ARCHITECTURE
This chapter traces as chronologically as possible the transformations of Kikuyu Traditional architecture described in chapter three and attempts to uncover the forces behind the transformations. It shows how Livingstone’s 3Cs under the work of the early Christian missionaries, government officials in the departments of education, health, agriculture and the settler community were instrumental in bringing forth the changes in Kikuyu traditional architecture through a revolution in the conception and making of things.
4 . 1 0 C O N T A C T S W I T H T H E M A A S A I
The Kikuyu-Maasai cultural fusion is “deep and extensive” with some Kikuyu sub-clans, mbari tracing their origin from the Maasai (Muriuki, 1974:98). Dressing and especially the warrior hair styles and similarities in heraldry are the most obvious manifestations of this mutual influence but it also goes much deeper into shared linguistic and religious beliefs and practices. It has already been pointed out that the hostilities that existed between the Maasai and the Kikuyu resulted in the concept of fortified villages. As far as other influences on housing construction are concerned, there is a distinct similarity in the construction of the earlier Kikuyu brushwood wall and mud wall with their Maasai counterparts and a clear divergence in the construction of the roofs. The divergence in the roofs has to do with the difference in precipitation between the two zones. Whereas the Nyika plateau dry conditions of the Maasai habitat can do with flat mud roofs, the wet highland conditions of the Kikuyu demand a slopping roof. It is beyond the scope of this study to delve into what are the influences that impact on the two tribes’ architecture then and now. A reading of Rukwaro’s 1997 PhD thesis on Maasai architecture will reveal some of the similarities today, partly because some of the forces of change impacting on both are similar.
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4 . 2 0 C O N T A C T S W I T H T H E K A M B A A N D C O A S T A L T R A D E
The Kamba occupied the lower Athi plains on the East and South East of the Kikuyu plateau. This was a much drier area prone to draught and the Kamba were dependent on their Kikuyu Bantu cousins for food in times of famine in the plains. There were also intermarriages between The Kamba and the Kikuyu especially along the eastern border “though this was on a smaller scale in comparison to the Maasai-Kikuyu intermarriages” (Muriuki, 1974:107). The Kamba were the chief contacts with the Arab coast and the main source of the principle item of trade, ivory. “By the early nineteenth century, when the coastal elephant population had largely been destroyed, the Kamba, farther inland, became the principal providers of ivory for export” (Were, 1984:90).
The Kikuyu and the Maasai exchanged the ivory to the Kamba for goats and “cowrie shells, beads salt and cloth.” The Kamba retained the position of middlemen in this lucrative trade until around 1870 when their influence in the trade began to wane. The Arab traders had by then established trade routes into the interior and began to deal with the Kikuyu directly at Ngong also known as Ngongo Bagas” (Muriuki, 1974:104). Thus by the time the earliest European explorers arrived in Kikuyuland the Kikuyu had had contact with the Coastal civilization through some of their young men who had undertaken the journey to the coast and back and through the artifacts. The trade routes had also become established so that the Railway merely followed the trade route up to Ngongo Bagas, where they established their camp that was to grow into the City of Nairobi.
4 . 3 . 0 T H E E A R L Y E X P L O R E R S A N D T H E A R R I V A L O F B R I T I S H R U L E .
The Kikuyu seer, Cege wa Kibiru (or Mugo wa Kibiru), had stated that there would come a people from the East who would look like butterflies and that they would come with sticks that spate fire and an iron snake that belched fire that would travel from the waters in the East to the waters in the West.
Further he had said that children will be born who will have no ears for the Kikuyu customs but will only listen to outsiders as they will plug their ears (earphones?). He made other such prophesies including that Lake Naivasha would one day be planted bananas by the Kikuyu. “Although it may be difficult to assess the significance of these prophesies” according to Muriuki1 (1974), we can take the broad view that Cege wa Kibiru predicted a transformative force that were to sweep Kikuyuland with the coming of the white race. This was no doubt what happened and continues to happen.
“The course of Kikuyu history was radically altered by the momentous events that took place in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. By the
mid-nineteenth century, only a handful of Kikuyu had managed to reach the coast, while others had had a glimpse of the outside world by coming across the white man and the Swahili nearer home in the Kamba villages.
This trend of increasing contact with the outside world was one of the chief features of the second half of the nineteenth century and culminated in the colonization of the Kikuyu country by the white man” (Muriuki, 1974:136).
As is going to be argued in this thesis, the transformative forces that were set in motion by this contact were to lead to changes in the architecture and it is these changes that began to break the prevailing status quo before 1900 that are of interest to us.
