it wouldn’t be a woman’. Nevertheless, this male bias was matched by the notion of God as the giver of life through women. While giving birth, the mother would be surrounded by other women singing prayers that invoked God’s blessing, and the new infant was felt to bring a touch of God‘s presence. To this extent, women were held to be uniquely close to God in the context of their fertility, and elders fully acknowledged this.33 The sanctity of birth contrasted with the unpropitiousness of death, where there was no notion of God being close or in any way involved. On laying out the corpse, the mourners would put fat in its mouth, lay a green sprig over it, and address it: ‘Father (etc). Lie in peace.’ There was no explicit suggestion of any afterlife, but rather an awareness that unpropitious forces could surround the occasion, notably in unusual circumstances when there could be an element of panic in disposing of the corpse. A Samburu elder once asked me about the Christian missions’ belief in afterlife. ‘Have they never seen a corpse?’ he demanded. ‘Cant they see that person is dead?’ While birth was regarded as full of promise and intimately involving God, death was associated with an unpropitious sense of isolation and loss.34 Evading the question of gender, the human qualities of God seemed to focus more on age. Samburu descriptions of an omniscient and eternal Being suggested the characteristics of extreme old age. The oldest and most respected elders would lead the prayers in any assembly. Their age and experience were held to have given them great wisdom and understanding. The image of God was like this, but infinitely greater. Governing over a gerontocratic society, God was the supreme gerontocrat.35 Nowhere was the image of God more gerontocratic than in support of the elders’ authority, which demanded respect for their age. Brushes with the unpropitious apart, an alternative cause of misfortune was held to be the result of some curse, and this too was a topic for speculation. In such matters, God was the ultimate arbiter. If a man who had been cursed was innocent, then he would be protected. If he was guilty, then he would be punished. The legitimacy of the curse hinged on a breach of respect towards someone who should be respected. A legitimate curse uttered in anger was an appeal to God and would provoke the wrath of God. A blessing would invoke God’s benign protection.36 This general view was elaborated when Samburu would claim that while there was only one God (Enkai), God was also a realm of guardian spirits that replicated the world in which they lived. Every human, animal, age-set, clan, mountain, tree, rock,

33 Spencer 1973: 80; 2003: 67. Corresponding to the notion of God as the giver of life among women, ritual sacrifice by elders was seen as entailing a gift of life from God, rather than as a piacular offering to God. God was in the rain that rejuvenated the grass that fattened the cattle; and eating the sacrificial meat of these cattle served as a revitalising blessing (Spencer 1988: 141-2). 34 Spencer 1965: 272-3; 1973: 107-9; 2003: 67. 35 Spencer 1965: 177-8; 1988: 49; 2003: 72. 36 Spencer 1965: 186, 188; 2003: 76-7. 124 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

or anything that was an entity in itself had its guardian spirit (enkai). The special ability of diviners to predict, of ex-Rendille to curse, or of unpropitious objects to bring harm were all due to the special relationship between the person or object and their guardian spirit. The ability of ritual specialists to interpret the baying of a hyena or the markings of a cow hinged on the unusual rapport between their own guardian spirit and the guardian spirit of the hyena or cow. The fact that non-Maa neighbours of the Samburu had different customs that brought them good or bad fortune was because they had different guardian spirits that were relative to their situation and irrelevant for the Samburu. The God that the Samburu prayed to for protection was in the final analysis the guardian spirit for all Samburu, incorporating all other guardian spirits in their area and structured in the way that their society itself was structured. A Durkheimian view of God as a projection of social and cultural unity was expressed in their terms as an unknowable world of guardian spirits who were custodians of the Samburu moral and ritual order. God was seen as an unknowable presence, and the notion of guardian spirits was regarded as an unknowable interpretation of this, for no-one could ‘know’. Regardless of interpretation, however, there was absolute certainty concerning the inherent cosmic order. 37 Guardian spirits were directly implicated in any blessing or curse. When an elder blessed a junior, then his guardian spirit would add his protection to that given by the guardian spirit of the junior, who would then be doubly protected from harm. If the elder cursed the junior for no good reason, then the junior’s guardian spirit would still provide protection and the cursor’s guardian spirit would be powerless to inflict harm. However, if the elder had good reason to curse, then the junior’s guardian spirit would ‘throw him (or her) away’. In this state of abandonment, the junior would become the victim of the avenging guardian spirit of the cursor. When the Samburu heard thunder, they would sometimes say that two guardian spirits were arguing over the uncertain fate of some victim. If someone was then struck by lightning, then this implied that the victim had been justifiably cursed. The critical issue in seeking a blessing after any curse was to restore good relations between cursor and cursed, but also between the cursed person and his or her guardian spirit. To be in a cursed state (ngoki) was dangerous, and to prolong this by not seeking a blessing was foolhardy,

37 Spencer 1973: 112-16; 2003: 85-7. The Maasai suggested that their expression that every person had their ‘own spirit’ (enkai enye) was a colloquial way of saying that some people have unusual luck. Their belief in one God did not stretch to any concept of guardian spirits beyond this. However, the domain claimed by the Prophet for each Maasai Section extended to all the people, animals and features within ‘his’ territory, and this was identical in scope to the domain associated with the guardian spirit for all Samburu, although the Prophet’s power was limited to insight rather than omnipotence. From this point of view, the Samburu as a whole could be viewed as a peripheral Section of the Maasai. Among both Samburu and Maasai, diviners and Prophets could help in diagnosing the causes of misfortune and suggest suitable precautions and remedies, but they were held to have no clearer insight into Enkai’s domain than other men. (Spencer 1973: 72 n.2, 114-5; 2003: 81, 106-7.) God and Afterlife 125

for the cursor might die and the cursed person would then be permanently without a guardian spirit and at the mercy of elemental forces. Guardian spirits, then, had castigating as well as protective aspects.38 There was a considerable overlap between the belief in personal guardian spirits and parental roles within each family, which also had both protective and castigating aspects. Up to a point, this might be seen as a division between the mother’s role as the bedrock of day-to-day existence and the father’s authoritarian role as undisputed head of the household. However, the father was also perceived as fulfilling both roles according to context. As an elder, he was the intermediary with the wider society, and had the experience and wisdom to ensure the family’s continued survival in terms of the wellbeing of the herd and of negotiating worthy marriages for himself and his children. As head of his household, he had to be a disciplinarian with the authority to ensure that his sons learnt the skills of herding from an early age and that his daughters above all acquired a keen sense of respect to maximize their chances of a good marriage. Thus guardian spirits could be regarded as having all-male or a mix of male and female attributes.39 The belief in the unquestionable fairness of guardian spirits (or God) in deciding whether or not a curse was justified brought with it an irrational contradiction. Did this justification extend to an arbitrary and sometimes extreme form of the punishment? Was it fair that punishment for a minor show of disrespect should threaten the wellbeing and even the lives of the victim and the victim’s descendants? Overriding any notion of fairness was the premise of an absolute authority underpinned by the unquestionable deference to age. This raised a further question. With a high rate of child mortality, how would Samburu children respond to the deaths of their siblings and friends? The generally benign and protective mood of their family life seemed to be undermined by this recurrent experience. Would these children wonder how a father could allow this to happen, unless he had contrived in these deaths? 40 During my research among the Samburu, this was a matter of speculation. However, extending the question to the Maasai at a later date made this dilemma for children more explicit. The moderating bonds of clanship were weaker among the Maasai, leaving the family exposed to a harsher form of patriarchy. Whereas Samburu elders would assert that no man would want to curse his own child and risk the future of his family, some Maasai fathers were quite implacable on this topic. They would argue that persistently naughty children deserved severe punishment, and their early

38 Spencer 1973: 113; 1988: 49; 2003: 87-91 39 Spencer 1965: 10, 184, 217 40 Spencer 2003: 77-9. This argument was outlined in my early paper, ‘The Dynamics of Samburu Religion’, but I then omitted the more speculative aspect in The Samburu and Nomads: in Alliance. Only after graduating to the Maasai years later did I realise that my evidence on this was now strong enough to consider it seriously (Spencer 2003: 78-81). 126 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

deaths would serve as a warning for their siblings to behave themselves. Other Maasai denied that they would ever curse their own children, but both sexes admitted that this could happen and that distraught mothers could threaten their children that they would ask the fathers to curse them (cf. a guardian spirit abandoning a guilty dependant).41 Samburu parents did not go that far, but – pursuing the speculation – the dilemma for children persisted. If deaths were not the will of the father, then there was still the wider community of elders. With their lives centred on the village, children were expected to avoid elders, and they gained a respect amounting to fear of the elders at large. Assemblies of these elders, debating and blessing somewhere out there in the bush, were the ultimate guarantee of protection – and the threat of punishment. Viewed from a distance by dependants, these assemblies generated an awe-inspiring spectre of power, and children were warned to keep their distance or they might be cursed. The assemblies were the intermediaries with God, and it is tempting to regard elders’ perception of God as a projection of their childhood experiences as onlookers. Like the assemblies, God was both protective and terrible, infinitely wise and knowing, overawing and punitive beyond human understanding. Confronted with tragedy and the destructive power of nature, the elders had a similar sense of awe of an omnipotent God as children might have of the elders’ assemblies, whose protectiveness could never be entirely taken for granted. In the scale of Samburu mystique, elders were revered for their wisdom. They acquired this wisdom from experience and associating with other elders at their assemblies. The oldest elders were at the peak of a pyramid of human knowledge and understanding. However, God was infinitely wiser and more powerful than any elders, with qualities that echoed those associated with age and elderhood, but infinitely more so. In Samburu terms, a Durkheimian view of God as a projection of a sense of the power of society focuses on the sanctity and power of the elders’ assembly. God was inscrutable, but the perception of God had characteristics that could be traced to their earlier family life and the ultimate authority of the remote and awe-inspiring collectivity of elders.42 This suggests that the most elementary form of Samburu religious life arose in childhood within the family, which oddly may also be said of the alternative view that we now consider.

41 Spencer 2003: 80 42 Spencer 2003: 80-1 God and Afterlife 127

7.2.2 Samburu Perceptions of God and Afterlife in 2002

In Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya, Bilinda Straight shifts the focus of Samburu religion from their beliefs in an unknowable world of guardian spirits, to a more direct and visible experience of God.43 A striking feature of her account concerns a confusion between empathy and objectivity. Samburu metaphysical beliefs are cited as if they are unquestionable physical facts rather than essential clues that illuminate the manner of Samburu thought and cosmology. In this vein, reported ‘miracles of resurrection’ are miracles; the author allows herself to speculate on the intentions of the Samburu God, Enkai; and she is amused rather than alerted when a Samburu neighbour expresses astonishment at a claim of the resurrection of the dead.44 However Straight’s own penchant are the flipside of her hard-earned empathy, and here I do not propose to treat these apparent contradictions as relevant for an assessment of her contribution towards an understanding of Samburu religion. Straight’s account suggests that by 2002 the Samburu view of death has shifted towards an array of notions of afterlife and a more uncertain boundary between the living and the dead. In order to maintain a propitious relationship with their dead parents, the living now place offerings of food and tobacco on their final resting place. It is held that if these ancestors feel they have been neglected, they may remind the living by visiting them in the guise of some animal or by affecting the behaviour of their herds. A more serious negligence can even result in the deaths of a succession of offspring. In one case where an elder repeatedly neglected his living mother, she is said to have haunted him in his dreams after her death, refusing to be placated, and hounding him to his own death. The possessions and all traces of those that have died childless are separated from the living, and their ghosts remain dissatisfied for there is no-one to feed them. This makes them powerless to inflict harm, but they can unsettle the living as they wander back and forth, appearing as misty white shapes that call to the living and visit the very sick to accompany them to their death. More benignly, it is thought that the propitious ghosts of older people may visit their friends, enticing them to die in peace and without fear.45

43 . A further problem in Straight’s volume concerns the esoteric nature of philosophical explanation. She offers her own critique on a range of writers concerned with the limits of phenomenological experience. This is not to denigrate the discourse that she is tuning into, but it is to note that this kind of theory sits awkwardly beside ethnographic evidence concerning such peoples as the Sam- buru. Extended tracts of the text and the whole of the concluding chapter make difficult reading for those who are unfamiliar with the writings that she cites, and the fact that she does not provide the relevant pages in her references makes her philosophical analysis effectively beyond the reach of the uninitiated. 44 Straight 2007: 63, 66, 129. 45 Straight 2007: 153, 155-6, 161-9, 173-4 128 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

Straight points out that most Samburu do not return from the dead, but she has talked to ‘dozens’ of others who claimed first or second-hand knowledge of corpses that had been laid out in the bush and then found to be alive. The earliest reported case occurred when the Lkileku age-set were moran (1922-36). This concerned a dead girl who had been left for hyenas to devour, but was then found by her morani brother to be sitting up and blinking her eyes. In a second case, it was a dead elder’s cattle that had blown away the mortuary leaves and nudged him back to existence, revealing him completely recovered from his illness. In a third, a dead man had been laid out in the bush for four days while his dog kept the hyenas at bay, and then he recovered. In a fourth, a sick morani was so ill that others assumed he had died, but his brother refused to leave him and he slowly recovered. During his illness, this morani had hallucinations that convinced him he had died. In a fifth case, a mother refused to believe an Italian doctor’s repeated pronouncement that her son was dead, and eventually he recovered. In a sixth, a dead man returned from the bush to his mother’s home carrying his mortuary hide, and this experience has been shared by children who returned home dragging their burial shrouds with them.46 None of these examples suggest that God (Enkai) was involved in punishments by neglected ghosts or in the revival/resurrection of those who were assumed to have died. Although in odd passages, Straight does suggest that the ‘space of Enkai [is] also the space of death’, and Enkai is closer to the deaths of the young and very old. Children are ‘the most frequent visitors to Enkai and the most common to resurrect’, and grandparents may be buried benignly within their own settlement because they are closer to Enkai. These suggestions are not elaborated, and more remarkable is Enkai’s perceived involvement in Samburu affairs in other ways.47 According to these beliefs, Enkai may appear as a rain-cloud or a large snake in a cave, or more strikingly in the guise of a wealthy family with warnings that echo moral predicaments facing the Samburu. In the earliest remembered appearances, Enkai warned against selfishness, and the arrogance and disrespect of young people. Girls especially were criticised for having adulterous affairs with elders and for being too proud of their appearance to give milk to hungry kin and neighbours. Affluent young people who bathed in milk were criticised for their excessive display of wealth and pride. It is said that these violations of public morality led Enkai to inflict widespread destruction on the Samburu in the 1870s, when the Tarigirik age-set were moran.48 In the twentieth century, Enkai is said to have punished individual families, inflicting fire and flood on the home of a woman who had refused people water for their animals. The family of another woman was destroyed by thunder and rain because she had had an incestuous affair. Indeed, stories of Enkai killing individuals

46 Straight 2007: 5, 13, 129-131, 150-1, 173 47 Straight 2007: 121, 170, 176 48 Straight 2007: 47-8, 54, 59-62 God and Afterlife 129

for selfishness and especially ‘grievous acts of adultery as in incest are too many to recount’. More recently Enkai is held to have been concerned with shifts in Samburu behaviour that reflect the transition in their lifestyle, such as the use of plastic bottles instead of traditional calabashes for milking, and wearing modern forms of dress in preference to traditional adornments, notably women’s valuable mporo necklace beads which have been sold to tourists.49 These examples give the image of God (Enkai) as a punitive guardian, overseeing Samburu traditions and traditional expectations. However, Straight’s most graphic illustrations concern visits to the home of Enkai by the living. She notes that she has heard ‘numerous accounts’ of children who have wonderful stories of visits to Enkai’s large and prosperous home, and such visits are ‘regular, if unusual occurrences’. She interviewed three of these ‘visitors’, and provides brief second-hand accounts of four more. An eighth semi-mythical account dates back to the nineteenth century. Of these eight visitors, five were girls, two were moran, and one was a mature woman who had been close to death at the time of her visit.50

Their accounts are as follows. 1. Remeta’s widowed mother was an alcoholic who lived in ‘the most untidy disorganised house’ that Straight had ever seen. At the age of about six, Remeta disappeared for a disputed length of time. She was visited by an Enkai girl, and then by an Enkai woman, and then by an Enkai morani, who all had light skins and wore white cloths. The morani led her to a sacred wild-fig tree and she found herself in Enkai’s settlement, which was very large with modern-built houses, but traditional Samburu furnishings inside. Her Enkai hosts gave her milk to drink and messages to take home with her. The Enkai girl told Remeta that she wanted Samburu moran and women to stop wearing fashionable orange cloths as these competed with the lightning she flashed when she wanted to make rain. The Enkai morani showed her a spotted stone representing Samburu misdeeds for which they are punished by wars, diseases, and other disasters. He wanted children to stop drinking tea, boys to revert to their traditional top-tuft hair- style, and women to stop using calabashes made of plastic for milking. The Enkai woman wanted Remeta’s mother to stop drinking liquor. The Enkai husband was sitting nearby, but only greeted her. When Remeta returned to her own home, her guardian uncle soon told her to stop talking about visiting Enkai’s home. There is no suggestion that she made further visits, but the messages that she brought

