Bantu Beliefs and Magic / With particular reference to the Kikuyu and Kamba tribes of Kenya Colony; together with some reflections on East Africa after the war

by C. W. Hobley

This applies to both sections.

(22) If a man beats his wife and draws blood, the woman is thahu, and the man cannot sleep in her hut until she is freed from it; the elders are called in and kill a sheep. The two persons concerned are not allowed to eat any of the meat, and the skin is reserved as a fee for a mundu mugo who is called in to perform the formal lustration.

This affects both sections of the tribe.

(23) If a woman is carrying a baby on her back, and it slips out of the leather garment and falls to the ground, it is thahu; the child must not be lifted from [[111]]the place where it fell until a sheep has been killed on that spot, and this is a case for both the elders of kiama and a medicine man. Both sections of the tribe are affected by this.

(24) If an elder or a woman when coming out of the hut slips and falls down on the ground, he or she is thahu, and lies there until a few elders of kiama come and slaughter a sheep near by, and some blood and tatha (contents of the stomach of the sheep) are rubbed on the spot where the person fell. The elders then say, “So-and-so is dead, let us bury him,” and they plant a sprig of the bushes called mukuria and muthakwa on the site of the mishap. This applies to both sections.

(25) If a man marries a woman and she steals anything from a member of her father’s clan, she is thahu, and milk will flow from her breasts without any natural cause, and any child she bears before the thahu is removed will be thahu. This is a matter for the athuri, or elders of kiama; a sheep is placed on the woman’s shoulders, and its throat is pinched until it micturates on the woman’s body, the sheep then being killed, and the contents of the gall bladder, mixed with urine from its bladder, poured over the leather garment of the woman, and her navel touched with a little of the mixture. The milk that was unnaturally flowing from her breasts will then dry up, and by this sign they will know that the thahu is removed.

This applies to both sections of the tribe.

(26) If a man’s son commits adultery with one of his father’s wives, and the father is still alive, the father becomes thahu and not the culprit, the reason given being that the father takes the thahu because he begot the son. The erring woman does not return to her husband, she is not thahu, and can still bring food to her husband, but he does not cohabit with her, and her hut is broken down. The son who has transgressed in this way has to make peace with his father by a formal present of a big male goat, nthengi. This thahu can [[112]]be removed by the athuri ya kiama; it is a very serious matter, and if the thahu is not quickly removed from the father, he will die.

It applies equally to both sections of the tribe.

(27) If a person touches menstrual blood, he or she is thahu; or if a man cohabits with a woman in this condition he is thahu. The person who is contaminated will first take some cow dung and then red ochreous earth (thiriga) and plaster it on the part of the body touched by the blood; ochre is said to be used because it is the same colour as the blood; the woman from whom the contamination came is also thahu. The mundu mugo has to be called in to purify the persons.