The great changes that were to transform not just the Kikuyu but the whole of Africa and what was to be referred to as the new world had their origin in European trans world trade that saw the European continent establish trade links with the Far East and the Americas and their subsequent settlement and colonial adventures. This was largely because of great advances in science and technology in Europe that also needed raw materials and markets. The two oceanic trades, the ancient Indian Ocean triangular trade between India, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula in the Indian Ocean and the younger triangular trade between West Africa, the Americas and Europe were dismantled so that the new traders could replace them. This done through the anti-slavery movement, the colonization of the territories began to take place. As has been argued, the three pillars upon which the anti slavery movement achieved their ends were
Livingstone’s 3 Cs – Christianity, Civilization and Commerce. These three, each handled by different players were the instruments of transformation of not just the Kikuyu but other traditional societies. Were (1984) summarizes in a chart the various players and their motivations in East Africa in the figure below.
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Fig 4.1 The variety of motives behind the East African conquest. (Source: Were, 1984)
Because the Germans in East Africa concentrated their efforts in Tanzania, Kenya was the sole preserve of the British except in the matter of religion as the Roman Catholic Church was active side by side with their protestant Church of England and Church of Scotland among others. After the partition of Africa of 1886 by the European powers, the Kenya and Uganda region came under the British sphere of influence, thereafter known as the British East Africa Protectorate. “Uganda contained the headwaters of the Nile, of strategic importance to the British, and in Buganda it possessed a burgeoning Christian community. According to Tignor (1976) “if Uganda was to be controlled and supplied, the British needed to occupy Kenya” and the
construction of the Kenya-Uganda railway connecting the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa with the Buganda was of first importance for ease of movement of staff and materials. The Imperial British East African Company, IBEA, a largely private company was formed to administer this region which was then known as the British East African Protectorate. This was roughly the shape of Kenya and Uganda combined and it was only much later in 1920 that the name Kenya was used for the new Colony and Protectorate of Kenya under the British Colonial Office.
Fig 4.2 Changes in East Africa boundaries between 1902‐1926. (Source: Were, 1984)
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The first administrative centre, Fort Smith near Kabete was built in 1892 by Captain Smith of the IBEA. By 1897 the Southern Kikuyu economy was expanding rapidly to meet the economic opportunities presented by the caravan trade and the new railway that had just reached Nairobi in 1899. Francis Hall founded a government station, Fort Hall, at Mbiriri (current day Murang’a). This was because this area was more capable of providing ample quantities of cheap food whose demand kept on increasing beyond the capacity of the Kabete area.
“By 1902 Fort Hall was effectively the epicenter or focus for the British colonial control of Kikuyuland and by 1904-5 the Kikuyu of Tetu and Mathira had also effectively come under control” (Rogers, 1979).
Fig 4.3 Kikuyu Country, 1890‐1905 showing location of Fort Hall (Mbiiri) (Source: Rogers, 1979)
Between 1890-1902, the IBEA extended its control into the Kikuyu Plateau through what was to be referred to as the pacification of the Kikuyu. The initial violent clashes between the Kabete Kikuyu and Fort Smith were met with punitive expeditions into the Kikuyu villages which were burnt and livestock confiscated. “There were instances of considerable loss of life” (Tignor, 1976:21). These kinds of expeditions which were numerous slowly broke down the resistance. This period of pacification also saw the Kikuyu suffer various other tragedies that further reduced the capacity for resist and paved way to the settlement of unoccupied Kikuyu land by white settlers. Between 1894 and 1899 there were intermittent invasions by locusts which caused extensive damage to the crops and a serious famine and outbreak of smallpox followed. There are estimates of between 50 and 95% mortality in the Kabete and Muranga regions
with many moving to seek refuge among their relatives to the North (Muriuki, 1974). By the end of 1904, the various forts were under the commissioners appointed by the Colonial office of the East African Protectorate and they had made an all out effort to bring Kikuyuland under Pax Britannica.
“As the British took over East Africa, many officials were struck by the possibilities its elevated regions offered for European settlement. Lugard, Johnston and others extolled the exhilarating climate and pictured vast empty lands awaiting development. The construction of a costly railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria put additional pressure on the British government to devise means by which the East Africa Protectorate could pay for its administration and the railway. Many thought that sponsoring European immigration and relying on immigrant farmers to develop the countries resources was the answer” (Tignor, 1976:22).
