3 - Understanding Uoi, Uwe, and Kithitu in Ukambani

Summary

Whether witchcraft does or does not really work, it is sufficient to say that neither the practitioner, his victims, nor the general African public regard it as an imposture.

In its broadest terms, “cosmology” denotes a critical contemplation of the universe and efforts to understand the place of human beings within the universe. Cosmology can also stand for a totalizing worldview, a consuming way of seeing and way of being in the world. Within the context of colonial Kenya, two competing cosmologies – dual ways-of-seeing and ways-of-being – existed. The next two chapters argue that from the opening moments of the colonial era, a Kamba cosmology centered on uoi (and uwe) beliefs and practices collided with a colonial cosmology focused around bureaucratic practices and beliefs. The collision of these two contrasting, totalizing worldviews produced various “critical events” through which the persistent sway of Kamba witchcraft challenged the ability of the state to secure law and order.

The colonial documentary record offers a clear picture of the ways in which British officials conceptualized and engaged with Kamba witchcraft and with other key supernatural practices like oathing, or kithitu. Colonial documents overwhelmingly figure such practices and beliefs as atavistic irrationalities, albeit ones that did work, challenging the “colonial order of things.” But how Kamba people have thought about and experienced uoi, uwe, and kithitu is more difficult to ascertain. As Steven Feierman writes, “the particular domains of African life which the conquerors saw as irrational are precisely the ones most difficult for the historian to interpret. The European sources hang like a veil between the historian and the African actors of that period.”