I am mwifwa muKamba. My mother is the daughter of Mwathe. Mwathe wa Kimeu of the mbaChongo sub-clan. Chongo, Mutumbi and Mwaniki were brothers. They add to form the aEthanga clan of the aKamba. The Kamba have more than twelve main clans and more small clans.
Demographically, the Kamba compose near majority city dwellers in Nairobi and Mombasa due to the proximity from origins in Machakos, Makueni and Kitui regions. By migrational expansion they are significantly distinguished in Garissa, Embu, Meru, Kajiado, Mbeere, Taita, Shimba Hills and beyond. Kamba people attribute a close relationship with Pare tribe of present Tanzania. Interactions with the Sambaa, Ngoni, Nyamwezi and Chagga as they evolved in the vicinity of Mount Kilimanjaro must have been strained by the surge of Maasai warriordom. As long distance trading later developed new business friends to Lake Victoria and North Turkana. Kambaa of Ethiopia may be distant kins.
Claims of a southern origin is supported by sculpture and curving skills which it has been said was borrowed from Makonde tribe.
This search leans towards the objective continuum that a tribe is not in its own sense 'pure' as the British described the Kamba in colonial times. Kamba seen as a relatively new group is better understood as a merge of various eastern Bantu communities before or about 15th century. Whether it is the merging that strengthened Kamba identity to save an earlier history or the merging lead to various identities Kamba including is a story untold. In South America, Paraguay, there are Kamba Cua, claiming ancestry from the aKamba of East Africa, from where they migrated by water in company of General Jose Gervasio Artigas. Kamba consider aMeru and aGikuyu as 'Kamba' in the mythology following.
God Mulungu created a couple in the heaven which only had sons. They came to Earth and lived on Nzaui hills where for evidence, footprints on stones are. Mulungu also caused great rains from which a man and a woman sprung from the ant hills who luckily bore only daughters. The Kamba cherish weddings. From heaven three goats for each daughter must have descended. One of them a male. This was made to enter the house of muKamba and as it got out it was cut at the door, signifying separation of a woman from her parents. Then the two remaining females, in addition to many others for dowry add to the gifting. An honourable son-in-law, as these wealthy borns of heavenly parents, is expected to gift parents in law extravagantly.
And so the Kamba earthly humans were rich with animals in a good country where they reproduced to desire expansion. And here the generations forgot Mulungu, as it is told, breaking taboos and customs. Breakaways followed necessitated by nature - drought and pestilence. The aGikuyu and Ameru new identity broke off. Akamba held close, not to lose mother identity. From where they now happen to move to Mbooni hills, grew in population and defined their clans as they spread by language to areas we tell of now.
Ravagers and hills. It signifies mixed source of livelihood - hunting, gathering, subsistence farming and livestock keeping. As agile lovers and owners of cattle sought for plains, mothers and the elderly and otherwise non nomads opted for settled life. Safer on the hills where roaming wildlife like elephants would find it hard to climb. And easier to spot any intruders. In this seclusion cousins married cousins, languages separated from protos while cultures reformed. To preserve these meant to resist inter-tribal relations. But time and circumstances ruin our fort walls.
As people move from Mbooni hills in search for pastures and cooler areas, the Akamba do not take long before they have covered a huge grassland arid area. They do not easily find waterpoints for many moons. Only late in the year when the globe tilts to the tropic of Capricorn that it starts to fall and farms are planted. My grandmother has even mastered the days. 17th of October the heavens start precipitating. By 25th there is rain. Often as sometimes the weather fails to observe these dates, it however rains and planting picks from late October to mid November.
The earliest ancestor I was given is Evui. He is the one who begot Syima and those that left Mbooni home to the East, Muthwani and Kalimani locations. Him and others of Ethanga clan included Mukanu, Ngoma and Kasoi. For sub-clans they prefix mba-. Syima begot mbaChongo, mbaMutumbi and mbaMwaniki. However you will hardly hear of mbaMutumbi because Chongo was mainly referred to of all three. Only that Mwaniki who went Kitui-wards may have strengthened his own identity. When they took cattle away for grazing as sun scorched, some of these family members never returned. And if they did they had news of new land. To migrate to.
Chongo had two wives. By first he begot Mutyanya, Mbithi, Muthingu, Mbole and Maliti. By second he had Kethoku and Eseo. Mutyanya's first wife begot no son. She was called Mutinika. The second wife was of Auani clan, her name Mbuthu. She had Makau, Muithya, Mumo and Maliti. And there is Wasua whom Mutyanya begot by a third wife. My maternal grandfather, born C. 1922 salutes Maliti of Mutyanya his grandfather.
Maliti was born in Ketile village and later migrated to Kyangulumi (near Mwala) with the two wives he had married: Kisoima and Mulekye of muTangwa and Akanga clans respectively. It was because of pasture, to feed his cattle and goats. By elder wife he had Mwandeke and Kalulu. Kalulu would migrate to Kitise, Makueni, whereas their younger brother Kamami went further south, Shimba Hills. It would be as well have been counted a history of another land had Maliti's second wife not been accused of witchcraft and moved back to Ketile village with his sons Kimeu and Kioko.
Yes she had ngoma. A traditional spiritual drum for Kilumi dance. When it played people got revelrie and revelations dawned. The Akamba, like most African communities sought to mystics to power their world and protect themselves. The lions and hyenas, as enemies, needed not to see goats or cattle that grazed and slept in the opens. The concept was to induce a protection such which kept property safe. But what of punishing those who harmed your property? Another. How about stealing and also not be harmed? Stronger concoctions. And in this manner a neighbour called another a witch when his eye pained, his cattle died and her children were born lame. Nothing happened without a reason.
