Being „Maasai‟ only by name

During my study, I came across Kamba and Kikuyu members who did not „pretend‟ or wear the mask of being Maasai. They were forthright about their Bantu identities but the Identity Card (IDs) bore Maasai names, which they did not use in everyday life. These names are adopted mainly for speculation purposes. In most cases, these new names are adopted so that young people can take advantage of training and recruitment opportunities in state institutions.

In contemporary Kenya, recruitment to the military, the police, teaching and medical colleges are done at the district level. Each district normally has a quota. Besides, the state also gives some priority to applicants from marginalised pastoral groups. Due to high literacy and population in Kamba and Kikuyu districts, competition is extremely stiff. To increase one‟s chances of selection, some school leavers „migrate‟ temporarily to Maasailand and obtain their IDs there.¹⁹² Obtaining these cards from a certain district theoretically means that you are a native of that area. After the recruitment is over, those who are successful may never return to those districts again. Those who are left may hang around or return to their home districts and come back the following year to try their luck again.

There is still another category. Some non-Maasai parents residing in Maasailand give their children masyitwa ma Amasai (“Maasai names”) in anticipation of the opportunities discussed above. These are people who will have names in their identity cards that are „Maasai‟

although the Maasai around them recognise them as non-Maasai. This is also a category that does not seek to be recognised as Maasai. In fact, even in school, they maintain their Kamba names, but in the ID and other important certificates acquired after that, they are identified as

„Maasai‟. Muisyo (Kamba) of Loitokitok says: “If you get my identity card (pulls it out), then I am Maasai, but as you have seen, I am Muukamba, they (Maasai) also know that I am Muukamba” (Loitokitok, 05/09/2000).

4.3.3 “For me, the Kamba and the Maasai are the same”

This is the story of Nkeni. Born in 1968, she was working in a bar in Kiboko when I met her.

She doubled as a bar maid and a commercial sex worker.¹⁹³ Nkeni is a unique actor. As I have noted before, most of the people from mixed parentage and living in Maasai territory, tended to identify with the Maasai even in cases where it was the mother who was Maasai.¹⁹⁴ For Nkeni however, she is „Kamba‟ and „Maasai‟ in word and action. Her mother, a Kamba from Salama (Makueni) met her Maasai father when he was working in a farm that belonged to a

192 Luckily for them, many rural residents do not have birth certificates.

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European settler along the Ukambani-Maasailand border. They married in 1966. Although she grew up in a Maasai homestead, Nkeni learnt Kikamba and Maa simultaneously.

Apart from language and matrimonial roots, some of her „Kambaness‟ came by default. She did not undergo the Emuratare ontoyie (“circumcision of girls”) because when her age-set was to be initiated in 1981, she was already pregnant.¹⁹⁵ She was beaten up by the father and chased away from home but not ostracised. She eloped with her boyfriend (a Kikuyu) whom her clan later rejected when his parents came to negotiate for marriage and bridewealth.

Nevertheless, they decided to stay as man and wife. They had dissolved the marriage by the time I met her in April 2000, and the three children of the marriage were in her custody.

Nkeni lives in a „rainbow world‟. She sees herself as not only having a mixed ethnic but equally a multifaceted social identity. Because of her command of both Kamba and Maasai tongues, she had a unique way of interacting with bar patrons, who were dominantly Kamba and Maasai. In the first place, her „mixed‟ ethnicity appeared to have been one reason why the bar proprietor hired her. They are simply the most appropriate kind of attributes in this multiethnic locality. The bar owner remarked: “She pulls customers...she knows what Masai want, what the Kamba want...she knows them...she knows where to touch (how to get al.ong)…you know she speaks both languages” (Kiboko, 13/04/2000). But although she used to speak Kikamba with Kamba customers and Maa with the Maasai, conversely, she was