49 Straight 2007: 48, 60-63. At various points in her narrative, Straight does not clarify the distinction between ‘incest’ and more serious acts of ‘adultery’. 50 Straight 2007: 38-41, 54-8, 61-2, 170-2 130 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

back appear to have had some impact, except over her mother’s drinking habit. Straight refers to her as a ‘child prophet’.51 2. Ngoto Malapen (Malapen’s mother) is described as a ‘famous Samburu prophetess’, who crossed into Enkai’s home throughout her life. Her gifts for prophecy and healing started when she was still a young girl, and had a vision of Enkai as two women. They found her when they were looking for someone who would understand their language and take their messages back home to Samburu. While Ngoto Malapen normally saw Enkai as a woman who brought rain and gave birth to all living things, Enkai could also appear as a morani when the message was bad and carried an implicit warning. No details are given of Enkai’s messages or of her visits to Enkai’s home, except that it was a beautiful place where she was invariably fed. Sometimes Enkai would visit her, and was angry with her on one occasion because she had begun to go to church and was afraid to prophesy. She developed blisters which went away when she stopped going to church.52 3. When Nompoi was expected to die, she ventured into Enkai’s beautiful home and could hear all that was said as people chewed a stimulant (khat) and asked for liquor. She then went outside the home and found cattle with giant udders. She tried to run after them but was turned back by the voices of dead people who warned her that these cattle were not hers. She had regained her life. In this series of accounts, Nompoi was the only ‘visitor’ who moved both between the living and the dead and between Enkai’s home and her own.53 4. Turaso was a little girl when the Lmarinkon age-set were moran (around 1890). She disappeared for a few days and was found in a cave claiming that she had wandered into Enkai’s home. An Enkai woman gave her honey to eat, while two other Enkai women argued whether they should keep her to punish her mother for taking away a wooden post from the house of a dead woman, but they relented because this had been unintentional. Turaso was then given an (unspecified) message to take home. Her father offered a sacrifice to Enkai and moved away from the area. Turaso begged him to move again as instructed, but he refused. As a result, her father then died, and Turaso was so furious that she refused to speak to Enkai for a very long time and stopped prophesying.54 5. When the Mekuri age-set were moran (around 1940), a group of children followed a goat into a cave, a fierce wind from the cave blew them out and a girl cracked

51 Interview, Straight 2007: pp. 37-41, 56-8, 62 52 Interview, Straight 2007: 56, 171-2 53 Interview, Straight 2007: 172. 54 Straight 2007: 55, 170-1 God and Afterlife 131

her skull open. Enkai visited her and instructed how her father should dress the gaping wound. She survived.55 6. A little girl went missing for a few days. She said that she had been taken by an Enkai woman to her home. The woman was nicely dressed in the leather garments worn by brides, and the herds were healthy and fat. The Enkai woman gave the girl a lot of milk and meat to eat, and a clean cowhide to sleep on.56 7. Lolsuri was a morani of Kiroro age-set and he was taken to Enkai’s settlement during a disastrous drought in the mid 1980s to early 1990s. There, he was nourished by the Enkai family until he was full and then given several warnings to take back to the Samburu. Child-bearing women and children should pray to Enkai, because there was a general lapse in standards. People were cursing children, women, and even elders too readily. They were selfishly living alone with too little pity for one another or sharing food. These were the reasons for the drought that Enkai had inflicted, killing off their herds.57 8. Another morani of Kiroro age-set visited Enkai’s settlement and noted that the Enkai family were wearing fully traditional clothing and beads. One of the Enkai family asked him if people dressed like this in his place, and when he answered that they didn’t, he was told that they should.58

A typical feature of these accounts is that the image of Enkai is reduced from a cosmic presence to human proportions, with messages for the visitors to bring back over moral issues that range from abusive behaviour to the globalisation of Samburu lifestyles. The questions that these illustrations raise are not just the state of mind of those involved at the time of their visit, or indeed the state of mind of those who claim to have been resurrected. The more far-reaching questions concerns the gap between the two accounts, spanning the post-colonial years 1960-2002. How might one explain the development of new assumptions concerning afterlife? More dramatically, how is it that belief in an unknowable God in 1960 (embedded in the title of my volume Time, Space, and the Unknown) could be transfigured into a belief in a larger-than-life deity who has become so knowable in so many ways by 2002 (implicit in the title of Staight’s Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya)?

55 Straight 2007: 55 56 Straight 2007: 54 57 Straight 2007: 55-6, 61-2. The Enkai family included a husband, wives, children, moran and livestock, but there is no indication which of these gave the warnings to the visitor. The Samburu term ‘children’ includes all women, and hence Straight’s reference to adults appears to refer to elders. 58 Straight 2007: 55-6, 62. Here too, the Enkai family included a husband, wives, children, moran and livestock, but there is no indication which of these gave the warnings to the visitor. 132 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

7.3 Conclusion: The Extraordinary Transformation of Samburu Beliefs

At first sight, differences between the earlier and later models of Samburu religion are so stark as to beggar comparison. In 1960, Samburu elders totally discounted any suggestion of afterlife. They regarded Anglican and Catholic missions as a general asset for the Samburu, and the premise that they had access to God’s domain seemed supported by the clear superiority of Western medicine and technology. At the same time, the missions’ creed concerning the survival of life after death was abruptly dismissed as just lies. Yet the Samburu fear of the unpropitiousness surrounding death in 1960 is not altogether incompatible with Bilinda Straight’s description of their belief in ghosts in 2002. The need to separate the living from the dead in order to avoid the mystical contagion of death was similarly expressed, shaving off their contaminated hair, disposing of personal possessions, and addressing the corpse to lie in peace. Particularly telling in 1960 was the practice of laying to rest any dead man who had breached the rules of exogamy. When his sons left the corpse, instead of placing a green sprig over it and saying ‘Father, lie in peace’, they were said to snap dry twigs over the corpse, shout ‘Mother’s-brother, do not harm us’, and then run away. This was not regarded as a belief in afterlife, but a bemusing custom in a rare and quite unpropitious circumstance. Nevertheless, it suggests a practice on the border between belief in afterlife and disbelief, leaving room for a shift towards belief over the next 42 years.59 Straight presents the notion of corpses who return to life as a further blurring of the border between the living and the dead: ghosts are the dead who visit the living, whereas resurrection concerns the miraculous event of the living who visit the dead – and return. She notes this as a recurring experience, and her earliest example appears to predate the arrival of missions in the area in 1934. However, the influence of missionary teaching seems very likely, and she admits that as the Samburu are increasingly exposed to Christianity, they have become generally familiar with the story of Jesus’s resurrection, and they accept this as a fact. That this is a recent conversion is evident from those who continue to find the issue of resurrection ‘disturbing’, ‘unheard of’, and express ‘utter astonishment’.60 The fact that the Christian message has gained a foothold may be linked to a significant transition in the disposal of the dead. Around 1960, a Consulata (Roman Catholic) missionary confided to me that there was only one aspect of Samburu society that he would like to change: they should bury their dead instead of laying them in the bush to be mauled and eaten by scavengers, such as hyenas. Burial is now

59 Spencer 1965: 149; 1973: 109, 120. 60 Straight 2007: 45, 129-31, 133, Conclusion: The Extraordinary Transformation of Samburu Beliefs 133

the norm in the Samburu highlands and the more accessible parts of the lowlands, due to increasing exposure to Christianity. None of the six instances of resurrection that Straight outlines involved burial, and it is tempting to suggest that these reports spread in a climate of rumour as the practice of burial became established, spawning new ideas. Straight gives no indication how far the belief in resurrection extends to areas less affected by mission teaching where the dead are still laid to rest rather than buried. She discusses instead the agonizing dilemma of those who now bury their dead while still uncertain whether this might stifle the chances of resurrection. Evidently, the nature of Samburu beliefs in ‘resurrection’ – however one might explain the individual examples – suggests a physical rather than spiritual interpretation of the Christian message.61 The only substantial concession that Straight makes to the influence of Christian missions is the growing assumption among educated Samburu that Enkai is male, rather than variable in appearance. Yet she also notes parallels with the Old Testament God, who similarly visited the sins of the fathers upon their children through the generations; and she notes that like the Samburu, the Israelites too were pastoralists who observed numerous taboos and made sacrificial offerings to God. The examples that she gives of Enkai inflicting disasters on the Samburu in the 1870-90s because of the wickedness of a young minority is reminiscent of an angry and punitive Old Testament God with the attributes and authority of a supreme male gerontocrat.62 The previous chapter cited W. Robertson Smith’s comments on ‘antique’ religions, noting that Semitic religion consisted of ritual institutions and practices rather than creeds. Precedents had to be followed accurately, whereas explanations were irrelevant and could be vague or inconsistent, but this did not matter. This attitude towards religion applied very clearly to the Samburu in 1960. In as much as they did have a creed, it was that God (Enkai) would punish any departure from standard ritual practice. No further explanation was necessary.63 In contrast to this, Straight’s presentation of Samburu beliefs in 2002 suggests an irregular discourse between a random selection of humans – notably girls – and a tangible and articulate Enkai. Apart from the stern warnings conveyed by Lolsuri (case (7)), the messages that the others are reported to have brought back were essentially concerned with ritual correctness at a rather trivial level. This does not just imply new beliefs, but a radically new approach from a practical religion that bonded with daily life in 1960 to an embryonic eschatology that floats above the dynamics of

61 Straight 2007: 122-3, 148-9 62 Straight 2007: 41, 45-6, 48, 60-1, 106, 159. In a similar vein, the most remarkable early work on the Maasai argued that they might be a lost tribe of Israel (Merker 1904: 260-339). For an alternative interpretation of Samburu sacrifice as a gift from rather than to Enkai, see Spencer 2003: 74, and n. 33, above. 63 Smith 1907: 16, 17, 20; Spencer 1965: 307; 1973: 112; 2003: 110. 134 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

daily existence. It suggests a transition that is no less profound than a switch from the Pentateuch to a surrealist slice of the New Testament. Following Robertson Smith, it may be regarded as just an irrelevant creed that has no bearing on ritual precedent in the hands of the elders. Or is there a genuine movement towards a new religion with its own ‘prophets’, as Straight implies, corresponding to Africanized forms of Christianity elsewhere? In other words, have the ‘messages’ brought back by ‘visitors’ to Enkai’s home had a tangible impact on Samburu behaviour? There is an alternative ahistorical explanation that may account for the apparent transformation of religious notions between the 1960 and 2002 models, and this concerns gender bias. My understanding of the Samburu as a gerontocratic society in 1960 focused on the interplay between dominant elders and fledgling moran, whose subversive activities presented an alternative reality that challenged the elders’ regime without undermining it. By my age, I was identified with the Kimaniki age-set who were moran on the brink of elderhood, and in effect I walked along a political tightrope between the two domains. Similarly, women were subjected to the domination of their fathers, their husbands, and the elders at large, and this produced a further source of subversion, notably through their adulteries with moran. But the widespread suspicions among elders and a conspiracy of shared secrets among wives created a further tightrope that was too sensitive to tread. I was firmly entrenched within the male domain, negotiating just one tightrope. While I knew the wives and mothers of some of my male informants quite well, I accepted their assurances on matters of religious belief that I should ask the elders, who understood these matters. With such responses and biased towards a male view, it did not occur to me that these women might share a set of beliefs into an alternative Samburu religion.64 Late in my fieldwork, I overlooked an episode that could have corrected my bias. This occurred when I was visited in the low country by a very congenial Anglican missionary. After we had parted, I saw him conducting a service outside a nearby settlement, standing in a circle with perhaps ten Samburu women. The local elders were bemused and did not join them. At the same time, they did not disapprove of their wives’ involvement, pointing out that women have a special relationship to God through their fertility, and only good could come of this kind of involvement. Years later in 2001, Fr Virgilio Pante was ordained as the Catholic Bishop of Maralal. A photograph of his installation shows the bishop also surrounded by Samburu women, with children in the foreground and perhaps one elder (far right, Plate V). I was told that the beads on his vestment had been sewn on by these women. Christianity clearly has made inroads into the women’s domain.65

64 Spencer 1965: 211-54. 65 I am grateful to Fr Pante for permission to reproduce this photograph.

Conclusion: The Extraordinary Transformation of Samburu Beliefs 135

Plate V: The installation of the Catholic Bishop of Maralal in October 2001

This leads me to suggest that Staight’s women informants have played a major role in shaping her understanding of Samburu religion and that corresponding to the male bias in my earlier account, there is good evidence to suggest an opposite bias in Straight’s later account. In Straight’s eight cases of those who have visited Enkai’s home, one is a mature woman, two are moran, and five are girls. One of these girls continued to visit Enkai throughout her life. While Straight suggests that children visit Enkai’s home and are the most frequent ‘visitors’, none of these children in her sample are boys. And none of the ‘visitors’ are established elders.66 In the same sample of cases, Enkai as an elder is only mentioned once, when he merely greeted Remeta (case (1)), whereas the other manifestations of Enkai who fed Remeta and gave her messages to take home included an Enkai girl, an Enkai morani, and an Enkai woman. In Ngoto Malapen’s repeated visits (case (2)), Enkai appeared as one or two Enkai women or an Enkai morani. In Turaso’s visit (case (4)) there were three Enkai women. The girl in case (6) was taken by an Enkai woman to her home. The two moran who visited Enkai’s home (cases (7) and (8)) interacted with the Enkai family, but there is no indication of the status of whoever fed them or gave messages.

66 Straight 2007: 7, 37, 54-5, 176. However, Straight does indicate that ‘even young elders’ sometimes ‘visit’ Enkai (but apparently not more mature elders). 136 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

Again boys appear to be absent in this sample, while the token elder plays a low key role with no messages to offer. Moran, on the other hand, appear as both ‘visitors’ and manifestations of Enkai in this sample. That Straight’s bias is against elders rather than against all males is again suggested in citing the myth of an appearance of Enkai as a man at a wedding clothed in rags. Others laughed at him and he turned them into stone statues. Straight supposes that he was ‘probably’ a morani, but the image seems to suggest a ragged elder rather than any finely attired morani. In this gerontocratic society, elders are opposed to moran who are their precocious sexual rivals and they are opposed to women who are their wayward inferiors. Moran and women are natural allies, and women of all ages dote on the notion of moranhood and the clean image of moran. The inclusion of moran in these visits to Enkai’s home is no anomaly.67 In Straight’s account, the absence of elders as ‘visitors’ to Enkai’s home and their low-key presence as manifestations of Enkai contrasts with any gerontocratic image. Whereas the Enkai who punishes Samburu from time to time in the same account appears to have many characteristics of a powerful elder. More powerfully still, as in the 1960 model, Enkai has the attributes of a formal assembly of wise and ageing elders in prayer, who are avoided in awe by women, moran, and children. In contrast to this alternative image, the experience of Strait’s ‘visitors’ – women, moran, and girls – was of a more domesticated Enkai, and even Remeta aged six overcame her fear (case (1)).68 The preponderance of girls over boys in these case studies may also be examined in the context of their differences in status. Straight notes the extent to which girls are peripheral to the family because they will leave on marriage. Their education lags behind that of boys and they do not understand why they should be denied food in times of hunger, whereas hungry boys are directly involved in the future of the family and jokingly pray for more livestock. In 1960, this disparity was expressed differently. In order to make a good marriage girls had to learn respect and were made to avoid elders from an early age, leaving their mother’s hut before a visiting elder could enter. The virtual absence of elders in ‘visits’ to Enkai’s home seems to bear on the sensitive avoidance between elders and girls in particular and the elders’ ambivalent relationship with the domestic domain more generally.69 Could it be significant that Straight takes two folk-tales told to children by older women as authentic insights into Enkai’s realm, blurring the distinction between children’s stories and religious beliefs? One of these folk-tales concerns a Samburu ‘Genesis’ myth suggesting that originally the Samburu could move freely up and down a leather strap that Enkai had dropped down to Earth, and they were given

67 Straight 2007: 47-8, Spencer 1965: 102. 68 Spencer 2003: 77-8. 69 Straight 2007: 28, 97; Spencer 1965: 212-5. Conclusion: The Extraordinary Transformation of Samburu Beliefs 137

any gifts they asked for. Then the strap was severed by a Dorobo (hunter/gatherer), separating Enkai from humans and giving rise to death. The second folk-tale concerns a Maasai moran who is separated from his age-mates and tricks his way to Enkai’s village, which recedes as he approaches, and then an Enkai woman feeds him and gives him a large herd of cattle.70 This is not to suggest that what were Samburu or Maasai children’s stories have now become mainstream religion, but it is as if they come from the same stable, providing related scenarios. There is a similar element of bizarre fantasy in Samburu folk-tales as in Straight’s case examples of ‘visits’, characterized by the title of her work, and a similar range of players. There does not appear to be any systematic collection of Samburu folk-tales. But a number of authors have published a useful selection for the Maasai which seems to overlap the few available for the Samburu. An analysis of 39 of these stories in Table 7.1 reveals different profiles in the roles played by girls and boys, and again the marginalization of elders.71

Table 7.1: Recurrent themes in thirty-nine Maasai folk-tales.

