The relationality of pesa makech: reversible disorder

According to Shipton (Reference Shipton1989; Reference Shipton2007), pesa makech denotes money gained in an amoral way: by selling ancestral land, killing someone, stealing or buying votes. It is money acquired by selling objects that are constitutive of sociality: other human beings, ancestral land and political influence. Objects bought with ‘bitter money’ are socially destructive and anti-reproductive. Houses built with pesa makech might collapse, cows might die and the employment of bitter money as part of bride wealth might result in the death or barrenness of the wife. Yet it is not the money that is bitter, but the relation between, for instance, the person selling ancestral land, relatives who could claim that land, the ancestors and the money. If one buys a radio with pesa makech, the bitterness does not travel with it: ‘If bitter money continues to circulate … the danger is not thought to circulate with it, but sticks with the one who committed the evil act and with his family.’ The bitterness is thus ‘an attribute of people’ (Shipton Reference Shipton1989: 42).

Acts that led to bitter money in the 1980s can be analysed as having one thing in common. They all ‘block[ed] pathways’ (dino yore; Geissler and Prince Reference Geissler and Prince2010: 113–50) of flows inside a social body constituted by a net of finely woven relations between its members. The order of this network is upheld by rules (kweche) regulating marriage, harvesting sequences, sexual behaviour, obligations to give and receive, and many other things (Geissler and Prince Reference Geissler and Prince2010). If one therefore selfishly sells something that plays a constitutive role in what one is according to one's relational position in that finely woven net of relations and rules, one risks causing an imbalance in the way one is related to others, and thereby might bring about ‘confusion’ (nyuandruok) that subsequently leads to death and infertility.Footnote ⁷

As the ‘bitterness’ results from a relational disorder within the immediate social environment, it can be ‘sorted out’ (rieyo) by sacrificing a bull. After those homestead's members who are most likely to be affected by the misconduct of the owner of bitter money have eaten the meat, an ajuoga (ritual specialist) mixes chyme (wen) from the sacrificed animal's intestines with herbal medicines (yath). The owner of pesa makech takes a sip and afterwards the ajuoga sprinkles the money, the houses of the homestead and its ground with the rest of the mixture (Shipton Reference Shipton1989: 40–2). In line with an understanding of the social body as an ordered net of relations, this ritual can be interpreted as a form of materially re-ordering parts of the disordered body of the homestead (dala; on the Luo homestead, see Dietler and Herbich Reference Dietler and Herbich2009), whose unity and order are re-emphasized by sprinkling the amorphous substance of chyme, water and herbs on it.

In conclusion, one can say that pesa makech signalled reversible transgressions of the moral order (chik) but never indexed a substantial threat of the latter's applicability. Precisely because the cause of disorder was situated inside people's immediate and known environment, possibilities of ‘sorting it out’ remained available. The increasing reference to pesa marach, however, seems to indicate a process that differs from the reversible transgression of chik. Rather than expressing an illicit internal disordering of the social body epitomized in the homestead, the displacement of ‘bitter money’ by ‘bad money’ appears to speak of a displacement of the cause of disorder from an internal, potentially controllable one to an external, radically uncontrollable one (scrutinized in the next section).

The oblivion of pesa makech: externalizing the cause of disorder

This quote from Antony, a secondary school teacher who, in addition, is pursuing a master's degree in English literature, exemplifies a common narrative. Due to the shortage of land (Shipton Reference Shipton2009), increasing population density (Population Reference Bureau 2011), climatic change (Ochola Reference Ochola2009), electoral violence (Mueller Reference Mueller2008), reduction of cattle herds, stockpiling debts, the pressure to acquire food for one's kin and structural adjustment reforms (Rono Reference Rono2002), money has become a necessary part of survival in Western Kenya today more than ever. It has become ‘simultaneous with life’, as one ja-Kaleko phrased it aptly. It dovetails with money's quotidianization that jo-Kaleko now perceive pesa acquired by selling votes or ancestral land, neatly packed into plots measuring fifty times a hundred feet, as unexceptional and no longer describe it as ‘bitter’.Footnote ⁸ People do not explicitly address the issue of money's origin and the money itself remains morally untainted. As one young and unemployed ja-Kaleko regretfully said: ‘Money is money.’ The money's origin does not matter as long as it enables you to survive. If I asked jo-Kaleko about the motives behind and the consequences of the sale of ancestral land, they never referred to a concept even remotely resembling pesa makech. Rather, they sympathized with the seller by pointing towards his economic inability, they mentioned promising ways of investing the money from the sale, or they alluded to governmental plans to force people to sell their land below market value. Others engaged in explicitly anti-monetary discourses by contrasting the ‘exclusively money economy’ of today with a barter economy that many believe was still predominant in the middle of the twentieth century. Another way of vilifying today's ‘bad money’ is by ironically comparing its huge denominations with its worthlessness or by evoking times during which small amounts of money could still buy valuable goods, such as the land of Edward Odhiambo, the thirty-year-old son of William's grandfather's brother and an unemployed father of two girls: ‘This land was bought with 1,200 shilling by my grandfather. Nowadays, even if I would have 1,200 shilling, what could I buy for it?’Footnote ⁹

