The Kikuyu were polygamous and although the original ten clans are named after a the ten daughters of Mumbi giving speculation that there might have been a time the society was a matriarchy, this had faded into a myth7 and the political organization was at the turn of the 19th Century a patriarchy, the man being the head of a family with several wives each having her own separate hut and granary.
Every Kikuyu belongs to one of the ten clans. When a man marries a woman from a different clan, the offspring will belong to the clan of the man although the woman continues to be associated with to her father’s clan and its practices. All the members issuing from a man’s union with one or more wives become members of the same Mucii which literally means homestead. In a polygamous homestead, each wife was a githaku or her “side” consisting of an area defined by her daily operations outside her hut. The githaku not only meant a physical space but also a social unit. Each woman’s children in a polygamous
7 Kenyatta 1965 Kenyatta gives an elaborate myth of “How women stopped to rule over the men”. P 8-10
arrangement belonged to her githaku, (Wanjau, 1998:18). All the offspring of the several brothers and step brothers will belong to a nyumba of their patriarch.
This nyumba or “house of” was usually named after the grandfather patriarch of that house for nyumba literally means house. Beyond first cousins, and other further removed extended families are what constitutes the mbari or sub-clan.
This can be a very big affair and the mbari settled all along a ridge with a river or stream separating it from the mbari across the river (Muriuki, 1974:59).This does not mean that some members could not go and settle elsewhere. They always did, but always referred to their ‘real’ home as where the main mbari was located. Mbari literally means side and the Kikuyus say the “people of that side”, or that mbari. Very many mbaris are what constitute a clan, muhiriga.
Fig 2.9 Kikuyu Social Structure. (Source: Author, 2011)
The homestead of a man whether polygamous or not stood as a distinct entity that could be termed the basic planning unit. Whether several homesteads belonging to a sub clan or house were built close together for security purposes, or it stood apart, a homestead could always be identified as the definite planning unit.
Since this Mucii literally translates as “Home”, the term homestead is then the proper description of this organizational unit as is understood among the Kikuyu. It is very well illustrated my Wangari Maathai in her autobiography.
“My father had four wives, including one he married after I was born. My mother was the second wife. At the time I was living in Nakuru, there were about ten children in my father’s household. All of us, the wives and the children and my father, lived in a single compound, a typical Kikuyu homestead. Our homestead covered a large open space and included several houses and a big courtyard with a fence and gate surrounding it.
My father had his own hut, called a thingira, which was one large, round room constructed of mud and wood and covered by a sloped grass-thatched roof. Here he ate, slept, and received guests, including strangers,
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who were not supposed to go beyond the thingira without permission from the man of the house. I would sometimes take food from my mother to my father in his hut, but as a girl I would not be expected to stay. This was the realm of men, boys and male visitors. Each of my father’s wives had her own house, called a nyumba, similarly constructed but with several compartments. This was the realm of the woman, the children, and female visitors and relatives” (Maathai, 2006:16).
From Maathai’s description and others like Thiong'o (2010) it is possible to get a snapshot of what she calls a ‘typical Kikuyu homestead’. If a man had say ten or more wives, which was not uncommon, the entire settlement could look like a village and was called an ituura or village. When several, independent homesteads were built close to each other for security reasons, they would likewise be called an ituura or village but a closer look would reveal that they constituted wholes of individual compounds or homesteads and yet possessing a social interaction that was quite strong.
Community life among the Kikuyu revolved around the village, a term that is also used for the settlement on a ridge of several independent homesteads closely linked by a network of paths and usually associated with a particular sub-clan, mbari. During the months of January and February after the harvest when it was dry and cool, the people held communal dancing and singing over the territory. These dances were organized by villages though several villages could come together for a major dance or competition for instance the “initiated singers” competition of enigmatic poetry, gicandi, (Pick, 1973). The people dressed for the songs and they took place mainly in the evenings just before twilight when there was moonlight. They were arranged according to ages and sex. Young girls would participate in the ‘one bone’ dance, ihindi rimwe. Young boys who had not yet been circumcised held their Nguru, the young men and women held the Kibata and Gicukia, while there was an older men only mugoiyo and a older women only Ndumo and Gitiro (Wambugu, 2006:179-182). These dances showed an extremely sophisticated level of spatial order and organization which has not been studied adequately. In the Gicukia for instance the dancing around the Mukuyu tree of origin seems to reflect mandala formations found in other cultural groups all over Africa and Asia. One cannot fail to see the complexity of the formations though their meaning may be obscure.
Fig. 2.10 Kikuyu Dances. The gicukia dance for young men performed round a Mukuyu tree. (Source: Cagnolo 1933)
In most evenings, children huddled near the fire in the woman’s hut listening to folk tales and this constituted a form of education. The day was spent either working in the fields, collecting firewood and for the boys, rearing goats and generally playing. Women took the bulk of the work in the fields helped by girls.
Boys play consisted of shooting and hunting birds with slings made of string and pieces of leather. Another game, ‘spearing the hoop’, kuratha mbara, was a form of amusement for the expression of the beginnings of sexual passion as well as developing the idea of the circle and the point. One boy would throw the hoop while his mate tried to throw a sharpened stake through it while mentioning the name of the girl of his dreams. If he speared her, it meant there was hope while missing meant she would spurn him. Girls could amuse
themselves with body form exercises like the dance of ‘one bone’, ihindi rimwe, gyrating on one leg as the world rotates on its axis. Another game by girls was with round ball seeds of the Sodom Apple, Ndongu, (solanum incanum), the size of marbles. There were many other games also specific to regions.
Fig 2.11 Various youth amusement activities. (Source: Wambugu 2006) Left: Boys putting a point to a circle and right the one bone dance by girls.
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