4 ideas
Muthoni, daughter of Joshua, the zealous Christian convert who leads Makuyu, runs away to her aunt in Kameno to undergo the female circumcision rite her father's church forbids. She says she wants to be a Christian and also a woman made beautiful in the ways of the tribe. The wound becomes infected and she dies at the mission hospital saying she sees Jesus, and each ridge reads her death as proof that the other side is wrong.
It is not a detachable custom. When the mission bans the rite, it is really ruling on who belongs to the society at all, so converts are pushed out of the tribe and traditionalists are pushed out of the schools. The fight over the practice is therefore a fight over membership, and neither side can give ground without giving up its community.
Waiyaki is sent to the Siriana mission school by his father, Chege, who believes an old prophecy that a saviour will come from the hills. After the mission expels children of circumcised families, Waiyaki builds independent schools and is hailed as a teacher and saviour. He puts off what the people are asking for, which is political unity against the settlers, and he loves the uncircumcised Nyambura. His rivals Kabonyi and the Kiama council then brand him a traitor and hand him over to judgment before the assembled ridges.
Joshua on the Christian side and Kabonyi on the tribal side each gain authority by defining purity as total rejection of the other ridge, so each needs the conflict in order to stay powerful. A figure who tries to hold both identities, such as Muthoni or Waiyaki, threatens both camps at the same moment. Such a figure is sacrificed not because the two camps agree with each other but because a bridge makes their authority unnecessary.