The simultaneous processes of ‘accepting’ money's ordinariness and ‘blaming’ money's devilish nature are accompanied by a relocation of the cause of socio-economic disorder. More and more people locate the cause of ‘disordered social surroundings’ beyond the homestead, and thus outside most people's immediate sphere of influence. The two main targets of such externalization are members of other ethnic groups and employees of the state, such as former President Mwai Kibaki. As Dorothy explained to me shortly before the general election of 2013, Kibaki ‘sneaked around Kaleko during the nights with fake money. Have you never heard someone knocking at your door during the nights? That might have been Kenyatta. He is now copying Kibaki. He tries to buy our votes and might want you to spy on us.’ Along similar lines, Edward more than once denigrated the KikuyuFootnote ¹⁰ by referring to their ‘natural’ tendency to be aggressive, egoistic and money-loving: ‘You cannot marry a Kikuyu woman, she will run away with all your valuables. That are the Kukes, they love money.’ Such ethnic hatred also becomes manifest in Facebook groups such as ‘The Luo Nation’ and ‘Luo Nyanza Arise’, which have mushroomed in recent years and portray Kikuyu and KalenjinFootnote ¹¹ as animals and sodomites. This pervasive attitude against other ethnic groups directly influences daily discussions and discourses. An argument between the same children whom I had heard shouting ‘Onge future’, for example, revolved around the question of whether Kenyatta's red eyes are a consequence of him being a demon, an alcoholic or a cocaine addict.

Returning to the historical trajectory of pesa makech, it seems valid to conclude that its oblivion correlates with an externalization of the cause of disorder beyond jo-Kaleko's immediate sphere of influence. A situation in which a reversible disorder of social relations affected available money tokens has been replaced by one in which the long and painfully felt absence of money brought about by external actors is perceived as the inexorable cause of a dramatic, if not irresolvable, socio-economic disorder. It is no longer another part of the net of relations that threatens the integrity of the social body, as in the case of pesa makech, but an other who threatens to cut that net of relations into no longer connected parts. To what extent some jo-Kaleko understand this trend as inevitable becomes manifest in an argument Patrick brought up to justify the controversial practice of polygamy (doho), namely that for each male Luo four female ones are born because female X chromosomes have gradually become stronger than male Y chromosomes due to environmental pollution, bad food and economic struggle. As much as Patrick thereby conceptualizes economic marginalization as creeping into the genetic disposition of Luo men, money and the ‘violence of its abstraction’ (Seyer Reference Seyer1987) are conceived as an essential characteristic of today's ‘surroundings’.

It can be said conclusively that the disorder brought about by pesa makech was an effect of an internal disorder that could be reversed by reaffirming the order (chik) regulating the homestead. In contrast, externalizing the cause of the disorder of one's surroundings necessarily led to changes in the ways in which disorder is understood and how people assume it can be tackled. As ‘sorting out’ one's homestead was no longer sufficient, jo-Kaleko were forced to imagine other ways of dealing with an externalized and radicalized economic exclusion.

