Kikuyu is spoken in the area between Nyeri and Nairobi. Kikuyu is one of the five languages of the Thagichu subgroup of the Bantu languages, which stretches from Kenya to Tanzania.
The Kikuyu people usually identify their lands by the surrounding mountain ranges in Central Kenya which is called Kĩrĩnyaga by the Kikuyu.
Pronunciation of differ
ent letters in the Kikuyu Language.
Tag: Kikuyu traditional dress
Gīkūyū Traditional Skirt – Mūthuru
The Gīkūyū traditional woman’s skirt was called the mūthuru, a simple leather wrap-around that was accompanied by a soft leather pubic apron that was worn under the skirt opening, mwengū at the front. The pubic apron is called the same as the gap it deals with, mwengū. The upper part of the body is protected by a cloak, nguo ya ngoro, or nyathiba, which can vary in length to just below the waist or up to the ankles. Because the skirt and apron were worn under the rather loose cloak, Routledge Scoresby writing in 1910 referred to the skirt as a petticoat. The cloak is made from three to four goat skins whose hair has been scrapped with a knife and then treated with ochre and castor oil until it was soft. Leakey in 1977 showed the method of cutting and combining the pieces from the four skins.
The sewing lines and repair lines for patches that would appear later were oftentimes decorated with beadwork. The cloak was knotted on the right shoulder and it dropped free, unlike the Maasai women’s cloak which was always held in addition to the shoulder knot, by a waist belt. The loose cloak allowed enough air movement as the two vertical ends were not sewn together. The body was wrapped and this formed the significant difference between it and the white man’s dress, matonyo, or a thing you enter’. Only the cloak was removed at night and used as a covering together with other old decommissioned garments. The skirt and apron remained in place even during sleep or coitus.
The Gikuyu women needed the skirt as it was an appropriate working garment that gave the knees and legs a lot of freedom. During cultivation and other demanding sweaty work, the upper cloak was removed or tucked around the waist being held in place by the skirt. The skirt was made from two sheepskins, (never goats). It was designed to taper behind the legs so that it protected the lady nicely even when she bent over. There were no issues of indecent exposure as strong leg calfs, ikere and thighs, ciero, were highly valued as symbols of strong motherhood and were not seen as nakedness. The cloak could sometimes “accidentally” reveal a wonderful lightning glimpse of a shadowy thigh or leg something young men’s cloaks tended to do with crazy abandon. This sensuous state of affairs could not be tolerated by the colonizers and was one of the first things they attacked declaring it obscene and primitive. Colonial visions of how Kikuyus ought to look like is best illustrated in the Karatina Coat of Arms, done under the direction of The College of Arms in Nairobi, an institution which until recently was nothing but an extension of The College of Arms, London.
The little leather apron worn under the skirt provided all the undergarment there was and for young boys and girls constituted all the clothing they had. A leather beaded apron, Gicoco, sometimes decorated with cowrie shells and worn over the skirt if there was one, indicated the girl was uninitiated, a Karīgū or Kīrīgū. It dangled the hoves of a duiker or Dik-dik, thiya, probably signaling in a subtle way that here was a duiker, “gaka nī gathiya.” A fully beaded tracery apron, mūniūrū, was worn during the initiation ceremonies and thereafter until the conception of the first child when the woman exchanged it for a broad beaded belt, ndohi, that supported the pregnancy. This was known as kwoha nda or tying the pregnancy. It is still an expression used today to describe a pregnancy though the belt is no more.
Today many of our ladies, young and old, have abandoned the skirt and taken up the trousers – (matonyo for the legs). The history of the Pantalone is well known and is a solution to the cold North as it traps the air as insulation. When you wear pants as tights, it even interferes with the perspiration of your skin through the pores, a natural cooling mechanism of human bodies. This is probably okay for the Northerners especially in winter but certainly suicidal for an African. Some African women will wear what they call a biker, little knowing that these wollen or cheap nylons are detrimental to their health. On top of the biker, a pair of woolen tights and on top of this a skirt or dress. The purpose of the skirt then is cosmetic and serves no other purpose than to pretend to be. It does not provide crucial ventilation down under. Don’t forget that sometimes, a pair of panties and even some sanitary padding are also included. Throughout all of Africa, the skirt was and should still be the centerpiece of rational clothing. African men are slowly, after being civilized into pants also tightening the noose around their vital parts, something that is playing havoc with their fertility. Africans by tightening up are in danger of ending up like European men, with dangerously low sperm counts and erectile dysfunction.
It is not just in clothing that we have got this whole traditional science wrong. The architectural scenario is worse. The traditional buildings had skirt roofs that kept the area down there wonderfully cool. The walls were mostly porous and breathed. Today glass-encased buildings trapping heat inside are dotting the African urbanscape. The glass towers like those in Nairobi are ‘Biker Buildings’, trapping heat and causing dis-ease inside. Dis-ease is just another name for the disease. Our mismanagement of the heart condition in Africa and related subjects like the mismanagement of metabolism in this hot environment means that rapidly ‘modernizing’ Africa is hit hardest by diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure, including cancer.
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