Njama's Supper: The Consumption and Use of Literary Potency by Mau Mau Insurgents in Colonial Kenya

Abstract

In this essay I hope to come closer to an understanding of how Mau Mau insurgents created a world in the Aberdares forest composed of individuals and groups who contested the means for which positive social value could be attained.' The world they created was replete with power, and this power was congealed in certain objects and the ability to use them. Many of these objects were literally stolen from the institutions which made up the colonial regime (schools and offices, for example). They circulated within and among groups of insurgents (itungati) in the forest and in some way represented and embodied the enchanted power of the colonial state apparatus.2 Yet the circulation of these objects into new social space (Mau Mau camps), whose constitution they contributed to, both changed the meaning of these objects and clarified and accelerated divisions within the movement. The circulation of literary-bureau-