It’s time to face the knife as the Luhya celebrate boys becoming ‘total’ men

Initiates sing and dance at Naitiri in Bungoma County as they head to pick a cow from their uncles before facing the knife.

NAIROBI, KENYA: It is circumcision season and Western Kenya is in frenzied excitement. On Friday The Standard On Sunday team witnessed one of the first foreskins drop to mark the start of a month-long passage rite.

While the rite is ongoing among some of the 16 sub-tribes of the populous Luhya community spread across Bungoma, Busia, Kakamega, Trans Nzoia and Vihiga counties, the real drama is among the Bukusu in Bungoma, where the ritual is most colourful.

The journey to the said “loss of a foreskin” is long, painful, enduring and yet a fun-filled one for the initiates. It is Friday August 1 – the first day of the circumcision season, which extends for the next two or three weeks – and The Standard On Sunday team has landed in Kibuke village, West-Bukusu division at 4am to witness it all.

As the rest of Kenyans snore away the last stretch of the night, here in Kibuke, the village is alive with bustling activity. There are flickers of lights scattered in a number of homesteads as traditional drum beats and whistle-sounds filter through in the air. This aura is replicated in most parts of Bungoma County.

Circumcision spirits

It is now 5.15am and the beats are now louder, the chants and shrieks wilder, and the singers’ words clearer. The mainly young people who have been keeping vigil the whole night are filing out of homesteads to lead initiates to the rivers.

“They are on their way this way. Push that thing (the car) into the bush and immediately switch off of its engine,” orders our local contact, Geoffrey Musungu Walumbe. Apparently, the circumcision spirits are allergic to the “metallic monster” at this point, and we risk shouldering blame and facing the wrath of locals, should the eventual exercise go awry.

As the chanting group nears, villagers from all directions join the throng. Musungu advises that we equally break into a song, do a jig, and join the group like everybody else. We oblige and easily mingle with the unsuspecting locals.

It is now 5:21am and the cold – it is a very chilly morning – is biting hard. And while everybody in the procession is heavily dressed in jackets, long robes and some with gumboots, the circumcision candidates are bare-chested and footed.

The only piece of clothe on their body is a pair of shorts. The children, barely 12, are literally shivering – from the cold and tension ahead of the big exercise, just a couple of minutes away. The sharp contrast between the well fed and well dressed adults, escorting shivering skinny bare-chested and footed children is difficult to fathom for a non-Bukusu.

The five-kilometre journey to Kibuke River is equally challenging as darkness still envelopes ridges of this dusty village. Occasionally, one misses a step and staggers or falls, gets trapped by some shrub or hits a protruding stump along the path. It is even riskier for the bare feet initiates – but they dare not cry or even scream.

At 5:43am, the drum beats suddenly go silent a few metres from the river. The team leader, an elder cousin to one of the initiates, draws a “magic” line and asks everybody to step back. All abaasinde (non-circumcised) and abo khulupao (those circumcised in hospitals) in the procession are prohibited from proceeding to the river.

There is tension as some people shy away and turn back. Here, the initiates dive in the river with water at near-freezing levels, and re-emerge on the other side. At this point, the shivers are more pronounced as their uncles partake in khulonga – smearing mud all over the body of initiates.

Special mud

Talking to The Standard On Sunday later, Zakayo Kwendo, a clinical officer and anaesthetist from Kakamega County, explains that the mud arrests haemorrhage. “This is a curious development that has mesmerised even medics. Combined with the early morning swim in the cold river, the special mud ensures very controlled bleeding among the initiates,” Kwendo said.

After khulonga, a particular type of grass called lusinyande is plucked and stuck on mud on the initiate’s head. Musungu, who is a representative of the youth in the Bukusu Council of Elders, explains that the plant, now referred to as “network” by the youth, is meant to create contact with the ancestors. It signifies that he, the initiate, is in communication with his forefathers.

From this point, the candidates are completely naked and it is a fast-paced marathon run as the group heads to the various homesteads of the initiates, amid chants. This time, the procession takes a different route to confuse witches who might have planted some charms to harm the candidates.

Ritual enthusiast

We opt to follow the procession of brothers, Amos Juma, a 14-year-old class six pupil, and Dan Wafula, a 15-year-old in class seven. Moments after arriving at the homestead, Amos and Dan are welcomed by their father and ushered to where the circumciser is waiting.

A seemingly impatient and excited Peter Kasmoto approaches one of the boys – now standing akimbo – with knife in hand. In a swift twist, he pulls the male organ and chops off its foreskin in a split second. It is both a climax and anti-climax moment as the whole high drama of weeks and months comes to an end within seconds as villagers roar in ululation.

Kasmoto, an old man of about 70, is famous for his precision and speed. Meanwhile, the other villagers still jostling for space for a vantage point and panting spectators dashing to the compound late, are heard cursing.

“Gosh! It is Kasmoto and it is all over!” reacts Dennis Makokha, an enthusiast of the ritual and school lever in his early 20s.

Before this big day, Amos and Dan have been part of thousands of young people engrossed in a near one-month procession. The final steps of this exercise include, khuminya – a dance procession along the roadside and market places that takes initiates long distances to announce their participation in the upcoming rite.

On Thursday, The Standard On Sunday team caught up with pupils of Buyekhe Primary School in Sang’alo West, along the Mumias-Bungoma highway doing their thing. The boys, Godfrey Simiyu (12), Wycliffe Barasa (10) and William Simiyu (12) were upbeat about the big day. “I am not afraid of anything because this is something I have willingly chosen. And by Monday, I will be a total man,” said Godfrey, a class seven pupil.

Part of the procession involves the initiates wearing chinyimba (jingle bells) and going far off to inform and invite their maternal uncles about the initiation. The latter gives out a bull as a present towards the feast.

The cultural traits and norms that revolve around this exercise are enormous and intricate. However, before one graduates from omusinde (uncircumcised) to a man, he is bullied and kicked around by those who have passed through the process, in the name of hardening them. And this time around, many men have been born in Bungoma County.