(9) Some medicine men have the power to place a makwa upon one of their wives who is a particular favourite. This is done by medicine, but the details are kept secret. If a man seduces the woman in question it is said that death will ensue unless he can by payment induce the medicine man to lift the curse.
(10) If a person goes to his mother’s native village and eats food there, and if by any chance a death has occurred in that village and the funeral ceremonies are not completed, he will be stricken with makwa. Even if a wife goes to pay a visit to her father’s village under the above circumstances the result is the same. This form of makwa can only be removed by a medicine man. [[132]]
The little known Thaka or Tharaka people in the Tana Valley south-east of Kenia also believe in makwa, and use the same word for it. A few examples have been collected by Mr C. Dundas, and are given below:
(1) If a village is ceremonially unclean for some reason or other, and a man cohabits therein with a person of the opposite sex before it is purified, they are both stricken with makwa.
(2) If a man belonging to a village has been absent on the occasion of a death and at the necessary subsequent purification of the village, he may not enter until a sheep has been killed and the contents smeared on the threshold of his mother’s hut. If this lustration ceremony is omitted he is stricken with makwa.
(3) After the death of the head of a family the sons may take the younger widows to wife, but not until the brother of the deceased has ceremonially cohabited with the principal wife of the deceased. If this rite is not observed before a son marries one of his father’s widows, he will become makwa.
Little is yet known of the procedure which has to be adopted to remove the makwa, but it is said that only medicine men can do so. An elder, seen recently, who was covered with small sores, and some of whose toes had dropped off, was stated to be suffering from makwa, due to infringement of the rule mentioned in example (1) above.
A new road was recently opened in Kikuyu country, and where it crossed the Ruiru River a bridge was built. At one end of the bridge an arch, made of bent sticks, was erected, and on this a small wicker-work arrangement was suspended. Over the bent sticks a strip of the skin of a sheep was entwined. This was called “rigi,” and was a miniature of the wicker door of a hut. The Ruiru River at this place is the boundary between two sections of the country, and the object of the model door was to prevent evil influences, or thahu, entering the neighbouring area by the bridge. The strip of [[133]]skin was taken from a sheep which had been sacrificed there.
There is a curious belief in Kikuyu with regard to the burning of a hut. If a hut is burned down, the owner must not lodge the goats from that hut in the house of a friend, the idea being that the hut caught fire as the result of some kind of thahu, and that the goats are probably infected with the thahu and may thus bring sickness to other people’s animals. There was, for instance, a case where a hut was destroyed by fire, along with several goats, but the people dare not eat the carcases, although the meat was apparently quite wholesome.
When a burnt hut is rebuilt, a goat is slaughtered to prevent the new hut from being destroyed by fire. The meat of the goat is eaten by the elders, and the skin is given to an elder who has had a hut burnt. But although he may use the skin he must not sell it.