Principal characters: Themes: Small animals Boys Moran Elders Women Girls

Outwit powerful adversaries 9 6 3 1 2 2 Kill monsters 1 4 5 - - - Kill wicked (step-) parents - 3 - - - - Kill enemies of the Maasai - - 3 - - - Face ridicule 1 - - 4 1 - Face punishment 1 - 3 3 5 1

Like children in this table, small animals are pitted against more powerful adversaries. Boys especially have a high profile, consistent with their aspirations for moranhood, whereas the high profile of girls in Straight’s examples may be seen as offering the possibility of an alternative future. The themes in her case examples are of course quite different, although some of the Maasai folk-tales that she does not consider do concern interaction with Enkai and the resurrection of monsters and their victims. These are not wholly unfamiliar topics in the Maa-speaking region.

70 Straight 2007: 50-1, 55, 153; Kipury 1983: 10, 30-1, 107-10. 71 Spencer 2003: 52. 138 The Transfiguration of Samburu Religion

The point to stress is the striking contrast between the 1960 male-oriented gerontocratic model on the one hand, when compared with the 2002 model and folk-tales on the other. This suggests a number of issues of belief that need to be clarified. Such an enquiry would cover the following questions. –– To what extent does the tightly structured self-presentation by the Samburu of themselves in 1960 survive and among whom? –– To what extent does the notion of Enkai as the supreme super-gerontocrat in 1960 survive and among whom? –– What is the extent and nature of Christian conversion in the area? –– To what extent has the post-colonial situation shifted the balance of domestic power between elders, women and moran (and even children)? –– To what extent do 2002 beliefs and evident disbeliefs in afterlife, resurrection, and ‘visits’ to Enkai’s home vary? –– To what extent have Samburu responded in their behaviour to ‘messages’ brought back by ‘visitors’ to Enkai’s home? –– Is there an overlap between current Samburu folk-tales and accounts of resurrection and of ‘visits’ to Enkai’s home? –– To what extent do answers to these questions differ between men and women of different ages, and educational and religious backgrounds? –– To what extent do answers to these questions differ between different areas of Samburu, ranging from the Leroghi highlands where mission influence is greatest, to adjacent lowland areas, to the less accessible parts of the lowlands where the Samburu still do not bury their dead?

Straight indicates that she has ‘talked to dozens of people claiming first- or second-hand knowledge’ of resurrection among the Samburu, and that visits to Enkai’s home are ‘regular, if unusual, occurrences’. She has heard ‘numerous accounts’ of children making such visits.72 The claims of extraordinary experiences are themselves extraordinary, and one needs to see them backed up with more detail and a clearer insight into changes in religious belief among men and among women since 1960. Only a balanced resolution of this problem would bring the two models into perspective and this could clarify how far Samburu religion, like their society, is diversifying at a deep-seated level. Neither study considers the dynamics of change in fundamental belief. Perhaps further shifts in the spectrum of religion may reflect change in the years to come.

* * *

The notion of an alternative religious experience among Samburu women, facilitated by their changing relationship with elders under modern conditions, raises the question of whether parallel trends have occurred among other Maa-speaking peoples. Are

72 Straight 2007: 22, 54-5, 129. Conclusion: The Extraordinary Transformation of Samburu Beliefs 139

Straight’s findings unique to the Samburu or should they be viewed as part of a regional phenomenon? Certainly, regional cults involving women’s concern with their fertility have been reported elsewhere, often fanned by exotic healers and imported beliefs in spirit possession. Among the Kisonko Maasai, for instance, Arvi Hurskainen (2004) has traced epidemics of spirit possession since the 1960s. These emanated from the wider non-Maa region, sharing a history of anxiety over women’s fertility, with singing and dancing playing a role in the cure (cf. Rigby 1969). In Dorothy Hodgson’s (2005) account of a women’s religious movement among the Kisonko Maasai in the 1990s, she traces the influence of Catholic mission activities. These missions sought to integrate Christianity with Maasai culture, focussing on the education of boys, but with little success. Kisonko elders too were sceptical and held to their traditional ideologies. On the other hand, uneducated women filled the churches’ congregations and displayed their spirituality as enthusiastic converts in a cult that expressed a Christian form of spirit possession and offset their subordination in domestic and local affairs, alienating the elders still further. While Hodgson’s account does not suggest any marked concern over decreased fertility among the women, the polarization of religious beliefs and a striking degree of women’s religious autonomy does reveal a clear shift in gender relations. This provides us with multiple strands to the argument. Chapter 4 noted the link between the periodic frenzy of Maasai women’s dancing and their obsessive concern with infertility, reflecting their depressed position. This appeared to echo a similar concern among Samburu women in 1960 and has a clear parallel with epidemics of spirit possession among Kisonko Maasai women reported by Hurkainen. In Hodgson’s analysis of more recent spirit possession in this area, there is no suggestion of an overriding concern with infertility or of invading spirits, but there does appear to be an increasing confidence, expressed through their behaviour as a congregation, inspired by missionary activity. In Straight’s analysis, there is again no systematic concern with women’s infertility nor cults involving dancing, but also no suggestion that her evidence of Samburu beliefs in afterlife or in a tangible God have spread through Samburu interaction with missions. Indeed, Straight denies direct missionary influence in these beliefs, taking her analysis out of its historical context, and endowing it with a timeless aura. As against this, I would argue that there are too many biblical parallels – noted by Straight herself at various points – for this to be coincidence. The missionary message of ‘miracles’ and ‘extraordinary experience’ does appear to that have been elaborated in highly original ways by the Samburu. One might also note Straight’s portrayal of God as a holy family on earth with an elusive father and surrounded by farm animals has a familiar Christian ring, however garbled. Again, I would surmise that Straight’s evidence of the almost total marginalization of elders in her examples is telling, and it suggests that Samburu women provided the main thrust in this complex of new religious beliefs. It bears a clear resemblance to the profile of Maasai women’s stories told to children, compiled in Table 7.1. Essentially, this is surely a women’s domain influenced by mission activities that parallels and yet clearly diverges from a similar trend among the Kisonko Maasai.

 Part III: Indigenous Democracy and Change Among the Chamus (1959, 1977) 8 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?1

The emphasis on tradition among the Maasai and Samburu obscures the extent of historical change. They portray their past essentially as a projection of their recent experiences and tend to assume that earlier communities were not radically different from the more remote communities of the present, apart from being more exposed to the uncertainties of intertribal warfare and shifting borders. The sequence of earlier age-sets provides an ideal scale for a chronology of major events. Yet even this is perceived less in terms of radical transitions than as a demonstration of the persistence of tradition. Between sporadic disasters, earlier generations are assumed to have experienced a similar lifestyle as their descendants, with similar opportunities for growth, and similar problems of survival. In contrast to this timeless perspective, the Chamus neighbours of the Samburu have a quite different view of their history, with oral traditions that associate radical changes in their social life with successive age-sets. Taking these traditions as an authentic reflection of their history, whatever the elaborations in matters of detail, one is presented with an evolutionary sequence that contrasts with the pastoralist view of chequered stability. To this extent, the Chamus have a sense of history as well as of tradition that goes back to their origins as foraging Dorobo.

8.1 The Dorobo

Small communities of hunter-gatherers were scattered throughout the pastoral region of East Africa, and they generally spoke the same language as their pastoral neighbours. In the Maa-speaking region, they were known as ’Dorobo’. Among the Kalenjin-speakers they were ‘Okiek’; and among the Oromo-speakers, they were ‘Warta’. As foragers, the Dorobo exploited a different ecological niche from their Maa neighbours, whose herds ensured a more reliable and affluent lifestyle. By common consent, the dedicated commitment to pastoralism was vastly superior to the more hand-to-mouth nature of foraging. Maa pastoralists despised Dorobo for having no herds or wealth of their own. At the same time, their separate economies facilitated a

1 An earlier version of this chapter has been presented under the title ‘Keeping Tradition in Good Repair: the evolution of indigenous knowledge and the dilemma of development among pastoralists’, and published in Bicker, A., Sillitoe, P., and Pottier, J. (eds), 2004, Development and Local Knowledge. London: Routledge (pp. 202-217). I am grateful to Routledge for permission to draw on this article here. For fuller details on the Chamus see Spencer 1997: 129-203, 210-213; and on the Dorobo see Spencer 1973: 199-219.

degree of casual trade, exchanging products of the bush and forest for sheep or goats (but not cattle). In times of severe drought and cattle epidemic, Maa pastoralists who had lost their herds might turn to the Dorobo as refugees and in effect become Dorobo until conditions improved and they rebuilt their herds. Conversely, ambitious Dorobo could hire themselves out as client herdsmen and even build up small herds of their own, joining the pastoralist community as stock owners. The boundary was open in both directions. The sharing of a common language between foragers and pastoralists extended to their clothing, ornaments, social habits, and even their age-sets and clans, but only up to a point. The Dorobo camouflaged themselves at a relatively casual level in the eyes of the pastoralists, and it was this casualness that characterized them as Dorobo. Only by raising their standards could those that had settled among the pastoralists begin to surmount the stigma of being Dorobo. Another characteristic of Dorobo was their adaptation to a local ecological niche. This involved an intimate knowledge of their local terrain with changing seasons and shifting opportunities. Nomadic pastoralists responded to changing conditions quite differently. They had an intimate knowledge of the needs of their cattle, but as nomads who moved around as grazing conditions changed, they had an altogether shallower understanding of the ecosystem as compared with Dorobo. Another niche was the sensitive border between hostile pastoral tribes where the Dorobo could trade as middlemen. From time to time, the boundaries between rival pastoral tribes would shift, sometimes quite radically. This could mean that the Dorobo who were attached to a particular niche could find themselves surrounded by new pastoralist neighbours with different customs and a different language. They would then adapt to this situation, switching their language, clan and age-set affiliations, and adapting their superficial ornamentation to that of their new neighbours, while retaining their former niche and lifestyle as foragers. In effect, the changing political identities in the region were accommodated with least disruption to the Dorobo way of life as they built up new networks of interaction with their new neighbours, and would now be known as Okiek among the Kalenjin- speakers or as Warta among Oromo-speakers, and so on. To be Dorobo was to be Maa in language and a shadow of Maa in other ways.

8.2 Chamus as a Quasi-oasis Society

Lake Baringo is situated 50 miles north of the equator, covering an area of about 60 square miles, and fed by the seasonal run-off of rain water from the steep slopes of the Rift Valley in northern Kenya. Chamus oral traditions maintain that they were originally Dorobo who fished, hunted, and gathered edible plants and fruits of the bush in the vicinity of the lake. This was their niche. In their oral traditions, Parsaina clan were descendants of the original inhabitants. Parsaina were then joined by three waves of Kalenjin-speakers from the west, whose descendants are 144 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?

now known as Kabis, Kesieni, and Lamaee clans. However, there is no suggestion that Parsaina spoke any language other than Maa, which became the lingua franca for all Chamus. The transition of Chamus from hunter-gathering to irrigation agriculture on the alluvial plain to the south of the lake is embodied in myth, portraying this as a chance event by serendipity. An elder of Kabis clan is said to have picked up a sprig of finger millet that had been dropped by a migrating bird. He decided to plant it, and then gathered the first crop. He gave seed to other Chamus and this new source of food spread among them. For this reason, Kabis clan played a leading role in rituals associated with their crops. This was so successful that it developed into an intricate system of irrigation. Because the migrating bird had been flying along the Perkerra river course that led from the ancestral home of Lamaee immigrants, it was elders of Lamaee clan who governed rituals associated with the irrigation system. The earliest accounts of the Chamus were collected in the mid nineteenth century from Swahili ivory traders who returned to the coast after leading caravans inland. As they increasingly penetrated the Maasai area, they established a strategic provisioning centre among the Chamus to replenish their diminishing food supplies in return for products from the coast. The Chamus appear to have built up their irrigation system in response to the opportunity to trade. At this time, they lived in two congested villages (see Plate VI showing Chamus huts and granaries). Each village was surrounded by a double ring of thorn fencing. The larger village with 250 huts (Powell-Cotton) and an estimated population of 1,500-2,000 people (vonHohnel) was five miles south of Lake Baringo and situated on one of its estuaries (Perkerra or ‘Great Uaso’).2 The smaller village was situated on another estuary and three miles further to the south. A few Chamus families also lived as a colony on an island in the middle of the lake, fishing, hunting and exchanging these foods for food grown by their mainland kin. From time to time, they would also keep goats, and the island served as a place of refuge for other Chamus in troubled times. Joseph Thomson, the first European to visit the area, gave the following impressive account of the irrigation system in 1883, noting that the Chamus

‘have developed a wonderfully ingenious system of irrigation by artificial canals of (for them) great magnitude. They construct dams across the deep channel of the [Perkerra River] and this raises the level of the water to that of the plain, and then by an intricate network of channels, they spread the precious fluid over a large area, and raise their millet and melons.’ 3

2 Powell-Cotton 1904: 162; vonHohnel 1894:5. Powell-Cotton’s is the most reliable indication of the size of the larger village, which combined with an estimate for inhabitants per hut among the Sambu- ru in 1958 would suggest a population of around 1,100 inhabitants. 3 Thomson 1968: 264. Chamus as a Quasi-oasis Society 145

Plate VI: Two views of a Chamus village c. 1900 (from Johnston 1902: 812-3)

Irrigation systems generally are associated with highly centralized control, politically as well as practically, to coordinate and maintain access to water. Among the Chamus this was achieved through two levels. At the lower level, the system was divided into family-based plots under the strict authority of the male household head, who held the tenancy. His wives undertook all the routine tasks from digging and planting to harvesting and cooking, while the elder manipulated the watering of his plot and the distribution of the food, meting out the rations of grain for his family over the seasons. At the higher level was a Council of elders with ultimate powers over the operation of the total water system and over the tenancies of individual household heads. Each of these heads was both a member of the Council and accountable to it as a tenant. Decisions by the Council were binding on everyone. The ultimate sanction against a dissident tenant was to expel him from the village. 146 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?

