Writing for Kenya

by Wangari Muoria-Sal

  of the three young men, the sources of authority and self-confi dence

  that were available to their mothers are no longer there. Th

  ey do not

  have the certainty of belonging to a particular ‘natural’ ethnic com-

  munity and they do not want that kind of identifi cation—it is out of

  tune with the times. Like their mothers, they have had the possibility of

  getting good secondary education and some have continued in higher

  education institutions. However, their economic situation is uncertain.

  Th

  eir mothers entered the labour market in the relatively confi dent and

  prosperous 1960s and 1970s under an economic regime that favoured

  Kikuyu enterprise. In the present situation of economic decline and

  growing insecurity getting a regular job for a young educated person

  is extremely diffi

  cult and several of Muoria’s grandchildren consider

  going abroad to live and work.

  Like most of their cousins of both sexes, David, Patrick and Julius

  have fi nished secondary school either in Nairobi or at a boarding school

  in the rural areas. One has been to college and two are now employed

  in private business organizations: Patrick works in a computer fi rm

  and David is employed in a mobile phone company. Both are doing

  well. Julius, one of Christine’s two sons who still lives in the family

  compound in Pumwani, is a self-employed businessman and runs a

  barber shop called Soul Brothers with his brother George. Th

  e saloon is

  located in a shack on the roadside and is decorated with eye-catching

  brightly coloured wall paintings of young men and women, showing

  53 Interview with Patrick Muoria, David Muoria, Julius Mwaniki, Nairobi, December 1999.

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  the latest haircut fashions. George is a talented fashion designer who

  buys, redecorates and sells second-hand clothes from a stall at the

  nearby Gikomba Market, in sharp competitions with immigrants from

  Tanzania and the Congo who regard cutting-edge fashion as their busi-

  ness niche. George has a daughter with his Kikuyu wife, and Julius is

  married to a Luo woman and has two sons. In order to look aft er his

  growing family, Julius has built a small house in a plot on the outskirts

  of Nairobi, left to his mother by his grandmother. He lets the house

  and goes there frequently to supervise that things are in order and to

  collect the rent. While he and his brother manage to make ends meet,

  their chances of signifi cantly expanding their businesses and changing

  their social situation are small.

  Julius tells about growing up in the tough neighbourhood of Pum-

  wani, in the late 1970s and the 1980s, a period in which slums in Nairobi

  were left to cope with an enormous rural infl ux and the settlement of

  numerous refugees from unstable neighbouring countries, without

  assistance from the government or the City Council:

  During our youth there was no time that we were involved in crime or

  drugs, but we really lived in ghetto circumstances. Prostitution was at

  a high rate, also there were many drunkards because money was not

  a problem those days—the economy was good. Mum used to warn us

  not to go near the prostitutes, also they knew that our father came from

  their place Tanzania, so they used to respect us.54 Our group was known

  as guys from Machini, meaning guys from down land, because we are

  near to the river.

  Machini, named by people who had moved there from Masikini, where their great grand mother Pricilla had settled sixty years earlier, lies next

  to Kamukunji Grounds, a large open space famous for being the site

  of oppositional political rallies and witness to a great deal of political

  and social violence. Julius and his friends have also taken part: ‘We also

  used to organize some gang fi ghts at Kamukunji Grounds to see which

  group was tougher than the other. Our group used to win always.’ In

  spite of being members of a relatively wealthy family, Christine and

  her sons in periods had to fi ght poverty:

  I remember there was a time when things were not good and we ended

  up collecting metal bars around Gikomba Market and going to sell them

  54 Julius is referring to the fact, well known locally, that many of the women working as prostitutes in Pumwani come from Tanzania.

