What Is This Thing,Anyone?Amongst the Kuria people, a semi pastoralist Bantu people that inhabit the southern most tip of Nyanza Province in Kenya and Mara Province of southern Tanzania this story is fairly common. The District of Kuria that was carved out of the greater south Nyanza is some 300 kilometers east as the crow flies from Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city.
Now these people are known to be very warlike and are famed for their mercurial temperament, bravery and warrior spirit. They are surrounded almost on all sides by the Nilotes, both River lake Nilotes the Luo and plain and highland Nilotes, the famed Maasai and Kipsigis (Lumbwa) respectively. These people especially the Maasai are known world over for their prowess at keeping cattle, they are pastoralists who till this day believe that all the cattle in the universe belong to them.
Enter the Kuria, these fearless warriors are known to make incursions deep into Maasai territory to “Relieve” the Maasai of their numerous herds of cattle. This they do regularly and in the recent past it has led to several flare ups of violence along their common border. Their Modus Operandi usually revolves around them, the Kuria’s raiding Maasai cattle and disappearing with them deep into Tanganyika (Mainland of the republic of Tanzania) where they hide amongst their kinsmen to escape Kenyan law enforcement officers.
In effect they are cross border bandits much like it was in the wild, Wild West of America in the nineteenth century. But they are also not averse to stealing from each other when such an opportunity presents itself. Hence it is common for one clan to organize raids to steal the others cattle and vice versa, the community itself has four major clans.
Now to protect their herds from their envious neighbors most of these people resort to witchcraft and sorcery. In Northern Tanganyika there are bordered by the Bantu Sukuma, who gave the Kenyan province its name Nyanza, meaning lake in their Bantu dialect. They also happen to be the most populous ethnic grouping in Tanzania inhabiting Mwanza province of Tanzania. They too have a large herd of cattle and they are one of the most feared witchmen, wizards and sorcerers in the whole of Eastern Africa.
So the Kuria normally visit their neighbors to acquire their potent charms to protect themselves from their robbing neighbors. The story goes that once upon a time such a band of bandits raided an old mans “Boma” home in the Nyabasi area of Kuria District. Their aim was to steal his cattle and to make of with some valuable household items. In this they succeeded, they made of with their booty in the dead of the night.
Then strange things began to unfold, very strange indeed. This Old Man, Tengera had apparently made pilgrimage to the Sukuma people, and had acquired some potent charms to protect his property from precisely such raids. So the story goes the raiders made of happy that they had succeeded in their mission, they set off in the direction from whence they had come assured of their victory they headed home.
What happened next is a subject of conjecture, but suffice to say that instead of heading back to their Boma (kraals), they started going round and round in circles around Tengera’s Boma. In effect they lost a sense of direction and went round and round the whole night till daybreak. Dawn found them a few hundred meters east of Mzee Tengera’s homestead.
They were walking around herding the cattle and carrying their previous night’s bounty, all in a zombie like state of silence. They could not utter a single word, when the village awoke they found these thieves moving around as if in a trance. That was when the old man was called, for only he could break the spell by physical touching each of them. They were then hastily dispatched to the law enforcement people, till this day this story is told amongst the people of Nyabasi as a testament to the powers of the Sukuma Sorcerers.
No comments:
Post a Comment