The Chamus maintain that each of the successive transitions in their economy was considered in discussion by the Council. Successive age-sets are remembered for their contribution to this evolving process while they were active moran, but it was the Council of elders during these transitions that steered the process of decision making. There was a tacit acceptance of creeping change, but above all a premise that the wisdom of elderhood lay in pooling their experiences and insights in order to arrive at well considered courses of action. The wisdom of tradition in coping with the unexpected was seen to lie in this community of knowledge and discourse. There was a downside to the Chamus economy, however. Thomson also noted that the area was infested by ‘myriads’ of rats that ‘swarmed everywhere’ and after inadequate rains to feed their system, the Chamus were obliged to eat the rats ‘or any unclean thing’. The next three visitors to the area gave equally somber accounts, implying that the Chamus were struggling to survive. VonHohnel in 1888 noted that they:

‘cultivate nothing but dhurra, eleusine, and gourds. The dhurra is an inferior, reddish brown variety, and of the gourds, we saw none for they had all been eaten up. Attempts had been made to cultivate maize brought by traders, but they were not successful. The loamy soil, which soon becomes perfectly hard again, even after heavy rain, makes agriculture very difficult, and there is generally a strong wind blowing in the afternoon, which raises clouds of dust. Large tracts of ground are divided, like a chess board, into plots three to four miles square [sic?], with a layer of soil only some few inches thick. Many of these plots were now lying fallow, and it is evident that the nature of the soil makes its cultivation extremely arduous, and that much care in arranging a rotation of crops is necessary. For irrigation, the natives make a number of artificial channels carrying off the water of the brooks, and in every way great toil produces only small results, even these often marred by depredations of the numerous birds. Now and then, too, elephants wreak havoc in the fields …’

Visiting the area in 1890, Peters reported that the Chamus were ‘suffering hunger’ and the ‘remarkable dryness’ of the region ‘often destroys the harvest and occasions famine.’ In 1893, Gregory added. ‘Last year [the Chamus] had no rain, and so the crops failed, and this year the rains had been so heavy that the crops had been washed away with the soil on which they grew’.4 From these remarks it seems probable during such times of hunger that Chamus foraging skills as ex-Dorobo would have been vital for their survival. Moreover, these skills may have been kept alive by previous famines of this kind throughout their period as irrigators. Yet while they experienced hand-to-mouth episodes associated with a Dorobo way of life, unlike Dorobo, the Chamus had developed a disciplined economy based on clear property rights. Moreover, unlike Dorobo, they did not attempt to merge with their pastoral neighbours, borrowing clan and age-set names

4 Thomson 1968: 264, 312; Von Hohnel 1894 (ii): 5; Peters 1891: 271; Gregory 1896: 118. Chamus as a Quasi-oasis Society 147

or superficial practices. They had their own distinctive clans and age-sets with their own distinctive identities. The Chamus appear to have had peaceful relations with the Samburu over an indefinite period, but they were not Samburu. In an overview of the evidence, David Anderson has stressed the heavy labour required to maintain the irrigation system and the problem of balancing this with the output of the system over the seasons and especially in years of drought. Immigrants were welcome as extra hands, but they had to be fed. Pastoralists whose herds had been decimated by drought could find a refuge among the Chamus, but the same drought also affected the irrigation system and failing crops. Then, as conditions improved and the ex-pastoralists rebuilt the nucleus of their herds, they would leave the Chamus, who still faced the problem of maintaining their system with a diminished work-force. Dams needed repair after heavy rains and annual replacement, and the furrows that filtered water from the river to the fields required heavy maintenance. Anderson suggests that the irrigation system had peaked in the 1870s and was already in an irreversible decline by the time of Thomson’s visit. As elephants became increasingly scarce, the price that Chamus demanded from traders for ivory became unrealistically high, and the coastal caravans meanwhile penetrated further inland where ivory was still plentiful and cheaper.5 The Chamus were clearly handicapped by the unpredictable extremes of their climate and by their primitive techniques and materials. While Anderson notes the shambolic nature of Chamus construction with badly built huts and flimsy dams made from boulders and brushwood, there are also impressive indications of their skills. He cites a visiting agricultural official in 1954 who noted that the Chamus women ‘employ a simple system of box-terracing … the accuracy of their bank construction was extraordinary, also their apparent ability to site the box-terraced lands so that an even flow of overflow water was received on the plots.’ Again, elders had a means of preventing their wives from filching from their grain stores by colonizing spiders to spread their intricate webs over the entrances and memorizing the patterns of these webs until they decided to make the food available for their families. The Chamus also seem to have successfully saved their granaries from the ‘myriad of rats everywhere’.6 The sophistication of the irrigation system was apparently matched by the sophistication of the elders’ Council in maintaining a control over this system and other activities that affected their society. A feature that may have played a major role in this fine balance was the ethos of Chamus society. Various writers have emphasised: that: the Chamus ‘receive strangers kindly’, whereas the Maasai were ‘cruel and remorseless to the last degree’ (New); that they were ‘singularly honest and reliable’ and their ‘charming unsophisticated manners’ contrasted with ‘the ferocious and arrogant warriors of the Masai country’ (Thomson); and that they were ‘peaceable

5 Anderson 1988: 247-8, 251-2. 6 Anderson 1988: 247, 256, Thomson 1968: 263-4; Gregory 1896: 125. 148 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?

and friendly’ and ‘more modest than their insolent [Maasai] cousins on the plateaus who … had developed a propensity for plunder and a thirst for blood’ (Peters).7 In part, this appears to be a contrast between Chamus elders and Maasai moran and their different attitudes towards strangers in an era when the Maasai dominated the region. But it also surely reflects the stress on conformity among Chamus to maintain their erratic irrigation system as a collective enterprise, and reveals their elders as essentially diplomatic, which would have been an asset in their peaceful trading with outsiders and a necessary quality for influence in any meeting of the Council, where consensus and harmony were stressed. If the elders were involved in overseeing their wives as dependent labourers and the irrigation system as a whole, then this raises the question, what contribution did unmarried youths and girls contribute to this unpredictable economy? According to Thomson: ‘very little work being expected of the latter, and the sweetheart system being preserved. They all, however, occupy the same village.’ But Thomson was describing the next stage of Chamus development when they were joined by Samburu who introduced an element of pastoralism into their economy, and he added: ‘When parties go off on war-raids, they also contrive to eat a bullock by way of getting up their courage.’ 8 This raises further questions. Before the arrival of Samburu immigrants, could Chamus youths – moran – have retained the hunting and fishing skills associated with their earlier traditions as Dorobo? Could this have provided a continuing lifeline for all Chamus when harvests failed? In providing an essential role for the moran, could this also have eased their induction into the collective economy?

8.3 The Transition to Agro-pastoralism

During its heyday, the Chamus irrigation system provided sufficient food to accommodate refugees from neighbouring peoples. These added to the workforce in return for hospitality and were absorbed into the existing four clans. Around 1870, there was an influx of destitute Maa pastoralists – the Toiyo – who had become detached from the main body of Samburu and had developed their own practices including river fishing skills while retaining their herds. When they migrated to join the Chamus, the Toiyo brought these skills with them and their commitment to pastoralism. As newcomers to the irrigation system, they are remembered for introducing river fishing to other Chamus, who had previously only fished in Lake Baringo. Their incorporation into the irrigation system extended to a recognized claim to ritual authority over the techniques of river-fishing, rather as the established Kabis

7 New 1873: 463, 469 based on early traders’ reports; Thomson 1885: 234, 264; Peters 1891: 224, 272. 8 Thomson 1885: 264. The Transition to Agro-pastoralism 149

and Lamaee clans held ritual control over crops and irrigation. As such, the Toiyo constituted a significant addition to Chamus society and formed a fifth clan. The Toiyo immigrations were followed by further waves of destitute Samburu in the 1880s, and these formed five further clans, retaining their Samburu names and spear-heading the thrust to rebuild their herds through raiding, husbandry, and trading. It seems quite likely that vonHohnel was referring to Samburu immigrants when he wrote that the Chamus ‘were very exacting about what they would take in exchange for their wares … for ivory they must have cattle.’9 A later source for building up Chamus cattle herds was as mercenaries who helped establish the incoming colonial administration against dissident Kalenjin and Turkana pastoralists. The Samburu were the principal agents in the transition of the Chamus to agro- pastoralism, and they introduced their Chamus hosts – especially the young men – to a growing element of pastoralism in their economy. A measure of the accretion of Samburu into an expanded Chamus society may be seen in the integration of their clan systems at this time. Altogether, the second wave of Samburu immigrants comprised representatives of five Samburu clans, of whom four formed a new ritual relationship with one of the four original Chamus clans. This relationship involved a reciprocal mixture of deep respect tempered in the final resort by privileged coercion. It was a practice borrowed from the Samburu and wholly absent among the Maasai, ensuring peaceful avoidances between previously hostile clans or sub-clans. This could well have appealed to the Chamus elders’ Council as a means of integrating the newcomers peacefully and containing the aggressive edge associated with pastoral rivalries, smoothing the transition towards agro-pastoralism. There were further immigrations by stragglers from the defeated Laikipiak Maasai from the east, who formed a further clan, and by Uasinkishu Maasai from the west who were absorbed individually by the existing clans. The tilt towards pastoralism also appears to have had some effect on the general ethos of Chamus society. The Chamus were previously regarded as peaceful irrigators, when close cooperation in maintaining their system under the control of the elders’ Council had been essential. The pastoral side of their economy, both in terms of building up their herds by raiding and then in terms of defending these herds gave a stronger and more competitive role for younger men – the moran. Irrigation required coordination in order to realize ultimate self-interest and significantly this was in the hands of household heads as members of the elders’ Council. Pastoralism, on the other hand, required dedication to the family herd within a much looser framework that could lead to a clash of interests. Some case examples involving immigrant Maa suggest a stronger element of aggressiveness associated with the pastoral culture and intense concern for their herds. This is to suggest a tilt towards initiative in the hands of younger men with

9 vonHohnel 1894: 5. 150 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?

short-term interests and away from the longer-term concerns of the elders’ Council, who were struggling to maintain their irrigation system. As they built up their herds by the first decade of the twentieth century, the Chamus consolidated the pastoral side of their economy by adopting the Maasai system of manyata villages to guard their growing herds. This was seen as a purely practical arrangement and, unlike Maasai manyat, there were no heavily ritualized overtones, but the separation of moran from the elders’ villages and hence from their wives may be significant. Beside the expansion of clanship, another indication of the integration between the irrigation and pastoral influences can be seen in terms of the Chamus age system, which contains a mixture of Samburu and Maasai elements, as well as other features that are distinctly different. It is tempting (though a matter of speculation) to strip away the Maasai features to reveal an earlier age system, and then to strip away the Samburu features to reveal a still earlier pre-pastoralist system. The significant point, however, is that the inclusive system was not an unstructured mishmash of elements borrowed at random. It was a system with its own rules and procedures that were neither Samburu nor Maasai, and it was integrated into a cycle that typically spanned 12 years, whereas the Samburu and Maasai cycles spanned 14 and 15 years respectively (Chapter 2). In 1917, unusually heavy rains caused the Perkerra River to overflow, bursting its banks, altering its course, and leading to a flash flood that destroyed the irrigation system irreversibly. Two factors appear to have contributed to this. First, official records suggest a sixfold increase in the cattle population between 1900 and 1920 (and this incidentally is identical to the increase in bridewealth over this period). Robert Chambers has attributed this increase to the reduction of intertribal raiding following the establishment of administration in the area. As a result, the high grass that had previously dominated the catchment area of the Perkerra River was grazed down and replaced by thick bush. This increased the run-off of surface water, eroding the banks of the river, and undermining the natural drainage that fed the irrigation system.10 A second cause of the flood is suggested by Anderson’s analysis over a longer period, stemming from the time when the Chamus increased their irrigation production to meet the growing opportunities for trading, even before Thomson’s visit in 1883. The system then became overworked, steadily eroding the soil cover until it finally succumbed to the flooding. In other words, the Chamus had over- exploited their irrigation system in addition to over-grazing the area that supplied its water. Whatever the balance between these two explanations, the Chamus became increasingly reliant on their newly acquired stock, and pastoralism now became the most successful component of their mixed economy.

10 Chambers 1973: 345-6 The Transition to Individualism 151

Following the flood, individual families dispersed and started to create small scale irrigation works at suitable spots around the lake. These met with irregular success and inferior unmarketable crops, alternating with reliance on famine relief. Six years after the flood, the two villages were reported to be practically deserted, except for a few older families. The elders’ Council survived and, according to Anderson in 1980, it ‘still functions dealing with controls over grazing as well as irrigation’, although with a growing and scattered population, it seems almost certain that its powers and procedures would have modified since the flood.11

8.4 The Transition to Individualism

‘The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.’

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1754

In pre-colonial times, polygyny was possible among Chamus, but elders preferred monogamy, which avoided all the troubles associated with younger wives and competition for and between wives. On the other hand the Samburu and Maasai pastoralists had a different attitude towards property and preferred polygyny as a means towards accommodating growing herds. This implied later marriage for young men and earlier marriage for girls (Figure 2.1), and the Samburu age-set system especially was geared towards this end (Table 2.2), whereas Chamus age-set system only produced a surplus of marriageable girls up to a point. While the irrigation system faltered, the human population and the herds continued to multiply, and the cattle were grazed further and further afield during dry seasons. Challenges to the age-set system became a gauge of a growing transition towards a more individualistic society. An early indication of this was the attempt to evade a rule that tied the initiation of boys to the inauguration of a new age-set: if a boy missed this, then he had to wait twelve years for his next chance. With increasing numbers of cattle, more monogamous elders with small families were holding back the initiation of their sons to retain their use as herdboys, delaying their initiation and ultimately their marriages and marriage prospects. Some ‘boys’ were even said

11 Anderson 1988: 247n, 251, 254-5 152 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?

to have grey hairs by the time they could marry.12 A few youths of Kiliako age-set who had missed the inauguration ceremony around 1901 absconded to become unofficially circumcised by a willing expert from outside Chamus, and then they claimed the right to ‘climb up’ to Kiliako. This initiative was followed by a trickle of members of the next three age-sets until the elders successfully threatened to curse any boys who attempted to climb up to Merisho age-set (initiated in 1948). The numbers were insignificant, but they revealed a readiness to challenge the system from below and a belated determination to maintain it from above. Meanwhile, attempts to enter the growing market economy by reinstating the principal irrigation system failed, and this increased the pressure on the young men of families without stock to find casual wage employment outside the Chamus area. Over successive age-sets, this increased the autonomy of these young men and their independence as elders when they returned to their Chamus homes. Exposure to the cash economy was now undermining the age-set system, which was seen as regressive in an era that encouraged peaceful competitiveness. The manyat were increasingly regarded as superfluous by fathers who felt they had lost control over their moran sons. In line with an increasing awareness of national trends, there was a rapid increase in the demand for schooling beyond the primary level, clashing with traditional notions of the role of moranhood. There was increasing pressure for lowering the age of circumcision. Elders increasingly ignored the age-set restrictions on early marriage for their sons. These trends were set by those who were able to take advantage of new opportunities. But they were just one side of the increasing differentiation within Chamus society. On the other side were those who had stayed at home to tend the family herd or what remained of the faltering irrigation economy, who had no schooling, and could not afford to release their sons for schooling or early circumcision or marriage. Significantly, the polygyny rate among the Chamus by 1980 was almost identical to that of the Samburu in 1960 (1.5 wives/elder), but whereas the Samburu data showed a distinct association with age (Table 2.1), this is less pronounced among the Chamus suggesting a more general distinction between rich polygynists and poor monogamists whatever their ages.13 The increasing polarization of Chamus society is highlighted by Peter Little’s rigorous research in 1980. This followed the privatization of land by the Kenya Government after Independence in 1963, and coincided with the growing wage

12 The Samburu evaded this problem by dividing their age-sets into three or four initiation periods, and the Maasai by dividing it into two (right and left) and permitting some late initiations. This appears to be the reason why the Chamus have a shorter age-set cycle (of c. 12 years) than the Samburu or Maasai: there was more pressure on Chamus elders to allow early initiations for fully grown youth, and hence a briefer cycle between initiations). 13 Little (personal communication); Spencer 1997: 87-8, 178. The Growth of Knowledge 153

economy and the emergence of new elites. Among the Chamus, enterprising younger men had taken up new opportunities of wage employment, and they could now reinvest their savings in the mixed agro-pastoral economy. This was at the expense of the less enterprising families, who now became increasingly marginalized. In this process, the need to employ casual labour rose during the critical season before planting, inflating wages at this time. This attracted poorer farmers, in spite of the fact that they could not at the same time plant their own crops and tend their own herds. By yielding to the short-term gains of high wages, they and their families were drawn into a downward spiral, especially during the hungry season. Eventually, in order to survive, they would sell off their herds and their newly acquired rights to land, and ultimately become badly paid full-time labourers, even on the land that they had previously owned. Conversely, those that had built up some capital could afford to pay the higher wages during the critical period, hire tractors, and buy the land and herds cheaply from the impoverished, increasing their capital in the long-term. With increasing yields, they could offer grain instead of wages to their employees and expand their holdings further. As competition for farmland increased, the successful owners would fence off their land to establish exclusive ownership and secure the best dry-season pasture for their herds, again at the expense of poorer herdsmen, whose free-range pastures were increasingly relegated to waterless tracts. Feeding on their profits enabled the successful to take on further wives and to give their children extended schooling, anticipating the possibility of more highly paid opportunities in work and diversifying the household economy still further in the next generation. In this way, social differentiation according to age in the traditional economy was being almost completely replaced by a new form of differentiation based on individual success in a capitalist economy. The earlier communal enterprise was now fragmented into a free-for-all – among the wealthy.14

8.5 The Growth of Knowledge

The successive transitions experienced by the Chamus from foraging to the development of private property may be viewed as a microcosm of social evolution in terms of the growth of knowledge. This has a bearing on the birth of anthropology as a discipline, when unveiling the macro-history of civilization became entangled with the prevailing concept of evolution. This concept concerned two quite separate streams of dispute: social evolution on the one hand and biological evolution on the other. Their separateness involved wholly different time scales. Homo sapiens was fully established as a forager long before the appearance of nomadic pastoralism with domesticated herds or the invention of agriculture with settled communities.