„Kamba‟ to the Maasai men who sought non-Maasai women and she was „Maasai‟ to Kamba men for the same reasons. She also used to pose as „married‟ which enhanced her „demand‟

since, in the era of HIV/Aids, married women were generally perceived to be “safe”. She would also use the imposed marital status to ward off those bar patrons she was not interested in. Since getting a „Maasai‟ woman working in a bar was a rarity in the area, she was particularly popular among the Kamba. But then, they had to compete with the Maasai. She had no obvious physical attributes that would betray her ethnic identity and would speak Maa to Maasai patrons to “catch them by surprise” as well as “make them feel at home.” Her ability to „surf‟ into the worlds of both these groups‟ made some patrons very angry. She was often dismissed as a “cheat” who took advantage of her bilingualism. However, there were many occasions when she would be best positioned to mediate between the two groups,

193 While interviewing her, I had to give her some money as a compensation for the “opportunities” she might have lost “talking to a man who was not interested in me,” as she put it.

194 Take for instance the case of Patricia Toine in this chapter. Nkeni has a divergent world view from Toine who sought to demean and discredit her maternal Kamba descent. Going by formal education and „exposure,‟ one would have expected Toine, a trained primary school teacher, to be more accommodative than Nkeni who had only four years of formal education. Perhaps, having to rely on Kamba employers, Nkeni‟s Kamba identity was important for her survival while Toine had a state job.

195 As preparation for marriage, circumcision precedes sex and pregnancy.

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particularly in the „resolution of conflicts‟ within the business premises. She was each group‟s most popular and most hated bar attendant. She tried to please all, but each group expected her to take sides. The Maasai would say that she should not speak Kikamba in their presence, for if she had a Maasai father, then she was “Maasai”. As for the Kamba, the bar was in Ukambani, owned by a Kamba and therefore she should have spoken only in Kikamba or Swahili at worst. Both groups would have loved to hate her but usually ended up hating to love her.

Nkeni had many trump cards. Some Maasai men, for instance, would be disinterested in her after finding out that she was „Maasai‟. “I tell them,” she said, “okay I am Masai but have you ever slept with an uncircumcised one?” (prolonged laughter). By saying this, she created a cloud of mystery around herself arousing curiosity. She claimed that although the Maasai insist on marrying circumcised women, they looked for uncircumcised ones to satisfy their sexual desire.¹⁹⁶ She told me that one of her colleagues, a Kamba woman from Makindu, lost a “Masai customer” at one time by posing as circumcised, thinking that by so doing, she would enhance his interest. The Maasai man told her he had “two circumcised women at home” and he was therefore looking for “something different.” Her attempts to „correct‟ the position fell on deaf ears. Interestingly however, Nkeni said that occasionally, she met Maasai men who sought only circumcised women. She explained: “For those ones, I tell them that I am Maasai”. Being “Maasai” was equated with having undergone the rite of circumcision. I asked her whether they would not find out; her answer: “Men just talk, they can‟t tell the difference” (Nkeni, Kiboko, 10/06/2000).

Having lived in both „worlds‟, Nkeni saw “very few differences” between the two groups. She felt that apart from physical appearances (e.g. dress or marks) and fairly divergent modes of subsistence, both groups had similar aspirations and concerns. For the men, she drew the conclusion that none wanted a circumcised woman “for sex” but only as “wives”. For her, being „Kamba‟ or „Maasai‟ is a question of “convincing others”. Her Maasai/Kamba identities had become situational and negotiable. She finds it strange that identities that she had taken for granted all along would be subjected to such controversies.¹⁹⁷ When she told me that the two groups are the “same”, she meant that the „incompatibilities‟ were narrowing through social transformation. But she acknowledges that differences are reinforced by “attitudes” and language. As a master of Maa and Kikamba languages, she finds it easy to oscillate between the two identities. However, she had been hated by the Kamba and the Maasai alike for making it look like there was no ethnic difference.

196 This claim was confirmed by some Maasai men.

197 Identities become important or are defined when in relation with others (see Eriksen, 1997).

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