Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the question of labour and Christian missionary enterprise shaped debates on masculinity and morality among the Cuka of Kenya. It aims at providing connections between the small struggles of everyday life of the colonized with anti-colonial revolt in Central Kenya.

Paper long abstract:

In 1907, Edward Butler Horne, entered Chuka and summoned the community's warriors. He ordered them to arrange their shields in a row and with rapid firing tore them to pieces. He then felled an ox that was grazing nearby with a single shot and invited the shocked warriors to take their share of free meat. The century's old warrior tradition had been blown off. Thus, gunshots defined the initial contact between Cuka men and the forces of colonialism. Henceforth, Cuka masculinity and morality would be subjected to social and spiritual re-engineering. In mid - 1953, twenty two Cuka young men, some of them converts to the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM), were shot dead by the King's African Riffles (KAR), while preparing for a church wedding, catapulting the community to the Mau Mau insurgency. The moment of conquest had ushered in major disruptions in the world of Cuka men.They had to adopt to the colonial logic of labour and still grapple with the new forces of christianity. They had to pursue advantage in new social spaces availed to them by colonial conquest - such as being employed as cooks(domestic servants)and conversion to the church.With the help of archival sources and testimonies of men who served as cooks (chifoko), this paper examines how contradictions inherent in these two spaces remolded the concept of being a Cuka man and how such remodeling contributed to their participation in the Mau Mau insurgency.