‘Raila will sort out Kenya’: upscaling rieyo and the problem of ‘fake money’

Making non-Luo responsible for the miserable state of Western Kenya's economy and clustering around the influential politician Raila Odinga, combined with building hope in the new constitution voted for in 2010, helped jo-Kaleko cope with economic exclusion during my stays in Kaleko before the 2013 general election. Irrespective of whether they had or had not read the new constitution, most jo-Kaleko felt certain that it would enforce free and fair elections. As Edward succinctly told me after praising the new constitution, which, apart from transforming Kenya into a federal state with semi-autonomous counties, introduced biometric voter registration: ‘We now have the American style of voting. We can't fail.’ It is thus not surprising that David Otieno – polygamist, father of nineteen children and medical assistant at Kaleko's small local clinic run by William – told me some weeks before the election that ‘agwambo [the miraculous one, i.e. Raila Odinga] will win the election and after that put Kenya back to order’. The fact that Raila is often referred to as wuonwa (‘our father’) and thereby equated with a homestead head dovetails with David's use of ‘putting back to order’, with which he evokes the principles of ‘ordering’, ‘straightening out’ and ‘disentangling’ that underlie rieyo.

Such equations between the political and the kinship sphere are common in Kaleko. William, for instance, argued that his third wife's temporary disappearances are a consequence of her right to ‘protest in the streets’. Comparisons between the recently introduced semi-autonomous counties, which people believe ‘are owned’ by specific ethnic groups, and homestead clusters where brothers who are considered to be relatively autonomous are simultaneously obliged to share wealth show that equations between Kenya and a homestead should not be viewed as metaphorical. Rather, these equations between politics and kinship reflect a specific understanding of politics itself, namely one in which the political sphere is potentially subject to the same process of ‘(re)ordering’ (cf. rieyo) as the kinship sphere. Kinship (wat) and politics (siasa) are not only ‘interpenetrated’, as Daniel Smith suggests in regard to corruption in Nigeria (Reference Smith2001: 345); rather, they are perceived to be structurally identical (Schmidt Reference Schmidt2014).

It is illuminating to look at two discourses about money to substantiate the claim that it is apt to talk about an upscaling of the rules regulating the homestead to the body politic. After I had asked how Raila would ‘sort out’ Kenya, David told me that an urgent issue would be to get rid of pesa mabandia (‘counterfeit money’).Footnote ¹² David, in line with many other jo-Kaleko, imagined that Kikuyu politicians printed ‘fake money’ to bribe Luo or to buy their ID cards in order to inhibit them from voting. Jo-Kaleko furthermore supposed that pesa mabandia would be accepted only immediately before and during the election. Thereafter, people would realize that the bank notes were counterfeit and it would thus be impossible to buy something with them. Luckily, though, Dorothy knew a fool-proof test to check if a bank note was counterfeit: one has to scrunch the bank note under scrutiny, throw it onto the ground and wait. If it unfolds autonomously, it is real money. Although the difference between pesa makech and pesa mabandia seems to lie in the latter's essential, non-removable infertility and inertness, exemplified in its inability to unfold (cf. Taussig Reference Taussig2010), both are believed to cause ‘blockings’ of pathways that could otherwise be used to create value and growth (dongruok). While pesa makech leads, for instance, to the barrenness of a woman and thereby blocks the growth of the patrilineal family, the dissemination of pesa mabandia into Western Kenya's economy leads to the selling of Luo ID cards and thereby ‘blocks Raila's way’ and ultimately inhibits the establishment of a true democracy led by a Luo politician.

While discussing the economic situation with Raymax Ooko, a teacher at a secondary school, I became aware of another discourse implicitly comparing the national circulation of money with the circulation of wealth in Kaleko's homesteads. Raymax did not buy into the assumption that Western Kenya's marginalization is a result of fake money or of what I had described to him as ‘bitter money’: ‘There is no difference to normal money, but it is too much money in circulation. That destroys us,’ he explained, embittered. ‘Kenyatta’ – at that time still Minister of Finance – ‘possesses a machine he has stolen from America. It is so big that Kenyatta's staff had to put it in a separate room where it prints as much money as Kenyatta wants.’ According to Raymax, the excess of money was supposed to destroy the ‘Luo economy’ by raising the prices of everyday goods,Footnote ¹³ which would increase the burden of jo-Kaleko depending on low pay. Like an elder brother who slows down the homestead's growth by sitting on his wealth instead of marrying so that the ‘path’ of his successor would be opened up, the teacher's folk version of the ‘quantitative theory of money supply’ assumes that unregulated accumulation of wealth, in the opinion of many closely connected to the continuous succession of Kikuyu and Kalenjin politicians into political office, leads to poverty and value depreciation.

