series of rituals to be performed to appease the spirits of the elders who had died of starvation while their sons had gone off. Though this story is consistent with historical events of the past century, it did not circulate widely, and it was not possible for my assistant and me to ascertain whether people were taking steps to remedy past transgressions in order to bring about the current initiation season.
Generation Classes as Identity Markers
An important ingredient in determining the status of one individual vis-à-vis another is the cycle of amakora—a core institution that regulates the systematic pattern of relationships and provides the guidelines for appropriate interpersonal behavior (Ruel 1962, 17). Membership in the amakora is ascribed at birth, and a man’s children are automatically members of the successive class; his grandchildren will then belong to the next class, and the great-grandchildren to the fourth one. Then, the cycle repeats. The formal relationship between the classes is fixed. All Kuria belong to one of two complementary cycles that each have four generation classes.
In the Monyasaai cycle, Abasaai give birth to the Abanyambureti, who give birth to Abagamunyere, who are followed by the Abamaina, who in turn give birth to the Abasaai. In the Monyachuuma cycle, the Abamairabe give birth to Abagini, the Abagini give birth to Abanyangi, the Abanyangi give birth to Abachuuma, and the Abachuuma to Abamairabe. Membership in each cycle is patrilineal, and norms of coevality apply to each class in sequence.
A child remains a member of the class he or she was born into throughout life, and follows the rules of respect in regard to members of other classes. The rules are simple and apply to both cycles. Members of adjacent classes have a relationship of respect and reserve with each other, whereas members of the same and alternate classes enjoy a relationship of familiarity. The emphasis on a modal two-generational pattern of behavior norms is consistent with the basic two-generational form of the homestead. The relationships between actual lineal kin are at the center of the classificatory system of relationships established by the generation classes. But through the classes, the two broad types of relationships (those of respect and of restraint) are extended further to cover all members of the ikiaro, together with those of other ibiaro.
In kinship matters, class relationships are expressed in marriage rules. A member of one generation can only marry within his own generation class or within the next alternating group. He cannot marry the next younger group because those are his “children” and he cannot marry from the next senior group because those are his “parents.” But “class norms and general patterning of relationships dovetail with and are subsumed by all kinship relations” (Ruel 1962, 28). On ritual occasions, generation classes delineate clearly defined social groups and dictate who may play a certain role, what shares of meat may be taken by whom, who may mix together, who should be kept apart, and so govern interactions according to the basic rules of respect and familiarity. Class membership orders behavior in a specific context of events and participants. It does not itself initiate what takes place (28–29). At the circumcision ground, the oldest amakora are the first to be operated on. In the past, members of the same generations were cut using the same knife, and members of the oldest generation walk first in the line of initiates.
Generation class membership is the most important in contexts of everyday interaction within the community, where the class system acts again as a general charter for social behavior and norms of respect. Underlying all greetings, social gatherings, chance encounters, beer parties, guest/host relationships, and feasting, the norms of respect operate between the different classes to establish generational groupings. Thus, for example, only members of the same class will share food from the same bowl. The more informal the situation, the less rigidly these codes are adhered to and behavior becomes more relaxed. Generation classes tend to be associated with certain age-groups of the community. In the past, the rough equivalence of the classes with the age-structure of the community was determined by a sequence of ceremonies performed by the classes in succession. Most of these ceremonies were no longer practiced in the 1950s and none took place in the ikiaro in the 1980s (Ruel 1959, 131–33). Still, Kuria use the names of the classes in referring to people of a particular generation or time. Thus, people refer to the movement of the Abahirichacha (a descent group) north into Kenya as having taken place in the time of Abasaai, who were accompanied by their children, Abanyamburiti.
The association between generation classes and age-groups of the community is seldom clear-cut and simple, and results from membership in a generation class being assigned on a genealogical basis. Thus two brothers, sons of the same man but by different wives, belong to the same class, even though the age difference between them may be thirty years. They will thus move through the life stages and age-statuses at different points in time, even though they are of the same generation class.
As I was listening to rumors of witchcraft and supernatural happenings, the troubles of the circumciser and debts owed to ancestors, the recurrence of blame and accusation being directed at the people of Nyabasi, the neighboring ikiaro, it became clear that the sociopolitical units of Kuria society figured largely in the unease expressed through rumors of witchcraft, pointing to arenas where local boundaries need to be revitalized.
More Rumors
The most frightening stories were the ones that focused explicitly on okogenderana—witchcraft carried out between clans (ibiaro). Three of the four Kuria clans in Kenya had decided to hold initiations that year. Abakira had already begun. But Abanyabasi and Abairege had both called off their initiation ceremonies. These two neighboring clans have a long history of hostility toward each other. For the past several decades they had been raiding each other’s cattle, and it had become unusual for both groups to circumcise in the same year. The okogenderana power of the witchcraft on each side was a matter of substantial concern. Numerous accounts circulated of trespassers coming from Nyabasi, stealing hair, fingernails, and other small body parts through which to exact witchcraft on their unsuspecting rivals.12 People told frightening tales of children being kidnapped, killed, and dismembered; adults being waylaid, beaten, and robbed; individuals unwittingly recruited to do evil.13 As I later found out, many of these incidents were registered with the police and the civil administration, so the rumors were often based on some level of fact.
I heard the first account from Mogore Maria, my host. An independent businesswoman, a widow, and an elected local official, she firmly blamed witchcraft for creating a climate where it was necessary to cancel initiation ceremonies. The day after my arrival, she assured me that two or even three witches from Nyabasi had already been apprehended in Bwirege, after a buried bag of magic had been discovered. One of the witches, a woman, was caught in a market community in the southeast part of the location as she carried a basket in which she was hiding a sheep’s leg. In Nyankare, the main market of the location, two men were caught, having been observed behaving in a suspicious manner. They claimed they had come to buy cattle, but instead left behind bundles containing fingernails and other body parts. All three of these people/witches were severely beaten, and it was said the woman lost an eye.
In another case, people believed to be from Nyabasi went to a farm in Bwirege where they found a young girl, not yet old enough for initiation. She was looking after her parents’ maize, which had been attacked by monkeys in the preceding days. The people from Nyabasi shaved her head, scraped some skin from the front and back of her head, and cut off her fingernails. They left her in the fields and walked off. The girl immediately ran home and told her parents what had happened. This, like some of the other stories, was repeated to me by diverse people in various areas of the location. Because the parents of the girl were named, it was easy to see that this particular story was widely believed.
Stories of this sort of witchcraft (okogenderana) between Abairege and Abanyabasi abounded. Two sisters, Nyagonchera Mwita and Janet Gaati, wanted to circumcise their youngest sons, who were insisting on accompanying each other through the process. But the sisters had heard and repeated to me a story of a young boy (a potential initiate) who had been bewitched into running into Nyabasi, to the secret conclave of that clan, where the elders killed him and cut off his private parts. When the elected official for whom the boy had been working followed the runaway to find out what happened to him, the councilor was stabbed. Both sisters are schoolteachers, traveled and well-educated, and their fear of witchcraft was palpable. The other story they recounted I had previously