Apprehending asapan a project to document the Turkana initiation ceremony in northern Kenya

Asapan, the initiation ceremony of the Turkana of northern Kenya, is a ceremony that draws together an extraordinary array of skills, knowledges, material histories and embodied performances. It is a social institution that reverberates through the entire population of the remote Turkana region, its ramifications emerging in ritual and domestic contexts alike. It is central to marriage, the management of territories (ngitela) and a wide range of other important practices, but it also compels the construction and implementation of a diminishingly rare array ritually-significant objects. Spears (ngakwaras), wooden bowls (ngatubwae), milk containers (ngakurumuo), circular wrist knifes (ngabara), head dresses (ngapukoto and ngimeod) and bundles of neck beads (ngakoroumwa) all take part in asapan, materialising the critical transition into adulthood. In their performances, these objects reach across diverse spatial and temporal scales, articulating complex histories, value systems and a landscape of other social institutions; they serve to make and re-make Turkana identities in the face of unprecedented socio-economic and environmental uncertainty. Building on unique historical collections from the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, this project will meticulously document Turkana initiation, over a period of two years. Through extensive ethnographic research, the project will explore the material histories that converge in its present-day performance, recording them, and the ceremony itself, for the benefit of generations to come.