Becoming Kenyan: The Delameres and the politics of being Maasai

The death of 48 year-old Thomas (Tom) Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley, 6th Baron Delamere, on August 17, 2016 reveals several things about our practices of expressive culture.

There were numerous messages posted on Tom’s Facebook page. One said: “…There was indeed no bigger Kenyan heart than yours!”

What does being ‘Kenyan’ mean in these circumstances of sudden death, contentious murders, ritual compensation and a long history of dispossession of many things, including autonomy and land? How is ‘Kenyanness’ expressed?

Must it adhere to specific ethnic norms or should it radically depart from them so that it can qualify as shared national practice?

Tom Cholmondeley was a fourth generation Kenyan white — a diminishing population that has gradually learnt to maintain a low profile. Some might sneer at the idea of them belonging but there should never be any doubt that the descendants of pioneer settlers have a right to carry a Kenyan identity card and to access any local or global benefits of being Kenyan.

Still, occasionally sensitive to the ugly memories of colonial order and its skewed power axis, Kenyan whites have, largely, steered clear of competitive politics and public office even in this era of haki yetu calls for inclusion.

Against this strategy of pursuing economic enterprise with little public attention — to belong without shouting; to steer clear of political controversy — Tom unwittingly succeeded in grabbing the headlines. He even stole the thunder from what is sometimes referred to as ‘Africa’s most celebrated white family’ — the Leakeys.

The Leakeys are renowned as a family of paleontologists and conservationists. One scion served briefly as an Assistant Minister after he was the elected Member of Parliament for Lang’ata Constituency (1979-1992).

With the rebirth of multi-partyism, another scion became an activist and MP under the Safina Party. In 1999, President Daniel arap Moi appointed him Head of the Civil Service. Last year, he was appointed to head the board of the Kenya Wildlife Service, an organisation where he previously served as Director.

CHOLMONDLEY OUTDID HIS INTERNATIONAL VISIBILITY

Tom Cholmondely outdid this international visibility. His (mis)adventures are too many to narrate here. In 2008, his mother, Lady Ann, spoke to Mark Seal, a contributing editor with Vanity Fair. She employed that classic English understatement that masks all anxiety when she remarked, “Tom is incident-prone, shall we say, … Who else do you know that has been shipwrecked on Lake Victoria, had a boat sink under him on the Nile, and been gored by a buffalo when paragliding?”

That buffalo ‘incident’ landed Tom squarely in the hands of Dr Sally Brewerton, who later became his wife and the mother of his two sons, Hugh and Henry. But Tom’s ‘incidents’ were not always marked by such romantic or happy endings.

That is why last month, his parents found themselves negotiating a settlement with the Maasai clan of Samson ole Sisina. Sisina is the game warden that Tom shot to death in April 2005 at the Delamere’s Soysambu Ranch; a vast land holding that is variously recorded as 49,000 acres, 50,000 acres, even 56,000 acres, depending on who is reporting.

Like the deaths of other prominent Kenyans, Tom’s demise was reported as a news item in the local print and broadcast media. But in a slight departure from our usual funerary fare, there was no amplification of this news in the obituary pages under those elaborate banners that proclaim ‘Promotion to Glory’ or ‘Gone Too Soon’. Neither was there a tangazo la kifo on Capital FM, Kiss FM or whatever radio station one might describe as being native to Kenyan whites (sometimes called Kenyan Cowboys or KCs) since we make our death and funeral announcements on the vernacular station that speaks our community.

As with other unexpected deaths of prominent Kenyans, there was, in Tom’s case, too, some tension immediately after his death. Media reports said that MP Shah Hospital — where he had undergone hip replacement surgery, before passing away in the ICU two days later — had refused to release his body to his family.

A second press report clarified the matter. Apparently, when Tom was admitted at the hospital, he indicated on the admission forms that his next of kin was his mother.

COULD NOT RELEASE BODY TO FORMER WIFE

The hospital could not, therefore, release his remains to his former wife, Dr Sally Brewerton, and his now-on-now-off girlfriend, Sally Dudmesh, when the two arrived at MP Shah Hospital ready to transfer Tom’s body to Lee Funeral Home for a postmortem.

You can’t get more Kenyan than a statement that the locally conducted post-mortem did not reveal a clear cause of death. This is usually followed by insinuations that body parts will be sent abroad (usually the UK) for more thorough interrogation and conclusions.

Indeed, since the days of Pio Gama Pinto, Argwings Kodhek, Tom Mboya, Mrs Perez Otieno Ambala and Robert Ouko, to be a prominent Kenyan is to be a person whose cause of death leaves people engulfed in fretful whispers and torrid rumours!

