ABSTRACT
The Katuruka committee’s investigation of oral traditions and oral histories was undertaken with a keen awareness that significant changes had affected this heritage, and that people today possess only a fragment of the oral knowledge that they once commanded. The fragmentary characteristic of such knowledge was not homogeneous. Some people retained more knowledge than others, and community members knew who among them were the best keepers of oral traditions and oral histories, namely, the elderly women who had become recognized keepers of heritage knowledge. An understanding of Njeru and her potential importance in the heritage of Katuruka and more broadly the history of Buhaya and the Great Lakes area first developed from interviews that Benjamin Shegesha conducted with Ma Eudes Bambanza, Ma Zuriat Mohammed, Ma Eudes’s brother Leveriani Bambanza, and one other male elder.