14 Little 1992: chapters 4, 5, 7. 154 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?

The question of ‘social evolution’ hinged on the balance between original invention and the diffusion of inventive ideas across the globe. Increasingly, it was the concept of diffusion that held sway. This was illustrated for the Maasai, for instance, when Merker’s (1904) study became caught up with the German school of catholic diffusionists (Kulturkreise), who sought to link the dispersal of humanity with the early chapters of the Bible, and hence the Maasai with a lost tribe of Israel. The only lingering interest in evolutionism concerned parallel stages of historical development between earlier civilizations of the New World when compared with the Old, since these could not be simply explained by diffusion. This ultimately boiled down to an archaeological quest to identify similar but independent sequences of invention and development between the two major regions. To the extent that these pointed in the same direction, they suggested implicit laws of social evolution, as against the uniqueness of each new invention prior to its diffusion. By the time that Malinowski gave social anthropology a kick-start in the 1920s, evolutionism only survived in this archaeological quest, and he saw his principal rival as the sterile debate among diffusionists seeking to unravel history from indirect evidence as against his own emphasis on interpretation through extended anthropological involvement with living societies.15 In reconstructing Chamus history, however, the debate between evolutionists and diffusionists is not altogether sterile. At a trivial level, one may consider the oral tradition that their cultivation of crops arose out of the arbitrary decision by an elder of Kabis clan to plant a sprig dropped by a migrating bird, whence the claim to have discovered agriculture as an independent invention. The more likely alternative is to suggest that planting crops (and indeed the techniques of irrigation) had been invented elsewhere, and spread to the Chamus by the diffusion of knowledge. The oral account is hardly credible, but it is also trivial in the sense that it is impossible to substantiate either way: independent invention or the diffusion of technology – and from where? Except for this one incident, the oral traditions of Chamus development appear to be credibly supported by the evidence of early travellers, and with no suggestion of other independent inventions.16 At a less trivial level, one may ask whether the whole pattern of Chamus development, from their foraging ancestry to the emergence of individualism, followed some sort of evolutionary pattern, whatever the outside influences. As E.B. Tylor pointed out, once a novel feature has been adopted by a whole society, it is

15 Harris 1969, 379, 634-53. 16 Chamus oral traditions do not appear to touch on the origin of their irrigation system and this could have been invented locally. But there were also a number of other irrigation societies on the fringes of the Maa area, and the technology could have been borrowed by the Chamus from any of these (Spear 1993: 131-2). More to the point, the Chamus would have had to develop their technology in response to the local topographical and ecological conditions which could not be borrowed. The Growth of Knowledge 155

irrelevant whether it was invented independently by one member or borrowed from elsewhere.17 Either scenario would involve a process of diffusion from its source and indicates that the society was ready to adopt it. This is born out by the sheer number of scientific inventions and discoveries that have been made independently by two (or more) pioneers at about the same time.18 This is quite close to Karl Popper’s view of Objective Knowledge, although I would prefer to label it ‘potential knowledge’.19 In this model, human awareness and endeavour focus on the problems of existence as they occur, and these are resolved through trial and the elimination of error. Selective pressures weed out ideas and experiments that do not stand the test of reality. They either succeed and become incorporated into normal practice in a process of adaptation, or they fail and will be discarded or ignored. As a result, routine patterns of understanding build up through the experience of successful and failed attempts; and where a pattern establishes itself as an underlying working premise then this provides a basic understanding: a strategy that suffices until it too is put to the test. The process of revelation and criticism is without end. The fate of a novel idea, like a mutation, depends on success or failure. If it succeeds, it spreads and becomes incorporated into the body of collective knowledge, and as Tylor noted, it may be a moot point whether this was an original or a borrowed idea. The significant point is that the community is ready to adopt it. In Popper’s model, Objective Knowledge consists of the sum total of the subjective knowledge of individuals, beliefs, interpretations, and understandings. No single person has more than a partial grasp of this knowledge, but collectively it is within their grasp: it is ‘potential knowledge’. This provides an autonomous world of possibilities that lie beyond the awareness of any single knower. It provides a matrix of ideas from which the next invention or discovery will emerge when a particular combination of pieces of information are brought together to solve a problem. This can only be achieved through the interaction of individuals sharing their subjective experiences, bringing a variety of points of view until a novel and relevant combination of ideas emerges and becomes established. Popper regarded this process of acquiring wisdom through trial and the elimination of error as the social equivalent of Darwin’s notion of adaptation by natural selection in biology, albeit at a vastly accelerated pace. The same model is applied, but it concerns shifts in human culture – in knowledge that informs a way of life – rather than the evolution of a living population as a species, a natural selection of hunches rather than of mutant offspring. The resolution of problems is

17 Tylor 1865: 378-9, cited by Harris `969: 175. 18 Ogburn and Thomas 1975: 61-77. This article lists 148 simultaneous inventions, including, of course, Darwin and Wallace on the principle of natural selection in 1858. 19 Popper 1972, especially chapters 4 and 7. 156 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?

achieved through creative social discourse rather than procreative sexual intercourse: the stuff of history rather than of genetic evolution. The accumulated experience, imagination, and partial knowledge of individuals combine to form a cultural pool of awareness that corresponds to a gene pool in the biological model, where each organism contains only a partial combination of the possible genetic information. The coming together of minds on a particular problem selects from the potential body of knowledge, providing a fertile breeding ground for new combinations; and out of this experience, new propositions are thrown up that undergo a critical process of appraisal until one is favoured and put to the test. The model can be elaborated with regard to the underlying premises that structure the syntax of knowledge and provide strategies for interpretation and action. When there is a shift in circumstance, this creates a problem whose resolution may hinge on the community’s ability to engage in a self-critical dialogue that breaks through the shell of their basic doctrines. Various imaginative ‘mutant’ forms may enter the mainstream of awareness, rewrapping the old package to form a new one: a Kuhnian paradigm shift. In Popper’s scheme, it is not society as a biological entity or species that is threatened with extinction by changing circumstances, so much as rigidly held cultural premises. Applying this model to the successive transitions of Chamus society, these were bound up with a continuing dialogue that was hammered out in their elders’ Council and arose out of problems whose resolution lay beyond the knowledge or experience of any one elder. The wisdom of tradition was seen to lie in this community of discourse and the readiness to share insights and recognise opportunities in a process of revelation as ideas jostled for attention in a search for agreement. An elaboration of Popper’s model would allow for the fact that the Objective Knowledge of the elders would have been circumscribed by the fact that women were excluded from the elders’ Council. To the extent that gathering edible products of the bush and other domestic activities were solely undertaken by women, they would have their own Objective Knowledge. They would share this collective wisdom in their own specialized interaction, and their accumulation of understanding would be different from that of the elders’ Council. Similarly, to the extent that youths (and not elders) were aware of the current opportunities for hunting, these would be part of their Objective Knowledge. Again, before Samburu refugees were adopted into the Chamus irrigation community, they too would have their specialized collective wisdom derived from the care of their herds. This would have been incorporated into the collective wisdom of the Chamus Council only when Samburu immigrants were admitted to its deliberations. In other words, Objective Knowledge is relative, and in a society where there is a strict division of labour, the world of Objective Knowledge is similarly divided. In Popper’s terms, each division constitutes a Closed Society. In this model, the growth of knowledge is perceived as a deliberate attempt to resolve a series of problems. To the extent that there is an element of purpose in this process of selection, it has parallels with a Lamarckian view of evolution. The Conclusion: Keeping Tradition in Good Repair 157

‘evolution’ of knowledge is speeded up precisely because it does not rely on random suggestions, but on informed guesses that are oriented towards a resolution in the first place. Nevertheless, to the extent that there is an element of random chance in the learning process of individuals that precedes an ability to understand problems or to have hunches that address them, this suggests a more Darwinian process that has neither purpose nor a presumption of progress. Such a pattern may build up in early life – from the random experimentation of infants, as they adjust to a strange world, to the more directed play and increasing rapport among children. In other words, a Lamarckian pattern of social behaviour among elders may be the outcome of a more Darwinian experience among individuals struggling with their youth. Putting to one side the Lamarckian implications of this model and apparently quite independently of Popper’s work, an elaboration has been proposed by Warwick Bray, providing an archaeologists approach to social development. This incorporates a series of parallels with the taxonomy of Darwinian evolution that takes the argument to a further stage.20 Bray’s list of evolutionary processes can be illustrated by the sequence of changes among the Chamus that do not suggest a purposeful evolution but the unplanned drift of their history all the way from foraging to the emergence of individualism and private property. This taxonomy and summary of Chamus oral history is presented in Chart 8.1. To the extent that a Darwinian model appears wholly appropriate, the growing pains of anthropology as an argument between evolutionists and diffusionists now appears to have missed the point. By shifting Darwin’s basic model from its biological origins to the notion of the evolution of ideas through social intercourse, Popper’s model fits rather well. Diffusion is an aspect of the evolution of ideas, whatever their origins, and this ultimately leads towards a convergence of global problems as the ultimate challenge.

8.6 Conclusion: Keeping Tradition in Good Repair

Chamus oral traditions of the role and effectiveness of their elders’ Council reflect the aspirations of elderhood among the Maa generally. However the Chamus lived in two compact villages and their complex irrigation system made it necessary to maintain a collective discipline in the distribution of water and keeping this system under constant repair. Whereas the livelihood of Maa pastoralists was based on their herds which were owned and managed independently by family heads, and this encouraged dispersal to make best use of the grazing. They were scattered in small semi-mobile settlements over a significant area of East Africa. The closest that the Maasai came

20 Bray 1973. Another independent invention? Bray’s article makes no mention of Popper’s earlier work, and it was apparently conceived quite independently (personal communication around 1990). 158 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?

Chart 8.1: Episodes in Chamus oral history compared with evolutionary processes

EPISODES IN CHAMUS ORAL HISTORY EVOLUTIONARY TAXONOMY

Dorobo ancestors of Chamus knew their local ecological niche = Specialization intimately just as Maa pastoralists knew their’s

The transition from foraging to agriculture occurred when an = Successful mutation elder by chance planted a sprig of millet & collected his first crop

He gave seed to other Chamus and this spread as a new = Adaptive radiation* source of food

The Chamus then developed an intricate system of family- = Stabilization based irrigation which was controlled by a Council of elders

The food surplus enabled them to accommodate impoveris- = Adoption hed refugees from neighbouring peoples

These included the Toiyo, a splinter group of Samburu who = Genetic drift* had developed their own technique of fishing on Lake Turkana

And also traders who exchanged manufactured goods for food = Symbiosis

As the pastoralist immigrants recovered their herds, Chamus = Hybridization & polymorphism became a mixed agro-pastoral economy

Some youths illicitly ‘climbed’ to become moran prematurely = Unsuccessful mutation until they were threatened with their firestick patrons’ curse

With increasing opportunity to trade, the irrigation system = Over-specialization expanded, became overworked and was destroyed by a flash flood

Pastoralism then became the major component of their = Selective adaptation economy

However, the creeping intrusion of capitalism undermined the = Anagenesis* traditional system in the less remote and more fertile areas

This created inequality and an unbridgeable gulf between = Cladogenesis* traditionalists and innovators, and between old and young

Chamus entrepreneurs built up land-holdings and started = Breakthrough fencing these off, undermining the communal traditions of ownership

And as they increasingly exploited the poor, so the traditional = Extinction culture of Chamus society was poised to disintegrate

* Adaptive radiation: successful diffusion from a single source. Genetic drift: an isolated colony develops different traits from its parent population Anagenesis: creeping divergence over a wide area leads to a continuum of variation Cladogenesis: substantial divergence across some boundary leads to separate species Conclusion: Keeping Tradition in Good Repair 159

to achieving the ideal of unity was through local interaction within each age-set of each tribal section, where consensus was paramount at their meetings. This had its roots in the manyata experience of moran, where democratic decision-making was mandatory as the ultimate preparation for elderhood. This ideal was compromised among the Samburu by loyalties to the clan, which cut across age-set loyalties, but within each clan there was still a spirit of age-set unity. Unlike the Chamus, the Maasai and Samburu had no oral traditions of progression from earlier forms of society. Historically, they interacted with agricultural and Dorobo neighbours and even dispersed to live among them in hard times, but these migrations were remembered as temporary expedients rather than as significant steps in their development.21 There was no suggestion of evolutionary stages as portrayed for the Chamus in Chart 8.1. Yet, the taxonomy listed in this chart could apply in other ways. Popper’s model focuses on the development of knowledge though social interaction shaped by a process of natural selection. A variety of other processes involving social interaction seem relevant to an extension of this model, such as shifts in popular religion or the spread and decline of fashion motivated by the pull of popular culture, or indeed other products of interaction that are independent of practical knowledge (cf. Bateson’s distinction between eidos and ethos). At the risk of overstretching the argument, consider the following synopsis of the chapters in this volume.

Chapter 1. The distortion of history through successive elaborations of reminiscences may be viewed as a process of repeated mutation and natural selection, and the spasmodic switch in fashionable paradigms in (eg.) anthropology follows a similar course (and are often perceived as breakthroughs in understanding).

Chapter 2. The exploitation by elders of physically stronger moran and of physically weaker women may be viewed as a form of parasitism. Also, the contrast in the profile of age relations between northern and southern Maasai, and the balance between these profiles displayed among the intermediate tribal sections may be regarded as polymorphism. And they could even suggest anagenisis, raising new questions concerning the genesis of this broad continuum.

Chapter 3. Stratification by age suggests cladogenesis indicating clear boundaries between age-sets, overriding the tendency towards mutation and natural selection that challenge these boundaries and the age system itself.

21 Berntsen 1979, Waller 1985. 160 The Evolution of Indigenous Knowledge among Chamus – or Global Diffusion?

Chapter 4. Age-set exogamy is linked to excessive group indulgence within each age-set and leads to a symbiotic relationship between rival age-sets in the quest for wives.

Chapter 5. Innovations in song & dance by each new age-set of moran (and indeed at every performance), may be viewed as successful mutations that result from the rapport established in the interaction of dancers. Where an attempt to generate a dancing event fails, then natural selection has taken its toll.

Chapter 6. The generation of anxiety through ritual leading to increased suggestibility may be viewed a preadaptation prior to a radical change in relationships.

Chapter 7. The transformation of religion among Samburu converts may be viewed in terms of genetic drift, or perhaps as cladogenesis if this develops into a clear rift between traditionalists and transfigurationalists, or even to the extinction of one or the other through cumulative forces of natural selection.

Chapter 8. The role the Chamus elders’ Council has an affinity with a Lamarckian view of evolution as a purpose-led process.22 However, the prior experience of individuals as children, learning from random experimentation, has a more Darwinian flavour, leading to a sense of purpose in approaching problems. Similarly, unplanned events that precipitated substantial shifts in the pattern of Chamus existence parallel a Darwinian view that has neither purpose nor a presumption of progress. Either way, change normally takes place through a series of small responses that are constantly subject to forces of natural selection.

Chapter 9. The skill in elders’ oratory and respect for their knowledge and understanding may be viewed as specialization: a process that is subject to natural selection. The heated exchanges during their debating may reflect adjusting to changes that are already taking place, as different points of view, like mutations, battle for survival in a challenging environment.

Most of these themes suggest a persistence of status quo rather than any growth of knowledge, but they each are the product of interaction between Maa where natural selection plays a significant role. The development of the Chamus towards individualism and a polarization between rich and poor does represent a transition that can be perceived in evolutionary terms, and this is also reflected in more recent studies of the Maasai, Samburu and other Maa-speaking peoples. Tradition appears to have lingered in the remoter areas, but it is always subject to modification. Within

22 Popper 1972: 268-280, 1973. Conclusion: Keeping Tradition in Good Repair 161

their traditional areas, moran cling to the modified ideals of moranhood, while successive age-sets of firestick patrons revere clouded memories of the past and still cling to their traditional role. Nevertheless, these elders recognise the need to reinvent details of ritual practice with changing times, as they always have done. Maa-speaking societies and their traditions have been and are involved in their contemporary times. The mechanism for this is through casual interaction and ad hoc gossip, building up to collective meetings when they strive to reach a consensus on major issues. Similarly, the Chamus elders’ Council were involved in the ‘present’ at each stage, periodically adjusting their traditions to keep them in good repair, just as they sought to maintain their failing irrigation system. The significance of tradition is not its inflexibility, but its emphasis on the continuity of society itself. 9 Maa Democracy, Development and Alternative Realities: an Open Letter1

Dear Robert,

I’m sorry that it has taken me so long to acknowledge your kind gift of Whose Reality Counts? (Chambers 1997), and that I have evaded any answer to your question until now. Attempting this takes me back to our very different types of involvement as novices among the Samburu around 1960, when I as an anthropologist found our conversations invigorating and valued your hospitality as a District Officer and your encouragement to voice my criticisms of the colonial record. A key interest that we shared at that time has a bearing on your book. This concerned the nature of decision- making among the Samburu, and this was amplified when I later turned my attention to their cousins, the Maasai and also to the Chamus, where our paths indirectly crossed a second time.