Tom’s death ticked yet another box in the ledger of modern Kenyan funerary practices with the announcement that the widow of the slain Samson ole Sisina would move to court the following week. She was seeking orders to halt Tom’s burial until the Delameres made good a long-overdue compensation to Sisina’s family. Our contentious deaths are only ever dimmed in importance by our notorious contests over burial.

Typically, our tussles over burial occur between a widow and her husband’s clan (apace  Priscar Ongoche Buluke, 1978, and Wambui Otieno, 1986-87). The other classic scenario involves quarrelling widows, each vying for the right to bury her husband at a place of ‘his’ choice.

The publicised forerunner in this trend involved the widows of former Nairobi PC John Mburu. Upon his death on October 27, 1981, Mburu’s body remained at City Mortuary for months on end until Justice J. M. Gachui overruled all three wives and determined that Mburu should be buried next to his father’s grave in Murang’a.

Occasionally, our burial quarrels are over a woman’s body. This usually happens when the widower had not paid (the full) dowry for his wife. Rather than go to court to enforce a decision, his in-laws will simply announce that they are burying their daughter.

In dowry-observing communities, such action is interpreted as stinging criticism of the widower. Inevitably, his clan regroups and rustles up the outstanding dowry, quickly covering the shame that would engulf their grief if they failed to earn the traditional right to bury the woman their son married.

In the case of Tom Cholmondeley, it was not immediately clear who the Sisinas were planning to file suit against for the damages that they sought. The man who shot their son — whether deliberately or inadvertently – was dead. It is said that dead men tell no tales. They don’t run bank accounts either and neither can they be cited as respondents in a legal battle. So how was the claim of the Sisinas to be brought before the courts when the Director of Public Prosecutions had already ruled, twice, that Tom had no case to answer in the matter of Ole Sisina’s death?

In July 2016 when the DPP made this ruling, the Sisinas reportedly retreated to his grave and, led by the laibon, carried out a ritual to curse Sisina’s killers. Speaking to the press at her Olemutel village in Narok East, Mrs Lucy Sisina mourned: “My children are living in abject poverty, they have stopped going to school and their tears will continue haunting them (Delameres)”.

What was this ritual exactly? The details are not important. What matters, as always with any ritual practice including the symbolic drinking of the blood of Christ and eating of His body in the Catholic liturgy, is what the adherents believe — what they hold dear as the power of the invocation that they make, the rite that they re-enact. Lucy Parsimei Sisina was convinced that “according to the Maa culture, there are more misfortunes on the way”.

Why did the Delamere family agree to settle with the Sisinas now — at this moment in time? This question has been pressed harder in some quarters by claims that the Delameres paid compensation to the family of Robert Njoya, the man Tom Cholmondeley killed in May 2006. Some social media cynics even claimed that the Delameres paid the Kikuyus and ignored the Maasais for political reasons.

Maybe the more accurate answer, as often happens, lies in the pull of culture rather than the allure of politics. Denial — of the past and of its shaping of present day aspirations — is integral to KC identity and the culture of fear of post-colonial retributions that stalks the community. 

But within KC identity, there also lies an allegiance to old England. The Delameres are adherents of the common law justice system that their famous (great-)grandfather and his peers brought with them to the colony at the turn of the 19th Century. Under that system, the Delameres knew that once their son had been tried by a court, found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to prison, the next logical step was for Njoya’s family to file a civil suit for damages.

It follows then that in the case of Sisina, where the courts said Tom had no case to answer, the Delameres believed that, legally, they were under no statutory obligation to pay damages over the death of the 45-year-old game warden. Without a guilty verdict — whether for manslaughter or murder — and without a judgment from a civil suit, filed by the Sisinas, there were no damages to pay.

Tom’s death seemed to change everything. The 48-year old Lord-in-waiting was at the prime of his life and then suddenly, without notice, he was gone. Tom did not survive what some might call routine surgery. He did not outwit fate or dodge the grim reaper as he had

done many times before — under water, over rapids, off a parachute, out hunting amongst wild animals and in bondage, where he was conspicuous as the only white man in a dangerously congested Kenyan prison.

On August 25, 2016, the Delameres agreed to meet the delegation of elders that accompanied Lucy Parsimei Sisina and her eldest son, John Esho. Press reports said that only six people out of the 30-member delegation, were allowed into the negotiations at the Roysambu Ranch. After a long day of deliberations, the settlement read: 49 Sahiwal cows, 27 acres of land, construction of a modern house and fully-paid education, up to university level, of all eight Sisina children.

The work of understanding belief systems requires one to pay attention to numbers and what they signify. So, why 49 cows and not the more rounded numbers, 40 or 50?  Why 27 acres and not 30?

According to NTV editor, Linus Kaikai, “it is because Maasai fines against acts of wrongdoing like murder — paid for in cattle — come in odd numbers.”