The excessive production of real money and the manufacture of fake money – which, in the view of many jo-Kaleko, were deliberately set in motion by Kikuyu and Uhuru Kenyatta – are understood to imprison jo-Kaleko in an economy that inhibits stable investment and growth. Before the election in 2013, one obvious and promising solution to handle this problem was to substitute those who were in charge with one's own. However, Odinga's electoral loss dramatically changed how the potentials of politics were evaluated. The main consequence of his defeat, without a doubt, was that many jo-Kaleko have become disenchanted with politics and have accepted their politico-economic marginalization; this became manifest in the slogan ‘Democracy has died’, which circulated in Kaleko in the aftermath of the 2013 election – often accompanied by an avowal of a bleak political and economic future. If even the new constitution, considered the pinnacle of Kenya's political maturity, could not prevent ill-minded politicians from rigging elections and stealing votes, what else could?Footnote ¹⁴

‘The surroundings are as they are’: struggling in disorder and ‘wicked money’

Many jo-Kaleko seem to understand that nowadays, more often than not, people are forced to appropriate someone else's wealth. ‘Making business’ by harming others, for instance by charging tremendously high fares when people really depend on transportation – as during elections – is no longer automatically interpreted as illegitimate. ‘Eating money’ (chamo pesa) has apparently become an accepted source of income because it often appears to be the only way of surviving. It is not the fault of individuals but a problem of an economy and a political system that fail to provide enough food, money and political influence for everybody. This resilient acceptance of the bleak politico-economic situation is captured by an expression painted on Kaleko's small bicycle repair shop: ‘The surroundings are as they are’ (‘Piny mana kamano’; see Figure 2).

Figure 2 Bicycle repair shop in Kaleko. Photograph taken by the author, 15 April 2015.

An incident and the way in which Dorothy talked about it illuminate how some jo-Kaleko navigate a world experienced as irreversibly tainted by economic failure and political impasse. While we were idly sitting around in Dorothy's living room, she casually mentioned that, during the night, some neighbours had sneaked into her field to dig out potatoes. Dorothy, however, did not show signs of moral outrage. Instead, she calmly explained that, although the neighbours should have asked her, she understands them as there would not be enough food for everybody and consequently all people are forced to ‘struggle’ most of the time.

The term ‘struggling’ (chandre) captures the development from a reversible internal disorder to an external non-reversible disorder aptly. In contrast to rieyo, which is understood as ‘sorting out’ disorder and ‘disentangling’ chaos, chandre signifies a form of accepting and simultaneously creatively navigating uncertainty, chaos and poverty, while brave young men, often called ‘thugs’ or ‘hooligans’, use the term to emphasize not only their hopelessness but at the same time their ability to tolerate disorder with a certain style and bravado (Vigh Reference Vigh2009; Weiss Reference Weiss2009). One archetypical ‘thug’ whom I met during my fieldwork in Kaleko was Wellington Ochieng, the thirty-year-old son of Dorothy's husband's first wife, who had died in the 1990s. Loving his NBA jerseys and woollen hats, Wellington, who still lived in the simba (‘bachelor's hut’) of Dorothy's dala, was known to be engaged in semi-legal activities and his whereabouts were a constant topic of rumours and gossip. The evaluation of Wellington's behaviour oscillated between accusations that he neglected his family responsibilities and outright enthusiasm for his cunning. His plan to ‘borrow’ cutlery, crockery and table cloths from Dorothy only to sell them to his uncle Patrick led to both laughter and anger during dinners to which Dorothy had invited me. From Wellington's perspective, however, such activities were the only means to ‘survive’ in a world that was devoid of a meaningful future. Instead of remaining in paralyzing and agonizing ‘waithood’ (Honwana Reference Honwana2012: 3–6), Wellington and other ‘thugs’ decide to constantly be on the move and ‘try their luck’ (Cooper Reference Cooper, Cooper and Pratten2014).

