An Uncertain Age - Paul Ocobock New African Histories

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of policy—it was a very intimate and personal one. Ronald Hyam has shown that by the end of the nineteenth century, circumcision had become vogue among well-to-do Britons, the very class responsible for running the empire. By the mid-1930s, about two-thirds of upper-middle-class men were circumcised.97 This had not always been the case, though. For centuries, the British and Europeans used circumcision as a marker of paganism, savagery, and sexual deviance in Jews, Muslims, and Africans. Circumcision also played into the horrors Britons endured out on the edge of empire. In 1780, hundreds of British soldiers were taken captive after the state of Mysore soundly defeated the British East India Company. Their Muslim captors forcibly circumcised them, shocking the British public. Removing the captives’ foreskins stripped them of their Christianity and Britishness and became an emblem of national humiliation and emasculation.98 A century later, the British inverted the humiliation of circumcision on the Indian subcontinent into a badge of masculinity and imperial robustness. Medical officials encouraged circumcision among officials in India to promote health and cleanliness as well as to legitimize their manliness and right to rule.99

      Officials in Kenya left behind no record of the status of their foreskins, but if Hyam is right, then a few provincial administrators might have been circumcised and more comfortable and sensitive to its cultural significance. Either way, provincial administrators recognized male initiation as an essential part of African masculinity. Dependent on the labor of young men and the power of elders to fuel the colonial economy and maintain law and order, male initiation became an unquestioned necessity.

      “THEIR MINDS ARE NOT THEREAFTER CONCENTRATED”

      Male initiation became a critical component of colonial authority akin to the reification of customary law, reliance on local chiefs, and enforcement of taxes and compulsory labor. In coalition with local elders, the British sought to exert authority over young men through the process of initiation. The provincial administration adapted male initiation to push newly made young men into the labor market and control their behavior. They manipulated and regulated coming-of-age by changing the timing and length of initiation, seclusion, and warriorship. As was the case among missionaries, the elder state’s work with African initiation practices began in small, unexpected ways. In the early years of the protectorate, medical officers performed a few circumcision procedures strictly out of concern for a male patient’s health.100 In addition, officials at the Kabete Reformatory for young African offenders held “careful discussions” in 1916 about offering circumcision to inmates on a voluntary basis.101 Discontinued, reformatory officials later revived the program in the 1940s when too many inmates escaped for initiation.102 By 1947, announcements were made in Meru and Nyeri informing local leaders that government medical officers would offer circumcision to Gikuyu boys once a week, free of charge.103 Only a small number of young men volunteered for these state-sponsored circumcisions. Beyond occasionally offering an alternative, medicalized form of circumcision, the colonial state had a much broader influence on male initiation.

      Across the colony, British administrators entered into delicate negotiations with communities to adjust male coming-of-age to meet the necessities of settler colonialism. Their first order of business was to refashion junior warriors, made obsolete by British conquest, into wage laborers. In early 1920s Central Province, district commissioners met with Gikuyu, Meru, and Embu elders to regulate and limit but never outlaw male circumcision. In 1920, only a year after provincial commissioner Tate had consented to missionary meddling in their schoolboys’ initiations, his replacement, D. R. Crampton, ordered district officials to persuade chiefs to shorten male initiation. According to Crampton, this was to be done to steady the flow of Gikuyu labor. “One of the reasons why this change has been advocated is that the present period of convalescence of able-bodied workers, who undergo circumcision, could be done away with and a larger supply of labour be consequently available.”104 The British believed young men spent too much time thinking about and participating in initiation-related events. They wanted a pool of able-bodied laborers with their minds firmly fixed on earning wages.

      In Fort Hall and Nyeri, elders agreed on two major changes. They consolidated ceremonies into a single, large celebration for boys living in a location, and they shortened the length by limiting dances and the period spent in seclusion. They rejected requests from the district commissioner to limit initiation to one week, instead agreeing to one or two months. Chiefs sitting on local councils looked favorably on limiting initiation. In 1920, the Fort Hall local council noted that the long length of initiation ceremonies “hang[s] up the output of labor seriously during the three months, and they would get into trouble over it.”105 A few years later, the Kiambu council claimed that “a large number of ceremonies . . . was most unsettling to labour and as things were at present a native so inclined could attend one ceremony after another to the detriment of his work.”106 The year before, Governor Northey had issued his circular on the mobilization of African labor by any means necessary. Neither district commissioners nor chiefs, who were responsible for labor recruitment, wanted their efforts hampered by lengthy initiation festivities.107 When a community spent months preparing for and recuperating from initiation, provincial administrators felt such energies could be put to use in more “productive” ways.

      In Rift Valley Province, a similar negotiation began among colonial officials and Kipsigis and Nandi elders. Unlike Gikuyu initiation, Kipsigis and Nandi boys required several years to complete the process. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Kipsigis elders negotiated with provincial administrators to shorten the time young men spent in seclusion. According to Peristiany, the form of initiation he witnessed in the 1930s had already been shortened compared to previous generations.108 Those initiated into the Chuma age-group from the late 1920s to 1947 acknowledged that their stay in the menjo had been shorter than that of previous generations. Thomas Tamutwa noted that his initiation took only six months rather than the two years his father had experienced.109 The change had come from the chiefs and “the elders accepted it, and so did the people.”110

      Both government and missions argued that these changes stabilized Kipsigis education and labor. The principal of the government school in Kabianga argued in 1945 that Kipsigis boys who left school for a year of initiation were “retarded on their return, and if leave is refused, their minds are not thereafter concentrated on their school work.” About 22 percent of initiated Kipsigis attending Kabianga School had been “medically circumcised” as opposed to “tribally initiated.”111 Although the rate of school attendance among Kipsigis was much lower than in other communities like the Gikuyu or Luo, these 22 percent attested to the reality that more and more young men experienced a modified initiation. The Kipsigis Sawe age-class initiated during the 1950s experienced the most change to their time in the menjo. Sawe schoolboys underwent initiation during their December recess, which lasted about a month.112 Those who did not attend school experienced a much longer period of initiation. Kimeli Too, John Kiptalam, and their cohort of friends in Kabianga, near Kericho, went to work on the tea estates rather than school. They spent a year in the menjo, compared to the month experienced by boys attending the government school.113 In the same location, young men could experience very different lengths of initiation depending on whether they herded livestock, picked tea leaves, or attended school.

      Labor and education were not the only factors pushing Rift Valley communities to shorten their periods of initiation. The heavy presence of Kipsigis and Nandi in the military also raised concerns regarding the length of seclusion. In 1941, the district commissioner of Kapsabet alerted the provincial commissioner that the Nandi Chumo (or Juma) age-group was about to undergo initiation. He warned that uninitiated Nandi serving in the King’s African Rifles would have to be given leave so they could return home for initiation, or they would become “disgruntled.”114 Worse still, they would likely stay home well beyond the two weeks afforded them by the military, thereby interfering with the colony’s preparedness. “Circumcision is the most important event in the life of a Nandi,” he argued, “and it cannot simply be ignored, and is now becoming the principle [sic] thought on their minds to the exclusion of everything else.” The military rejected the commissioner’s proposal for extended leave. Those soldiers who left the service for initiation would either face charges of desertion or forfeit their time in seclusion. Soldiers struggled

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