'9 IS A SACRED NUMBER'

But Mzee Peter Shompole, a retired teacher from Kajiado, said “the negotiations settle on an amount and then the number 7 is added which is the number of bodily openings excluding the eyes. When eyes are counted, then 9 is added to the agreed penalty.” 

Moses ole Marima, former MP Narok North and community elder, emphasised that, “9 is a sacred number”. The nine bodily openings give life, so a daily prayer or blessing would say, “give me life in my nine” so the number 9 must appear in any compensation or retribution” to signify death as the permanent closing of the nine bodily orifices.

I spoke to Henry ole Kulet the Narok-born author of To Become a Man,Daughter of Maa and Moran No More, amongst other fiction works that dramatise his Maasai heritage. He explained that, “for the purpose of compensation the dead person has to be a Maasai and the death caused by a fellow Maasai…Death of a non-Maasai was thought to be caused… by an act of war and no compensation was payable in such cases. In a case where death is caused by a non-Maasai, elders of the community from which the aggressor came would first negotiate for peace, then negotiate for compensation. There is no fixed number of heads of cattle in such a case and that is where expert negotiators are employed to obtain maximum compensation”.

As an aside, when the victim is a woman, the operative number is 8. It signifies the 8 things that every adult Maasai woman owns: loin cloth, needle, calabash, razor blade, axe, reeds for cleaning her calabash, beads or cowrie shells and finally, thread. 

Kaikai was of the view that, “the Maasai also placed concern not to overburden those paying blood money, or bride ‘price’… there were fines that could go as high as 99 cows. These could be subjected to a whole community like the Kikuyu during their constant pre-colonial wars”.

Ole Kulet explained that negotiations involving a murdered Maasai man were led by “an aggressive delegation” called entikas. In seeking compensation, “they literally declared war!

The notion of manslaughter was not distinguished verbally because the Maa word sesekuan simply means murder. But if someone had been killed inadvertently, say, by a hunter’s spear, then entikas would be more subdued, walking with friendly fire, so to speak, as they approached the killer’s home to discuss compensation”.

Ole Kulet frowns upon the term “blood money” and the negative connotations that colonial anthropology heaped on it in its description of ethnic compensation systems. For him, the more accurate translation of the Maa word inkirro, is “cattle or property relating to the blood of one’s kin”.

INTERNAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Explaining that the Maasai still believe in their internal justice system away from the common law “which tends to build permanent hostilities rather than unite people”, Kakai argued that the Delameres had been subjected to a fairly steep fine because the Sisinas “were dealing with a rich family that had not previously shown remorse”. That might be so, but  Ole Kulet added a fascinating detail to the cultural underpinnings informing this Sisina settlement.

Whilst Tom was in custody, Ole Kulet visited the Roysambu Ranch and Tom’s father, Hugh George Cholmondeley, the current Lord Delamere, told him that “he (Hugh) had undergone a Maa ritual that had made him an honorary Maasai. His wish at the time was that he be let to negotiate compensation in accordance with the Maa culture that considered him an elder of the community”.

It seems Lord Delamere was granted his wish, hence the settlement of the traditional fine of 49 cows. But what about the building of a modern home, the education of Sisina’s children and the 27 acres of land?

Sironka ole Masharen, author of The Maasai Pioneers, explained to me that traditionally, land amongst the Maasai was owned by the community, it was never an individual possession. “And the Sh2 million, I have heard mentioned, did the Maasai have money in this form?” an incredulous Ole Masharen asked.

Was this whole settlement really accomplished because the Sisinas had conducted a ritual to curse the Delameres? In Oral Literature of the Maasai, Naomi Kipury speaks of engooki — a curse or an irredeemable sin — but she makes no mention of a curse relating to killers. The Maasai have numerous clans and there is a broken telephone in what takes place in the transmission of culture from one generation to another, so there are bound to be unique departures.

Still, none of the people I spoke to was aware of a traditional Maasai ritual that was conducted at a grave to compel compensation from remorseless murderers.

Ole Kulet reiterated that compensation was never charmed from a killer, it was enforced by warring entikas. Secondly, though there is a Maa word enkurare, the Maasai had no graves. Ole Masharen explained that the Maasai practiced predator burial.

The body was smeared with sheep’s fat or blood and left out in the bush for wild animals to devour. The only exception to this rule occurred when the death was one of a grand old man.

His stately status was marked by interring him inside the cattle boma – enkurare olkimaita tolosinko.

CULTURE CONSTANTLY IN A FLUX

To be a Kenyan is to be a person whose culture is constantly in a flux, caught between the past and the present. In A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour: Kenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder (2015), Grace Musila demonstrates the failure of white Kenyans to break away from colonial colourings of their authority over nature and wildlife.

This particular identity-marker of a selfless conservationist dominated Tom in his relationship with his neighbours in Soysambu, many of whom he viewed as tiresome poachers.