In contrast to Wellington, who blatantly ignores Luo moral order (chik), Dorothy creatively reinterprets how the relations between parts of the social body are regulated. What was conceptualized as the intra-action of value to another part of oneself becomes the intra-action of an absence of value: instead of Dorothy giving away the potatoes, her neighbours gave her the potatoes’ absence (on creative debt shifting in Western Kenya, see Shipton Reference Shipton2010). The net of relations that had been used to open up possibilities of value production is thereby formally upheld, while it is no longer primarily the production of value that is sought but maintenance of the whole social body in the face of inevitable value destruction. Instead of backing up the belief that the possibility of reinstating order permanently lies within one's own responsibility, chandre – from Dorothy's perspective – forces people to recognize that any action intended to appease marginalization merely displaces the suffering to another part of society or postpones it. ‘Hooligans’ such as Wellington, however, disregard Dorothy's conviction that every person shifting the absence of value to another part of society has to take into account the prosperity of that part as well as carefully reflect upon the level of one's own neediness. While both Wellington and Dorothy agree that ‘hustling’ (chandre) differs from ‘stealing’ (kwalo) (cf. Chernoff Reference Chernoff2003), Dorothy's form of ‘struggling’ aims at reducing the suffering of others as much as her own. Referring to chandre is thus, on the one hand, used to back up one's clinging to and continuing belief in chik, as shown by Dorothy's diagnosis that ignoring responsibility for others hazards a high risk that those neglected will suffer even more. On the other hand, references to chandre are used to sanction one's immoral behaviour, as in the case of local ‘thugs’ such as Wellington who justify blatant exploitation of others by alluding to the unknowability of the future and the necessity to survive in the present.

The pragmatic acceptance of uncertainty and economic exclusion that characterizes ‘struggling’ becomes manifest in a ‘wicked’ type of pesa marach that seduces its holder to spend it on ‘bad things’ (gik maricho). ‘Wicked money’, as Daniel Obonyo, owner of a bar in Sindo, told me, causes misfortune: one would find oneself suddenly in a bar drinking chang'aa (home-distilled liquor), would wake up next to a prostitute without remembering the previous night, or would lose one's wallet. Daniel emphasized that one quickly loses control over oneself whenever ‘wicked money’ takes hold. This constitutes an interesting difference from pesa makech, which fostered reflection on its expenditure because its owner knew that the money was ‘bitter’. This peculiarity of pesa makech left the owner with the option not to spend it, for instance, on cattle for bride wealth. In contrast, ‘wicked money’ literally spends itself.

By ascribing agency to pesa marach and metonymically equipping even small amounts of money with the potential to drag people, at least temporarily, into the poverty and helplessness that are experienced as a result of an overall economic decline (Weiss Reference Weiss1997), jo-Kaleko give voice to their marginal economic position. As much as the whole politico-economic situation pushes them to the margins of the economy (Morrison Reference Morrison2007), a single index of the latter – a mere 100 Kenyan shilling note of ‘wicked money’ that allows one to buy enough chang'aa to get seriously drunk – can lead to personal disintegration. As much as a single note thereby becomes synonymous with the whole, the whole extends beyond the control of the sum of individual actors: the ‘disordered surroundings’ can only be resiliently accepted and ‘struggled through’. While pesa makech left everyone who overstepped the rules of sociality with the agency to ‘sort things out’ and return to the stable world they knew and that empowered them, ‘wicked money’ signals a helplessness beyond any reliable form of economic, moral or political agency. The emergence of ‘wicked money’ and ‘struggling’ are thus effects of the same socio-economic situation. Both chandre and ‘wicked money’ are indexes of an experience of reality as hopeless and lacking in potential. This experience is consequently more and more normalized, ‘loses its exceptional character and in the end, as a “normal”, ordinary and banal phenomenon, becomes an imperative to consciousness’ (Mbembe and Roitman Reference Mbembe and Roitman1995: 325). It is precisely this normalization of socio-economic disorder that chandre and ‘wicked money’ speak of.