9.1 Public Consensus and Private Anxieties

In Whose Reality Counts?, your depiction of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) involves ‘changes and reversals of role, behaviour, relationships and learning’ shared by the whole community and extending to advisers in a sustained attempt to resolve problems of rural development. PRA facilitators do not dominate. They sit down, listen and learn, encouraging people to express their own realities. This conjures up memories of formal debates among Samburu elders. These allowed all points of view to be expressed, but only one at a time, inhibiting private disputes or sustained interruptions. Their discussions would take place in the shade of a large acacia tree, and this provided an analogy for the process of arriving at any decision. They pointed out that the branches of this tree were like the different views expressed by various elders on some vexed topic, while the trunk was a meeting point of these branches, binding them together in a unanimous compromise. Any elder could speak at these assemblies, standing up while the others remained seated on the ground. But he had to obey the rules of procedure, taking his turn, addressing the issue, and making a coherent contribution. While ideally he could voice any opinion without interruption, others could call on him to sit down if they felt that he was rambling or disagreed with him strongly. On contentious issues,

1 An earlier version of this chapter has been published under the title ‘Foxes and Hedgehogs – and Lions: whose reality prevails?’, in Cornwall, A. and Scoones, I. (eds.), 2011, Revolutionizing Develop- ment: reflections on the work of Robert Chambers. London: Earthscan. (pp. 45-51). I am grateful to the publisher for permission to reproduce it here.

interruptions could lead to a groundswell of dissent and even to episodes of unruly shouting between rival factions. The most influential elders were those with the skill to frame an argument that sought to resolve diverging interests with an acceptable compromise. An elder who rose to the occasion would command the attention of the assembly, eloquently wielding his stick to make each point in his own time, with the oratorical use of extended pauses and repetitions to hold his audience. The assembly would argue the various points of view with no fixed agenda or limitation on their time. The debate on any topic would continue until they resolved their difference and reached a binding compromise by common consent, or overwhelming pressure, or just exhaustion. The decision would then be confirmed by invoking God’s blessing. This was led by a member of the oldest age-set present, even if he had to be woken up with no clear grasp of what had actually been agreed. The sense of unanimity and the blessing gave the occasion an irrefutable authority. In your book, you adopt Archilochus’s metaphor, contrasting creative foxes with fundamentalist hedgehogs.2 In this vein, the Samburu elders were behaving like foxes, with many ideas that contributed towards the resolution to their problem. This may fall short of the PRA ideal in that these debates excluded all women and younger men, but it does express a compromised version and reflects the embedded gender and age divisions that characterised Samburu society. In my mind’s ear, I can hear Samburu elders pointing out that their wives are merely hedgehogs (injolis) with just one big idea – a fundamentalist desire to keep having children linked to a widespread concern for their fertility – while they, the elders as foxes (isiron), have a broader and more mature understanding of the world with robust ways of thinking and responding. This displays an alternative fundamentalism, of course, regarding their wives as ‘children’, and disregarding any contribution that women’s points of view can make towards the debate.3 However, the elders do add that they have an overriding responsibility for the well-being of their ‘children’ and go hungry if necessary to make sure that these dependants are fed. Samburu women’s anxiety over their fertility is expressed in their dancing, and this is a theme that has been reported more widely in the region and other parts of Africa. This touches on another area of concern: population growth in underdeveloped areas. You note this, but as a neo-Malthusian, I am less reassured by your evidence of some kind of balance between population growth and economic development.4 In East Africa, the official 2012 estimate for the annual growth rate of population was 2.44%. This may seem containable at first sight, but it implies a doubling of the human population every 29 years with no end in sight. Even in areas as remote as Samburu, I

2 Chambers 1997: 163. 3 Cf. Chambers 1997: 88. 4 Chambers 1997: 24-6, 31. 164 Maa Democracy, Development and Alternative Realities: an Open Letter

estimated an annual growth rate of 2.3% in 1973 for a clan that by definition excluded immigrants.5 As a global phenomenon this presents an ethical Pandora’s Box. World powers may confer over climate change or international financial crises, and they may just conceivably have some impact in sorting these out. But can you conceive of a situation where there might be some global consensus over population limitation? You note that poorer sectors adopt a robust strategy to cope with their poverty in the long-term.6 Yet one of these robust approaches is to aspire to large families as a safeguard for their old age. To assume that the pace of economic development will match population growth is speculative, especially in a world that is running short of fossil fuels and threatened with climate change. Redistributing global resources could buy valuable time, but it would not address the basic problem. Nor can we safely assume that birth rates and poverty traps are set to diminish over time. With population growth at this rate, the escalation of man-made disasters seems set to continue. At a local level, I wonder how a PRA facilitator would handle a discourse on this issue. Public debates do not necessarily dispel private anxieties.

9.2 The Institutional Context of Decision-making

Turning to the Maasai, decision-making follows a similar pattern to the Samburu, but on a grander scale. The sense of age-set loyalty among the Maasai is not compromised by clan divisions as among the Samburu, and this can lead to bitter disputes between age-sets relating to promotions up the age ladder. During their years at their warrior- village, Maasai moran are encouraged to cultivate a debating finesse as a key to their ‘warrior’ discipline and as a training for consensual action when they become elders. With elderhood, the key virtue remains as loyalty to their age-set. A defaulting age mate who fails to comply with expectations may be punished by slaughtering one of his finest oxen or even by an age-set curse. If just two age mates approach a third with a reasonable request, they represent their age-set at large and he should comply. It would be a disloyalty to his age-set to do otherwise. When an elder is summoned by his age mates to lend his support by attending some gathering, he ‘dare not’ refuse. If a particularly astute member is nominated by acclaim to represent a group of age mates or is asked to lead a delegation on some issue, there may be an implicit kudos or coyness in accepting this role, but again the expected response is that he ‘dare not’ refuse. At a more formal debate, his role as a representative gives a man considerable authority to persist in asserting his case in contention with others, including representatives from rival pressure groups. In Maasai terms, he is a ‘feather’

5 Spencer 1997: 214. 6 Chambers 1997: 175. The Institutional Context of Decision-making 165

(enkopiro). This term refers to the ostrich feather head-dress that encircled the head of a Maasai moran, rather as the collectivity of representatives surround the eloquent and supremely influential figure of the spokesman for the age-set: their ‘head’. In a debate, the spokesman should be the last to express an opinion, having weighed up all the arguments. His skill is to bring together these diverse views in the course of debate, without declaring his hand too soon. He is expected to listen, especially to the ‘feathers’, and then to steer the debate towards a binding consensus. The spokesman (or ‘head’) chooses other age mates as his aides (‘necks’) to support him in his general task of governing his age-set. But the Maasai insist that real power lies with the representatives (‘feathers’) who can hold the spokesman to account if they consider that he falls short of their democratic expectations, and even replace him in the final resort. A point to bear in mind is that in the more casual discussions and gossip of daily life, men of influence are priming themselves with relevant information that underpins their performance on the more formal occasions. The hierarchy of roles on these occasions provides an institutionalized framework, both for arriving at wide- ranging decisions relevant to a broad community of interests, and for acting on them afterwards – considering differences of opinion in the first instance, and inhibiting dissent after a decision has been reached. You describe PRA as a means of arriving at such decisions after informed debate, but does PRA build on locally established institutional practices to arrive at and pursue resolutions? Quite apart from subversion, can there be a Hawthorne effect once the facilitators have left the scene, with participants reverting to their old institutional practices and personal concerns for their own interests? Your book criticises the institutional assumptions and practices of those in power and a table refers to building up local institutions in the longer-term, but you appear to overlook the resilience of existing local institutions in community dynamics and the necessity of working through them to facilitate development.7 With respect, while Whose Reality Counts? is disarmingly self-critical, it reads as though PRA is seeking to wipe the slate clean before building up a new rapport, overlooking the rich and creative significance of local institutions that are themselves products of local cultures and capable of modifying with changing circumstances. Three examples from the East African pastoralist region demonstrate the scale of oratory in local decision-making. First, a raw form of democracy has been reported among the Karimojong of northern Uganda, where any forceful elder can try to impose his views in a debate. Having emerged as a local leader, he may order persistent objectors to leave the meeting, provoking a minority to vote with their feet and to form a rival faction with their own spokesman and debate. If this movement threatens to wrest the initiative,

7 Chambers 1997: 57, 85, 115, 221-2. 166 Maa Democracy, Development and Alternative Realities: an Open Letter

the local leader is expected to climb down and reassess his views in order to remain within the mainstream of discussion. In this example, the thrust towards consensus overrides the clash of personalities.8 Second, a particularly sensitive analysis of elders’ debating is by David Turton in relation to the Mursi of southern Ethiopia, and it draws attention to the modulating rapport among elders in reaching for agreement on any problem. The most influential Mursi elders are those with a flare for piecing together a forceful argument that assimilates different points into some imaginative synthesis, overriding parochial interests. Such men have to cultivate their reputation, or popular regard will shift to those who outshine them, especially ambitious younger men. Each debate has the potential to modify the contours of influence, based on attendance and performance. Each speaker needs to cultivate his audience. He should only interject at a point when they are ready to listen, and then hold their attention with a terse style and subtle allusions that make a significant contribution toward the discussion. He should then finish at a point of his own choosing, before he is hassled by a rising tide of interruptions. If he attempts to intervene prematurely when attention is still focused on another speaker, or too often, or with too little to say, then he will lose face. No individual is indispensable, and no-one is expected to arbitrate between conflicting views. Rather there is an implicit process of peer review with the most influential contributions emerging towards the end, bringing together the strands of argument and reducing the need for further discussion.9 Finally, the most imposing debating arena in the region is among the Oromo in the Ethiopia-Kenya border area. Successive Oromo ‘age-sets’ enter the ruling gada ‘age grade’ for periods of eight years and then retire. During each gada period, an array of office holders are nominated to take responsibility for resolving all forms of conflict and dispute; and midway in this period, a massive pan-Oromo assembly is mounted to consider intractable problems. No aspect of customary law is immune from scrutiny on these occasions, and the debating is geared towards updating tradition in order to adapt to the realities of change. This example draws attention to the adaptability of a highly structured institution.10

9.3 Institutionalised Adaptability

The robustness of indigenous decision-making leads me to consider the Chamus, to whom you also have drawn attention in relation to the implications of a top-down

8 Dyson-Hudson 1966: 223-4. 9 Turton 1975: 171-8. 10 Legesse 1973: 81-98. Institutionalised Adaptability 167

approach to development in colonial times.11 Here my focus will be on the Chamus tradition of the opposite: an indigenous process of bottom-up development. Historically the Chamus have experienced a string of changes in their social organisation associated with in-migrations and an increasingly mixed economy based at first on irrigation agriculture, then with trading their surplus, then agro- pastoralism, then dependency on famine relief after the breakdown of their major irrigation system, and finally the response to new opportunities following Kenya independence. The significant point here is not the details of how these changes came about, but the mechanism whereby the Chamus elders responded to these changes. Developing and maintaining the Chamus irrigation system required a collective discipline, and this was achieved through a Council of elders, which consisted of all household heads. Attendance at their meetings was compulsory, and any breach of a decision by the Council was a punishable offence. The Chamus word for their Council was olamal, which corresponded to the Maasai term for a ritual delegation whose requests must never be refused. In coining this term, the Chamus seem to have emphasised the compulsive element that followed from the sanctity of Council rules. The Council provided the opportunity to pool creative strands of understanding through open discussion. The oratory of more persuasive elders may have had more influence in the final resort, but still their debates stimulated a process of selection by popular acclaim. As among the Samburu and Maasai, deliberations only concluded when a consideration of all points of view led to a working consensus. Unanimous agreement could then be achieved with a degree of coercion over any reservations, or through sheer exhaustion. The agreement was then binding on everyone through a blessing. According to Chamus elders, each successive transition in their economy was mulled over by their Council in order to arrive at a united course of action; and each successive age-set is remembered for its contribution to this evolving process while they were active moran, often playing a part in introducing innovations. However, it was the Council of elders and not the moran that steered the process of adaptation, maintaining an overarching control, with the age-set of moran available to support their decisions when necessary. The richness of Chamus oral history was matched by the sanctity and practicality of their system. Once again, the implication here is of an indigenous institution for decision-making, backed by public opinion in order to maintain their system while adapting to new realities. Your critique of top-down development among the Chamus raises an awkward question. How far can local cultures and institutions adapt to any development agency that espouses different premises, and vice versa? Suppose the agency requires women and younger men to be consulted and values their input, whereas this is alien to the local elders, who regard themselves as the custodians of their society and way

11 Chambers 1973. 168 Maa Democracy, Development and Alternative Realities: an Open Letter

of life.12 Reverting to Archilochus’s metaphor, the elders see themselves as shrewd foxes, and any ideological challenge to their custodianship may be regarded as the fundamentalist bigotry of some narrow-minded hedgehog (and again vice versa). To put this another way, can there ever be a totally unblinkered culture-free approach to PRA from above or below? Any institution or interested party must have some basic premises and these imply a fundamentalism. Coining the idiom of your book:

Can there be any solution Without some institution? Or any institutional promise Without a fundamental premise?

9.4 The Problem of Subversion

As against the metaphor of hedgehogs and foxes, we may shift the focus to consider Pareto’s foxes and lions. This involves a switch from a question of insight and understanding to one of integrity, providing a different slant on the character of the foxes. Let us call these respectively wise foxes after Archilochus and sly foxes after Pareto. For Pareto’s sly foxes, their wide variety of experience and perceptiveness feeds their cunning in the devious pursuit of self-interest. In this metaphor, sly foxes are portrayed as scheming innovators and are opposed to lions, who are essentially loyal to broader social ideals and strong enough to pursue these. But faced with the complexity of change, lions are vulnerable to the scheming manipulations of sly foxes. Lions are the backbone of an establishment, but in effect they have the underbellies of hedgehogs. This switch of metaphor is well illustrated in Peter Little’s penetrating study of more recent development among the Chamus.13 Little traces the penetration of capitalism into the Chamus economy following the privatization of land in Kenya. This gave rise to a new generation of entrepreneurs – the Paretovian sly foxes – who systematically acquired land and stock from impoverished Chamus, and then exploited them further as cheap landless and stockless labour. The discipline of the age-set system gave way to new inequalities that were perpetuated through generations within each family. Turning to your comments on the success of PRA, this seems to assume that participants collaborate as wise foxes and then maintain their PRA gains as trusting and trust-worthy lions.14 Plato’s Republic was very close in some ways to your model

12 Chambers 1997: 88, 213-4. 13 Little 1992. 14 Chambers 1997: 199, 208-9. The Problem of Subversion 169

and sought to cope with a more complex range of basic personality types than we have considered here. Plato’s solution was in effect to take those warriors/moran that had proved to be lions or wise foxes, and then, when they retired to elderhood, to sit them at the high table as a privileged elite over other retirees who were unsuited to govern. Your model, on the other hand, is slanted towards a universal concord of good will, with no high table and suppressing or ostracising any suggestion of rival agendas. This may be compared with two classics on Maa society that suggest a more cynical view of democracy. Philip Gulliver’s (1963) book on social control among the Arusha portrays them as sly foxes that resort to lies and subversion as they seek to build up alliances in order to settle their disputes on the one hand while also trying not to become involved in their allies’ disputes on the other. This approach echoes Merker’s (1904) repeated assertion that the Maasai follow the principle of pursuing self-interest with the axiom that ‘Might goes before Right’. Yet surely, all these metaphorical guises – sly foxes and hedgehogs included – are aspects of our persona, shifting with context. You dwell on a popular criticism against Freud.15 But it was Freud who led us to understand the manipulative infantile sly fox that lies buried in the human condition, and indeed the ambiguities of character more generally that are inadvertently revealed in our behaviour. Frustration may tempt wise foxes to become slyer, and it may turn lions into hedgehogs. Sly foxes in youth may become lions and pillars of the establishment as they mature, and then staid hedgehogs as they age in a changing world. And indeed this resembles the Maasai elders’ view of their age system, with moran cast as sly foxes, filching their stock and seducing their young wives. Maasai women in general reverse the order, regarding moran as glamorous lions and their husbands as sly foxes. In Gulliver’s study of the Arusha, elders confront one another as sly foxes over lineage land disputes and in their shadow-boxing over age-set promotions, but then they become the lions of the age-set establishment in maintaining social order. Note the institutional context that provokes the style of response: family interests on the one hand as against age-set loyalties on the other. It is because we are so vulnerable to the many sides of our personality that the very basic teachings that lead us towards adulthood are couched in terms of the fundamental strictures of hedgehogs that you criticise (and Plato extols).16 These are aimed at confining some of our more basic instincts and fostering the lion and wise fox within us to mature.

