Strife Between Age-Sets

The relentless drumfire of natural catastrophes took its toll upon the Meru and their conquerors alike. By the early 1920s these afflictions were intensified by a sequence of human conflicts that proved equally disruptive to both sides.

The first of these would have been apparent only to the Meru themselves. Traditionally certain types of ecological disaster led inevitably to the rise of social conflicts, usually between age-sets, that could be resolved only when environmental conditions improved.

Continued failure of the millet harvests, for example, meant different things to blacks and whites. The British thought solely of physical starvation. The Meru considered a social dimension as well. No millet harvest meant no millet beer. Without beer no Ndinguri could be circumcised, since tradition required its ceremonial consumption throughout the rituals.

Until circumcision, however, young men were still boys. Without proper ritual an entire generation was virtually forbidden entry into warriorhood and thus adulthood as well. Instead, regardless of their ac-

tual age, they remained Biiji, uncircumcised boys, locked into the status of childhood that grew less appropriate and more oppressive with each passing day.

The frustrations of youths placed in this position were fully shared by their fathers. These men had stayed for many years as family heads/apprentice elders. As junior members of their councils they had remained at every ruling elder's beck and call. Never did their rank permit them to share—or even speak—in the deliberations. For over a decade they had been silent, civil, and subordinate, their only achievements having been to father growing sons. Now, as these sons attained warriorhood, they too should have risen in power, taking on the prerogatives of rule.

These aspirations were opposed as a matter of course by the existing set of ruling elders, who had no wish to give up their prerogatives and enter retirement. Nor did their sons, still warriors in theory if no longer in fact, wish to be pushed "upward" into family head status by a new generation of just-circumcised youth.

It was a conflict long sanctioned in Meru tradition, one that set old against new. It lasted until the emerging group of fledgling warriors grew sufficiently numerous to physically expel the established generation from its war hut. Seizing the hut by physical force, they would proclaim their age-set triumphant throughout Meru and then begin their time of warriorhood. Soon thereafter the family heads would rise to authority as well, buying the status of ruling elderhood by presenting the retiring age-set with appropriate gifts.^[11]

By 1916, youths who were subsequently to form the age-set of Miriti had grown so numerous that they began to demand access to warriorhood. The demand was fiercely resisted by the men of the Murungi age-set, still proud of their status. By 1917–1918 the continued failure of each millet harvest provided warriors in every region with reasons for delay, an argument supported enthusiastically by their fathers, the ruling elders.

At this point the British unintentionally stepped forth with a decision that further delayed the impending age-set transfer. Still seeking ways to increase the district's revenue, they imposed a special poll (head) tax upon each circumcised male. The ruling elders were delighted. Logically, they argued, the fewer circumcisions, the less tax need be paid. The family heads were appalled, because the tax would draw livestock from the very herds they had so carefully preserved to use as gifts (fees) throughout their sons' impending circumcisions.

As the herds were taxed away or subsequently decimated by disease, both family heads and their grown sons were in despair. Raging at the delays put on them by nature, they turned their anger at those age-sets above them, relieving their frustrations by an endless stream of taunts and chants and petty brawls with those they felt were thwarting them. As always it was tradition that was most sharply damaged, as elder boy fought warrior and family head taunted senior; the age-set structure began to wear away.

A second source of Meru social unrest lay in the relentless rise of taxes, imposed at first by the administration during the years when every clan in the district was reeling from disaster. The concept of taxation was introduced in 1911, when Horne imposed a single tax on every hut in Meru. Initially it had been set at three rupees (later, shillings) per hut, to be acquired through labor or livestock sale. In consequence ridgetop risings had occurred in areas near the mountain's base, each of which had been broken by gunfire. Stunned, other Meru regions accepted the three-shilling tax without protest. Over time that amount had become "traditional" from a Meru perspective and was thus considered a reasonable sum for the British to demand.

