Generations Past by Burton Andrew;Charton-Bigot Hélène;

Author:Burton, Andrew;Charton-Bigot, Hélène;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ohio University Press

Searching for Alternatives

In the late 1950s, a former Moran Supervisor reviewed the failures of murran policy: “One may say, ‘Do away with Moran system’ [but] the question [then arises] ‘Replace it with what?’”116 Neither hard work at home, the elders’ remedy, nor education, sports, and communal labor, government’s ideal, could compete with manyatta life in attracting the enthusiasms of the young. At first, it was enough to break up murran formations to prevent raiding, but from the 1930s onward, administrators realized that an opportunity was being lost. One OiC thought it “lamentable that we can do nothing with [murranhood] but break it up.” “The fundamental idea,” he argued, “is not to oppose Masai institutions but to use and mould and develop them into an educational system.”117 An alternative frame of socialization and a different model of male maturity were the elements needed. Their absence in Maasailand reminds us how important their presence was elsewhere, where government could look to missions and schools for help in molding young colonial citizens.

The Africa Inland Mission, the only mission in Maasailand until the 1950s, was always marginal, ignored by Maasai and their rulers alike. Its first success had, in fact, been with an influential murran spokesman, Malonket ole Sempele, but conversion separated him from his age-mates and the opportunity of working with murran was lost and never recovered.118

Nor were schools any more successful. Education in Maasailand began as part of a larger modernization effort.119 A school was opened at Narok in 1921 and another at Kajiado in 1926. The latter moved to Loitokitok in 1929 and merged with Narok in 1940. In the late 1930s, the first LNC primary schools appeared, but, by 1940, education was still confined to “a few tiny … islands existing in a wide sea of apathy.” The principal at Narok thought the history of education in Maasailand “a series of disappointments” and its pupils’ achievements “equally uninspiring.”120

There were several reasons why schools failed to strike root. The first was the compulsion involved. Chiefs were given quotas to fill. Small boys were then rounded up and sent to serve what must have seemed like a three-year detention sentence far from their families. Absenteeism was common, and truants were tracked down by the Tribal Police. Fathers needed their younger sons to herd at home, since older sons were away in manyatta, and therefore resisted conscription and shielded truants.121 In 1931, the DC admitted that, without compulsion, attendance at Narok Government Masai School would not reach double figures.122 Another difficulty was that school preceded rather than replaced murranhood. Most of the boys were between eight and fourteen and would still be laiyok when they left school. They were thought to be more tractable and easier to influence, but in a competition to reach boys before they became young men the school was bound to lose. As initiation approached, boys became “restless” and lost interest in school work. With circumcision, a “marked change” took place, and when ex-pupils joined the murran, they lost “any good which [their] education may have done [them].

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