Coastal complexity

Let me now come full circle. In the first chapter of this book I described how Kajiwe, the witch-finder, argued strongly, in 1966, for the adoption of western education and medicine, as well as Christianity, and was opposed to those of Islam and of the Mijikenda themselves, including Giriama. Not only did he seem to anticipate the increasing acceptance of western goods, ideas and practices, he was part of its realisation. In casting out and burning gourds, effigies, boxes, rods, hides and skins, powders and other alleged instruments of witchcraft (that is, of divination and medicine, depending on one's viewpoint), and in urging women to abandon their traditional hando dress and families to send their children to schools and their sick to hospitals and clinics, he helped usher in the medicines, artefacts, clothes, fashions, cigarettes, soft drinks and bottled beer, transistors, cameras, watches and other objects of western affluence.

At that time, these articles were heard about and occasionally seen in the possession of better-off non-Giriama, rather than possessed by Giriama themselves. Of course, Kajiwe's role in encouraging their acceptance was a minor one, but is highlighted in view of his own prominence as a cult-like figure. His intervention marks a turning-point: it occurred three years after Kenya's independence, in 1963, and at a time when western development aid and investment was pouring into Kenya and other parts of Africa.