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Abstract
This article focuses upon a cluster of questions about identity: under which conditions can social, political or ethnic affiliations which have been denied for over a generation be revived? Can there be, even in predominantly oral cultures, a kind of backup copy for older identities which are of no use in the present but might be useful again in the future? How does collective memory deal with what is deleted from it? Do insiders preserve and pass on what in the version of history they propagate has been cut out, maybe by describing to the younger generation in detail what it is that they should not say? Two cases are considered. The Ajuran of Kenya, who in the early colonial period were regarded as Oromo, later insisted on being Somali, denying completely that the close ritual and politico-military affiliation they once had to the Boran Oromo ever existed. In recent years the Ajuran have sought an alliance with the Boran again. This case is mirrored by the Degodia Somali, who briefly claimed to be brothers of the Boran, producing even a genealogy in support of that idea, and then went back into the Somali fold. The physical and social environment in which these re-identifications take place comprise arid lowland conditions with contested water and pasture resources, the Kenyan and Ethiopian states and their ethnic policies, neighbouring groups of pastoralists like the Gabra and Garre, and international legal discourses about human, civic and minority rights. As identity games imply, choices are restricted by considerations of plausibility, consistency and the need to be accepted, and it is not easy to re-affiliate in terms of belonging to one major category rather than another according to political and economic needs. Re-affiliation may also fail and the claim to historical links be exposed to ridicule.
Notes
1. The material for this paper is derived from ongoing research undertaken with Abdullahi A. Shongolo, an education officer from Moyale, Kenya. We plan to publish a book, provisionally entitled ‘Islam and Ethnicity in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia: Observations on Somali, Oromo and Rendille’. Data from 1999 to the present have mostly been collected by Abdullahi Shongolo, and the earlier data by myself. The book will expand on the themes dealt with necessarily briefly in this paper, and will contain fuller quotations in original languages.
2. The ‘brothers’ here refers to patrilineal descendants of brothers, i.e. people who ultimately share one apical patrilineal ancestor.
3. The verb ‘to be’ (i.e. ‘were’ Oromo) may sound a little too essentialist to some, but as these classifications were mutually agreed between one group and the other, and as alternative affiliations were a matter of specialist knowledge, it cannot be denied that the Ajuran were perceived as ‘being Oromo’ at a particular point in time, namely the early twentieth century.
4. In other words, when they stressed the Somali aspects of their identity. In a way some of them, notably the Waqle clan cluster, have always been Somali.
5. This was in Wajir District, where I did field research in 1979–80 and in 1984 on inter-ethnic clan relationships (sponsored by the German Research Board, or DFG), and in 1989–90 for the Range Management Handbook of Kenya, sponsored by German Technical Aid (GTZ). I have also undertaken research in the Districts of Marsabit, Mandera and Isiolo.
6. For the orientation of the reader I have included a table showing the groups mentioned in the text and their wider affiliations. See Appendix at the end of the paper.
7. This refers to an adoptive clan relationship. In the process of establishing their hegemony in present-day northern Kenya since the sixteenth century, the Boran allocated the lineages and clans of non-Boran pastoralists to Boran clans. See Schlee, Identities on the Move, 91, 99, 119, 133, 140, 142, 172, 199.
8. According to CitationHaberland, the Burji had originally dispersed from their mountain dwellings because of Amhara slavers. The Boran despise them more than any other group but do not know why. Burji men were victims of Boran raids which served the purpose of ritually required killings. Women and children were not taken as booty, because the Boran regarded them as ‘too dirty’. See Haberland, Galla Südäthiopiens, 28, 150, 206.
9. CitationSchlee, ‘Some Effects of a District Boundary in Kenya’ and ‘Nomades et l'Etat au nord du Kenya’.
10. For his account of an earlier pan-Boran legislative meeting see Shongolo, ‘The Gumi Gaayo’.
11. See CitationSchlee and Shongolo, ‘Local War’.
12. This actually adds up to 188.
13. The Weekly Review, 6 November 1998.
14. On Ethiopian maps the spelling varies, for example ‘Moiale’.
15. Boru Jilo on a Meeting Moyale, Ethiopia, March 1999. Notes taken by Abdullahi Shongolo.
16. The phrase is borrowed from CitationAssmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis, 123, who uses it in an entirely different context.
17. The phrase was coined by CitationLewis: see Lewis, The Somali Lineage System.
18. This alliance did not pay off for Hussein Aidid. His forces were later beaten at Baidoa by Rahanweyn and Ethiopian forces, after which he was compelled to reconcile with Ethiopia on Ethiopian terms, opening an office in Addis Ababa. At the Somali peace conference in Kenya in 2002–03, he was counted among Ethiopia's more ‘minor’ allies.
19. This refers to the satellite herds which are not maintained at the settlement.
20. Interview of Guyyo Galgallo by Abdullahi Shongolo, June 1999, Butiye.
21. Gon is the Boran Moiety to which the Ajuran were affiliated at the time of the pre-colonial Worr Libin alliance.
22. Interview of Golicha Galgallo by Abdullahi Shongolo, June 1999, Moyale.
23. East African Standard, 8 July 1999.
24. For example, see CitationSchlee, Identities on the Move.
25. Daily Nation, 14 May 2000.
26. Taken from the meeting at Moyale on July 9 2000. Notes taken by Abdullahi Shongolo.
27. CitationSchlee, Identities on the Move, pp. 212f., 219, 263.
28. See footnote 26.
29. This means members of the Boran clan, Jilitu = Jille, who are bald, hornless (without the Boran tress, guutu).
30. See footnote 26.
31. See footnote 26.
32. His real worry may have been that the Ajuran councillors were dissatisfied with their remuneration as members of Wajir County Council, and therefore wanted to become members of the more affluent Moyale Country Council.
33. See footnote 26.
34. CitationSchlee, Identities on the Move, 43, 199.
35. Note that the term ‘Somali’, as used here, does not comprise the Degodia. We have found a similar distinction vetween ‘Somali’ on the one hand and ‘Ajuran’ and ‘Garre’ on the other in early colonial records. This speaker seems to reserve the term ‘Somali’ for more recent arrivals such as the Darood.
36. See footnote 26.
37. The relationship, which in reality also comprised claims of genealogical relations, is here reduced to the wider and more vague brotherhood of all Muslims.
38. See footnote 26.
39. See footnote 29.
40. See footnote 26.
41. Daily Nation, 14 June, 24 June 2000.
42. Daily Nation, 24 June 2000.
43. Daily Nation, 7 July 2000.
44. East African Standard, 17 July 2000.
45. We are talking here about stereotypes. In reality there are many devout Muslims among the Oromo and many Somali are nominal Muslims at best. Even on the level of stereotypes these have only a local validity. Elsewhere, for example in Western Ethiopia, the Oromo are the prototypical Muslims and their ethnic ‘Others’ are branded as pagans: see for example CitationPopp, ‘Jem, Janjero oder Oromo?’