CHAPTER II

THE EVIL EYE

This belief, so widespread in Europe, Morocco, and many other parts of the world has never received much attention from observers in this part of Africa, and it was only recently realised that it received much recognition in Kikuyu. It is called kita or kithamengo.

The word kita means saliva as well as evil eye. The Swahili synonym is kijicho.

A few people here and there throughout the country are believed to possess this gift, women as well as men, irrespective of the guild to which they belong. The possessor is born with it.

It gradually dawns upon the people that So-and-so possesses the power, owing to the fact that if that person audibly admires a beast belonging to a neighbour the animal shortly after that becomes sick. If this occurs several times the various owners compare notes and it becomes generally known that So-and-so is kithamengo.

It would therefore seem that the idea is not based on an evil glance but upon an envious thought.

After that, if a cattle owner hears that a man who has this power (or one ought, perhaps, to term it “this infliction”) has been admiring one of his cows, he will send for him and insist on his removing the evil; this is done by the man wetting his finger with saliva, and touching the beast on the mouth and on various parts of the body with his wetted finger; this is believed to neutralise the enchantment.

Members of the Chera and Anjiru clans are notably possessed of this power with considerable frequency; the Ambui and Aithiageni again very rarely possess it. Even a medicine man cannot remove a curse imposed by a person with the evil eye; only the individual who imposed it can remove it, and he can do it only in the morning before he touches food.

Human beings and also inanimate objects are equally affected by the power, for it is said that if a person who possesses the evil eye admires a woman who is enceinte she will abort, and if she is not, her breasts will become highly inflamed, and he has to come and ceremonially rub a little saliva on them to remove the danger.

If an individual object is admired, say a spear, it will soon afterwards be broken, or if, for instance, the leather-covered sheath of a sword is admired it will probably be gnawed by rats and spoilt.

No one who is not born with the power can acquire it, and it appears to be looked upon as an unavoidable misfortune. It is said to be the gift of God (Engai), and if a death or loss occurs the person to whom it is attributable cannot be sued for compensation before the kiama, or council of elders.

In time the people get to know who possesses the power, and if such a person enters a village he is asked in a friendly way to spit ceremonially on all the children to prevent anything untoward occurring to them owing to his visit. If a father possesses this power he can render his children proof against its action either from himself or any other person by shutting his eyes and then ceremonially spitting into each of their mouths.

The power is said to be hereditary, but all the children are not born with the gift. This belief exists among the Masai, and is called ’Ng-onyek oo’-l-tunganak, and will probably be found to account for the ceremonial spitting which was so common among them when they wished to show their friendliness. Refer to Hollis’s “Masai,” page 315, the spitting on children is undoubtedly done to show the parents that the stranger is anxious to do the right thing and not afflict the child by the power of the evil eye. Also vide Hollis’s “Nandi,” page 90, spitting is again believed to remove the spell of the evil eye (sakutik).

In Ukamba, Mr Dundas states that it is called kyeni; there is said to be a whole clan in Kitui called Mwanziu which possess the power, and it often happens that when a person has received a slight injury he will go to a member of this clan and ask him to spit on the injured spot, which forthwith becomes whole. Possibly he attributes his hurt to someone with the power of the “evil eye.” It is also said that possessors of this gift have such power that if they admire a stone it will split into fragments.

The evil eye is a belief of great antiquity, for it was even recognised as far back as Mosaic times, cf. Deut. xxviii. 54: “His eye shall be evil towards his brother and towards the wife of his bosom,” etc.

The Magic of the Eithaga.—It has occasionally been incorrectly alleged that the power of the “evil eye” in Kikuyu is the monopoly of one clan called the Eithaga or Aithaga, but such does not appear to be the case. The members of the Eithaga clan are credited with supernatural powers, but they are of quite a different character, as will be seen below. The name of the clan is Eithaga or Kiuru, a single member is called Mweithaga. The name Kiuru is an opprobrious nickname, which means “those who bewitch people.”

The stronghold of the Eithaga is Karuri’s country on the east slopes of the Nandarua Mountain, but it is said that they originally came from Karira’s to the north of the Saba Saba River. The present head of the clan is one Kiriri near Karuri’s, and in South Kikuyu the most prominent Mweithaga is Mkone wa Ndawa, and it is said that the chief Kiriri has hair growing on the point of his tongue. The clan is nearly entirely endogamous, that is to say, a Mweithaga generally marries a Mweithaga, and no man of another clan will marry a Mweithaga woman, but a Mweithaga man may occasionally find a mate from another clan. The members of the Eithaga clan practically all belong to the Kikuyu circumcision guild. They are, however, divided into two divisions, A-Mbura and A-Kiuru, the first meaning the “rain-makers” and the second the “wizards.”

The former profess to be able to make rain, but their powers in this connection are not considered very extensive, and the majority will only admit that if rain is about, a Mu-Mbura may cause it to fall if it is the proper season for rain. If rain comes on in a camp where one has any Eithaga porters they will turn out, wave branches and blow vigorously in the direction from which the rain is coming, and, what is more, firmly believe that they are having some effect on the elements.

In connection with these rain-making powers, it is curious to note that no Mweithaga may drink or cook with rain-water that has been collected in a cooking pot; if he does so he will surely die. Further, no Mweithaga may carry embers of fire in a fragment of crock from a cooking pot. He must either carry the fire in some green leaves in his hand or get a firebrand.