The next section elaborates a third, less radical solution to deal with disordered surroundings in an age of increased uncertainty: instead of acknowledging the impossibility of dealing with disorder or attempting to upscale the strategy of rieyo to the body politic, the actions of many jo-Kaleko merely suggest that the sphere of rieyo’s applicability has become diffuse and is no longer firmly anchored in the homestead, as in the case of disrupted relations signalled by pesa makech. As a consequence, many jo-Kaleko merely question the rigidity of the scope of rieyo’s applicability and try to discern that sphere of reality where uncertainty no longer or not yet rules. In other words, they attempt to uphold rieyo’s value-generating potential on a smaller scale. This downscaling of rieyo to the nuclear family, or even to one's own individual personality, is enacted as an ethical alternative to the ‘struggling’ of ‘hooligans’ such as Wellington. Furthermore, its emergence explains why it is not only ethnic hatred that has recently spilled over but also intra-ethnic tension between jo-Kaleko. The exclusion, one could say, turns against those who had unquestionably been included before. In the following section, such intra-ethnic tension is interpreted as a side effect of the diffusion of uncertainty into mundane and quotidian encounters (Bonhomme et al. Reference Bonhomme, Berthome and Delaplace2012). Disorder and uncertainty are no longer exclusively understood to be caused by politicians residing far away in Nairobi or Central Kenya – and probably they never were, except during politically heated moments.

‘Communal life is not there these days’: privatizing rieyo and pesa nono

While his homestead was unfenced during my first visits to Kaleko in 2009, William, a well-known jaduong’ (honourable elder), had decided to fence it between April 2014 and February 2015 when I returned to attend the funeral of his mother, the late Philister Achieng. After I inquired why he had put up fences, William asked me if I had never heard about jo-Kaleko stealing cows or ravaging fields. Having painfully experienced that not all jo-Kaleko stick to cultural rules, William suggested that I finally build my own house in Kaleko: ‘Privacy is important. People here have not yet realized that. But it is necessary. You should have your own house.’ Taken together, his praise of privacy and his attachment to Luo ‘values’ such as polygamy and political unity (riwruok) suggest that the geographical encapsulation of his family into a fenced compound can be provisionally understood as an attempt to privatize Luo order (chik). The fence could thus be analysed as indexing his effort to construct an enclosed ‘surrounding’ where rieyo and chik are still applicable, a secure and stable stronghold opposed to the ‘surroundings’ that William, as much as Dorothy, considers to be fraught with perils and uncertainty.

A short walk around Kaleko proves that other jo-Kaleko agree with William. If money is available, most new houses are furnished with iron windows and doors secured with padlocks. In addition, more and more people enclose their fields with fences and welcome the possibility of ‘hiding’ money by using mobile financial services. This turn towards privatization and securitization seems to contradict the potential of doorways and open thresholds to serve as locations where value is created (Geissler and Prince Reference Geissler and Prince2010: 116–22) or, as in Dorothy's case, the absence of value shifted around. However, individuals’ choices aligned to this turn trigger contradictory responses, which illustrates that the question of who belongs to one's ‘private’ sphere is strongly debated. During the time I resided in Antony's house, which I used and still use as my base during fieldwork, I was, for instance, often caught up between contradictory demands connected with the opening and closure of doorways. While Antony repeatedly reminded me to close the door with padlocks whenever I left, as he suspected that some of his sisters-in-law or nephews would otherwise sneak in and ‘borrow’ some kitchen utensils or furniture, other members of the homestead accused me of being overly seclusive.Footnote ¹⁵ Instead of allowing others to ‘borrow’ what they need and thereby trusting them, as Dorothy proposed, Antony opted for securitization because he feared that otherwise it would be impossible to build up a ‘good house’.

Protective measures are, however, not limited to guarding wealth in the form of land, furniture, cows and money. After telling him that I had recently discovered that people take karate classes in an otherwise unused hall next to Kaleko's market, Jack Okech, a twenty-four-year-old student at the University of Nairobi, smiled and admitted that he had actively participated in these classes because ‘nobody can be trusted nowadays. You see, I really adore the man who invented the gun. It is great for self-protection.’ After I had asked him during one of our strolls why he thought it necessary to take care of oneself before taking care of other people, although Luo are known not only as peaceful but also as caring, he merely shook his head and cited a proverb: ‘Dhier ma ka owadu ok moni nindo’ (‘The poorness in your brother's house does not hinder you to sleep’). For him and many others, ‘communal life is not there these days’, as a businessman living in Kisumu had explained to me. Not in the rural area and even less so in town, as an experience Grace Omondi shared with me illustrates.