This understanding, of course, existed only on the Meru side. From their perspective the arrangement they had made with Horne was unfairly and unexpectedly broken in 1919 by a British decision to raise the level of taxation throughout the entire colony. In Meru taxes were increased to five shillings in 1920, and again to eight shillings in 1921. In Nairobi the increases seemed economically justified as part of colony-wide efforts to help England's African subjects "rebuild" what war and nature had destroyed.

The Meru district commissioner knew better. He sent letter after letter of protest through appropriate colonial channels, asking that the intended increase be laid aside. His requests received some consideration, but were ultimately rejected. Dutifully, he mobilized his administrative staff, only to be faced with a windstorm of protests that seemed to come from every ridgetop in the region.

To the Meru each increase seemed particularly unjust, coming at a time when they were struggling to survive. Every single homestead in the district, without exception, simply declared themselves as livestock poor, thereby owning nothing with which the tax could possibly be paid. Many communities also claimed they had become population poor as well, whole clans having either migrated or withered away

under the ravages of famine and disease. ("And yet, the huts remained and each was counted, for who could prove whether someone still lived inside.")^[12]

Other protests seem to have been particularly irksome to the harassed district commissioner. Often his African staff tended to count the huts used to shelter goats or even store grain. There were also protests against counting the "huts of old women," usually widowed, of great age, and with no discernible means of support. Alternately, several of these aged women—each with her own hut—might be dependent on a single equally aged man, whose herds, flocks, and sons alike had been carried off by disease and famine.^[13]

In fairness it must be noted that both the Meru and their colonial administrators had been placed under impossible conditions. The British, pressed by demands from their own superiors, found it imperative to raise district revenues simply to maintain the existing colonial structure. The Meru, however, had no means whatsoever by which to raise the required sums.

In the past individual homesteads had coped with the taxes by selling their livestock and grain, usually to members of the neighboring pastoral tribes (Maasai, Somali, Galla, and others), who had paid fair market value for that period and place. Now they found it virtually impossible to sell either commodity at anything more than a fraction of the accustomed price, their traditional buyers having suffered as deeply as they. In near desperation successive Meru district commissioners put aside their moral scruples and forced whole communities to sell livestock at whatever prices they could fetch. Thereby, they achieved at least partial collection of the required revenues but drove elders in the more afflicted areas into unprecedented depths of despair.

Their feelings were shared for different reasons by men of the younger age-sets. By 1920 many family heads and former warriors had come to accept the money economy, through either their war or work experiences with Europeans. Consequently they chose to cope with British taxes by working for rupees, then standard currency in Kenya, and saving what they received. Over time many men had saved sums that for that era seemed substantial and had even begun to use the surplus to buy goods.

The rupee had been Kenya's standard monetary unit since 1898. Its value had always been one shilling and fourpence, British sterling. Suddenly, in January 1920 it rose to two shillings and fourpence, then

dropped to two shillings by March and to one shilling and fivepence in June of the same year.^[14]

Normally these fluctuations would not have affected the Meru population, even those who worked wholly for wages. They did, however, affect Kenya's Indian and European communities, both of whom began enthusiastically to smuggle vast numbers of rupees into the country.

The Kenya government was thoroughly alarmed. It had also brought in large amounts of one-rupee notes, intended as belated payments to the thousands of African ex-servicemen who had returned from the great war. Worse, the payout had actually begun in mid-1920, continuing throughout Kenya for seven days, to the accompaniment of great rejoicing and enthusiastic all-night dancing by the ex-servicemen involved. On the eighth day the government clamped down on every form of smuggling in the only possible way: it withdrew all one-rupee notes from circulation. Suddenly and dramatically, the wages of war were rendered useless paper in the hands of the hundreds upon hundreds of Africans who now possessed them.^[15]

In Meru the warriors and younger family heads now plunged into despair. Economic explanations proved totally useless, particularly because neither the district officers nor their sullen listeners had any grasp of the economic forces in which all were caught. What remained, among men of these younger age-sets, was a raging sense of betrayal, joined to feelings of rising despair as intense and poignant as those felt by their elders. For perhaps the first time in Meru history, neither the present nor the future offered hope.