We now come to the wizard branch of the clan. Only the males have magical powers. It is said that a Mweithaga will take an ox or Kudu horn and blow it, and so doing will bewitch an enemy, saying, “I blow this horn and your heart will become like the wind I blow through this horn,” meaning, it will disappear and be lost. The person will then be bewitched, will cough up phlegm, and eventually die unless he takes offerings to the Mweithaga and beseeches him to remove the spell. The proper thing is to take a ram and some sugar cane, and if this is done the wizard is unable to refuse, and will keep the sheep, cook some of the fat and put it in his mouth with some of the juice from the sugar cane. He will then squirt a little into the mouth of the bewitched person, and will also put some into a gourd for the patient to take back to his village and give to his children. After this ceremony the patient recovers, and, what is better, it is said that no Mweithaga can again bewitch him in this way.

A Mweithaga, if he wishes to bewitch a village, will go into the bush and find francolin eggs, and will put these, together with the leaves of the mkurwe (Albizzia) bush, on a fire and will say, “As these eggs burst and as these leaves shrivel up so shall this village be destroyed,” and it is believed that evil will forthwith fall on the people of that village, but only upon the people, for the Eithaga do not harm live stock. Some will put the francolin eggs with water in a cooking pot on a fire and then break the pot and the eggs with one of the hearth stones. The Eithaga rarely use herbs or material substances in their magic, their spells being done by invocation. No medicine man can remove a spell imposed by a Mweithaga; it can only be removed by the one who imposed it or by another Mweithaga. If, however, a mysterious sickness falls on a village a mundu mugo, or medicine man, is called in, and he can diagnose it and tell whether it is due to the magic of Eithaga. A Mweithaga cannot bewitch another Mweithaga, nor can he bewitch a person belonging to another tribe such as Masai or Kamba.

Sometimes, however, they are of use, for they are believed to have the power of bewitching unknown thieves, and so it occasionally happens that a person who has had, say, some goats or some sugar cane stolen, will call in a Mweithaga and ask him to throw a spell on the thief. He will come to the village and take a piece of mud containing the spoor of one of the stolen animals or one of the stems from which the sugar cane has been cut, as the case may be, and he will say “A rokwa nguo,” “I bewitch the thief.” The thief, who is probably not far away, will hear people talking of this, and being convinced of the effects of the magic will hasten to return the stolen property to its owner.

The Mweithaga is then called again, and the owner of the goats takes one and kills it, the Mweithaga cuts out the stomach with part of the œsophagus, wets his finger with saliva and touches the end of the œsophagus with his wetted finger, and then inflates the stomach by blowing and makes passes with it over the body of the thief, thus removing the spell. He finally fastens a rukwaru, or strip of the goat skin, on the thief’s wrist and the thief has to pay a sheep to the Mweithaga as a fee. If the theft is that of such a thing as sugar cane the thief has to find the sacrificial goat and then be purified as above described.

No Mweithaga may eat wild game, and in no case can he even wear the skin of a wild beast; the only exceptions to this law are that they can eat locusts and can make honey bags out of the skin of the ngunu, a small reddish antelope, probably a duiker.

For all their magical powers the Eithaga, like other people, are subject to the incidence of thahu, and are also subject to the power of the evil eye.

There is a kind of constitutional antipathy between the Eithaga and the smiths of the tribe, and it is said that there are no Eithaga smiths. A Mweithaga may not sleep in a smith’s house or vice versâ; if this did occur it is believed that illness or even death would supervene. The evil spell can, however, be removed by the owner of the house; that is to say, if a smith sleeps in the house of a Mweithaga, the Mweithaga could remove the evil, and vice versâ.

The Kikuyu are very afraid of the Eithaga, and in former days after someone had been killed by their black art the elders would induce one of them to come and remove the spell from all the people of the village where the man had died. They would then collect as many of the members of the clan as they could find and insist on their taking the oath known as ku-ringa thenge, by which they would swear not to bewitch any more of their neighbours. Sometimes, however, they would turn out en masse and slaughter all the Eithaga they could lay their hands on. It is said that a Kikuyu would never enter the village of a Mweithaga uninvited.

If a Mweithaga goes to a village and becomes embroiled in a quarrel with a member of another tribe, goats must be exchanged to make the peace, and the Mweithaga must spit on the other party to obviate any evil effects. The Mweithaga then invites the other man to his village to drink beer with him, and will take a sip from a horn of beer and eject it back into the horn, the man then drinking the beer, after which he is immune from the effects of any Eithaga magic.

The Eithaga are believed to have the power of protecting forest, and their powers are sometimes invoked for this purpose. If a man wishes to protect a patch of forest on his property, he sends for a Mweithaga to put a spell on it; the magician proceeds to the spot with the local elders and brings with him a cooking pot taken from the deserted hut of a deceased person. He fills this with water drawn from each spring and stream in the piece of forest, and boils it on a fire made on a path in the said forest; the pot is supported on three stones. After this a little of the water is poured back into each of the springs or streams, and the pot is then shattered by dropping one of the hearth stones on it. The magician then blows his horn and announces that if anyone cuts the trees in the forest his heart will burst forth like the blasts of the horn.