Grace, a twenty-two-year-old girl from Siaya who went to Nairobi at the age of sixteen to work as a maid, often told me that Nairobians are cold and do not care about fellow Kenyans: ‘It's difficult to talk to people in Nairobi. When you enter a Nissan [minibus], they will not even look at you.’ After thus expressing her distress, she laughed heartily and confessed that when she had visited her rural home the last time, her mother had accused her of being ‘egoistic’ and ‘spoiled’. Apparently, a neighbour had talked badly about Grace, because Grace had refused to converse properly with her when their paths had crossed on market day. The neighbour had told Grace's mother that Grace's conviction that she was ‘something better’ only because she had made it to Nairobi was unjustified. Being reminded of that incident, Grace had suddenly realized that she was accusing Nairobians of doing something that she herself had been accused of a couple of weeks before. After discussing this incident, Grace and I concluded, by now both laughing, that nowadays it is indeed difficult to evaluate the strange behaviour of others as egoistic. Caring exclusively for oneself might be the result of a free decision to act egoistically, but it might also be the effect of the socio-economic situation. Grace's experience thus speaks of the intertwinement of the overarching economic situation and the fragility of day-to-day interactions and serves as an example of how ‘the wide-ranging dynamics of modernity translate into the basic substance of everyday social interaction on a smaller scale’ (Bonhomme Reference Bonhomme2012: 211).

The turn towards privacy, security and individualization also lies at the heart of another practice well known in Kaleko. While strolling around with Edward shortly after the primary elections of 2013, he confessed that he had taken money from a politician although he had never intended to vote for him. In contrast to what one might expect after reading Shipton's study of pesa makech, Edward does not consider such acts as immoral as long as one uses the money according to one's best consciousness, which, in this case, he had done by using the money to send a friend's sick daughter to hospital – a way of disposing of the money that reproduces social relations and would have led to negative effects in the 1980s. William has a less easy-going perspective on money gained in such a way. Similar to ‘handouts’ distributed during political campaigns, he perceives them as undeserved, as being acquired without ‘hard work’ legitimating their appropriation, and referred to them as one reason for Western Kenya's non-developing economy. Instead of working on their fields, people would walk and drive from one political event to the next in order to get some ‘extra cash’ (pesa nono). The two contradictory evaluations of the practice of taking money from politicians without intending to vote for them – on the one hand Edward's embrace, on the other William's rejection – exemplify a problem that results from relativizing the sphere of rieyo for the sake of upholding its potential to order the surroundings in such a way that value can grow. If the sphere of rieyo’s applicability is no longer limited to what happens inside homesteads inhabited by an extended family, it becomes difficult if not impossible for people not perfectly acquainted with the intentions and actions of others to evaluate whether acts are signs of an individualism that is blatantly directed against Luo chik or if they are attempts to rescue Luo chik on a smaller scale. Relativizing the sphere of rieyo’s applicability by privatizing it thus results in an unintended increase of uncertainty, although it actually aims to reduce uncertainty.

The difficulty of inferring someone's intention from the available information and the problem of having a multiplicity of potential perspectives, as epitomized in Grace's realization that one and the same action can cause mutually exclusive interpretations, not only lead to an increase in suspicions and allegations of illicitly gained wealth between Luo and to a dangerous impasse in regard to meaningful political action,Footnote ¹⁶ they are also mirrored in the relativity of pesa nono’s moral classification. Pesa nono refers to money that is gained in ways considered ‘disreputable’. In contrast to pesa makech, however, no overarching agreement exists as to what money should be classified as pesa nono. Almost all money can be put in this category, apart from money acquired by hard, manual labour (tich matek). While William classifies ‘handouts’ as pesa nono, other people might conclude that the money William acquires by selling maize other people plant for him is pesa nono. It is this reluctance to clarify what counts as pesa nono that inhibits jo-Kaleko from conceptualizing pesa nono as entailing socio-economic consequences comparable to the ones explored in the case of pesa makech. As much as socio-economic disorder and marginalization have made it difficult for jo-Kaleko to localize the sphere in which rieyo is applicable, money's moral classification has become a contested issue, of which not only pesa nono’s ambiguity but also pesa marach’s diversity are a clear index.