Mwaa: A Kiama Of Clowns

During the 1890s a series of agricultural calamities seem to have jolted the members of Kiama Kia Nkoma away from cultivation and crop protection. Like other famine-stricken peoples, they became food gatherers, forming stomach Kiamas and using magic to seek whatever food could still be found. Unlike other groups, however, the Nkoma reemerged as several smaller bands of clowns, blending the powers of both magic and music to provide members with sustenance and security.

It was at this time that the Kiama Kia Nkoma also became known as the Mwaa. In Ki-Meru, waa means both "foolish" and "stupid." A "man of Waa" (Mu-Waa or Mwaa) is defined as one who has embraced foolishness or folly.^[11] Nevertheless, the term carries overtones of joyous clownishness rather than of ignorance or imbecility.

Traditions suggest that the transition from landed cultivators to dancing clowns occurred gradually. At first during periods of famine, but eventually at the onset of each dry season, groups of Nkoma would band together as "fools" or clowns, often only in groups of two or three. Thereafter, they would tour surrounding homesteads singing for their sustenance in the manner of English minstrels.

During this early period their reward was never more than a handful of castor seeds, flung into their goatskin sacks in exchange for each

burst of song. When sufficient quantities had been collected, the singers could trade them at local markets, thereby sustaining themselves, however meagerly, throughout a famine.

By the early 1900s, however, Kiama Kia Mwaa had evolved into groups of polished entertainers, with branches on virtually every Meru ridgetop. They had also become increasingly deviant and predatory. Their dancing costume was blatantly feminine, consisting of numerous strings of minyugu (beads), worn around the neck and waist in women's fashion, and a skirt made either from shredded strings of goatskin or palm leaves.

Each member also wore the wide shoulder blade of a cow, tied with vine around his neck so that it dangled across his chest. A wooden cowbell, similarly bound with vine around his throat, lay against the cow bone. When dancing, the bone and wooden bell and clapper provided the basic rhythm. It was supplemented by the whistling of a karambeta , half-flute, half-horn, made from a hollowed stick to which a small round gourd had been attached, its base punched out to amplify the sound.

Members also dressed to remind others of their power. Often they danced with tiny bows and arrows, symbolic of the weapons carried by apprentice elders in time of war, when tradition forbade them a warrior's spear. Their real power, however, lay in the magic substances carried in goatskin sacks. Slung across the shoulders of each man, they continuously rattled as he danced. The constant noise was intended to remind all listeners of the magic contained within each bag, "lest anyone forget to fear."

As an obviously deviant minority, the Mwaa were highly sensitive to verbal insult, whether directed at single members or their Kiama as a whole. Their choice of homesteads at which to dance was often dictated by reports of who among the rich and powerful had spoken ill of them. To ensure sufficient victims, they often formed processions, dancing down the public paths while considering the comments and even the expressions of those they passed for evidence of disrespect.

Performances took place at dusk, when people were returning from their fields and could take time for leisure. By prearrangement a Mwaa troop would dance their way into a wealthy homestead, singing and cavorting in exchange for a reward. Over time the earlier handfuls of castor seeds expanded into full-scale feasts. During the early 1900s, cultivators forced to host Mwaa dancers were required to donate enough millet beer, vegetables, and later, goats to feed the entire company. In theory these donations were freely exchanged in return for the enter-

tainment In fact failure to provide what was expected led to the usual curse being placed on the entire homestead.

Mwaa councils followed cursing practices all their own, however. Surrounding the hut of a recalcitrant cultivator, a troop would dance noisily around it, chanting verbal maledictions in traditional Meru fashion. They also purposely defecated, ringing the property with human feces that had been liquified by a substance the group had previously consumed. Borrowing, perhaps, from the earlier practice of Wathua (who used goat dung as protective magic), the Mwaa provided a more powerful substitute for the earlier cursing pattern of visible sticks and vines. Human feces, of course, could be smelled as well as seen, and were used to isolate a "violator" within his home, in such a manner as to express the troupe's extreme contempt. To remove the condition, the cultivator had only to pay over the required foods, in the form of invitations to a feast.

Few homestead heads dared resist this type of threat. A host's most frequent reaction was to accept the appearance of a Mwaa Kiama with whatever courtesy he could muster. Spectators shared no such inhibitions, and the chaos of a band of wildly dancing Mwaa could bring them running from every direction to enjoy the show.

The songs themselves were rough and aggressively sexual. Both words and rhythms were extemporaneous and explicitly intended to both mock and shame either the host or any spectator that caught a singer's eye. In practice both songs and dances could combine bursts of extemporaneous eloquence with the crudest displays of juvenile toilet humor, always to the rising laughter of the crowd. One of these, for example, described a series of increasingly hilarious misfortunes befalling a man of Meru (the host) who went into the forest to hunt buffalo. The "gunshots" with which each stanza invariably ended were provided by the entire Mwaa chorus and consisted of the air expelled in unison from their assembled anuses.

The dancing was also spectacularly female. The humor came from the dancers' imitation of female body movements, especially urination, defecation, and sexual intercourse. These, when combined with song and story, were intended to provoke lust and laughter. ("Mwaa dances were so funny and insolent that it was too great a burden not to laugh.")

Sometimes during a performance, onlookers might be so moved that they joined in, unconsciously swaying to the dancers' rhythm and laughing deeply at the songs. In such instances the attraction might operate on either of two levels. One was clearly sexual: the chance to

join others who wore women's clothes and thereby imitate female roles in a way that brought at least limited social approval. On another level, the Mwaa might also attract men who simply took pleasure in singing and dancing.

When a man responded, however, whether moved by sexual or musical motives, the performers redoubled their efforts, trying to lure him out of the audience to join them in the dancing ring. Succeeding, they would embrace him, ritually welcoming him into their group. Failing, they would suddenly turn on him, with the entire troupe seizing small rocks from their shoulder bags to stone him.

Faced with such a barrage, the man usually turned and ran, often still laughing at his memories of the spectacle without realizing he was now part of it. The entire troupe of dancers gave chase, finally seizing him in a mixture of laughter, good fellowship, and physical force. The captive was borne away to be "taught Mwaa," whereby he swore both the agrarian and sexual oaths that now bound him to the dancers' Kiama.

It must be noted, however, that contemporary informants who were once members of Mwaa declare that the element of compulsion was more ritualized than real. Many family heads, dangling in the double noose of unhappy marriage and inadequate land, saw the Mwaa as the gate to their freedom. The capture was generally used as a method to allow those who wished to join to do so without loss of face. In particular, men uncertain of their sexual identities were shielded from social disapproval by the element of compulsion. The method was also valid, however, for men who simply wearied of their drought-and insect-ridden land and for whom the joys of song and dance offered more than years of pointless toil.

Despite their antisocial aspects, therefore, the supernatural dancing societies such as that of the Mwaa seemingly provided several positive functions within Meru society. At the most obvious level they offered increasingly polished entertainment to a people always burdened with toil, as well as the beginnings of an entertainer class within a still relatively undifferentiated and classless society. In times of hunger they offered famine relief, providing a socially acceptable option whereby those most fearfully stricken could band together and sing to ensure their survival.

Finally, the Mwaa offered a socially acceptable alternative to sexual deviants. Sexual deviation was not condoned in Meru, but now family heads who proved unwilling or unable to restrict themselves to male roles could act out feminine behavior in a way that brought

at least minimal social approval. Alternatively, if that approval was withheld, Mwaa could strike back at those denying it, combining sexual and supernatural actions that ensured that even deviance commanded respect.^[12]