the muorias in kenya
83
living possible and attractive. So, several of the Kiambu Muorias came
to town. Judith’s son Mwaniki was employed by the City Commission
and his brother Kinyanjui worked in Barclay’s Bank. Elizabeth’s son
John Mwaniki was a sculptor and taught art at the famous Starehe
School for boys, situated close to Pumwani. James Kinuthia Gitau, his
equally gift ed brother, was a graphic artist. He went to art school and
was subsequently employed by Th
e Standard, the newspaper that had
dismissed his father’s letter to the editor and thus started Muoria’s
career as a journalist.
Gitau had a troubled career. He lived with his wife, Fedelis Njeri, and
four children in the smaller brick house where his mother, Elizabeth
Th
ogori, had stayed aft er her divorce from Muoria. He was unhappy
about his parents’ divorce and was torn between his rural home and
life in the city. His ambition was to be able to live a comfortable urban
life, rather than being dependent on the limited and unstable income
from cultivating the land. In spite of his eff orts, he did not manage to
generate enough income from business activities and his newspaper job
to make his wish come true. However, like his father he distinguished
himself in the newspaper industry: when Muoria returned to Kenya
in 1989 and paid a visit to Th
e Standard, his son was given credit for
having started the paper’s art department and infl uenced its lay-out,
while Muoria was praised for being a pioneer African journalist.45 Gitau
died in 1990 aft er a long illness.
His half-brother, Charles Mwaniki, son of Henry and Judith, who
had grown up next door in Nyathuna, was also aware of the tension
between rural and urban life as it played itself out in the Muoria fam-
ily. Mwaniki, who died in 2008, was a trained nurse, and aft er sixteen
years in Nairobi, working for the City Commission, he ran a medical
clinic named aft er his mother near the rural family home. He traced the
urban-rural ambivalence back to the diff erent outlooks of Henry’s wives
and to an ambivalence in Henry himself, the founder of the family. In
Mwaniki’s view, although his father worked, married and owned land
in the city he ‘was not an urban person. He had a plot in Eastleigh,
but he did not build there. He built here, in his community.’ On the
other hand Ruth and her children were urban: ‘Th
ey have a garden
here, but they don’t cultivate. We wouldn’t squeeze them here, where
they don’t fi t.’ Charles himself, though settled in Kiambu for the last
45 Th
e Standard 16 June 1989.
84
chapter two
part of his life, was not immune to the pleasures of city life, ‘you feel
better when you visit town.’46
Th
e lives of the Nairobi Muorias have involved travel and mobility.
In 1962 Mary, Ruth’s eldest daughter went to London to live with her
parents and take her O-levels. From the mid-1960s onwards other
Muoria children started travelling between their two homelands.
Urban-rural traffi
c, already ingrained in the family, translated itself
into transnational mobility. Rosabell from the second marriage, born in
1950, saw her father for the fi rst time when she travelled to London in
1969. She took a secretarial course in the U.K., sponsored by the Bible
Society of Kenya. Wangari, the eldest of the London Muorias, born
in 1955, fi rst visited Kenya in 1975 with her sister Juliet and brothers
Peter and Josphat. Wangari remained in Nairobi, working and getting
to know her family. Nine years later Peter Mwaniki met his future wife
in Kenya. Th
ey married in the U.K. Th
ey were the ones who actively
recreated the links—carrying greetings, photos and stories that restored
the family spirit and re-presented the family experience as something
that was relevant to all branches.
Kenya’s independence intensifi ed Muoria’s wish to return home, but
obligations to his London family and an uncertain political situation
in Kenya made it impossible. He returned to Nairobi in 1975 for the
fi rst time since 1952. Kenya was deep into a political crisis connected
to Kikuyu political and economic dominance. Kenyatta’s hold on power
was uncertain. Muoria took tea with the President and had dreams of
re-launching his newspaper, but the idea of publishing a newspaper
in Gikuyu was then extremely controversial. Family members warned
him not to go ahead with his plans. All in all, he did not experience
suffi
cient political and economic encouragement during his test visit
for him to give up his life in Britain, and he returned to London. He
had been away from Kenya’s political life for too long and the political
culture had changed in ways that he was not conversant with. Muoria’s
visits to Kenya in the late 1980s and early 1990s in connection with
the deaths of his fi rst and his second wife stirred an interest in his life
and ideas and contributed to bringing the family together. On these
visits the political climate was very diff erent from that of the mid-1970s
and Muoria was welcomed like a hero in his home area. People came
46 Interview with Charles Mwaniki, Kiambu, November 1999.
the muorias in kenya
85
from near and far to greet him and national newspapers brought out
interviews and lengthy features on his life and achievements.
