Thread by @HistoryKE

#HistoryKeThread: Once Upon Wanjohi

“....while I could easily pick out a hundred Kikuyu who, mixed with an equal number of Maasai, could not be told from the latter, even by an expert....”, so, wrote John Boyes in his book, The King Of The Wakikuyu.

A native of Yorkshire in England, Boyes was an adventurer and trader who lived among the Agîkûyû community from 1898.

During the time when Boyes lived in that corner of central Kenya that is today Muranga’s Kangema division, there were bloody wars between members of two Agîkûyû camps. Each camp was led by a “njamba” (distinguished warrior or war leader).

One njamba was Wang’ombe wa Ihûra, who hailed from present-day Mathîra in Nyeri County, while the other was Karûri wa Gakure of Kangema.

Boyes (pictured) wrote about various similarities between the Agîkûyû and Maasai communities. Besides dress, other similarities he cited among the two communities were in the manner they performed war cries.

Boyes could not have been expert enough to note that although the Maasai were nilotes, they shared some words in common with their Bantu (Agîkûyû) neighbours.

The word thingira, for example, which is gîkûyû for “hut” is “osingira” in Kimaasai.

But we can excuse Boyes as he did not spend as much time among the Maasai as he did with the Agîkûyû.

But he did encounter the Maasai and wrote the following:

“It was before the end of the year 1898 that, striking camp one morning, I entered the Kinangop Plain, a favourite grazing-ground of the Maasai. The plain is a fine stretch of open country, rising in....

.... a gradual slope from the caravan road for about one thousand feet or more to the commencement of the bamboo forest...”

The Kinangop plains were on the western side of the Aberdare forest. They were separated from Agîkûyû villages by a thick covering of natural forest, from which many a river flowed down numerous valleys.

As herders, Maasai were wanderers who were only too happy to rise up against another community if only to enrich themselves with a few more livestock and, in some cases, members of the fairer sex.

Contrariwise, the Agîkûyû were farmers and rarely staged raids on other communities, preferring instead to trade and till the land. But any community bringing war to the turf of the Agîkûyû seldom left victorious.

Except for one incident. One about which hardly anything has been written.

On the windward side of Kinangop, right on the edge of the thick Aberdares forest lay a village, Kîhari. The village was situated then, as it is today, among steep hills that form part of present-day Mathioya in Murang’a county.

At Kîhari, sometime between the late 1900s and early 1910s, there lived a prominent elder.

Although not as well known as the likes of Kinyanjui wa Gathirimu and Karûri (both pictured), this elder had an area of jurisdiction that straddled present-day Mathioya and Othaya divisions of Nyeri and Murang’a counties respectively.

His name was Wanjohi wa Ndegwa.

Like many prominent elders from the Gîkûyû community, Wanjohi had several wives.

According to lore, one day a number of Maasai warriors from the Kinangop side emerged from the forest and attacked an expansive area that included Wanjohi’s hilly village.

The attack is estimated to have happened between 1908 and 1914.

Elders from Mathioya privy to the incident say that the Maasai war party grabbed livestock, kidnapped a few women, including Wanjohi’s wife, and his child, Gachûhî. From accounts, the attack happened in the late morning hours.

At the time of the attack, Wanjohi was reportedly away.

The attackers were said to number no more than fifty. They disappeared with their war loot into the forest, trekking through the forest and towards the other side of the Aberdares.

I have not, in my research, been able to unravel some details.

For example, were the Maasai confronted by Agîkûyû warriors in the neighborhood of Kîhari during the attack? Were there clashes at all?

What is clear, however, is that following the attack, elders led by Wanjohi, who must have been distressed by the loss of his wife and son, assembled a few warriors to pursue the attackers.

Sometime in the afternoon a small war party of Agîkûyû warriors led by Wanjohi himself set off to hunt down the attackers.

Wanjohi instructed his warriors to act in stealth, and with great caution, so as not to inflict collateral harm on his wife and child.

Deep in the forests, Wanjohi and his men carefully followed the tracks of the fleeing Maasai attackers.

Back in Kîhari and the adjoining villages, word spread about the attack(s).

Warriors gathered to discuss the incident. They wondered why Wanjohi hastily assembled a war party without rallying for more warriors from adjoining villages.

They feared that Wanjohi and his band of warriors would be overran by the Maasai. According to Mzee Ngaii wa Kîmarwa of Mathioya, Wanjohi and his men were estimated to number no more than two dozen.

A decision was made for more warriors at first light the following morning to set off on the trail of their counterparts with the aim of backing them up.

Wanjohi and his men must have trudged through for 20 kilometers before they decided to spend the night in the forest.

Undoubtedly, it was unforgivingly cold that night.

Wanjohi must have wondered how his son was coping with the cold. I doubt he slept that night.

The following morning, he and his men resumed their search.

After a few hours, they emerged from thick forest on the other side of the Aberdares. It wasn’t long before Maasai warriors minding the stolen livestock nearby were tracked.

This was at a small open area dotted by isolated moorland bush.

Wanjohi’s men stealthily scouted the area for any signs of the captives. It is not clear how many captives there were in all. But Wanjohi’s wife and child were both spotted alive, but kept under the watchful eye of a few Maasai warriors.

The latter were oblivious of the fact that from bushes yonder, they were being spied on.

It wasn’t long before a war shout rang out.

Just then, a band of warriors, spear and shield at hand, leaped from their hiding places and swiftly descended on the enemy.

Traditionally, it was not characteristic of the Agîkûyû to bury the dead. But Wanjohi reportedly instructed his warriors to gather the bodies of the slain Maasai men and bury them.

The burial was in the form of stones placed atop the dead bodies. This, perhaps, was so that the bodies were not eaten by scavengers.

According to Mzee Ngaii, the spot on which the killing took place is to this day referred to by a few senior citizens as “mbîrîra”, which is gîkûyû for “where remains are interred” or, if you like, graveyard.

Meanwhile, the other band of warriors that had set off from Kîhari on the trail of their counterparts was united with them at this mbîrîra.

I wonder what was the reaction of the new arrivals.

Wanjohi decided that some of his livestock could graze here. And according to Mzee Ngaii, some members of Wanjohi’s family immediately moved in and settled here.

And that is how this alluring part of the Aberdares became known in the gîkûyû language as Wanjohi.

Years after the incident, white settlers found the allure of Wanjohi irresistible. The colonial government decreed large parts of the area around Wanjohi as part of the White Highlands.

The hedonistic lifestyles of Wanjohi Valley’s white settlers was immortalized by a famous book, White Mischief, and a movie by the same name.

Elders tell me that those who consider Wanjohi their ancestral home, or their home for the last 3 generations or so, may have kin 40kms away as the crow flies, on the other side of the mountain.

Death has no shame. And in it, all dead are united. Yet from somewhere atop Wanjohi, a graveyard reunited a family.

From the story, I came to infer that Wanjohi deliberately decided not to take a large continent of warriors with him out of fear that the captives, whatever their number, could get killed as “collateral damage”.

Also, he might have had the Maasai warriors buried for fear that their tribesmen would stumble upon them and wage a revenge attack.

But they must have gathered a lot of stones if this were the case. I have no information on the number of casualties on either side.