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.
90
chapter two
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.
92
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.
the muorias in kenya
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.
94
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.
the muorias in kenya
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