Urogi: Rumors Of Witchcraft

The commissioners' enthusiasm for their new governmental institutions, however, was short-lived. After the early 1920s almost every

aspect of colonial administration fitfully halted. This decline was particularly evident in the sphere of criminal justice, where the four British-sponsored native tribunals operated only in spurts, resolving smaller numbers of disputes each year, in vague approximation of what the members of each body perceived as British law.

The same pattern was apparent at every level of the administration. The Local Native Council, after its enthusiastic start, proved increasingly reluctant to pass laws on anything at all. Those that were passed proved impossible to implement, as chiefs, headmen, process servers, and even tribal police were curiously reluctant to carry out directives, even those, such as establishing medical stations, that administrators thought were clearly to the advantage of Meru everywhere.

Initially administrators attributed this singular reluctance to a combination of sullenness, backwardness, and passive resistance. "After six months' residence here," one wrote in 1923, "I have come to the conclusion that . . . hardly a single headman (of ninety-four) can be relied on to assist government in the detection of crime, . . . arrest of criminals, . . . or in putting down abominable practices."^[26]

Other Meru administrators wholly shared this view. In the 1920s the Meru became notable in colonial circles as a "backward" people, incapable of attaining either British administrative standards or the economic progress shown by their Gikuyu neighbors. This was also the era, however, when the administrators began to feel that Meru noncooperation might have another, deeper, cause. Eventually they decided the problem was witchcraft.

The British of that era were often fascinated with African witchcraft. Universal in their belief that it was based solely on deception, most administrators rather looked forward to chance encounters with the "witch doctors" of peoples whom they ruled. Never were they more pleased than when the witch doctors' magic seemed occasionally to work. Orde-Browne, within his private papers, related one such encounter with considerable glee. In the line of duty he had been forced to arrest a "little old fellow" for bewitching his workers. On arrest, the elder had "cursed him horribly." Subsequently Orde-Browne was stricken with an inflammation of his knee joints that left him incapacitated for several months. "The event," he later wrote, "was seen by every native in the district as a sign of the witchdoctor's revenge."^[27]

Unfortunately the second generation of colonial administrators knew much less about Meru witchcraft than the first. A report on the Meru written in 1911, for instance, meticulously described the differ-

ences between a Murogi ("poisoner who collects . . . medicines secretly at night"), a Muga ("medicine man [who] is a power of good . . . [with] more than twenty medicines . . . of vegetable-roots and leaves"), and a Muroria ("soothsayer [who] foretells the length of famine, war, . . . as revealed . . . in dreams").^[28] Ten years later, colonial administrators had lost all knowledge of their various ritualists, including their names. Reports from the 1920s tend to group all such practitioners under the title of "witch doctor," a figure to whom they attributed nothing but malice and evil. In 1924 an administrator declared: "the natives here remain backward and believe quite notably in witchcraft and curses. This is most noticeable in Tigania and Igembe, where the hold over natives by witchdoctors seems slightly on the wane."^[29]

In fairness, it would have been difficult to live among the Meru of that era and remain unaware of the supernatural aspects of their daily lives. Usually, a new administrator first learned of witchcraft through his reading (or observation) of cases in court. Although conflicts brought before the native tribunals concerned crimes against people or property, the parties invariably accused one another, at some point in the process, of having bewitched (cursed) their livestock, crops, kin, or themselves.

Less frequently, victims of an alleged bewitchment might seek a private meeting with an administrative officer. Most often this happened on tour, when newly appointed officers visited the hinterlands to familiarize themselves with more remote corners of the region. Usually the officer declared a public meeting, at each stop asking all who sought justice to step forward. No one did. Then, at the meeting's conclusion, footsteps shuffled before the officer's tent as darkness fell, and low voices accused others of bewitchment.

Enthusiastic officials tended to attribute almost every Meru ritual to witchcraft, often inferring satanic overtones that had no basis in Meru life. One example of this trend occurred late in the 1920s when one of the district's first medical missionaries began to construct a Methodist mission hospital in Igembe. After the first week or so he "became aware of sorcerers around the hospital, through continuously coming across three-inch strips of red raw meat impaled on sharpened six-inch pegs and stuck around hospital grounds."^[30]

In fact there were no "sorcerers," only workaday Meru, as concerned as the missionary with fighting illness and disease. One method, long sanctified by tradition, was for the community elders to gather at a single spot, slaughter a goat, slice the meat into three-inch strips, then

peg them into the ground to be eaten by spirits, ideally those that caused illness. What better place could be found for such ritual than a building wherein whites themselves claimed "disease was collected and illness could always be found"? The incident illustrates the evolution of colonial administration over the first two decades. Where the first generation of colonialists had come to learn, too many of the second wave came only to teach.

Nevertheless, successive administrators throughout the 1920s began to differentiate between three different types of Meru "witchcraft." The least offensive was represented by the individual "witch doctors"—a term used to cover every type of supernatural specialist—whom the vast majority of district officers dismissed as harmless tricksters. Most administrators knew several of them and usually joked with them during their occasional meetings.

However, a second form of witchcraft began to come to official notice after 1920, a type allegedly practiced by entire bands of sorcerers. A district commissioner first wrote them into an official record in late 1920. During the last months of that year he was called into a remote corner of Igembe to suppress the practices of what he referred to as: "the Kaiita, . . . a society which consists mostly of tribal elders. It includes medicine men as its most powerful members and among other objectionable customs is responsible for the seduction of many young unmarried girls with consequent abortion of children thus conceived."^[31]

Over the next four years similar "secret" societies seemed, to colonial officials, to proliferate throughout Meru. Certainly they occupied an increasingly large place in both official and private correspondence.

They [the Kaiita] have a great influence owing to proficiency in the art of pursuing. Kaiita in Igembe had a large rough hut in each location to which they called a lot of young girls. The girls were kept there and were not allowed to return to their parents. . . . At night they held dances naked and had sexual intercourse with the girls. [11 November 1920]^[32]

Aathi is the name of a secret society which exists in the middle of Meru. We know that it exists but it is impossible to find out what things they do. . . . Even members never speak of it. . . . They build large huts with long entrance corridors and stay in there . . . and eat and drink and do worse things. . . . They believe themselves invulnerable to any poisoning . . . and have great power to curse others. [November 1921]^[33]

Mbujo League—this league gained considerable power and has many adherents. [Its] object is the practice of witchcraft. The high priest, Mboro [sic : M'Mburi] was sentenced to a year [imprisonment] in January, 1924.^[34]