Responses To Conquest: The Family Heads (Aruau)

The shock of conquest fell with equal force upon all age-sets and both sexes. For warriors it meant the collapse of both military and moral traditions. Most of the rank and file turned to alcohol and brawling. Many abandoned their vows of celibacy, initially adopting the limited sexual pleasure allowed by Nguiko, then gradually abandoning even the restriction of its leather apron in favor of outright intercourse. Former war leaders, appointed as colonial servants, turned to patterns of material and sexual extortion, in which the livestock, beer, wives, and daughters of the elders soon became fair game.

Middle-aged men followed the same paths. If the warrior youths of the Murungi (age-set) could no longer follow traditions related to war, those of the Kiramana (age-set) were equally barred from assuming the dual roles of family head and apprentice elder, known in Meru as the Aruau (sing.: Muruau).

Both roles were required by tradition. The years immediately after warriorhood were intended to be ones of peace. Every man entering family elderhood had devoted twelve to sixteen years to both celibacy and war. He was rewarded by the chance to court and marry a girl just reaching puberty, thus twelve to sixteen years his junior. During the following twelve to sixteen years, family heads/apprentice elders were to devote themselves to conceiving and raising the sons who would

someday serve as warriors in their turn. With their wives they were also expected to create family homesteads, based both on produce from the fields and livestock brought into the marriage by the bride.

Simultaneously, new elders were expected to redirect their thoughts beyond war and procreation to maintaining harmony within the community at large. Once established, they sought membership in their ridgetop Kiama, where they came in constant contact with the aged. Within the council they became "apprentices," subordinating themselves to the ruling elders (in 1907, the Kaburia age-set), whose guidance they sought on matters of tradition.

Overawed—at least in theory—by their entry into the presence of such wisdom, the family heads spent the subsequent thirteen years in silent apprenticeship. Their only function was to listen. Freed for the first time in their lives from ceaseless military training, they had only to sit silently, at the edges of the council's conversations. Over the coming years, until the sons they were producing grew to puberty, they could share freely in the millet beer and public drunkenness that formed the main prerogative of elderhood. Secure in the knowledge that new warriors would now defend their herds, they had only to absorb the verbal wisdom of those older than themselves against that time—years hence—when their sons would pass through circumcision, and their age-set would finally come to power.

Tradition taught that learning the "wisdom of Kiama" would take the balance of their lifetimes. It was believed that every imaginable aspect of human conflict would eventually emerge within an elders' council. Apprentice members had only to listen, therefore, to the ways in which each conflict was resolved and to the specific oral precedents ("ancestral traditions") upon which elders drew for their decisions. Over years those who listened would acquire a vast and constantly expanding knowledge of such precedents, which they would use to settle conflicts as they came to power in their turn.

The conquest slashed across every aspect of these expectations. Colonial levies on livestock drained the flocks and herds and, with them, all sense of security. Worse, the conquest depredations of colonial appointees, whether official or self-appointed, gnawed ("like angry rats") upon their stores of grain, beer, remaining livestock, and the peace of mind of those who tended them.

Nor could new family heads feel secure about either the sexual loyalty or labor of their wives. No longer protected by tradition, their wives—always thirteen years younger than themselves—were subject

to seduction by former warriors and extortion by those who once had led them, demands that could include field labor in the daytime and sexual service at night.

Neither were the family heads secure in themselves. The mantle of "elderhood," instantly apparent to every Meru, could be ripped aside at will by any European in search of men for communal labor. Within the first years after the conquest white demands for Meru labor multiplied each year as planters, missionaries, hunters, and entrepreneurs settled the surrounding regions, all with requests for native laborers to initiate their work.

As a result long lines of former warriors were roped together at the command of whites, then sent off to work for other whites in fields that seemed more distant every year. Each chief and headman received a certain quota to fill. If too few warriors were available, no headman would hesitate to seize family heads to avoid colonial wrath. In such circumstances the long-anticipated cloak of elderhood meant nothing.

Nor could the new apprentice elders seek help from the respective ruling councils, either to protect their livestock or themselves. The ruling Kiamas, struggling to preserve their own authority against both colonialists and chiefs, were powerless to do more than utter protests against the seizure of their junior members. Attempts to explain the differences in status between warriors and apprentice elders were beyond Horne's willingness to grasp. Among Europeans the sole criterion for labor was whether men were strong enough to do the work. In consequence the fledgling elders' expectation of sitting quietly in council to absorb ancestral wisdom was rendered hollow. The traditional role, anticipated with such pleasure, had simply disappeared.

Deprived of both security and status, the entire Kiramana age-set slid into despair. Family heads now carried fighting sticks to replace the now forbidden spear. Public drunkenness, acceptable in moderation, now expanded beyond all known bounds. Worse, it led to almost nightly brawling, as family heads across Meru expressed their rage through confrontations with those warriors they felt showed undue interest in their wives.