Capturing khandi: For the young men in Northern Kenya, initiation is no joke

When Samuel Derbyshire and Abdikadir Kurewa set out to document an enigmatic ceremony, they left with questions about globalisation, the endurance of social rituals, and the changing face of masculinity

The Rendille initiates singing in the run up to their circumcision (Samuel Derbyshire)

After three days on the road, we arrive in Korr in the scrublands of northern Kenya, not far from the shores of Lake Turkana. It is a secluded and dusty settlement, which grew out of an Italian mission station established in the 1980s; a cluster of kiosks, squat houses, and camels waiting to be sold. There is neither electricity nor piped water.

Our car is laden with tents, fuel, food supplies – everything we’ll need for a month in the bush, we hope. But Korr is not its usual quiet self. All around us is the hum of expectation, and every now and then, as if out of nowhere, a band of young men come marching by dressed in animal skins that have been smeared with a thick coat of charcoal, singing together in call and response and fluttering their hands over their mouths with a sort of hypnotic vigour.

When we enquire, with the last of our energy, as to what, exactly, they are singing, we are told nonchalantly: “They are calling for anyone among them who is afraid of the blade to flee this land, and to never return.” Within a few weeks, these young men will have been circumcised, and khandi, a rite of passage that all Rendille men must undergo, will be over for another 14 years.