  the muorias in kenya

  91

  to scrap metal workshops or garages. We could get good money by selling

  and we could spend it buying bread and going to movies. Mum did not

  like it so we had to stop this business.55

  Respectability was important and it was linked with Kikuyu ways and

  customs—what Julius and his cousins would refer to as ‘our culture’,

  a composite fi eld of norms and ideals, put together by elements from

  imagined Kikuyu, national and African culture. When asked about their

  identity, the young men claimed that being African is what is most

  important to them. Being Kenyan comes next and fi nally the tribal

  heritage gets a passing mention: ‘In our age group we don’t think that

  tribe comes in that much.’ Th

  e young men understand Gikuyu and

  speak some but prefer Swahili and English. Th

  ey are part of an urban

  generation who make use among themselves of Sheng—a mixture of

  English, Swahili and other African languages common in Nairobi, like

  Gikuyu and Luo. Th

  ey refer to and share their grandfather’s pride

  in being African and his beliefs in Christianity and education: ‘Most

  Africans feel inferior. We should be proud of ourselves. Th

  ere are two

  hundred and fi ft y six churches in Kenya. We have Christianity and

  have gone to school and found out what is good for us.’56

  Th

  e cousins support their family’s tradition of openness towards other

  ethnic groups and other cultures. Th

  eir aunt Rosabell expresses it like

  this: ‘Th

  e Muoria’s have a broad heart that is able to accept with ease

  people who are diff erent from them.’57 In the Kenya branches of the

  family marriage partners include Asians, Luos and Luhyas. Even for the

  most urbanized of Kenyans, however, there are moments of cultural

  truth. One is marriage. When Patrick’s sister got married to a young

  Luhya man in December 1999 in Nairobi, the wedding was preceded

  by elaborate bridewealth negotiations. Th

  ey involved substantial delega-

  tions and senior spokesmen from both sides, drawing on Kikuyu and

  Luhya culture to an extent where problems of translation threatened

  to become acute. Th

  ey were overcome in the end not least because of

  the tolerance and understanding on the part of the Muorias.

  Th

  e Nairobi-based cousins regret the lack of connections to their

  rural cousins, uncles and aunts. Most of them did not visit the family

  home in Nyathuna until the late 1980s, when they were almost grown

  55 Personal Letter, November 2002.

  56 Interview, Nairobi, December 1999.

  57 Personal letter, December 1999.

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  chapter two

  up. Th />
  ey went during a home visit by their London-based grandpar-

  ents. Th

  e young men in Pumwani have felt that something was missing

  when they were children, because almost all the people they mixed

  with in the dense and sociable neighbourhood would go regularly to

  the rural areas in holidays to visit their family: ‘Th

  em, they used to go.

  So when they came back they would say, ‘ah, those guys, they don’t

  go to their places, they don’t have any rural places’, they used to tease

  us.’ Th

  ey explained that the grandmother is the central fi gure making

  connections between the town and the countryside branches of the

  family: ‘Our family . . . when you go upcountry you normally go and

  see your grandmother. Okay, the grandmother is not around, she is in

  London, so there is no way we could.’ On the whole, however, urban

  life has suited them and they do not feel that the lack of connection to

  upcountry has been a serious problem when they were children. Now

  that they are adults they desire closer relations between branches of

  the family: ‘Nowadays, I think, I myself, I insist that . . . we should have

  contact, should be going there, should be talking to them, so we know

  how they live and they know how we live—become one family.’58

  Th

  ey now like to visit their cousin Alex who is in charge of the family

  farm in Kiambu, with his uncle and his mother. Alex Muoria is the son

  of James Gitau and has inherited his father’s artistic talent. He draws,

  paints and makes skillful clay fi gures. However, as the eldest of four

  brothers and sisters he has responsibility for his widowed mother and

  his siblings. He had to leave school two years before graduating and

  assist in the cultivation of the land because of economic diffi

  culties

  and his father’s illness. He is grateful that Muoria has left the fam-

  ily with suffi

  cient land to cultivate: ‘We pretty much depend on the

  past, what our grandfathers did. Me I feel lucky because we have a

  garden, a big garden, compared to others.’ So that, although money

  for hiring seasonal agricultural labour and for paying school fees may

  be diffi

  cult to fi nd, there is enough produce—spices, cabbage, maize,

  sweet potatoes, beans and sukuma wiki (‘spinach’)—to provide for the

  family. Especially aft er an electric pump for the irrigation system has

  been installed. ‘I would like to stay in the rural areas. Farming, I think

  it’s good. I would like to build a very good house and put my farm in

  very good order.’ Alex is now in the process of building his own home,

  58 Interview, Nairobi, December 1999.

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  93

  the third substantial building on the Muoria land. He is happy to be

  part of the Muoria mbari:

  My grandfather could marry many wives. . . . The land was divided

  between wives. Th

  e children of those wives belonged to the family, that

  is the mbari . . . who are all the same root. Th

  ey became a long chain—

  I believe it was a very long chain. And they had similarities—they have

  some common things.

  Like his grandmother, his uncle in London, and his cousins in Nairobi,

  he singles out the signifi cance of religion in giving cohesion and hope

  to the family.

  Th

  e part I like about Kikuyus, they knew God. Th

  ey used to worship at

  a Ngumo tree, a fi g tree. Th

  ey would go to the shrine and pray for rain

  and stay, and by the time they came out it would rain. I tried to compare

  with the Bible and I saw that they were facing Mount Kenya, so they were

  also facing Mount Sinai. I saw they knew God.59

  His far-away cousin Terry in Oakland California certainly feels that she

  is part of the Muoria mbari: ‘Being a Muoria means being royalty—it

  gave us a certain status in school, although we were from a poor area

  in Nairobi.’60 She is one of Hellen and John’s six daughters and grew

  up in Kibera, a large mixed Nairobi neighbourhood, with her parents

  and sisters. She fi nished her secondary education there and has now

  spent more than ten years in the United States, graduating in Business

  Studies and Hotel Management. Her elder sister, Nuna, has joined her,

  works for an attorney and lives round the corner from her.

