Word: kikuyu
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Among the six accused Kikuyu tribesmen, one stood out: a paunchy, bearded man of about 50, with slightly bloodshot eyes, who wore a giant bloodstone ring on his left hand. He affected a kind of personal uniform: an open-neck, rust-colored sport shirt, crepe-soled suede boots, a leather windbreaker and dark brown corduroy trousers fastened with a gaily embroidered native belt. In Kenya such belts are called kenyattas, and from his fondness for wearing them, the man had derived his last name. His first name had been of his own choosing, the Kikuyu word for an unsheathed dagger...
...whites' political leader, Michael Blundell, returned from London conferences with Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton, talking less moderately than he once had. Said he: "We must now face the fact that the Kikuyu tribe [1,250,000] is in a state of rebellion. There should be summary justice." Day & night, Nairobi's white Home Guards patrolled the city streets and suburbs under new orders: "If you see any numbers of Negroes assembling and get no quick, satisfactory reply to your first challenge, shoot immediately and to kill." Troops and police in armored cars drove into the Negro section...
Explained a white senior army officer: "We believe the Mau Mau supreme war council has secret headquarters here in Nairobi. The Kikuyu drive taxicabs and buses, work in hotels and nightclubs. We believe these Kikuyu are Mau Mau spies who tell the Mau Mau war council where and when to strike. They overhear and report all white conversations, and know all our dispositions and plans...
...panic-stricken people rushing out to be cut to bits by the attackers' arms, an alerted Home Guard opened fire, killed 21 Mau Mau. In the same area, a platoon of 20 Negro soldiers of the King's African Rifles, led by a white officer, saw a Kikuyu woman furtively carrying sacks of food into the forest. Following the woman, the soldiers engaged a gang of 100 Mau Mau in a two-hour battle in which 24 Mau Mau were killed, including a Mau Mau oath administrator who was wearing women's clothes as a disguise...
...forestall a rumored Mau Mau massacre, which Kenyans grimly referred to as "the Night of Long Knives." But the long knives were already whetted, and would not be stayed.. The Mau Mau took its revenge for the mass arrests, not on the hated white man but on sleeping Kikuyu whose only offense was a desire to live in peace...