The name is absent

armed men. If possible an arch of banana leaves was at the site of the
ceremony, and all those to be initiated passed under it and passively
responded to instructions from the oath administrator. These instructions
generally started with the order to remove shoes, coins, watches, and other
metal items. Each ceremony utilized meat and blood from a dead goat, and
the initiate usually took the oath while holding ‘a damp ball of soil against his
stomach with his right hand...a symbol of the person’s willingness to do
everything in his power to assist the association in regaining and protecting
the land belonging to the Kikuyu people.’ By 1952, increasing tension and
rapid expansion of the oath-taking activities had led to a modification of this
oath to the extent that its details were not uniform throughout Kikuyuland."⁴⁹

Maloba continues with additional descriptions of oathing ceremonies that
correspond to the different oath stages referencing mostly literature already
written from J.M Kariuki’s 1963 study, Mau Mau Detainee and Mau Mau from
Within by Barnett and Njama discussed above. Both works offer oathing details
and ceremony accounts. Maloba wrestles with the generalities of the oathing
practices by attempting to address what was uniform or standard about different
oath stages. However, based on the substantial literature of earlier scholars
providing their varied testimonies of oathing, it is clear that there was no standard
oathing ceremony. Nevertheless, through his analysis of different stages,
Maloba helps to outline the challenges with interpreting the Mau Mau oath
because the oath ceremony was dynamic and a function of many variables
working together. Another key contribution to this work is his treatment of the
criminality of the oath and colonial government propaganda. The colonial
criminalization of oathing during the Mau Mau period is an important dimension in
understanding the nature of the oath and how it evolved over time.

Another valuable study during this period is Greet Kershaw’s study, Mau

Mau from Below. This study was based mostly on interviews to understand the

⁴⁹ Maloba, Маи Май and Kenya, 102.

48

<<   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   >>

More intriguing information