Agĩkũyũ - The Concept Of Time

The Concept Of Time:

The Agĩkũyũ had four seasons and two harvests in one year. These were divided as follows

1. Mbura ya njahĩ (The Season of Big Rain) from March to July, Wangarĩ Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Price Winner was born in this season.
2. Magetha ma njahĩ (The season of the big harvest) between July and Early October
3. Mbura ya mwere (Short rain season) from October to January
4. Magetha ma Mwere (the season of harvesting millet)

Further time is recorded through each initiation generation each of which is given special name. According to Hobley each generation, riika, extended over two years. Further the various riika are grouped together to form a bigger generational group. The last bigger riikas at the arrival of the Europeans were Mwangi and Maina or Irũngũ. The oldest Maina generation at the arrival of the Europeans consisted of the following generational groups, Kinuthia, Karanja, Njuguna, Kinyanjui, Gathuru and Ng’ang’a. A finalisation seems to have taken place such that most people at the time were either of these riikas, alternating between father and son, much as the names given to sons and daughters alternate, such that the first son or daughter bears either the grandfathers or grandmothers name. As such if man is from the Mwangi riika, then the son will be a Maina and his grandson a Mwangi.

There was a very important ceremony known as Ituĩka in which the old guard would hand over the reins of government to the next generation. This was to avoid dictatorship. Kenyatta relates of how once in the land of the Agĩkũyũ, there ruled a despotic King called Gĩkũyũ, grandson of the elder daughter (Wanjirũ according to Leakey) of the original Gĩkũyũ of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi fame. After he was deposed of, it was decided that the government should be democratic, which is how the Ituĩka came to be. This legend of course calls into question when it was exactly that the matrilineal rule set in. The last Ituĩka ceremony where the riika of Maina handed over power to the Mwangi generation. Took place in 1898-9. (Hobley). The next one was supposed to be held in 1925 - 1928 (Kenyatta) but was thwarted by the colonial imperialist government, and one by one Gĩkũyũ institutions crumbled.