15 Chambers 1997: 77-8, 82-3. 16 Chambers 1997: 59-62; Spencer 2003: 242-6. 170 Maa Democracy, Development and Alternative Realities: an Open Letter

9.5 Conclusion: The Clash of Fundamentals and the Pragmatics of Compromise

This raises further awkward points. Your model presumes an inherent and thoroughly open-minded altruism, free from cultural assumptions or self-seeking motives.17 But can a PRA inspired transition that has been achieved in a general spirit of compromise survive in the longer term? Pareto’s analysis of history envisaged the rule of lions as vulnerable to the manipulation of sly foxes, who replaced them as the governing elite until they in turn were overthrown by a re-emergence of lions in an endless cycle. In the Maasai model, aggressive younger age-sets replace ageing senior age-sets until they too age and are replaced. But can this guarantee a continuity of the original PRA ideals, especially as times change and new leaders emerge with their own agendas?18 Again, how would a new system cope with a major crisis of confidence? Your suggestion that PRA innovations are infectious and build on one another positively seems reminiscent at first sight of the growth of Maasai group ranches.19 From diffident beginnings, these seemed to have growing popularity among the Maasai. However, their boundaries were challenged at critical times by the pressure for flexibility in the face of drought and growing populations, and these boundaries would give way to the overarching principle that all their land belonged to all Maasai. Eventually, it became clear that the increasing attraction of new group ranches had been prompted by a fear of losing newly acquired land rights if they did not join. Here, there was a clash of two fundamental principles: traditional claims in sharing land as against the environmental need to protect this land from overgrazing. The success of PRA initiatives described in the pages of your book brings hope that life in rural areas stands a chance of adapting locally to environmental problems, even if attempts at higher levels have failed to produce a solution. PRA is clearly in tune with upbringings that seek to restrict our very basic self-centred instincts in order to participate as social beings in problems that are ultimately social. This points towards a collective compromise with reality, expressed in the image of a Maasai warrior’s feather head-dress. While local institutions are capable of changing, they are embedded in the local cultures that provide their local legitimacy and are the best hope for containing the sly foxes. Similarly, the ultimate legitimacy of development agencies depends on their keeping their own sly foxes at bay. Could you envisage a PRA that is equally prepared to meet these existing institutions half-way in a spirit of compromise? Would you be prepared to respect some of their fundamentalism in order to legitimise the search towards some tangible result? Each step forward is a compromise with harsh reality, and in answer to the question posed in your title,

17 Chambers 1997: 13, 208-11, 215, 234. 18 Chambers 1997: 189, 217. 19 Chambers 1997: 133, 196, 199, 206, 209, 223. Conclusion: The Clash of Fundamentals and the Pragmatics of Compromise 171

Whose Reality Counts?, I suggest that this compromise is the post-colonial reality that really counts. Will age-set institutions play any role in these compromises? The strength of age systems is that they encourage a discipline that favours lions and wise foxes. The weakness of a world governed by market forces and rising populations is that this world becomes a playground for sly foxes as age related inequalities are outmoded by inequalities between families, and age-set systems lose their teeth. In this vein, no doubt Maa traditions will ultimately become extinct just as social anthropology will become a branch of the history of non-western institutions. Nevertheless, the record of these traditions can provide a rich heritage for the Maa- speaking peoples and in the final resort for all of us. The study of the decreasing number of societies organized around the concept of age-sets and the inevitability of ageing helps us to respect these societies and to appreciate how this topic fits into a wider understanding of human institutions. May your book earn you a more effective Samburu blessing than I could possibly hope to emulate, my old friend.

Paul References

Anderson, D., 1988, ‘Cultivating Pastoralists’ in D.H. Johnson and D.M. Anderson (eds), The Ecology of Survival, London: Lester Crook Academic Publishing. Asad, T. (ed.), 1973, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. London: Ithaca Press. Bailey, F.G., 1957, Caste and the Economic Frontier: a village in highland Orissa. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Beattie, J., 1971, The Nyoro State. Oxford: Clarendon Press Beidelman, T.O., 1959, A comparative analysis of the jajmani system, NY: J.J. Augustin. Berntsen, J.L., 1979, ‘Economic Variations among Maa-speaking Peoples.’ In Ogot, B.A, (ed) Hadith 7: Ecology and History in East Africa. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau. (pp. 108-127). Bray, W., 1973, ‘The Biological Basis of Culture.’ In Renfrew, C. (ed), The Explanation of Culture Change:Models in Prehistory. London: Duckworth. pp. 73-92. Burghart, R., 1978, ‘Hierarchical Models of the Hindu Social System’, Man (N.S.) 13: 519-536 Caine, N. G., 1986, ‘Behaviour during Puberty and Adolescence”, in Mitchell, G. and J. Evans, (eds), Comparative Primate Biology, vol.2: Behaviour, Conservation and Ecology, New York: Liss (pp. 327-361). Chambers, R., 1973, ‘The Perkerra Irrigation Scheme’ in Chambers, R. and J. Moris (eds), Mwea, Munich: Weltforum Verlag. Chambers, R . 1997, Whose Reality Counts?, London: Intermediate Technology Publications. Chapple, E. D. & Coon, C. S. 1947. Principles of Anthropology. London: Cape; New York: Holt. Chodorow, N., 1974, ‘Family Structure and Feminine personality’, in Rosaldo, M. Z. and L. Lamphere (eds), 1974, Women, Culture and Society, California: Stamford University Press (pp. 43-66). Darwin, C. R., 1871, The Descent of Man, London: Murray. Dohinow, P., 1984, ‘The Primates: age, behaviour, and evolution’, in Kertzer, D. I. and J. Keith (eds), Age and Anthropological Theory, London: Cornell University Press (pp. 65-81). Douglas, M., 1970, Natural Symbols: explorations in Cosmology. London: Barrie and Rockliff. Dumont, L., 1966, Homo Hierarchicus. English translation 1972, London: Paladin. Durkheim, E., 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by J.W. Swain. London: Allen and Unwin. Dyson-Hudson, N., 1966, Karimojong Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fallers, L.A., 1956, Bantu Bureaucracy. Cambridge: Heffer. Foley, R., 1995, Humans before Humanity, Oxford: Blackwell. Fox, D.S., 1930, ‘Further Notes on the Masai of Kenya Colony’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 60: 447-65. Fox, R., 1975, ‘Primate Kin and Human Kinship’, in Fox, R. (ed.), Biosocial Anthropology, London: Malaby Press (pp. 9-35). Frank, A.G., 1967, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, New York: Monthly Review Press. Freud, S., 1950, Totem and Taboo (orig.1913), Routledge and Kegan Paul: London. Gennep, Arnold Van. 1960. The Rites of Passage. (orig. 1909; translated by Vizedom & Caffee). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Goffman, E., 1969, ThePresentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Gregory, J.W., 1896, The Great Rift Valley. London: John Murray. Gulliver, P.H., 1963, Social Control in an African Society: a study of the Arusha, agricultural Masai of northern Tanganyika, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. References 173

Gust, R. H. H., 1935, trans., The Life of Benvenuto Cellini. London: Navarre. Hamburg, D. A. and E. R. McCown, 1979, The Great Apes, Menlo Park, Calif: Benjamin/Cummings. Harris, M., 1969, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A history of theories of culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hertefelt, Marcel d’, 1962, Les Anciens Royaumes de la Zone Interlacustre Méridionale (Rwanda, Burundi, Buha). London: International African Institute Hobbes, T., 1651 (1958), Leviathan, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hodgson, D.L., 2005, The Church of Women: Gendered encounters between Maasai and missionaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. vonHohnel, L., 1894 (vol 2), Discovery by Count Teleki of Lakes Rudolf and Stephanie. London: Longman. Holtzman, J., 2009, Uncertain Tastes: Memory, ambivalence, and the politics of eating in Samburu, Northern Kenya. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hurskainen, A., 2004, ‘An Invasion of Spirits: Epidemiological spirit possession among the Maasai of Tanzania’, Nordic Journal of African Studies, 13: 1-204. Johnston, H.H., 1902 (vol 1), The Uganda Protectorate. London: Hutchinson. Jolly, A., 1972, The Evolution of Primate Social Behaviour, London: Macmillan. Kipury, N., 1983, Oral Literature of the Maasai, Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Books. Kuper, A., 1973, Anthropologists and Anthropology: The British School 1922-72. London: Allen Lane. Lamphear, J., 1992, The Scattering Time: Turkana responses to colonial rule. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lange, R., 1975, The Nature of Dance: an Anthropological Perspective. London: Macdonald and Evans. Langer, S., 1953. Feeling and Form: a Theory of Art. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Langham, I., 1981, The Building of British Social Anthropology. Dordrecht: Reidel. Leach, E.R., 1970, Lévi-Strauss, Fontana Modern Masters, Collins: London. Lechieni, M. and family, 2013, “The World of Masiani: portrait of a Maasai patriarch”, translated and edited by P. Spencer. SOAS Research Online (e-prints. SOAS.ac.uk). Lee, P. C., 1994, ‘Social Structure and Evolution’, in Slater, P. J. B. and T. R. Halliday (eds), Behaviour and Evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (pp. 266-303). Legesse, A., 1973, Gada: three approaches to the study of African society, New York: The Free Press. Lévi-Strauss, C., 1966, The Savage Mind, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Lévi-Strauss, C., 1969, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (orig 1949), Eyre and Spottiswoode: London. Little, P.D, 1992, The Elusive Granary.: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malinowski, B. 1948. Magic, Science and Religion, and Other Essays. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press. Maquet, J.J., 1961, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda: a study of political relations in a central African kingdom. London: Oxford University Press. Mauss, M. 1954, The Gift (orig. 1924), Cunnison: New York. McLennan, J., 1865, Primitive Marriage, Edinburgh: Black. Merker, M., 1904, Die Masai, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. Middleton, J., 1960, Lugbara Religion. London: Oxford University Press. New, C., 1873, Life, Wanderings and Labour in Eastern Africa. London: Cass. Ogburn, W.F. and D. Thomas, 1975, ‘Are Inventions Inevitable? A note on social evolution.’ In Brady, I.A. and B.L. Isaac, A Reader in Culture Change. London: Wiley. Okely, J. and Callaway, H. (eds.), 1992. Anthropology and Autobiography, ASA Monographs 29. London: Routledge,. 174 References

Ortner, S. B., 1974, ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’, in Rosaldo and Lamphere (pp. 67-87). Parkin, D.J., Caplan, L., and Fisher, H. (eds.), 1996, The Politics of Cultural Performance. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pereira, M. E. and L. A. Fairbanks (eds), 1993, Juvenile Primates: life history, development and behavior, New York: Oxford University Press. Peters, C., 1891, New Light on Dark Africa. London: Ward, Lock & Co. Pocock, D., 1961, Social Anthropology. London: Sheed and Ward. Popper, K.R., 1972, Objective Knowledge: an evolutionary approach. Oxford: Clarendon. Popper, K.R., 1973, ‘Evolutionary Epistemology.’ In Miller, D. (ed), 1983, A Pocket Popper. London: Fontana Paperbacks. (pp. 78-86). Powell-Cotton, P.H.G., 1904, In Unknown Africa. London: Hurst and Blackett. Quiatt, D. and V. Reynolds, 1993, Primate Behaviour: information, social knowledge, and the evolution of culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press. Redfern, S.J., (ed.), 1986, Nursing Older People. London: Churchill Livingston Reynolds, V., 1973, ‘Ethology and Social Change’, in Renfrew, C. (ed.) The Explanation of Culture Change, London: Duckworth (pp.467-480). Rigby, P., 1969, ‘Some Gogo Rituals of “purification”: An essay on social and moral categories’. In Leach, E.R. (ed), Dialectics in Practical Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rigby, P., 1992, Cattle, Capitalism and Class: Ilparakuyo Maasai transformations Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Royce, A.P., 1977. The Anthropology of Dance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ruben, H., 1972, African Harvest. London: Harvill Press. Rust, F., 1969. Dance in Society: an Analysis of the Relationship between the Social Dance and Society in England from the Middle-Ages to the Present Day. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Sachs, C. 1933. World History of the Dance. Trans. B. Schonberg, 1937. London: Allen and Unwin. Sargant, W. 1957. Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing. London: Heinemann. Sauvain-Dagerdil, C., Leridon, H. and Mascie-Taylor N. (eds.), 2006,, Human Clocks: the bio-cultural meanings of age, Peter Lang, Bern. Smith, A.B., 1992. Pastoralism in Africa: origins and development ecology. London: Hurst & Company Smith, W. R. 1907. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. Burnett Lectures, delivered 1888-89. Edinburgh: Black. Southall, A.W., 1953, Alur Society. Cambridge: Heffer. Spear, T., 1993, ‘Being “Maasai” but not “People of Cattle”, in Spear, T. and Waller, R. (eds), Being Maasai: ethnicity and identity in East Africa. London:Currey. Spencer, B. and F.J. Gillen. 1904. The Northern Tribes of Central Australia. London: Macmillan. Spencer, H., 1850, Social Statics, New York: Appleton. Spencer, P., 1959, ‘The Dynamics of Samburu Religion’ Conference paper, SOAS Research Online: eprints.soas.ac.uk/8763/ Spencer, P., 1965, The Samburu: a study of gerontocracy in a nomadic tribe. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Spencer, P 1973, Nomads in Alliance: symbiosis and growth among the Rendille and Samburu of Kenya. London: Oxford University Press. References 175

Spencer, P., 1988, The Maasai of Matapato: a study of rituals of rebellion. Manchester: Manchester University Press Spencer, P., 1997, The Pastoral Continuum: the marginalization of tradition in East Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Spencer, P., 2003, Time, Space, and the Unknown: Maasai configurations of power and providence. London: Routledge. Spencer, P., 2010, ‘The Samburu, Maasai, and their Neighbours: a synopsis of five related volumes by Paul Spencer.’ SOAS Research Online: eprints.soas.ac.uk/8363. Spencer, P., 2012, ‘The Maasai and Maa-speaking Peoples of East Africa.’ In Oxford Bibliographies Online in African Studies. Ed. Thomas Spear. New York: Oxford University Press. http://www. oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199846733/obo-9780199846733-0041. xml. Srinivas, M.N., 1959, ‘The Dominant Caste in Pampura’, American Anthropologist, 61: 1-16. Stewart, F.H., 1977, Fundamentals of Age-Group Systems. London: Academic Press. Straight, B., 2007, Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Taylor, B.K., 1969, The Western Lacustrine Bantu. London: International African Institute. Thomson, J., 1968, Through Masailand. (Orig. 1885). London: Frank Cass and Co. Turner, V. W., 1957, Schism and Continuity in an African Society. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Turner, V.W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Turton, D., 1975, ‘The Relation between Oratory and the Exercise of Influence among the Mursi’, in Bloch, M. (ed), Political Language and Oratory in Traditional Society, London: Academic Press, (pp. 163-83). Tylor, E.B., 1865, Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization. London: Murray. Tylor, E. B., 1871, Primitive Culture, London: Murray. Tylor, E.B., 1889, ‘On the Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions; applied to the laws of marriage and descent’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 18: 245-69. Waller, R., 1985, ‘Economic and Social Relations in the Central Rift Valley: the Maa-speakers and their neighbours in the nineteenth century’. In Ogot, B.A. (ed) Hadith 8: Kenya in the Nineteenth Century. Nairobi: Anyange Press. (pp. 83-151). Walters, J. R., 1987, ‘Transition to Adulthood’, in Smuts, B. B., D. L. Cheney, R. M. Seyfarth, R. W. Wrangham, and T. T. Struhsaker (eds), Primate Societies, Chicago: Chicago University Press (pp. 358-69). Wrangham, R. W., W. C. McGrew, F. B. M. de Waal, and P. Helte (eds), 1994, Chimpanzee Cultures, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press. Wrangham, R. W. and D. Petersen, 1996, Demonic Males: apes and the origins of human violence, Boston, New York: Houghton Miflin. List of Maps

Map: The Maasai and Maa-speaking peoples in 1977 List of Figures

Figure 2.1: Comparison of demographic age structures

Figure 2.2: Age and the two male arenas

Figure 2.3: Shifts in the line of cleavage during an age-set cycle

Figure 5.1: Dancing among moran as a process of reversion List of Tables

Table 2.1: Variation of polygyny with age (Samburu 1958)

Table 2.2: Distribution of age differences between spouses (Samburu 1958)