But just like the Maasai have gradually absorbed individual land ownership as part of the kernel of their sense of belonging, white Kenyans find themselves adding ethnic practices of expressive culture to the core of their colonial roots. This is the lasting significance of the Delameres ethnic settlement with the Sisinas. Perhaps they were anxious that with regard to their departed son, we should all live up to the English saying (though originally Latin), “never speak ill of the dead” so that he can “rest in peace”. But clearly, this could only be achieved once the Delameres navigated and paid homage to contemporary Maasai practices.

All cultures subscribe to an ethos that privileges human life and protects it from wanton destruction. When push came to shove, Tom’s father, Lord Hugh, resorted to his “Maasainess” rather than his English peerage to uphold this ethos. His willingness to part with 49 Sawahil cattle confirms that Kenyan white culture is not immune to infiltration from indigenous ethnic practices.

Likewise, as both Ole Kulet and Ole Marsharen agreed, this settlement demonstrated the ways in which Maasai culture is adaptive to modern commercial practices, showing a deep appreciation for the social and economic dynamics of our times. Education is pivotal; individual land ownership affirms belonging and a modern house is a marker of success, a reward for decades of toil.

These modern signifiers matter to the Sisina clan and their notions of what their late son might have accomplished had he not been cut down in his prime.

Whether or not this story of a curse enacted at Sisina’s grave is true, it nonetheless reveals that Maasai culture is not just open to Western practices.

It is also being influenced by the traditions of other Kenyan ethnicities where sorcery colours traditional medicine.

LIMITS TO WHAT GETS IN

With all cultures, there are limits to what gets in and how quickly it is absorbed. A few days after Tom’s death, the local area MP paid a visit to the Roysambu Ranch to say, pole. But that visit did not translate into what many ethnic Kenyans practice as an open-ended matanga where neighbours and friends pour into the home daily to keep vigil and to help with funeral plans. Neither was there — as happens even with fairly wealthy Kenyans — a death and funeral announcement in the press, inviting all a sundry to “ a harambee to offset hospital bills and funeral expenses”.

Finally, Tom’s funeral was not a free for all attendance. Typically, our burials are a study in performance theatre. T-shirts bearing a portrait of the deceased and similarly branded water and lapel pins provide colour.

Emotive songs and unending talk rent the air. Today, traditional ethnic dirges have virtually been drowned out by church choirs. Instead, recorded gospel artistes like Solomon Mukubwa and Gloria Muliro boom out from shrill overhead speakers.

Local politicians trip over each other in the race for the microphone. Dignitaries of one kind or another catch the eye of the day’s Master of Ceremonies (MC). Sometimes, the MC merely “recognises the presence of so-and-so”. At other times, he boldly breaks away from the well-prepared, printed A-4 size programme and invites the well-heeled to the microphone to “greet the mourners” or to “pay their last respects”.

The clock ticks on. Relatives and close friends contain their grief, aware that the day belongs to the multitude. A show of many speakers is used as an expression of bottomless love for their departed loved one. The huge gathering is publicly understood as support for the deceased’s immediate family. 

By contrast, Tom Cholmondeley was laid to rest at a private ceremony on Soysambu Ranch. Invited guests only. They included Charles Njonjo, our resident Anglophile, a former president’s son, the local MP and the area Governor. No television cameras. No straying neighbours. No screeching gospel artistes.

And thus ended the story of Tom Cholmondeley: Quietly, somewhat hidden away from public attention in that minimalist way that white Kenyans have learnt to belong. The better known part of Tom’s story was captured in Last White Man Standing (2011), an ITVS documentary directed by Justin Webster. It’s dubious title aside, this documentary focuses on the trial that sent Tom to prison for the murder of Robert Njoya.

Like Kenya Murder Mystery (2009) the documentary made by Tom’s cousin, Fiona Cunningham Reid, Webster’s film raises key questions about our unresolved colonial past, our economic disparities and our justice system. Both documentaries examine the character, motives and causes of Tom Cholmondeley but they do not come anywhere near unpacking the dense cultural web that gave Tom Cholmondeley “the most Kenyan heart of all”. 

Our rhetoric of ancestry grows more and more shrill as ethnic audits dominate the work of the National Commission and Integration Commission, a body set up to ease rather than to inflame our struggles of belonging.

In this ethnicised environment of jostling for space and acknowledgement, the very notion of a tribe called white Kenyans is not made any easier to accept for many, by the escapades of Tom Cholmondeley.

But it is given hope, new impetus and ingenious potential by the cultural compliance of his father in that Maasai settlement.

That is why a new book by Jane McIntosh titled, Unsettled: Denial and Belonging Among White Kenyans (2016) is an important addition to our explorations of both the nature and the politics of this loose, layered and sometimes contradictory identity that we call Kenyan.

Dr. Nyairo is a Cultural Analyst – [email protected]