Word: kikuyu
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...three-generation story about the Kikuyu tribesmen of East Africa, written from the native point of view, it particularly delighted British reviewers by a mixture of sympathy and picturesqueness not unlike that in the novels of Julia Peterkin. In their primitive state (the subject of some 100 early pages) the Kikuyu people were well-built, well-adjusted savages, who observed strict tribal laws combining communal ownership of land with private initiative as regards goats and wives, the latter being worth about 30 of the former plus a batch of sugar-cane beer. Occasionally they fought a battle with the tall...
...these well-governed, well-content heathens, British rule proclaimed itself taking over to preserve order and administer justice. In Kikuyu eyes British rule merely looked like the invention of lunatics. Even more incomprehensible was the Christian religion. Why, asked incredulous natives, did God scorn polygamy when "only poor men have one wife, and God does not like poor men." Why pray when there is no immediate bad luck! An old man, dying a few years after British occupancy, summed up for his generation: "Soon I shall die, for I have seen enough...
...although Author Huxley views the natives' misfortunes with sympathy, her sympathy with the whites makes Red Strangers a tragi-comedy rather than a tragedy. The final scene (after two generations of British rule): A young Kikuyu farmer takes his first ride in a plane, trudges boastfully home, pleased with himself and the white bwana, determined to name his forthcoming child Aeroplane...
Mbiyu Wa Koinange, which means Mbiyu, son of Koinange, is the son of Koinange Wa Mbiyu, which means Koinange, son of Mbiyu. In Bantu "koinange" means "dancer," Koinange Wa Mbiyu, chief of 800,000 Kikuyu tribesmen in British East Africa's Kenya Colony, was a good dancer in his youth but he never learned to read & write. Last week Mbiyu Wa Koinange, who will soon succeed his aged father as chief of the Kikuyus, got his A. B. degree at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio...
...thought he was growing paralyzed. Of U. S. phenomena he has been most im-pressed by the Statue of Liberty, skywriting, Negro spirituals, politicians. He took readily to collegiate sweaters, rejected knickers as undignified. Having specialized in sociology, he hopes to make his people yearn for knowledge. Now the Kikuyu's prime ambition-which he achieves only by years of prying and pulling with coils of wire, disks of wood, cane pegs, gourds-is to make his ear lobes touch his shoulders...