In 1896 Francis Hall welcomed three European families to settle around Fort Smith and amongst the Kikuyu in the ‘vacant uncultivated land’. But it was not until 1901-1904 under a scheme formulated by High Commissioner Charles Elliot to attract settlers that a substantial number began to settle. After World War I the Colonial Office undertook to increase the number by settling a group of ex-soldiers all over Laikipia, Trans Nzoia, and Northern Nyeri.
This increased the settler population. The newcomers introduced into Kikuyuland and the rest of the country a new system of human-land relations where one person cultivated large tracts using wage labor. Previously labor obligations were tied to the family and the more members a family had the more it could cultivate. Because the new settlers were also using new methods of cultivation and conserving the soil, new crops and animals, new methods of communications and disposal of the produce through sales to far off places their system of land economics called for large tracts of land in the region of hundreds of acres. The government therefore stepped in and declared large areas of what was to be known as the white highlands and officially alienated them from
“native reserves”. Those native families who were settled in the alienated lands were simply pushed away or became squatters and sources of cheap labor for the European farms.
The crops introduced by the new settlers were principally, coffee, sisal, maize, wheat and dairy farming all of which depended on African labor.
Although there seemed to be ample labor in the villages for the settlers, the conversion of the African into a wage earner required again the intervention of the government. In 1901 the government in order to help its new settlers imposed a tax on every hut and required by 1910 that it be paid in rupees not in kind.
“Those persons unable to raise money through the sale of their agricultural or pastoral surpluses were often forced into the labor market in search of wages”
and the only source of the money was of cause the settler (Tignor, 1976:8). As
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there was no serious local administration to help in the enforcement of this tax, the government turned its attention to building and strengthening its power within the local government. The way they went about this was through the appointment of chiefs who were held responsible for the collection of tax and for enforcing government laws. Because the Kikuyu traditional system of
government was composed of various levels of council of elders, njama, without a clear head, the government resulted to elevating by fiat the most prominent individuals. Muriuki suggests that these traditional prominent individuals or warriors, athamaki were merely specialized in particular fields thus there were
‘athamaki a cira’ or judicial kingpins or ‘athamaki a kirira’ or rites kingpins etc.
These artificial ‘chiefs’ were given enormous powers through the native authority ordinances of 1902 and 1912 and there were cases of gross abuse of power. “In the chiefs the government had perfect tools for meeting settler demands: A chief proved his loyalty by the success with which he recruited labor, and anyone who refused to pay the hut tax, or to be recruited for work on the farms, was either flogged or fined a goat” (Muriuki, 1974:177).
Elsewhere the government divided Kenya into a number of provinces which in turn were divided into districts and the districts into locations.
“Provinces and districts were under the jurisdiction of British officials, the provincial commissioners, district commissioners, district officers and assistant district officers. The locations were the responsibility of the chiefs” (Tignor, 1976:42).
Fig 4.4 1895 map of administrative provinces and districts with present Kenya outline superimposed.
(Source: Sullivan 2006)
4 . 4 T H E M I S S I O N A R Y I N F L U E N C E
One of the direct consequences of the building of the railway was the influx of Christian missionaries into the interior. Before 1890, there was little missionary activity in the Kenyan highlands but before the World War I there were already seven missions at work among the Kikuyu, Kamba and Maasai (Tignor, 1976:113).
The first mission station in Kikuyuland was the Church of Scotland Mission station, a 3,000 acre site at Thogoto, just outside of Nairobi. “Watson arrived at Kikuyu on 11th September 1898, which must be regarded as the real birthday of the Kenyan Mission” (Calderwood, 1948:10). The CSM had taken over the unsuccessful work of the East African Scottish Mission in Kibwezi at the Indian Ocean Coast near Mombasa. The Scottish missionaries were finding the Coastal climate inhospitable and the people not receptive to their message.
On moving to Thogoto in 1896 they opened two other Centers, one in Tumu-Tumu, Nyeri and the other one in Chogoria Meru. The Thogoto mission coming at the height of a serious famine and disease outbreak among the Southern Kikuyu “attracted hundreds of sick and hungry” - a windfall for the missionaries (Muriuki, 1974:178). “The CSM believed in centralizing its missionary and educational activities and allowing the influence of large stations to radiate from the countryside” (Tignor, 1976:113). However, among the Missions inside Kikuyuland the most prominent and influential especially in the Nyeri area were the Consolata Fathers of which we will give a more detailed narrative. This is because their “Conquest for Christ”16 was very well documented and they also undertook anthropological studies which have become invaluable to researchers.