Why August sends shivers among Bukusu 'outsiders'

15 years old Dan Wafula (left without T-shirt) and his 14 years old brother Amos Juma(right) during the Bukusu cultural preparations for their circumcision on 1st /Aug/2014 at Kebuke river, Machwele village in Bungoma County. [PHOTO: CHRISPEN SECHERE/STANDARD]

BUNGOMA COUNTY: This time of the year is not particularly friendly for residents of Bungoma County who hail from communities that do not traditionally circumcise.

This is the time for them to be taunted and even threatened with forced circumcision. In fact, the unwritten golden rule here among the non-Bukusu male is to pack and go home every even year and return only after the month of August.

“There are a number of matatu touts, drivers and hawkers mainly from the Luo and Teso communities operating here (Bungoma town bus park), who have since taken off to their rural homes. We know they will all be back by September,” says Benson Makokha, who runs an eatery in the town.

Their leave is a life-saving measure considering increased cases where non-Bukusu men have previously been forcefully circumcised with crude vessels and left for dead. In their pre-ceremony processions along village paths and main roads in major towns, twig waving youths ordinarily bellow out war chants, baying for the blood of abaasinde (derogatory term for the uncircumcised).

Loosely translated, the songs warn abaasinde to take cover or take to their heels to an unknown destination, lest they get circumcised upon being sighted. Some over enthusiastic youth have been known to confront “foreigners” and humiliatingly undressed them in search for evidence (on their circumcision status).

So serious is the threat that another source advised this writer to abandon this assignment on account that I bear an “O” name: “Even if you hail from Busia or Kisii County and are probably circumcised, you may have to be subjected to a humiliating experience. I would advise that you observe these events from safe distance,” he offered. Solomon Nabie, mission director at Inter-Christian Fellowship Evangelical Mission (IcFEM), a Kimilili town-based indigenous Christian organisation, regrets that traditional circumcision is a major source of threat and discomfort to business people and civil servants from other counties. “Attacks on non-Bukusu had relatively reduced when we were actively engaged in alternative circumcision programmes. Now I am afraid, there is resurgence of traditional circumcision – thanks to support from the county government,” she lamented. But retired Senior Chief Matayo Khisa maintains that forced circumcision only happens to local residents – no matter their advanced age – who have escaped the knife. Indeed in 2012, John Mawe (40), who evaded the cut 24 years ago out of fright, was finally cornered at Kamasielo village, frog matched to Maeni River and circumcised at Kapsokwony town in public. Mawe has a wife and children.

And even if one dies having escaped the knife, he cannot be buried “that way”. Mzee Khisa explains that circumcision shall be carried out on the corpse so that he is lowered into the grave “a clean man”. “Circumcision is not just about removing the foreskin. It is a practice with a cultural value about our people and our ways and therefore circumcising strangers is only tantamount to causing them bodily harm,” said the ex-Bukusu West senior chief.

Paul Oyuga, a former student at Khasoko Secondary School, recalls with amusement how one evening he was confronted by fellow students, who threatened to chop off the foreskin of his male organ. Owing to lack of water in the school, the students had been released to a nearby stream to bathe and wash clothes. “In self-defence I quickly bent to pick a stone to hit at the charging mob. But I accidentally picked a harmless piece of dry cow dung. It served the purpose, though, because I flung it at the unsuspecting students, and succeeded to repulse them,” says Oyuga.

Apparently, this trend is not restricted to the Bukusu alone. Their “cousins” in Eastern Uganda, who are only separated by the Kenya-Uganda border and who speak the same dialect, have equally been visiting terror on non-circumcised neighbours.