Henry Muoria’s funeral at Nyathuna in 1997 brought almost the
whole of the London branch of the family to Kenya. Aft er his death
Ruth, his widow, stayed on for a longer spell in the Kibera house
of her daughter Hellen and her son-in-law John. However her visits
are becoming less frequent as her health is fragile. She is supported
in London by her children and grandchildren and the British health
care system.
Identities—London, Nairobi and Kikuyuland
All family members share a pride in being a Muoria and refer to the
family history as a source of identity. But they are also aware that the
complicated and dramatic family experience, with its forced separations
and remaking of links across economic, social and spatial diff erences,
has fostered a variety of possible identities and potential confl icts. Muo-
ria never saw himself as anything but Kikuyu and Kenyan. In Britain
he was in exile. When, during an interview in his London house in
1987, he was asked about his identity, his answer played with the cru-
cial diff erence between a ‘house’ and a ‘home’, known to all Kenyans:
‘I am a Kikuyu, a Kenyan who was born to Mwaniki wa Muoria and
Wambui wa Mbari. My home is in Nyathuna, Kikuyu. In London I
have only a house.’47
Wangari in London considers language is a key to identity. In her
view it is signifi cant that those that were brought up in the rural areas
all speak Gikuyu, even Henry’s grandchildren. Among the Muorias in
Nairobi, Ruth and Henry’s daughters s
peak Gikuyu. Th
e urban grand-
children speak Swahili and English but understand Gikuyu. As for the
London branch, Muoria’s sons and daughters understand Gikuyu but
cannot speak it—like their nieces and nephews in Nairobi.
47 Daily Nation 18 February 1987. Th
is was the year of the highly controversial
court case concerning the right to determine the burial site of S. M. Otieno, a case in which discussions of the diff erence between ‘house’ and ‘home’ turned out to be crucial. See David William Cohen & E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Burying SM: Th e Politics
of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power in Africa (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1992).
86
chapter two
Judith’s daughter Rosabell, interviewed in 1999, characterized her
father as a pure Kikuyu person. However, as a consequence of its
dispersal the Muoria family had split in three clans, characterized by
degrees of ‘Kikuyuness’:
As for me there is no debate about my identity—I am a pure Kikuyu
person and I am very proud of that. When I saw my Dad—I have been
with him in London several times—he identifi ed himself with his own
tribe. I have never known him to speak to me in English unless we were
in the company of non-Gikuyu speakers. So I am Kikuyu through and
through and my Dad was also Kikuyu through and through.
To her a Kikuyu identity is closely linked to pride in being African and
equal to but diff erent from Western people. Kikuyu identity is nurtured
by growing up in Kikuyu culture. Rosabell explains, half jokingly, that
although her father encouraged his children to feel like Kenyans and
Kikuyu, the family in London may be more English than Kikuyu:
Th
ere are many things that they don’t understand, especially Kikuyu
cultural trends. I believe one adopts the culture one grows in. . . . Culture, I take it as the total way of life of a particular society or people. Culture is not in a name but in a way of life. A culture—you grow up in it, it
is something you are taught, you somehow have to live with it . . . it is
acquired through living in it. . . . When we come to Nairobi—okay they
are Kikuyu, but without the culture. Th
ey may not claim to be so much
Kikuyu because they have to adapt to the culture where they are. . . . So we
are three cultures: Th
e Kikuyus, that is the rural Kikuyus, the half Kikuyus,
and I think the ones in London are maybe a quarter Kikuyu.48
When this idea of degrees of Kikuyuness was presented to Muoria’s
widow, Ruth, she disagreed and insisted that her London children are full
Kikuyus, brought up ‘in the customs of the Kikuyu’ to ‘respect elders’:
‘Th
ey are proud to be Kikuyu. But they are born in London.’49
In Rosabell’s view relations between generations are a touchstone
of Kikuyu culture. Children who grew up in the rural areas used to
respect and keep a certain distance to their parents:
Upcountry now, where we think we are Kikuyu . . . like Mama, if she
told me off over certain things I didn’t do right, there is no way that I
can answer back. Oh no, there is no way. I will just keep quiet and be
48 Interview with Rosabell Wambui Mbure, Nairobi, November 1999.
49 Interview, London, July 2000.
the muorias in kenya
87
sober. . . . Th
e present generation is more free to say what they feel and
what they want.