  Nuna and Terry both affi

  rm that their Kenyan identity is important

  to them though they are temporarily ‘dislocated’, as Nuna terms it. She

  has happy memories of her grandparents—‘my grandma is a beautiful

  proud woman’—and thinks that ‘being a Muoria is just nice.’ She has

  known for a long time that she wanted to live in America although

  she is ‘Kenyan to the core’. Californian living suits her and she experi-

  ences a great deal of interest in her African background. Both sisters

  notice that African identity, names and language enjoy a high prestige

  in American popular culture: ‘It’s cool, actually, now in Oakland, to

  speak Swahili. I know a couple of local schools, which teach Swahili.

  Th

  ere is an interest in Africa and wanting to be African. In sitcoms

  59 Interview with Alex Muoria, Kiambu, October 2000.

  60 Interview, Terry Gichache, Oakland, April 2003.

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  chapter two

  nowadays you’ll fi nd a word in Swahili, in advertisement and in radio

  commercials. So I think Swahili is part of popular culture.’ Th

  e high

  value put on things African has strengthened Terry’s resolve to return

  to Kenya. She notes her own paradoxical trajectory: ‘For me it’s the

  reverse. Before I came, I wanted to be African American, but when I

  came here people wanted to be Kenyan and African. . . . Right now I

  think I am a Kenyan most importantly, and an independent woman.’61

  Both identities have been strengthened by her life in America.

  Within the plethora of possible identities those of Henry Muoria’s

  grandchildren who were born in Kenya seem to have made their choices:

  whereas Muoria’s sons and daughters still want to keep up aspects

  of belonging to the Kikuyu community, Alex, Patrick, David, Julius,

  Nuna and Terry all identify with ‘Kenya’ and ‘Africa’ more than with

  Kikuyu heritage, no matter whether they live in rural Kenya, Nairobi,

  or the United States.

  Conclusion

  Like other colonized societies, Kenya underwent massive political

  and economic change in the period. As a consequence of the region’s

  incorporation in a new global political economy, urbanization and

  centralization, livelihoods became diversifi ed and the population was

  no longer solely dependent on trade and agricultural produce; land

  became scarce and processes of rural class diff erentiation led to a

  growing mobility, aff ecting both men and women, and more or less

  permanent states of migration. Women and young people have taken

  advantage of the possibilities that the establishment of a diversifi ed

  economy and the growth of urban centers have represented.
In some

  urban settings, as we have seen, social organization centred round gen-

  erations of women and tended towards a matrilineal social order. In

  the early period young men in particular, but also some women, made

  sure to harvest the fruits of education which came hand in hand with

  mission Christianity. Later, with independence, reading and writing

  became everybody’s birthright. Spatial mobility had been a reality for

  a long time, but for most people it was limited to movement between

  the town and the countryside—a process that deployed members of

  61 Interview, Oakland, April 2003.

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  95

  an extended family network in accordance with family obligations and

  economic opportunities. Divisions and links between rural and urban

  living increasingly became a theme in the lives of Kenyans. Urban living

  and the new mobility meant that for some sections of the population the

  ideal and possibility of a nuclear family structure was attractive. Housing

  arrangements and income levels in the cities made the perpetuation of

  larger kinship-based family organization diffi

  cult. However, Kenyans

  continued depending on each other in extended family networks and

  many families have kept features that were characteristic of earlier

  polygamous structures. Similarly, they have continued drawing on both

  rural and urban resources in their fi ght to lead decent lives

  Henry Muoria published his newspaper and wrote his pamphlets in a

  period that has turned out to be decisive in the development of Kenya’s

  politics and society. In the decade aft er the Second World War politics

  were conducted in a complex negotiated and fought-out relationship

  between colonizers and colonized. For a long period the use of force

  was the crowning argument in these fi ghts. Power was taken away from

  elderly rural patriarchs and habitual orderings of relations between

  genders and generations in the African population became destabilized

  in the wake of urbanization and the growth of political organization.

  From the 1930s onwards, and decisively in the 1950s and 1960s, Kenyans

  moved from being unhappy subjects of an alien colonial regime to

  achieving and enjoying the full rights and confi dence of citizenship in

  an independent nation. Independence, however, came only aft er the

  confrontation between British colonialism and Kenyan nationalism and