118. Kamwanya is a ‘small opening’, as in a break in a hedge. Kenyatta is referring to the nomination of Eliud Mathu in 1944 as the fi rst African member of Legislative Council, to join the Revd. Leonard Beecher as the second representative of African interests.
119. Th
e meaning of this reference is not transparent. Th
e Gikuyu text says that
Barlow (a Scots missionary and Gikuyu linguist) is ‘reported to have said that the maheni ma kwihonokia ti moru’, that the ‘lies of saving yourself are not bad’. Uhonokio,
‘salvation’, was the name Kikuyu gave to the East African Revival, a Christian conver-sion movement that began in Rwanda in the late 1930s and spread to Kikuyuland by
kenyatta is our reconciler
391
the mid-1940s. Its converts, many of them women, made a practice of testifying, in public, about their most private sins. Th
eir talk infuriated Kikuyu elders, who regarded
revivalists as scurrilous gossip-mongers. Kenyatta’s phrase may therefore interpreted as a jibe against lying revivalists, who slandered other people for their own gain. See also above, ‘What Should we Do?’ section headed ‘Th
e reason of prayers and belief ’.
120. Kenyatta here lists some of the different organizations running churches and schools in 1940s Gikuyuland. See the previous section, and footnote 109, above for Kenyatta’s earlier criticism of denominational division and the reaction among whites.
121. Kenyatta uses the word Ithiramu here, a Gikuyu-ized version of the Swahili word Islamu.
122. Kenyatta here quotes the 5th of the ‘Ten Commandments’. See Exodus 20: 12.
123. ‘If we promote him’ is an interesting phrase to apply to offi
cially appointed chiefs
who were formally state servants rather than popular representatives. But the legitimacy of chiefs depended on a complicated calculus of popular support, British backing, and factional intrigue. See, Th
roup, Economic & Social Origins of Mau Mau, 144–51.
124. Ihaki were the fees paid by young men to their elders upon their initiation, or the fee paid by litigants in court cases.
125. While Kenyatta placed great emphasis on the need to enlarge and improve the facilities at Githunguri and invited the assistance of a white woman teacher (information from June Knowles, February 2008) his reputation suff ered, whether from his alleged embezzlement of the construction fund—probably of more concern to the British than to Kikuyu—or from the fact that donations to build his power, seen as legitimate by Kikuyu, did not enable him to achieve any desired reform, especially the alleviation of landlessness. For these diff ering views see, Corfi eld Report, 91, 183–9; Kershaw, Mau Mau from Below, 218–19, 242–3.
126. In Gikuyu Kenyatta assures his listeners that the Karing’a, ‘true Gikuyu’, are not the only ones at Githunguri school.
127. Chai, ‘tea’ or kitu kidogo, ‘something small’, remain colloquial Kenyan terms for a bribe.
128. Kabete, the senior Anglican mission station in Kikuyuland, had been founded and expanded with the sponsorship of the Mugane Njonjo and Koinange families, both of which furnished senior colonial chiefs and post-colonial cabinet ministers. It was the mission where both Grace Wahu, Kenyatta’s fi rst wife, and Henry Muoria had been educated. While this letter was not published in Muoria’s original Gikuyu-text pamphlet, we think it probable that it appeared in Mumenyereri—a supposition that cannot now be substantiated, since very few copies survive and not everything that appeared in the paper was translated for the information of the British (to be preserved in the Kenya National Archives).
129. A benevolent ancestor, beloved by his descendants for bequeathing land and livestock, the substance of life, to his or her descendants. We should note that this very high praise came from a senior mission school rather than from an independent school.
130. Or, ‘leaders do not shirk responsibility’.
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Writing for Kenya Page 58
