Cowardice and keeping of secrets

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his wife with a venereal disease. After he was infected with the disease, apparently by his wife, he beat her up to reveal where she had got it from. That is how a Maasai man came into the picture. After the treatment of the disease, the man came to the chief to seek his intervention.

When the chief asked him what he expected his office to do, he was quoted as having said:

“The man who has done this to my wife is a Maasai, you must do something”. The chief said that it was quite unlikely that the Kamba man would have reported the incident to him if the one accused was another Kamba. He noted: “He knew that he could very easily get a handsome compensation from the suspect...he also knew that the Maasai have fear for authorities” (Chief, Emali, 21/08/2000).

The chief decided not to act, arguing that his being a multiethnic locality, the Maasai would have protested against any move that would have jeopardised their “name”, dignity and possessions. Apart from the monetary motive, the wronged man appeared to have been keen to paint the Maasai as people infested with all sorts of diseases, which fits into an earlier assertion that they were a “risk group”. The chief could not clarify why the Maasai “feared”

authorities for this claim went contrary to Maasai reputed courage, pride and readiness to defend their interests. Chapter seven, which examines how the Kamba and Maasai relate with the state, sheds more light on this.

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interethnic conflicts, the „cowardice‟ talk is still rife. The Kamba are said to be “soft”, which appears to go contrary to Maasai assertion that their Bantu neighbours “toil too hard” in the fields. Besides, the Kamba regard themselves as men and women of exceptional bravery.

Ndeti notes “the Akamba self-pride in the dignity of labour is further testified by the types of jobs which they occupy in the Kenyan government. Both the army and the police have a substantial number of Akamba. The large portion of actual fighting men are Akamba” (1972:

148). These „facts‟ do not necessarily falsify the Maasai position on the Kamba. This simply shows what ethnic depictions are in practice; able to be twisted and manipulated to fit intended goals even if that means contradicting oneself. On the afternoon of the 25^th August 2000, I was seated in a bar-cum restaurant in Kiboko having a meal of roasted meat with two of my research partners. It is a place where Kamba and Maasai mix freely. Like most „good‟

bars in the region, it had a pool table¹⁷⁰ where young men in particular, and also women, took part in endless duels with losers having to part with an agreed amount of money or bottles of beer. On that afternoon, a Maasai murrani,¹⁷¹ fully dressed in the traditional regalia, took on a Kamba teacher. The teacher hesitated taking the murrani on, but as other Maasai patrons jeered him saying that he was acting “cowardly”, he stepped forward and offered to play.

What would ordinarily have been a „normal‟ play between two men was instantly transformed into a „Maasai-Kamba‟ duel. People left their seats to surround the pool table. They played a total of 10 games. The murrani lost all. In fact, they played so many in his attempt to avenge his steady defeat. At the loss, the young man shed tears hitting his head on the wall and hurling incoherent insults, saying that he could not believe that “a Kamba” had beaten him in a game. The loss was to degenerate into a clash between his group of Maasai murran and the Kamba patrons if it were not for the intervention of two policemen. The loss had robbed the murrani his pride as a warrior. He was disturbed that he had “let the Maasai down”, to quote another Maasai (Nkari) whom I had asked to make some sense of the murrani‟s reaction.

Although the Kamba cheered during the first four wins, at some point, some were asking the teacher to “let” the Maasai murrani “win one game”.

I gathered that the angry young man had played and lost to other Maasai without any scenes, but losing the game to a Kamba assumed a different meaning. The bar attendant said: “I always tell these people (the Kamba) not to play against the Maasai, if you leave them alone, then there is peace here, they come, they play, solve their own problems, drink their beer and

170 Otherwise called “Billard” in German or billiards in English.

171 I am using murrani here instead of murran simply to distinguish between the singular and the plural form.

Otherwise, a one warrior is olmurrani while many are ilmurrani. In writing, murran (without the prefix il and the suffx i) is commonly adopted in reference to the Maasai warrior age-set (see Spear and Waller, 1993).

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go away”(Kithome, Kiboko, 25/08/2000). Kithome argued that “losing to the Kamba was like losing twice”. First, the game and, perhaps what was more painful, hurting his personal and ethnic pride, and concern that the humiliating defeat may confirm Maasai‟s apparent

„backwardness‟.

This debate about Kamba “cowardice” is revisited in chapter seven when discussing interethnic competition for state resources and power. Nonetheless, I would like to talk about

„secrecy‟ which is closely linked to cowardice and „softness‟. What are secrets? From an emic definition, it is that body of information which, if revealed, could be damaging to a person, family, lineage, clan or group. In many cases, by its very nature, a piece of information is expected to be regarded „secret‟ without prior caution.¹⁷²

In the „traditional‟ Maasai society, women were considered to be “incapable” of keeping family and group secrets. From a male perspective, they were said to carry “small brains” and therefore could easily jeopardise the immediate family, clan or section interests should they be privy to “crucial information”. In the olden days, they would be kept in the dark regarding expeditions, cattle raids, booty and whatever transpired in male gatherings. Actually, it is not that they could not keep secrets. They were taken as subservient and subordinate and therefore taken for granted and ignored. Even in the contemporary Maasai society, this trend has continued. The attitude that women “don‟t matter” has had devastating consequences:

Daughters are pulled out of school and married off by their fathers, land and cattle are sold behind wives‟ backs and men disappear for days without prior warning to their spouses.

