Gikuyu

From the top of the mountain the whole country lies open. Ice underfoot, thin cold air, and below it a long fall of forest, ridge after ridge going down green into the haze. This is where the story of the Agikuyu begins, with one man standing on the summit of Kirinyaga, the mountain the maps call Mount Kenya, while his maker points out what is to be his.

The man is Gikuyu. The maker is Ngai, also called Mugai, the Divider, who lives in the sky and keeps the mountain as a resting place on earth. Ngai made Gikuyu, carried him up to the peak, and showed him the land running south and west from its foot: rivers, valleys, game, and timber. Then he pointed to one spot in the middle of it, thick with fig trees, and told him to go down and build there. The place is called Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga, or Mukurwe wa Gathanga in the older spelling. One telling from Murang’a adds that Gikuyu was to look for a mukurwe tree full of nesting birds, the nyagathanga, and that when he reached it the birds sang and he knew he had arrived.

He had not been sent there alone. Waiting in the grove was a woman, Mumbi, whose name means the one who moulds or creates. The two set up house together, and that homestead is counted as the first Kikuyu home. A day there looks like any day on those ridges since. Smoke lifting through thatch in the early chill. A man out at first light with the goats, a woman at the hearth, red earth turning to mud after the rains.

Mumbi bore nine daughters and no sons. Their names are still among the commonest given to Kikuyu girls: Wanjiru, Wambui, Wanjiku, Wangui, Wangeci, Wanjeri, Nyambura, Wairimu and Wangari, with some variation from list to list. There was a tenth, Wamuyu, also called Warigia. Custom avoids counting people out to ten, so the daughters are spoken of as the full nine, which is a polite way of saying ten without saying it.

Nine daughters and no sons is a problem with only one kind of solution, and Gikuyu could not supply it. So he did what Ngai had told him to do in any trouble. He made a sacrifice and turned his face to the mountain. He killed a lamb under a great fig tree near the homestead, and lit the fire. The tellings part company on what came next. In one, nine young men walked out of the flames as the meat burned. In another, he went home, slept, and came back at daybreak to find nine strangers standing quietly under the tree, waiting to be spoken to. Either way there were nine of them, and each daughter is said to have chosen the man who matched her in height.

Gikuyu did not simply hand his daughters over. The young men could marry them only if they agreed to stay, live in his homestead and let the children belong to the mothers’ line. They agreed. There was not much else to do. Each daughter’s household grew into a clan that carried her name, the Anjiru from Wanjiru, the Ambui from Wambui, and so on through the list, and those are the nine full clans of the Kikuyu. The tenth daughter married later and outside the arrangement. Some say she bore a child unwed, and some link her to the neighbouring Akamba.

So the father of the nation founded a people who were, for their first generations, counted through their mothers. A further story explains how that ended. The women ruled, took several husbands and grew harsh, and the men, tired of it, laid a plot. They arranged matters so that all the women were heavily pregnant at the same moment, and then they rose. The women could not fight. Descent passed to the fathers and the men took more than one wife from then on, but the clans kept the daughters’ names and keep them still.

What Gikuyu holds in all this is a founder’s power and nothing stranger. He has no weapon, kills no monster and works no wonders. Ngai gives him the land outright, and he can call on Ngai and be answered, which in this story is the only strength that matters. His limits are just as plain. He cannot make sons, cannot find husbands, cannot do anything about either except ask. And his name went onto the people while the houses inside it went to his wife and daughters. The Agikuyu have long called themselves the house of Mumbi.

The story reached print through several hands. Jomo Kenyatta, later the first president of Kenya, told it in Facing Mount Kenya in 1938, the anthropologist Louis Leakey gathered it in the same decade, and Kikuyu writers such as Gakaara wa Wanjau set down the clans in their own language. The grove is still there. Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga in Murang’a County is a protected cultural site, with a tree, a ring of old-style round houses and elders who still go there to pray.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Gikuyu in Kikuyu tradition?

Gikuyu is the first man and founding father of the Agikuyu, or Kikuyu, people of central Kenya. The god Ngai created him, showed him his land from the top of Mount Kenya and sent him to live at Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga. The Kikuyu people take their name from him.

Who were Gikuyu and Mumbi?

Gikuyu and Mumbi are the first man and first woman in the Kikuyu origin story. Gikuyu found Mumbi waiting for him in the fig grove where Ngai told him to settle, and their homestead is counted as the first Kikuyu home. They had nine daughters, usually said to be the full nine, meaning ten.

How did the daughters of Gikuyu find husbands?

Gikuyu had no sons and no men to marry his daughters, so he sacrificed a lamb under a fig tree and prayed to Ngai. In one telling nine young men came out of the fire, and in another he found nine men waiting under the tree the next morning. They married the nine daughters on condition that they lived in the homestead of Gikuyu and let descent run through the women.

Where did Gikuyu live?

Gikuyu lived at Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga, a grove of fig trees in what is now Murang’a County in central Kenya. Ngai pointed the place out to him from the summit of Kirinyaga, which is Mount Kenya. The site is kept today as a protected shrine.

How are the Kikuyu clans connected to Gikuyu?

Each of the nine full Kikuyu clans descends from one daughter of Gikuyu and Mumbi and carries her name, such as the Anjiru from Wanjiru and the Ambui from Wambui. A later story says the women once ruled and the men overthrew them while the women were all pregnant. Descent then passed through fathers, but the clans kept the daughters’ names.

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