Table 7.1: Recurrent themes in thirty-nine Maasai folk-tales List of Charts

Chart 3.1: Maasai notions of purity associated with age and sex

Chart 3.2: Ranked scales of status among the Maasai and Hindus

Chart 6.1: Evidence of brainwashing in Samburu ilmugit ceremonies

Chart 8.1: Episodes of Chamus oral history compared with evolutionary processes List of Plates

Cover. Samburu elders bless a departing bride (1959)

Plate I: Maasai moran process to the ritual enclosure at their eunoto ceremony (1977)

Plate II: A Maasai mother-of-moran shaves off her son’s hair at his eunoto (1977)

Plate III: A Samburu morani takes his turn to slaughter his ilmugit-of-the-bull ox (1958)

Plate IV: Samburu firestick patrons bless moran at an ilmugit ceremony (1958)

Plate V: The installation of the Catholic Bishop of Maralal in October 2001

Plate VI: Two views of a Chamus village c. 1900 (from Johnston 1902: 812-3) Subject Index

Adultery 26 Binary oppositions 36, 45, 89 and incest 128-9 Birth, sanctity of 41-42, 76, 123, 164 moran 26, 29, 46, 79, 98, 108, 112 Blacksmiths, despised 46-7 privileged 64 Boys 45 Age grades 31, 36, 44, 50 and moran 28-30, 75-6, 83, 93 (see also age ladder) lack respect 45, 54, 93-4 Age ladder 6, 44-45 Boys’ initiation 74-5, 151 climbing 110 as rebirth 76 jostling 11, 31, 36, 50-55, 67, 164, 169 ordeal 94-96, 99 status hierarchy 50-1 song lebarta 74-77, 94 Age-set 1 ‘Boys dances’ 83, 87 and age grade 31, 36, 44, 50 Brain-washing 104, 106 and ageing 11, 27, 32, 64-4, 75-6, 78, 110 change-over 30, 75, 94, 119 Chamus 1-2 curse 63-4, 66, 119 age-set system 150, 152 ‘daughters’ 65-7 and Dorobo 143, 146, 148, 158 egalitarian 1, 5, 57 and Maasai compared 142, 150-2, 159, 167 ‘exogamy’ 65-8, 160 and Samburu compared 142, 149-52, 159 hospitality 64 capitalism 7, 152-3, 168 inauguration 74, 94, 151 clanship 144, 148-9 loyalty 10, 14, 63, 66, 164 elders Council 145-7, 149, 151, 156-8, 160-1, punishment 10, 64, 164 167 span 33, 118-119, 152 fishing 142, 148, 158 spokesman 106-7, 165 history 6, 142 sub-age-sets 34, 152 increasing differentiation 152-3, 158, 160, Age-set systems 1, 61 168 and functionalism 22, 25, 56 irrigation system 144-5, 147, 150-1, 154, stratified hierarchy 44-5 157-8 variation 3, 22, 37, 159 ivory traders 144, 147, 150, 158 (see also Samburu; Maasai; Chamus) manyat 150, 152 Ageing 35 pastoralism 149, 158 and awareness of time 19-20, 75-6, 78, polygyny 151-3 110 research method 6-7 charisma 54, 93, 123, 163 restraint 148-9 social construction of 5, 8 Samburu immigrations 149, 156 Alliance theory 5, 68 villages 144-5 Anger 68 Childhood and curse 27, 63-4, 106, 114-6, 121, 123 and death 125 moran 68, 74, 81, 88, 90, 101-2, 106 and peer-group 88, 125 women 57-60, 68-8, 121 discipline 125-6 Ariaal 118, 169 experience 125, 160 Arusha 2, 169 play 85-7, 157 Autobiography 4 Clanship (see Maasai, Samburu, and Chamus) and distortion 11, 16 Colonial administration 43, 149-50, 162 and history 8-9 Cosmic order 69, 124 Curse 111-3 182 Subject Index

age-set 63-4, 66, 119 social vs. biological 153 and anger 27, 63-4, 98, 114-6, 121, 123 Eyes 113-4, 119-21 and blessing 114, 117, 123-4 and family (Straight) 115-6, 118, 127 Father 27, 125 and greed (Straight) 117 curse 61, 125-6 and hunger (Straight) 114, 120-1 death 27, 102 and misfortune 113, 121 Father’s brother 102 marriage threat 113, 121 as sorcerer 119 mother’s brother 112, 119, 132 Father-daughter avoidance 27, 58, 65-6, 68-9 Father-son relationship 9, 27 Dancing 72 Firestick patrons 32, 34-5 and confidence 73, 76, 90 authority 51, 93-4 and social development 87, 89 blessing 98-9, 101, 106-7 and women’s fertility 57-8, 61, 68-9, 78, 91, curse 97, 99, 105-6, 104, 115 139, 163 harangues 97, 106-7 benign influence 88, 91, 120 retire 35 boys’ lebarta 74-7, 94 Firestick relationship 36, 49-50, 52 inviolable arena 5, 73, 85, 87-8, 90 Folk tales 9, 136-7 moran 79-80, 83-8, 100 Food, withholding (Straight) 114, 118, 120 performance 73, 75, 78, 88, 90 Functionalism 17-8, 56 Death 123 and age-set systems 22, 25, 56 and afterlife (Straight) 15, 127-8, 130, 132-3 and delayed marriage 25 and disposal 116, 132-3 resilience of institutions 165, 167-70 living-dead boundary (Straight) 127, 132 unpropitious 116, 123 Gender bias 6, 122-3, 134-5 Democratic process 6, 159, 162-8 Gerontocracy 78, 105, 123 Dorobo 43, 113-4, 137, 142-3, 159 and power vacuum 28, 90-1 northern Maa model 52 Elderhood 27 Ghosts (Straight) 127, 132 abuse of power 69, 90 Girls 37-6 and moran 31-3, 89, 134 and moran 46, 62, 79, 82, 86 anger 68 (see also anger and curse) arranged marriage 27, 38, 76, 78, 125 arena 33, 63 as spectators 80 authority 42, 48, 50, 79-80, 90, 108, 126 avoid elders 27, 66, 68-9, 107 control over marriage 31 dancing 76 herding stick 89, 115 marriage ordeal 107-8 status and power 53 curse (Straight) 115 novice elders 32, 35, 51, 55 upbringing and prospects 125, 136-7 self-indulgence 63, 82 God 122 (see also Ageing; Firestick patrons) and death 123 Elders assemblies 63, 89-90, 107-8, 122, 145, and gender 122-3, 133 159, 161, 162-7 and gerontocracy 123 and God 126, 136 and punishment 128-9 confrontations 93, 162-3, 165 as custodian spirit 123-5, 133 oratory 89, 160, 162-3, 165-7 as life-giver 76, 90, 123 suggestibility 108-9, 166 as protector 48, 60-1 Eunoto ceremony 29-30, 39 holy family 131, 139 Evolution 24 manifestations of 122-3, 128-131 invention vs. diffusion 154, 157 village home (Straight) 128-131, 135 of knowledge 153, 155-7, 159 Grief 28-9, 120 Subject Index 183

Group indulgence 5, 61-4 veto 113, 121 Group ranches 170 Matapato Maasai 2, 5, 9, 117 Guardian spirits 123-4 Missions and parental roles 125 and disposal of dead 116, 132-3 influence among women 134-5, 139 Herding mode of production 10, 48-9, 53, 150 parallels with Old Testament 92, 133-4, Hindu caste system 44 154, and purity 44, 46, 53 teachings 123, 132, 139, Brahman caste 48, 53-4 Models 3, 4-6, 44, 55-6, 105-6, 155-8, 168-9, Kshatriya caste 48, 50, 54 (see also Primate model) status ranking 54 Modes of production 1, 49 untouchables 44, 46, 54 herding MOP 10, 48-9, 53, 150 varna 44, 50 predatory MOP 49, 53, 149-50 History Moran (warriors) 17, 28 and ageing 20 adultery 29, 46-7, 51, 67, 94, 98, 112, 134, and autobiography 8-9 169 and boys 28-9, 51, 75-7, 83, 93 Ilmugit ceremonies 77, 96-7, 103, 106 and elders 31-33, 89, 134 Incest 58-9, 65-70 and girls 38, 46, 62, 76, 79, 82, 86, and adultery (Straight) 128-9 and play 48, 85-7, Inequality, premise of 55 and primate model 25-6, 28, 30-1, 37 Islam and commerce 1 and separateness from elders 36, 93 and the bush 76, 96, 100, 103 Kalenjin 142-3, 149 arena 31, 33 Karimojong 45, 165-6 dances 79-80, 82-8, 100 Kisonko Maasai 1, 37, 52, 139 marriage 26, 62, 75, privileges 29-30, 51-52, 61, 74 Latukuny (‘smell’, fortune): 115-7, 121 retire to elderhood 51, 75-6 Lebarta (boys initiation song) 74-7, 94 stock theft 26, 29, 35, 82-3, 112 Loitokitok Maasai (Kisonko) 2, 3-4 (see also manyata; shivering and shaking) Moran characteristics Maasai 1-3 acquire a sense of respect 68, 82-3, 97, age system 26-37 99-101 and Chamus compared 142, 150-8, 159, and purity 46-7, 100 167 anger 17, 58, 68, 74, 101 and Samburu compared 1, 3-5, 11, 33-37, as defenders 58-60, 64 58, 78-9, 89, 92, 100, 117, 119, 121, 125-6, as focus of attention 29, 79 139, 9 assertiveness 19, 81, 101 clanship 34-5, 64-5, 125 comradeship 28-9, 62 competitiveness 11, 19 devious reputation 26, 33, 46 patriarchy 9, 27, 119, 125 feuding 51, 79, research method 4, 6 suspended adolescence 19, 23-4, 28, 30, self-presentation 8, 57 34, 40, 52, 78, 88, 99, 101, 107, 111, tribal sections (‘Sections’) 2, 61 Mothers-of-moran 29, 39 Manyata (warrior village) 28-9, 34, 61-2, 64, Mursi 166 150, 159, 164, Mystical misfortune 102, 109, 111, 113 Marriage 27-8 bond between age-sets 67, 69 Nature to culture transition 41-2, 87-8 exogamy 34, 41, 64-6, 69, 112, 132 Nomadism and community 9, 64 process 38 184 Subject Index

Old age ritual correctness and misfortune 92-3, anomaly 24, 32, 35-6, 40, 42, 52 102, 109-10, 113, 122, 133 and charisma 53-4, 93, 123 ritual weaklings 46-7, 76 social construction of 31-33 Ruanda 43, 48 Oromo 76, 142-3, 166 Sacrifice as a gift from God 123, 133 Pastoralism 43 Samburu 1-2 and nomadism 9, 64 age-set system 34-5, 152 cattle herding ‘ritually neutral’ 45 and Chamus compared 142, 149-52, 159 pastoral mode of production 1, 49, 149 and Maasai compared 1, 3-5, 11, 33-7, 58, relations with farmers 43, 149, 158 78-9, 89, 92, 100, 117, 119, 121, 125-6, 139, relations with hunter-gatherers 43, 142-3 164 Polygyny conformism 11, 16, 21, 100, 108, 114 and age 27 ‘fathers-of-moran’ 34, 111-2, delayed initiations 77 gerontocracy 93, 112, 114, 117, 136 and delayed marriage 25, 28, 151 mothers-brother’s curse 112 gerontocracy 26 research method 4-5, 7, 134 competition for wives 66 Samburu clanship 34-5, 112 high rate in Africa 24 autonomy 76, 112, 118 persistence of 77 clan assembly 108-9 problems 78 honour 94, 105 Population growth 23, 119, 163-4, 170-1 loyalty 77, 79, 112, 159 PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) 162-165, order of precedence 96 168, 170 restraint 113, 149 Predatory mode of production 49, 53, 149-50 rivalries 79, 109, 112-3, Primate model 22, 24, 26-31, 33-5, 42 Shivering and shaking 5, 74, 81, 98, 92-3, 98 and human social development 23-5, 30, and anger 81, 101 37 and apprehensiveness 101-2 and moral issues 27 as a conditioned reflex 100 and moranhood 28, 37 Social theory and fashion 3, 20 Prophet 92, 120 Somali 118 and moran 1, 35, 48 Sorcery 51, 55, 63, 113-4, 119 and sorcery 48, 52, 119 guardian uncle 9 Purity 46-8, 100 and the Prophet 48, 52, 119 and illness 48 Spirit possession 139 Purko Maasai 2, 4, 37 Suez crisis 13-4, 16 Time Religious conversion 17, 105 and ageing 18, 78 Reminiscence, exaggeration 9 perception of 75-6, 78 Rendille 12-13, 113-4, 124 use of the ethnographic present 4-5 Reputation and marriageability 109 Totemism 121 Respect: for age 19, 53-4, 68 Tourism 8, 116 Rites of intensification 103 Tradition 4 Rites of transition 6, 19, 45, 103 and mystical misfortune 93, 102, 109-10, Ritual performance 113-4 and apprehensiveness/stress 92, 102, updating 6, 157, 161, 166-7 104-5, 109, 160 Tribal migrations 43, 148-9 and changing relationships 109-10, Turkana 1, 76, 113-4, 120-1, 149 brain-washing and suggestibility 104, 106, Tutsi 43, 48 109 Subject Index 185

Wealth inequalities 1, 62-3, 153 fertility 58-60, 115, 139, 163 Wet season 58-60 fertility dances 57-8, 61, 68-9, 78, 91, 139, Widows 38, 68 163 Women, guardians of moral order 69 and pollution 46 life-course 37-40 ages compared with husbands 38 mobbing 59, 65, 69, 121 alternative religion 7, 134-9 ritualized rebellion 61 and moran 58-9, 79, 136 subservient 37, 57, 60, 68-9, 134, 139, 163 anger 58-9, 68 taunting songs 78, 90 domain 37-40, 58, 61, 110, 139 Name Index

Anderson, D. 147, 150 Kuhn, T. 16, 156 Archilochus 163, 168 Kuper, A. 20 Asad, T. 17 Lamarck, J-B. 156-7, 160 Bailey, F.G. 56 Lamphear, J. 1 Bateson, G. 159 Langer, S. 72 Beattie, J. 43 Langham, I. 20 Beidelman, T.O. 56 Leach, E.R., 65 Bernsen, J.L. 159 Lechieni, M. 9 Bernstein, B. 16 Legesse, A. 166 Bray, W. 157 Lévi-Strauss, C. 41, 65-68, 88 Burghart, R. 55 Little, P.D. 152, 168 Lock, J.A. 100 Cellini, B. 9 Chambers, R. 150, 162 Malinowski, B. 20, 109 Chapple, E.D. 103-4 Maquet, J.J. 43 Coon, C.S. 103-4 Masiani (Lechieni) 9-12, 18 Mauss, M. 65 Darwin, C.24, 26, 28, 41, 155, 157, 160 McLennan, J. 41 Dumont, L. 43-46, 50-54, 56 Mead, M. 20 Durkheim, E. 18, 72-3, 101, 122, 124, 126 Merker, M. 1, 35, 56, 92, 133, 154, 169 Dyson-Hudson, N. 67, 166 Middleton, J. 9

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 18 New, C. 147

Fox, D.S. 100 Ogburn, W.F. 155 Frank, G. 54 Ortner, S. 41 Freud, S. 41, 67, 88, 169 Pante, Fr V. 135 Gennep, A.Van 102-3 Pareto, V. 168, 170 Gillen, F.J. 73 Pavlov, I. 104 Goffman, E. 8, 11 Peters, C. 146, 148 Gregory, J.W. 146 Plato 168-9 Gulliver, P.H. 56, 169 Pocock, D. 18 Popper, K.R. 7, 155-157, 159-60 Harris, M. 20, 152, 155 Powell-Cotton, P.H.G. 144 Hertefelt, M. 43 Hobbes, T. 27, 41-42 Radcliffe-Brown, A. 20, 103-4, 109 Hodgson, D.L. 139, Rigby, P. 56, 139 Hohnel, L. von 144, 146, 149 Rousseau, J-J. 151 Holtzman, J. 118 Royce, A.P. 72 Hurskainen, A. 139 Ruben, H. 13 Rust, F. 72 Johnson, M. 5 Johnston, H.H. 145 Sachs, C. 72 Sargant, W. 104-107 Name Index 187

Smith, A. 43 Thomas, D. 155 Smith, W.R. 92-93, 133-134 Thomson, J. 81, 89, 144, 146-8, 150 Spear, T. 154 Turnbull, C. 72 Spencer, B. 73 Turner, V.W. 9, 88 Spencer, H. 41 Turton, D. 166 Spencer, P. 49 Tylor, E.B. 41, 65, 67, 154-55 Srinivas, M.N. 56 Stewart, F.H. 3 Waller, R. 159 Straight, B. 111, 114-121, 127-33, 135-9 Weber, M. 3 Wesley, J. 105, 107