Across the Great Rift (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine March 2002

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Across the Great Rift (Cont.)

ONE MORNING A WEEK into the safari, a young boy walked into our camp, bowed his head for all of us to touch (as uncircumcised Masais traditionally must), and announced that the laibon—whose name was Mokompo, and who was the most famous laibon in western Masailand—would speak to us that afternoon. Mokompo's father, Simel, had been the laibon before him, and Simel's father, Senteu, had been a son of Mbatian, who'd been chief laibon at the end of the 19th century. People came up from Tanzania to consult with Mokompo, driving anywhere from five to four dozen cows before them as payment. We'd requested an audience through Lulunken, who turned out to be his nephew. Thanks to the connection, we scored a deal—3,000 shillings, or about $40, still a princely sum in a country where the average man makes $1 a day.

Mokompo lived at the end of the Orng'Arua Valley, on the far side of a bog. As we drove there, Mike explained what Mokompo was—not exactly a witch doctor, but a "ritual expert."

Mike loved his adventurous Masai childhood, but he had a better time as a Boy Scout in Nairobi. "That's really where I learned to camp," he laughed.

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"The difference being that he's informing you of a ritual that will cleanse you, not telling you how to get rid of your neighbor who's a nuisance."

We parked under a solitary tree and crossed the bog in single file. Mokompo, a tall, still-muscular man in his late sixties, received us in a tin-roofed shed. His outfit consisted of a robe of hyrax fur lined with purple cotton and two shukas, or togas, one purple and yellow and one black and green. His face and temples were marked with white paint, and he fanned himself regally with a zebra-tail whisk.

"He doesn't look as scary as I thought," Mike whispered as we took our seats on a low bench.

A small hole in the roof sent a shaft of sunlight into the otherwise dark room. An old man in the corner pulled a medicine bottle out of his earlobe and tapped a pile of snuff into his palm. Mokompo sat on a stool, picked up the liter of scotch I'd brought as a gift, and began to speak. Mike translated.

"How much is this good for?" he asked.

"That would last a man about a week," I said.

He poured some into a cup. "It takes a smart guy to take this," he said. "You can burn your liver unless you drink it slowly. I've seen this by pouring some on the liver of a slaughtered goat—it burned."

He took a sip, wrinkled his eyes, and gave us a sly, knowing look. "This stuff isn't for dummies," he said.

He poured more scotch and then had a boy put the bottle away in another room. Finally, at Mike's prompting, he began to tell the story of how his family had come to the Loitas. Mike picked up the video camera and started taping.

It was a long story, and the scotch had to be fetched several times. It began with Mbatian. When he was old and bedridden and nearly blind, he had called in his son Lenana, his favorite. "The time has come for me to hand over my powers to you—come tomorrow morning," Mbatian said. Another son, Senteu, the same age but from a different mother, overheard this and got jealous, so he planned a trick. Very early the next morning he went into his father's hut, pretending to be Lenana. He gained everything—the horn from which the stones were cast, and his father's blessing as well. Then he left.

Lenana had overslept, and came to see his father late that morning. Shocked, Mbatian cried: "To whom did I give the blessing?" Then he spat in Lenana's hands to bless him, so Lenana could also become a laibon. "By then the British were here," Mokompo continued. "The Masai were famed for their fierceness, and the British wanted to befriend them. They learned of Lenana's rivalry with Senteu and befriended Lenana. Lenana gave them the land in Laikipia they wanted. In exchange, the British banished Senteu to Loita. The idea was that he and his family would perish from disease. Somehow, they survived."

Mike put down the camera. His eyes were wide with surprise. "I've never heard this version of the story," he said. "I've always been told that the British exiled Senteu to the west side of the Great Rift Valley because the rest of the Masai complained of his witchcraft. But this version explains why Lenana gave out Masai land, the so-called White Highlands, to the English—to get rid of his rival. It's always been a burning question to me."

Mike was genuinely excited. "What Mokompo is saying is that Senteu wasn't the traitor; ultimately Lenana was," he said. He smiled and called it "the west-side story." For Mike, this was a clear explanation of the Loita's "reputation for authenticity," as he put it, but also, I thought, a budding political insight. As a nomadic people, the Masai lacked centralized leadership—or had since the days of Mbatian. The British had cleverly exploited a fraternal power struggle, and the Masai had paid dearly.

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