Making the Mark. Miroslava Prazak

       Acknowledgments

      Almost thirty years ago a colleague in graduate school suggested that I do research with “his people.” This led to the voyage of a lifetime—geographically, physically, culturally, and intellectually. In the intervening decades I have spent many years with Kuria people in southwestern Kenya, living my life alongside theirs, studying, learning, teaching, and enjoying. I started out there as umuiseke, and now I am umukungu, with grown children of my own. Over the many years I have enjoyed the generosity, kindness, understanding, and empathy of many individuals and families. Here I would like to acknowledge their importance in my life.

      I begin with my father, Jiri, who, had he lived two centuries ago, would have been an intrepid explorer. He did not allow his birth in a small central European country to contain him. His genuine eagerness to explore places he knew only from a map in an atlas, and curiosity about ways of life other than his own, led him all over the globe. My mother, Katerina, accompanied him and, despite a longing for home, set up households on four continents. My sister, Alena, was my soul mate and constant companion, and to this day embodies family—the family that was the one constant of our wandering youth. Together we moved through life, and ultimately found ourselves in North America. Our journeys were not only through geographical space, but through ways of living.

      My second family is from my life in the United States. John and Martha Conant hosted me, a Czech student coming from Pakistan at the beginning of my college career, and have remained a supporting, loving family in the decades that I have made my life here. My “second” siblings Alex, Tim, Chris, Johnny, Justus, Sophie, and now their families, continue to share many of the adventures, milestones, and everyday moments in which our lives unfold.

      Just as my life has unfolded in different phases accompanied by significant change, the lives of the people I came to know in East Africa have passed through dramatically different periods of social change. From early on in my stays in Bukuria, I was incorporated into a large and important family in the community central to my work, and through its kindness of spirit and willingness to associate with an outsider, I came to know Kuria life from the inside. I thank my Kuria parents, the late Irisabeti Wankio and Boniface Rioba, for treating me as one of their own, teaching me right from wrong and the skills of acceptance and tolerance. My Kenyan siblings, my brothers Nyamoraba, Bageni, and Machera and sisters Robi, Nyangige, Monika, Rose, and Maseke, have each in his or her own way made important marks on who I am. I have relied on all of them at various points and have been so very grateful for their being a part of my life. Their spouses, children, and extended families are my people. On the occasions my European parents, my sister, or my nephew JP visited Bukuria, they were accepted as family, linking our worlds in yet another way.

      I have been friends with, spoken to, interviewed, and hung out with many, many other Abakuria. I acknowledge those whose participation was crucial in the research and the writing of this book on genital cutting. I begin with the people who opened their homesteads to me, giving me a central home during my esaaro research. They are the late Anna Gaati Chacha and family, including Mwita, Boke, Mariba, Maria, Daudi, Sarah, and Jenipher; Susan and Sawi Maroa and family, especially Mwita and Machera; the late Boniface Rioba Machera and my brothers, Nyamoraba, Bageni, and Machera, and their families; and the late Joseph Mahanga, his wife, Robi Christine, and their family.

      In the course of my research I employed a number of people who helped arrange and carry out interviews, collect data, transcribe, and translate tapes. These include Tyson Mwita Chacha, Christine Gaati Kisito, Mwita Kisito, Winston Mwasi Mahanga, Christine Nyandawa, Janet Weisiko Sawi, and Maroa Thomas. The work was often difficult and tedious, and their skill, dedication, and perseverance are greatly appreciated. In the preparation of this book, I relied on the assistance of Joseph Mwita Kisito for fine-tuning the translations of poems and songs, Erica Frohnhoefer in cataloguing images, and Rachel Kelleher in drafting the glossary and bibliography. Others have contributed to various aspects of the final product out of the kindness of their hearts. They include David Mwita Chacha, who tirelessly checked facts, searched for meanings, and followed up on unresolved questions; Tim Voice and Robert Pini, who created the illustrations; Heather Booth, who helped in analyzing and clarifying demographic data; and Nino Mendolia, who aided in formatting and solving computer issues. Their contributions have made this book possible.

      Equally important have been the contributions of friends who shared stories, answered questions, and in many ways ensured that my understanding was accurate and thorough. For their kindness and generosity with their time and patience I thank John Mupusi Marwa, Janet Nyagei Chacha, Brantina Boke Chacha, Gooko Serina Mupusi, Mwita Makanga, “Nyamoraba” Wambura Rioba, Rose and Sammy Muniko, Peter Muhiri Chacha, Father Matiko, Susan and Sawi Maroa, Daudi Mwita Chacha, John and Gaati Magesi, Pastor Mishael and family, Moses Mwita Masiaga and family, especially his brothers Muniko and Fred, and Chacha Ntogoro. Paulette McNeal generously shared her collection of newspaper clippings. Having resolved not to pursue this topic in the spirit of morbid curiosity, I attended only those events to which I was invited, hosted by people I knew from other contexts as well. I thank the people, too numerous to name, who issued invitations for me to join them at various stages of the initiation rituals. They enabled me to be a participant observer in the full sense of the label.

      In the fifteen years I have been working on this project I have depended on a number of people in the United States to see me through, to encourage my progress and to kindle the fire when my energy and enthusiasm flagged. My gratitude goes foremost to my family and my husband Robert Pini, deputy anthropologist, who shared much of my fieldwork experience and cared for our children Megan and Dylan as they got older while I traveled, taught, and wrote. His willingness to take on being both parents for extended periods of time, and to reach across the distance to encourage and sustain me while we were on different continents, is what really made the work, both research and writing, possible. He has read the entire manuscript in many forms and lived parts of it.

      As the only anthropologist at Bennington College for most of the past two decades, I have relied on colleagues at other institutions for ongoing grounding in anthropology and in the events of life in East Africa. Most especially I thank Bill Kelly, who has gone from being a teacher and dissertation advisor during my graduate studies to being a lifelong mentor extraordinaire. I appreciate greatly the colleague-ship of Katherine Snyder and Jennifer Coffman, two East Africa hands and women with lives parallel to mine. They have kept me grounded in the discipline and the everyday lives we lead in Kenya. Encouragement and camaraderie on a daily level came from