On the other hand, relations to grandparents are close and character-
ized by equality: ‘Children believe that their grandmothers cannot
be wrong. A grandmother can be friend, more than Mama.’50 Grace
Njoki’s upbringing of her granddaughters is an example, as is the close
relationship between Ruth and her grandchildren
More generally, from contact with the London branch of the family
and from living in Britain for several years, Rosabell has found that
Kenyan and British understandings of what constitutes a family diff er
a great deal. Th
e polygamous character of the family has meant that for
the Kenya Muorias there was a great fl exibility when it came to bringing
up children—primarily located in networks of women. Another distinct
feature of the extended family in Kenya is that it upholds traditions
of strong horizontal cohesion between people from the same genera-
tion. Age sets mean that half brothers and sisters as well as cousins are
considered brothers and sisters.
Th
e grandchildren on being Kenyan, being African and being
a Muoria: Nairobi, Nyathuna, Oakland
Th
e historical transformations of the Kenyan society that have occurred
in this period have meant that creating a space for the survival and
security of the family in rapidly changing and oft en volatile political
situations has been a great challenge. In the case of the Kenya Muorias
the traditional reliance on women as caretakers of children and for
primary livelihood was strengthened by the absence of Henry Muoria.
In this situation in addition to the over-all economic responsibility the
family’s women have had the task of making sure that the younger
generation had access to school and further education, and of instill-
ing appropriate (but fl exible) social and moral values. Undoubtedly the
women of the family have lived up to it. Th
ey have exploited tendencies
towards a matrilineal family organization that were already inherent
in the social upheavals occurring from the 1920s onwards in the wake
members, female strength is a double heritage, stemming from being
50 Interview with Rosabell Wambui Mbure, Nairobi, November 1999.
88
chapter two
Kikuyu and from belonging to their particular family. When talking
about sisters, mothers and grandmothers, Judith’s daughter Rosabell
emphasized that Kikuyu women are powerful, their oral wisdom is still
alive and available: Th
ere is ‘a saying in Gikuyu for every occasion to
make you strong. Even when the husband goes the woman still remains
very strong. Th
ey are like the backbone.’51
Now, where does female thrift and enterprise situate men, and par-
ticularly the young men of the family? Do they agree about the power
of women, and do they value the Kikuyu identity, which is part of the
family heritage? In an interview, David, Patrick and Julius, sons of
three of the Pumwani sisters, confi rmed that their mothers were very
strong. Th
ey located the immediate source of the women’s power in two
generations of women: their great grandmother, Grace—‘I think our
mothers have inherited something from her—that thing of dominance,
control. Th
ey are always in charge’—and their grandmother Ruth: ‘she’s
unique! She has been an inspiration. . . . She told us so many things about
when she was a child, when she grew up, when she was about to get
married to grandfather. . . . It is very good to have such an interesting
grandmother.’
Kikuyu identity more broadly has been one source of
authority for the family’s women and another has been their ability to
hold important positions or build and manage enterprises. Th
ey have
had responsible positions in their working lives that reinforced their
position in the family: ‘Most of what they say, it goes.’ As an illustra-
tion, they told that when the husband of one of the sisters left her for
a second wife, her grandmother, Grace Njoki, made sure that the two
sons stayed with their mother and thus the family was kept together:
‘Th
e Kikuyus from a long time back, when you have children you have
to stick to them. Our mothers were taught by their grandmother not
to let the husbands go with the kids, even if the divorce comes, to stay
with the children.’ Th
e cousins saw this as a distinct characteristic of
Kikuyus—other tribes will let husbands get away with appropriating
children from a split-up marriage. Th
ey explained that ‘that is why they
forced us to be named aft er Kikuyus—the mother’s side.’52 According
to the traditional Kikuyu naming practice the fi rst son and daughter
are named aft er the paternal grandfather and grandmother. Th
e sub-
51 Interview with Rosabell Wambui Mbure, Nairobi, November 1999.
52 Interview with Patrick Muoria, David Muoria, Julius Mwaniki, Nairobi, December 1999.
the muorias in kenya
89
sequent children will be named aft er the maternal grandparents, and,
following that, paternal and maternal uncles and aunts. In their case,
however, if they did have a name from their father’s side of the fam-
ily it was because in school one had to, but it was less important than
the maternal name. David, Patrick and Julius considered the naming
practice privileging women a distinct characteristic of their family, but
not one that they themselves would carry on.
Th
e young men were less sure if female strength was characteristic of
their own generation, in relations between themselves and their sisters
and wives. One claimed that the oldest men of the family were the ones
who took important decisions, ‘nowadays they have let the men take
over’—another said that relations between the sexes were character-
ized by ‘respect and equality’.53 For the family’s young women, sisters