Even Kimeu's death had a reason. He had only complained of stomach aches before giving up the ghost. The son of Kioko at Mbuvo, Ikaasu, where they had now migrated to had also died in such manner. Why? The reason was the curse of Munaku. Maliti had four daughters; Mathei, Yula, Nduku and Munaku. Munaku was a trader, but not a long distance one as the Kamba community is historically attributed. In this manner she could not be held as at her marital home as a wife. Kimeu was bothered by her presence in the homestead of Maliti, sometimes on wait for a market day to take her goods. One day they quarrelled and Munaku cursed him. A sister can curse a brother, a daughter can curse a father, be just with the daughters of soil ye kinspeople.
The Ethanga revere the pot, clay. It is their totem. Their clan name means soil. You break it and you need cleansing. You swear by it and it shall pass. You curse by breaking it and so it is. We know how important a pot is. In it the staple muthokoi is cooked. We may not know how delicious it was served with milk and butter. Away from the pot was a woman's menstrual blood that if she dared scoop and show in anger then it was bad. Like your mother flapping her breasts at you or if bad bad your wife stripped in anger among the Maragoli. This was done by Munaku and a few days later as she went to market the vehicle she was in rammed a valley ridge of the gulley seasonal rivers. Dead. Kimeu and the son of Kioko were her takings. Better be cursed and there was time to make peace than the aggrieved died before. Which consequently the family called for a medicine man to cleanse.
The ngoma of Mulekye was inherited by Mbinya, Kimeu's wife, of Amwai clan. Kimeu and Mbinya were second cousins, sharing maternal family. They begot Ngumbi, Mwathe, Kavoi and Ndeto sons whose wives were all converts, anything traditional religion was suspected as witchcraft.
The Kamba approached the new Christian religion with own ignorance, a source for answers to natural problems and a new forum to gossip how witchcraft works and how prayer plus afew other things keeps one holy. This ancestraly meek tribe was not only recruited in government enmass but also Indians in the private sector trusted them. Pride in shot marksmanship made them titled, 'soldiers of the Queen'. They left the villages in droves, leaving lands back home for the young and elderly, to labour on the plough and stock grains. During Christmas holidays families come back in bright coloured clothes as Kamba are known of with bread and load away with more cereals in cities.
Love for home and culture kept them tuned to local lingua radio stations, away from home. Nine radio stations at present and a TV one is a good effort in preserving the Kamba language and culture. Children do sing along if not dancing to the Mbenga music. Sometimes they vigorously dance only unaware that Kamba are unmatched in acrobatics if they revisit their traditions. And children among the Kamba are not what Maragoli say. To be seen and not heard. You will hear Kamba children square out with their elders (only those at family) as if they are equals. Such induced arguments aim to empower the child to take up responsibilities while you young. And as artists like Ken waMaria, Kativoi and others who should get credit for their music in making young people appreciate Kikamba, also they need be challenged to emancipate rather than maximize on debauchery for entertainment sake.
The first wife of my grandfather, Nundu, had to run away when Mwathe was 'lost' in Nairobi. She lived in a manyatta, the first house of Mwathe. Made of sticks and grass. In Nairobi Mwathe met and married Agnes Syombunda, my grandmother, muMuti by clan. The city generation detached heavilly from traditions by secularism and new religion. And their music, one man guitar, gave rise to Mbenga, the disco plays. Clitoridectomy started losing essence. The poor got jealous that others were making money from employment. Those with more money migrated from their villages, to other areas.
Ngumbi, the elder brother of Mwathe, together with Kioko, Mwathe's younger father, left Kalimani to Mbuvo. The year 1962. Ngumbi's parcel of land would be shared by Mwathe, Kavoi and Ndeto. The absence of Ngumbi's wife now would make my grandmother to stand in as elder daughter in law of Mbinya, Kimeu's wife. And inherit ngoma. Kavoi only begot one child, a son, Thomas Kavoi Kyalo, my informant. Giving credit to Mwathe whom told him much of what he told me as I asked. His mother's clan is muMui, whose totem is a lion. Like the cat family, the Amui did not eat liver. Else their eyes would redden and sicken.
My grandmother says she feared it, the ngoma. It hung in her mother-in-law's house. And there as the house crumbled, burrowed by insects, years after the death of Mbinya, the ngoma was left to also decay. Mbinya had spent her day at the farm as most elderly women do and it was as she had left to her house that death visited her. End of an era.
My grandfather therefore believes in education. He schools my mother, his first child. I can imagine my mother then. Afraid of the elephants she said roamed. Becoming the target of the male youths at teenage. A beautiful girl, not very sure of the power in education. She becomes pregnant and begets my elder brother, Wambua. Mwathe puts hope in and schools my uncle, Stephen Shikuku, a Christmas born child to Egerton University. A time would come when homes lacked cattle. Goats. Sheep. But educated people. This may have been the fallacy as parents sold lands and animals to school their children. Shikuku got the best that was.
Syokimau prophesied about the whites and their impact, as other seers in various communities. These prophets however did not say Jesus or Mohammed or such a saviour was going to set the people free from ignorance and natural calamities as drought. But formal education neared such a hope of a better future life. How true it is yet to be known. Shikuku abused the chance by smoking and drinking. Died at forty. He was followed by Mueni, a girl, who too died at forty. And Maliti who dropped school. By the time Kanini, Kalekye and Mumo the last born got to secondary school, Mwathe was straining.
Mwathe's job at Posta Posta Kenya where he had made my mother join was already retrenching. Something bigger than education called economy was influencing life. The further from the centre the harder the life. Its language nothing but money. It needed something more than schooling. Making my mother tarmac, early 1980's. Standing by a company gate, in Industrial Area, Nairobi, where an Indian would be calling a number he needed for the day, Kibarua. That is how my father and mother met at Golden Biscuits Company.
With Thanks
Lung'afa Igunza
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