Barrack Muluka
Lemeriat is the local name for the ear ornament that Nandi men have traditionally worn to enhance their beauty. When they are many, they are called lemerinik. Through several millennia, men have wanted women to appreciate their beauty. They have gone out of the way to adorn themselves.
This has included piercing and decorating their ears with ornaments, since 5000 BC. That is why it must puzzle you when national political and religious leaders make the wearing of an ear stud a matter of life and death, when they should be focusing on grave issues like famine and murder and mayhem in Turkana.
Desmond Morris makes for interesting reading in the volume titled The Naked Man: A Study of the Male Body, published by Jonathan Cape in London in 2008. Morris’s book examines 24 different parts of the male anatomy. It attempts to give a compendium of their structure, functions and functioning.
It also addresses their decoration. You will be surprised to learn about what men have done with their bodies through history, including decoration of hidden members of their anatomy.
Among the Dayaks of Borneo, they have even bored holes through the main hidden member. They have slid bones, ivory and assorted precious and decorative metals through the holes. And they do not remove these metals, even in congress. To do so would be to serve their women food without salt.
In Victorian England, Prince Albert, the husband of the queen, had this kind of penile jewelry. Morris writes, "Worn by Queen Victoria’s husband, it originally consisted of a so-called dressing ring attached to the male member, which was then strapped to the thigh to maintain the smooth line of the very tight trousers that were fashionable at that time. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini also wore a "Prince Albert" and had a hole cut in his pocket so that he could reach it with his hand, to play with it in times of stress.
" If you are mesmerised by what you can see on display on people’s ears, you would get a heart attack if you knew what men hide in their trousers. This includes some Members of Parliament and even religious men. If only trousers could tell stories!
But I digress. In Emanyulia, as in many civilisations throughout history, men have pierced their ears for spiritual reasons. A woman who kept losing her children in infancy would have a medicine woman pierce the next baby’s ear at birth, regardless of the child’s sex.
The baby would then be conveniently abandoned on a rubbish heap, to suggest that he was rubbish. He would be given the name Makokha or Matendechere, which is to say junk. It was assumed death had no interest in garbage and so the child should survive. The ear was pierced to mark the child as special.
Likewise in oriental civilisations, it was believed that evil spirits and demonic forces were ever attempting to enter into people’s bodies. They sought to do so through any orifice they could get. The tunnel of the ear was thought to be especially vulnerable. It had to be protected. Yet it could not be blocked, as this would obstruct hearing.
The solution was to place some precious metal near this tunnel, to distract the evil spirits. So it was that the first earrings to be used about 5000 BC were employed not as decorations, but as life saving lucky charms.
But earrings and studs progressively took on an aesthetic dimension. In the England of Queen Elizabeth I, male earrings were the in thing. Even William Shakespeare himself wore a gold earring in his left ear. Walter Raleigh (1552–1618), a famous poet, soldier and explorer wore a large pearl in his.
The irony and futility of associating male ear studs with moral collapse is not lost upon students of literature and history. The Elizabethan era is infamous for its inward looking moral standards.
It was the era of morals and values, so to speak. The moral probity of the time transcended the demise of Queen Elizabeth I (1558 – 1608) to the extent that 19th century writers like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy were still encumbered with Elizabethan (and later Victorian) moral probity. How so laughable it might seem to Shakespeare and Dickens to associate a male ear stud with sexual perversion!
In the pastoralist communities of Kenya’s Rift Valley, male ear decorations are the rule rather than the exception. The Maasai and the Kalenjin, who are probably descended of the ancient Egyptians, still adorn their ears with all manner of beautifiers as the ancients did. William Ruto’s late father had pierced ears. He wore the Kalenjin lemeriat. You could say more about the male anatomy and its adornment. You could especially go on and on about the auditory apparatus. One thing is clear; the men who have spotted ear studs for well over 7,000 years have not needed special prayers, except the changeling infants, the ogbanje as they are known in Chinua Achebe’s famous novels.
When Kenya’s Members of Parliament meet to discuss the Chief Justice nominee and his deputy in Parliament on Thursday next week, these issues will come up. But they only do so as diversionary affairs. It was always thought that Kenya would appoint spineless judicial officials who can be bought. It turns out that we are about to appoint two people whom nobody can buy, no matter what the offer might be. And so MPs want to hide elephants of impunity behind the mice of ears studs. It was Ghanaian novelist Aye Kwei Armah who famously said the beautiful ones are not yet born. Well, they have begun arriving and there will be no stopping them. For those who have cause to feel guilty, the time to own up and style up has come. Congratulations are in order to Dr Willy Mutunga, Nancy Baraza and certainly to President Kibaki and Premier Raila Odinga. Over to you in Parliament, we are watching you.