The Kamba are perceived by the Maasai as “unreliable” people who could easily divulge important information if threatened. Solinketi of Sultan Hamud says that whenever the Kamba captured a Maasai warrior during cattle raids, and asked him to disclose his accomplices or say where they had taken the raided cattle, “the Kamba would always be disappointed” for the captive would not betray his compatriots. On the other hand, he continued, when a Kamba raider fell into the hands of the fierce Maasai, “he would shamelessly say everything”(amid laughter). Solinketi even cited a 1965 incident in which he took part. Surprisingly, these assertions, that the Kamba would betray their fellow raiders and even reveal where the raided cattle had been taken, was confirmed by Kyuli and Mutisya, who, during their youth, raided cattle among the Maasai. Kyuli said that a Maasai captive would “say nothing...even if you threaten to kill him”. The two men could not hide their admiration for the Maasai “hardness”, as a reflection of “real men”. They confirmed that Kamba „secretive‟ plans to raid the Maasai would at times leak to the Maasai or the police. But again, Ukambani was also a bit more

172 Excuses to the effect that “I did not know that it was a secret”, are usually unacceptable.

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„opened up‟ in terms of communication and therefore the state could easily know what was happening. Moreover, there were many Kamba, even during the colonial period working for the police and military. Despite these facts, the Maasai insisted that just like their women, the Kamba had loose tongues.

Solinketi noted that among the Maasai, revealing secrets is “acting like a woman” and therefore “no man would allow himself to bend that low”.¹⁷³ Sitonik was even more blunt.

Putting it in English, he likened Kamba „cowardice‟ and „softness‟ to “the way women behave”. He pointed out that Kamba traditional institutions like male circumcision had collapsed and yet it was during such occasions that “men would be taught important things, you see, secrets that are important for the survival of the group...these things (e.g. traditional circumcision) have disappeared” .¹⁷⁴ He argued that even for those who went through the old rite of passage, it was never “tough enough”, adding that Maasai and Kikuyu circumcision produced “real tigers”. He then posed: “How many of you (Kamba) have been circumcised using the traditional knife?...you take small boys to hospital, they are injected with pain killers, then the doctor uses a scissor to circumcise, now, you call that circumcision? Is that a man”?

(Sitonik, 18/03/2000). He turned to the national police force and quipped: “I even wonder how they (Kamba) manage to be in the police force and military¹⁷⁵...they cannot keep secrets”.

In schools, the ability to keep one‟s mouth shut, was said to distinguish between “the cowards and the brave”, “the hard and the soft”, “the men and the women”,¹⁷⁶ and “the Kamba and the Maasai”.

A Kamba teacher, working in a school near Sultan Hamud that has Kamba and Maasai pupils, told me that teachers “face a problem” if a Maasai pupil is asked to name his/her fellow pupils when the group had broken school rules (e.g. „roaming‟ around the trading centre). A police officer attached to Kiboko police post said the same about Maasai suspects; “they never tell you anything, which forces us to beat them...(up)”. The general police brutality in Kenya notwithstanding, the officer said that the Maasai stood out as “hard nuts to crack”. He argued that the Maasai were less willing to expose their accomplices in a crime (e.g. stolen goats, sheep and cattle) for they were bound by some “collective responsibility” or comradeship, which meant that exposing the others would amount to betrayal. This was particularly noted among Maasai warriors (murran), who have to exercise peer equality and protection.

173 Maasai men hold women in low regard. This is not to suggest that they are an exception. In fact, a study by Obura (1991) showed that the same obtains in many other ethnic groups.

174 In contemporary Kamba society, most boys are circumcised in hospitals/health centres.

175 The Kamba are considered to be overrepresented in the police and military forces.

176 Here, a woman could be a “man” if she could keep a secret. Likewise, a man could be a “woman” if he could not keep one.

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How does one make sense of these depictions on cowardice, secrecy and „hardness‟? Among the Maasai, building a strong institution of secrecy has been a matter of expediency. Maasai survival has hinged on sustainability of herds in fragile environments and shrinking grazing grounds, keeping cultural practices in the midst of hostile groups and other hegemonic forces (e.g. the colonial and postcolonial state). In such an environment, economic survival and maintenance of social boundaries has been a matter of life and death. This „isolation‟ creates a fertile ground for enhancement of cohesiveness against the „others‟. For a captor or „suspect‟

therefore, the stakes are quite high and it is only through „hardness‟ that he can bestow honour and pride to himself and the larger group. A combination of factors may explain why the Kamba may not be as „hard‟ or secretive as the Maasai. Thanks to a wider adoption of Christianity, formal education, monetary economy, a weakening clan system and an individualised land tenure system, the sense of „collective interest‟ has been undermined. As the Maasai society becomes more differentiated and many of their traditional institutions weaken, „hardness‟ will probably be measured in other ways (e.g. academic achievements) and at some point, the issue of certain ethnic groups being more secretive or cowards may not arise.