News, Reviews and Opinions

                The Kikuyu faced Mt Kenya during prayers in the belief that God reseded there  -  image from Wikipedia commons Who was Wang'ombe wa Ihura of the Kikuyu? Chief Wangombe was the son of a Kikuyu man and a Maasai woman. He was born in Tetu, at Kamakwa, near present-day Nyeri Town. His father and therefore the whole family, belonged to the Ambui clan of Thiukui  Mbari . Mbari is a cluster of homesteads whose members of several generations can trace their origins to a single clan member. His father was a trader by the name of Ihura Karugu. He went frequently into Maasai country to trade for foodstuffs, especially during famines and cattle epidemics when the Maasai needed grain most. In one of Ihura’s business trips , in the company of the young Wangombe, he was dispatched by the Laikipiak Maasai. The young boy escaped and went to live with his relatives among the same people who had caused the demise of his father. Af...

  Kikuyu people: Ceremony of the second birth Routledge, writing in the early 1900s, noted that all the Kikuyu clans in his locality took their male children through a ceremony that re-enacted a birth. He termed it appropriately ‘second birth’ and was perplexed by it. He noted that “the symbolical second birth is perhaps the most mysterious of the Kikuyu rites…” Routledge tried to get to the bottom of the rite, but much as he tried, the Kikuyu would not let him in on it. He even offered to be taken through the rite himself, while his wife offered to be one of the birth attendants. Routledge records that “no amount of bribery or use of personal influence prevailed to permit either of us to witness it.” The European couple was, however, fortunate to have among their servants “natives who have freed themselves from tradition,” who described the procedure, having gone through the ceremony themselves. For those who have read my writings about the Kikuyu having come from ancient Egyp...