REFLECTION OF GIKUYU CULTURE

 The term 'culture', although generally associated with artistic activities only, encompasses more
than that and is inevitably linked up with a people's way of living, whether they comprise a village,
a clan, a tribe or a nation. It is, as Ngugi puts it, 'the sum of their art, their science and all their
social institutions, including their system of belief and rituals’.

 During the struggle and progress of a community against the forces of nature there 'evolves a
body of material and spiritual values which endow that society with a unique ethos' , which is
expressed in the various artistic forms-- songs, stories, dances, paintings, sculptures, ritual and
ceremonies. This body of values, linked up as it is with the life of a community, changes and
develops with changes in the society.

 Also, communities with different social, political and economic systems produce different kinds
of cultures. Thus, ancient Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies, though existing almost at
the same time, show different kinds of cultural developments.

GIKUYU CULTURE

 The educational system among the Gikuyu follows the rule where "the child has to pass various
stages of age-grouping with a system of education defined for every status in life. The parents
take the responsibility of educating their children until they reach the stage of tribal education."
The children are first educated in the family and clan traditions. For them, 'the homestead is the
school’.

 The religious system among the Gikuyu operates at three different levels. First, there is Ngai, the
supreme deity or the highest- God. Sacrifices are offered or rituals or ceremonies performed to
Ngai only on the occasions of national (tribal) importance, although even on occasion of birth,
initiation, marriage and death of every Gikuyu, communion is established with Ngai.

 Mount Kenya-the mountain of brightness-is the earthly dwelling place of Ngai and all ceremonies
or sacrifices are generally performed under sacred trees facing Kere-Nyaga which is the Gikuyu
name for Mount Kenya.

GIKUYU CULTURE

 This natural process of land acquisition, through a filial bond with the spiritual guardians of land
as the ancestral spirits, is one form of creating a collective identity – a crucial staple for nationalist
discourse.

 Thus, in Ngugi’s earlier texts the collective identity, as a template for nationalist politics, is forged
through the language and idiom of oral tradition, specifically through the creation myth and
ancient prophecy of men like Mugo wa Kibiro. The texts allude to Mount Kenya as the privileged
carrier of nationalist meaning.

 And yet it is incorrect to argue that Ngugi’s nationalist moorings are entirely constituted around
the Agikuyu myth of origin. As early as his first novel, Ngugi was already stretching the meaning
of orality to embrace popular forms, such as biblical allusions that had become part of the
contemporary culture of the Gikuyu and of Kenya in general.
  And in appropriating both Agikuyu and Christian mythology, Ngugi was striving for a hybrid form
that remains the chief characteristic of his works, including the later novels in Gikuyu.

ORAL STORYTELLING

 Oral storytelling, which is part of the rich African tradition, provides the people relief and the
stories mainly revolves round land. The expert tellers like Ngotho retells those stories and get
immersed and make others spellbound.

 So, while he tells stories to others, he forgets “Kamau, Njoroge, Boro, Kori, and many other young
men and women who had come to make the long hours of night shorter by listening to stories.”
(28)

 Thus, telling story is not only a source of enjoyment, it is also the provider of relief from their
pangs and pains of daily life. The protagonist of the novel Njoroge looks forward to becoming a
part of such gathering.

 This overall embeddedness in the land sustained even in adversity. But it was not the task of the
hypocrite colonizers to allow the native to do so.

ORAL STORYTELLING

 Ngotho tells the children in his Thingira one evening some stories. Such storytelling, as is stated
earlier in the chapter, was a part of the traditional Gikuyu way of educating their young. Thus,
Ngugi presents an interesting situation ·whereby the young people under colonialization received
their education from two distinct sources -formal missionary schools and traditional Gikuyu
means.

 As will be evident from the story, such education, coming as it did from two different sources
based on two different ways of Iife; often pursued contrary aims. The story is the well-known
Gikuyu myth about the beginning of man, the handing over of Iand by Murungu, the Creator, to
Gikuyu and Mumbi, the first couple.

 Ngotho refers to the coming of the white man and the misappropriation of their land as had been
prophesied by Mugo wa Kibiro, the Gikuyu seer.

LAND AS DIVINE RIGHT

 Ngotho refers to yet another prophecy by Mugo, according to which a son of the tribe would one
day lead them -like Moses -to deliverance from the Mzungu who would then go away, leaving
their land once again in their possession. Thus, we see Ngugi blends the theme of education with
that of political independence when Njoroge, begins to believe that he himself would be the
prophesied deliverer.

 Gikuyu and Mumbi also humanise a world that would otherwise be the domain of abstract and
inanimate objects. The legendary Gikuyu couple has a close association with Mount Kenya too.

 We are told that when he created Gikuyu and Mumbi, the original parents of the tribe, Murungu,
the great God, told them: ‘This land I give to you, O man and woman. It is yours to rule and till,
you and your posterity’.
 AGIKUYU MYTH OF ORIGIN

 The Agikuyu myth of origin is one of the most recurring icons in Ngugi’s narrative. It seems to be
the cornerstone of Ngugi’s art, and it occurs in virtually all his novels, although it is most
prominent in his earlier novels.

 Ngugi marshalls the Agikuyu oral mythology in his nationalist imaginings. Indeed, the precolonial
history is constructed entirely through a religious myth of origin.

 The Agikuyu myth of origin in Weep Not, Child,is imbued with religious connotations that
represent cosmic forces that play a central role in the creation and evolution of humanity from
nothing to something.

 The oral transmission of the myth from generation to generation underscores its historical
significance to the community. If the belief enhances communal and spiritual unity, the mountain
concretises it with a physical presence that defies time.

 The mountain therefore symbolises the encapsulation of the material and spiritual, the concrete
and abstract, in the people.

MYTH OF ORIGIN

 The myth of origin therefore has history, legend, narrative and social life all interlocked. For Ngugi,
the weaving of all these genres around Mount Kenya was part of an everlasting search for an
enduring moral centre.

 In a significant way, it is Ngugi’s recourse to oral mythology that helps to naturalise his nationalist
discourses in the earlier narrative.

 This hill, Mount Kenya, is the resting place of their creator and deity, Murungu – elsewhere called
Ngai, Mwenenyaga. Mount Kenya becomes the centre of the Gikuyu universe, now under the
threat of colonialism.

 In other words, it represents their life and its continuity: after all, God, the creative essence,
reposed there. Thus, if the divine powers of God are permanent, then the permanence of the
mountain confirms its eternity.

MYTH OF ORIGIN

 The myth of origin, while Gikuyu-specific, is a staple of any nationalist framework and hence must
be seen to carry a double meaning. It is, for example, used here to naturalise the birth of the
Agikuyu nation, and by extension the Kenyan nation. The phenomenon of a nation, instead of
being manufactured, a socially constructed idea, becomes a natural process.

 Myth here becomes a legitimising ideology which transcends historicity. Significantly, all the texts
of Ngugi, in spite of their obvious differences, tend to forge a spiritual link between the people
and the land.

 In Weep Not, Child, Ngotho reminds his children that ‘God showed Gikuyu and Mumbi all the land
and told them: “This land I hand over to you. O Man and woman / It’s yours to rule and till in
serenity sacrificing / Only to me, your God, under my sacred tree ...”’ (Ngugi 1964, p. 24).