The widow who beat the British through ecstatic

dance
rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/mekatilili-wa-menza

The year is 1913. The place is Kenya. The British are behaving badly.

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Onyato Snr alikuwa Project na Stooge wa Colonial Brit Emp

What did they do now, you ask? Whip out your “colonial hooliganism” bingo cards:

Levied enforced labor on the locals (after ostensibly outlawing slavery).

Tore down the tribal systems of government and put their own stooges in charge.
Conscripted unwilling locals to fight in World War I.
Overtaxed, overregulated, and eventually ruined the local economy.

Now, these tried-and-true methods had already resulted in many conflicts around the
world with various colonial powers (some examples I’ve covered: the War of the Golden
Stool, the Igbo Women’s War, Maori conflicts, and the Dahomey wars). And like their
rebellious forebears, the Giriama, an east Kenyan tribe, was about to start a ruckus over
it.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, it should come as no surprise that the rouser of
said ruckus was a woman.

Mekatilili wa Menza had little business (or precedent) doing this. Aghast at the notion
of Giriama fighting Europeans for Europeans, she began complaining long and loud to
anyone who would listen. This was doubly unusual: not only did Giriama women rarely
(if ever) have this level of political involvement, but she was effectively a commoner.
Her only claim to higher social standing was the fact that she was a widow, which
culturally afforded her some room to speak. She milked that for all it was worth,
agitating for an end to free labor, overtaxation, and the British-installed stooges. And
she did so in dance form.

The dancing that Mekatilili engaged in is called kifudu. It’s a type of ecstatic dance
usually reserved for funeral ceremonies, which meant the sight of an elderly woman
excitedly jittering from town to town was… somewhat unusual. Her kifudu attracted a
crowd of onlookers wherever she went, and soon the onlookers became devoted
followers. Within weeks, the Giriama colonial system had all but shut down due to her
efforts. All of which earned her the attention of the British colonial supervisor, Arthur
Champion.

There is a legend of the two meeting — likely apocryphal. In it, Mekatilili approached
Champion and let loose a mother hen and a number of chicks in his house. She laid out
a dare to him: try to pick out a single chick and see what the mother hen does. He did as
instructed and, in a turn of events shocking nobody, the mother hen pecked the living
hell out of him. See, said Mekatilili? This is what will happen if you take Giriama men
for your war.

In response, Champion took out a gun and shot the mother hen.

This was not a particularly subtle piece of metaphor.

Mekatilili ramped up efforts after that. With the aid of medicine men, particularly a
fella named Wanje wa Madorika, she arranged a widely-attended meeting at a kaya,
one of the traditional Giriama forest temples that the British had pooh-poohed. There,
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the elders administered sacred oaths so that nobody would cooperate with the British,
and the Giriama left that meeting with a renewed sense of rebellion.

The British responded by also ramping up their own efforts. In short order, they
confiscated 1/5th of the Giriama lands, ordered the Giriama to move, killed around 150
of them, burnt 5000 homes to the ground, destroyed a number of kayas with dynamite,
and arrested several key members of the rebellion — including Mekatilili and Wanje.

Prison did not hold Mekatilili and Wanje for long. The larger problem they faced after
escaping was getting back home. Shipped off to the far reaches of western Kenya,
Mekatilili and Wanje were nearly 600 miles of dangerous wild land away from home. So
they began to walk. This was a borderline incomprehensible feat to the British – the
route wound through areas infested with wild animals which no European would dare
traverse. And yet, the duo made it. Moreover, by the time they got home, they’d fallen in
love and were man and wife. There’s frustratingly little information on this journey, so
substitute whatever middle-of-the-movie half hour romcom antics your heart desires.

In the years following, when he found that Mekatilili had returned and that the Giriama
were again sliding towards open revolt, Champion realized that he was fighting a losing
battle. With the British resources stretched thin due to World War I, and a
disproportionate amount of effort being spent in the hinterlands of Kenya compared to
the benefits available to the crown, Champion threw in the towel. The kayas and tribal
councils were reinstated. At the head of the new council was Wanje. And at the head of
the newly-established women’s council was Mekatilili.

But, truth be told, the story does not have a happy ending after that. For whatever
reason, the new kayas never received much support, and their newly-entrenched
isolationism did not serve the Giriama well. As Kenyan business developed, the Giriama
continued on their path of being small-scale producers, almost completely disconnected
from the larger economy. In present day, they’re one of the poorest and least
developed regions of the country, and regularly suffer from bad access to clean water
and poor sanitation.

According to legend, Mekatilili herself died while pounding grain in the field, sinking
straight into the earth where she fell. This legend ties her closely with Mepoho, a
Giriama prophet who’d ostensibly predicted Mekatilili’s deeds decades earlier and had
met a similarly subterranean end. Mekatilili’s provincial story was largely forgotten
until several years ago, when the Malindi District Cultural Association began to herald
and reinvent her as a local hero. Gradually, the oral history was codified and word
spread – similar to how the world learned of other African heroines, like Yaa
Asantewaa.

All of which indicates that there are untold scores of local heroines like this all around
the world — we just do not know about them. Yet.

(enjoy the art? you can get it as a poster, shirt or phone case!)
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Since Mekatilili was considered a prophet by her people (possibly because she
consciously patterned herself after the aforementioned Mepoho), she’s given a sort
of heavenly light treatment here.
She’s wearing a hando, a traditional type of pleated cotton skirt. Although it had
fallen out of fashion, concurrent to the resurgence of her story, it has been
embraced as part of the Giriama cultural heritage.
Right behind her is a mother hen and a bunch of chickens, a reference to her
showdown with Champion. This is even referenced in a modern-day statue of her
in Kenya.

See? Chickens!

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 Speaking of which, Champion can be seen in the crowd on screen left. In the
crowd on screen right is his supervisor Charles Hobley, who described her as a
“half-mad woman named Katilili.”
The hut behind them is Kayafungo, the Giriama kaya where they met and
administered oaths. This is a rebuilt version, as the original was destroyed by the
British.

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A hungry hippo is bad, and a hungry firebreathing hippo is worse, but you know who’s
even badder than that? This magical girl.

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