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PREFACE The central Gĩkũyũ occupy Mũrang''a County, which is in the central part of Kenya. At various times in history, the central gikuyu territory has been known as Ithanga, Mũkũrwe-inĩ, Gĩkuyu, Kĩrĩnyaga, Metumi, Fort Hall and finally Mũrang''a. They are the original Gĩkũyũ and direct descendants of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi. The country of the central Gĩkũyũ,'' whose system of tribal organisation will be described in this book, lies between the southern Gĩkũyũ of Kiambu (Kabete) and the northern Gĩkũyũ of nyĩrĩ (Gaki) all three lying in the central part of Kenya. Murang''a is divided into six administrative sub-counties: Kandara, Gatanga, Kĩharũ, kangĩma, Kĩgumo and Maragwa. The population, according to the 2019 census is (1,056,640) one million, fifty-six hundred, six hundred and forty. The central Gĩkũyũ people are agriculturists, today keeping a few flocks of sheep and goats and cattle. They are also ardent businessmen. The cultural and historical traditions of the central Gĩkũyũ people have been verbally handed down from generation to generation. These traditions are quite distinct from the other two of the north and south. In writing this book, I sought to bring out this distinction to establish the difference with the southern Gĩkũyũ as was aptly captured by Louis Leakey in his treatise titled "southern kikuyu before 1903". Probably the only and most comprehensive book on Gĩkũyũ culture, Leakey candidly dwelt on the southern Kikuyu and confesses to not having had much contact with what he wrongly summed up as northern kikuyu. In that said north, there exists two distinct kikuyu cultural groupings that have never been studied to establish this glaring distinction between the nyĩrĩ and mũrang''a groupings. From inception, the central Gĩkũyũ carried forth their information and history through memory. In the book "a prehistoric people: the central Gĩkũyũ before 1970", effort was made to collect relevant information from sometimes very meagre sources to try to correct the misconception that the kikuyu are a homogenous people practicing a common culture. As a central Gĩkũyũ myself, having been born and grown up there, it is clear after interaction with the other two, that the original Gĩkũyũ still exists in mũrang''a (fig 15) as close to as it was during Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi era. It is from these original Gĩkũyũ that the other two, the southern and northern, developed after dispersal from Mũrang''a. Thaaaai-to the members of the central Gĩkũyũ kĩama, mwaki wa rũgongo rũa kĩranga, in which I stand as mũthuri wa mbũri igĩrĩ, my comrades-in-arms of the past, present, and future. In this work as in all my other activities, their co-operation, courage, and sacrifice in the service of the central Gĩkũyũ people have been the inspiration and the sustaining power. Finally., I extend my warmest thanks to all those elders and scholars as well as people of all walks of life who gave me much of their time to help collect, critic and record the facts correctly. Again, thank you very much. Samuel Mwitũria Maina PhD Nairobi, 2021
Some travel books authors try to impress the reader with a full sense of the danger and hardship they have undergone. Others are deadly afraid of bragging about their adventures, knowing, for instance, that hundreds of others have been charged by a lion and may be reading their book. In The Land of Footprints, Stewart Edward White attempts to be the ideal travel book author, one who tells the reader what the country, its people, and its animals are really like, "not in vague and grandiose 'word paintings,' not in strange and foreign sounding words and phrases, but in comparison with something they know." The Land of Footprints is the enormous enjoyable, immensely readable memoir of Stewart Edward White's year spent in East Equatorial Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. STEWART EDWARD WHITE (1873-1946) was born in Michigan and lived in California where he became known as the author of many articles, short stories, and books about the state's mining and lumber camps and his explorations around the world. He devoted the last thirty years of his life to writing accounts of his wife's mediumistic explorations of the inner dimensions of life.
Facing Mount Kenya, first published in 1938, is a monograph on the life and customs of the Gikuyu people of central Kenya prior to their contact with Europeans. It is unique in anthropological literature for it gives an account of the social institutions and religious rites of an African people, permeated by the emotions that give to customs and observances their meaning. It is characterised by both insight and a tinge of romanticism. The author, proud of his African blood and ways of thought, takes the reader through a thorough and clear picture of Gikuyu life and customs, painting an almost utopian picture of their social norms and the sophisticated codes by which all aspects of the society were governed. This book is one of a kind, capturing and documenting traditions fast disappearing. It is therefore a must-read for all who want to learn about African culture.
Offers an insightful yet readable study of the paths - and challenges - to social cohesion in Africa, by experienced historians, economists and political scientists.
A Companion to Gender Studies presents a unified and comprehensive vision of its field, and its new directions. It is designed to demonstrate in action the rich interplay between gender and other markers of social position and (dis)privilege, such as race, class, ethnicity, and nationality. Presents a unified and comprehensive vision of gender studies, and its new directions, injecting a much-needed infusion of new ideas into the field; Organized thematically and written in a lucid and lively fashion, each chapter gives insightful consideration to the differing views on its topic, and also clarifies each contributor's own position; Features original contributions from an international panel of leading experts in the field, and is co-edited by the well-known and internationally respected David Theo Goldberg.
Henry Muoria (1914-97), self-taught journalist and pamphleteer, helped to inspire Kenya's nationalisms before Mau Mau. The pamphlets reproduced here, in Gikuyu and English, contrast his own originality with the conservatism of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first President. The contributing editors introduce Muoria's political context, tell how three remarkable women sustained his families' life; and remember him as father. Courageous intellectual, political, and domestic life here intertwine.
Explore the violence and conflict that lead up to the land invasions prior to Kenya's 2017 general election. The Contested Lands of Laikipia tells how, and why, land claims and ethnic categories became increasingly politicized here over the past century.
During the colonial period, Africans told each other terrifying rumors that Africans who worked for white colonists captured unwary residents and took their blood. In colonial Tanganyika, for example, Africans were said to be captured by these agents of colonialism and hung upside down, their throats cut so their blood drained into huge buckets. In Kampala, the police were said to abduct Africans and keep them in pits, where their blood was sucked. Luise White presents and interprets vampire stories from East and Central Africa as a way of understanding the world as the storytellers did. Using gossip and rumor as historical sources in their own right, she assesses the place of such evidence, oral and written, in historical reconstruction. White conducted more than 130 interviews for this book and did research in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia. In addition to presenting powerful, vivid stories that Africans told to describe colonial power, the book presents an original epistemological inquiry into the nature of historical truth and memory, and into their relationship to the writing of history.