Challenges in the Diaspora – PART V

The  biological father. Later on I learned in the US that the children of unmarried mothers knew their biological fathers and the fathers attended to their activities wherever the child lived. In our time, it wasn’t so in the Gīkūyū community. Once a mother wasn’t married to the father of her baby, the guy paid a penalty (kūrīha ihu) and denounced the mother and the baby that he would never in any time in future claim them forever. The process made the mother and the baby free for another man to marry that mother and take the baby as the father. In many a time the women with a baby was married as a second hand (gīcokio) and were married as a second wife or third one. The man who married such a lady with a baby, traditionally and implicitly declared to be the father of the child or children. If the baby is small, he or she will not know that man was not the biological father. And the issue would never be discussed by anyone in the family or in the neighborhoods in the presence of the child or children. Those ladies that didn’t marry and they had children, the mothers didn’t show their biological fathers. The mother with children and not married was counted as one of the sons and she would inherit the land from her father. And her children will inherit that land from their mother. The process protected the mother and children and defined the boundaries in terms of who would inherit who and where to inherit from-father or mother. The most people, adults in the community knew there was a father present for them to be born, could be still living in the same neighbourhood. Yet no one would dare talk about it openly for them to hear. The silence was an agreed upon traditional personal vow strictly observed by everyone to protect the child and the mother from the conflict of the current family of the man who impregnated the other woman before the man’s present marriage.

When change came to Kenya  Gīkūyū community was divided into two groups-Christians (athomi) and Non-Chistians  (acenji). My mother as a young girl belonged to Christian group.  My mother as a young girl was a student at African Inland Mission school established by the missionary from the US in 1903. The Christian group had accepted to denounce some of the  Gīkūyū traditional rituals such as piercing ears,  circumcision of girls, drinking alcohol, dressing in goat skin  and accepting to wear clothing, drinking from cups not calabash, etc. My mother fell into the hole of girls circumcision and piercing of ears during one of the school breaks, when she optioned to visit her mother who held  the Gïkūyū traditions tightly.. My mother’s young Christian brother protected her and lived with her during break time. 

In returning to the school she was expelled since she broke the school regulations. As a young girl she became vulnerable to any occurrences. And with no adequate protection between her traditional mother,  the school, and the church. She had offered her brother and feared to return to his house to continue living with him. My mother’s brother, Eutichus became a Christian in AIM and her little sister Cicelia the last born in the family of five kids- two sons and three daughters took his little sister to school. 

Why do I tell this story- the young girl, Cecilia,  after she was kicked out of the missionary school would be my mother. Soon or later Cecilia kicked out of school she landed into the soft hands of a guy and she became pregnant. Cecilia gave birth to a cutie pie baby girl and named her Nyambura, after her mother’s name. I was born.

Later on my mother Cecilia was married by another man who became my father. The only father I knew all my life. I loved my father. He loved me. Another nine siblings were born after me.

The biological father’s disclosure. At the age of twenty years my mother disclosed to me that the father I knew always was not my biological father. She travelled from the central province Kenya to Rift Valley to bring me the information with a purpose. A Gīkūyū traditional wave was going on that all uncircumcised females (irīgū) regardless of the age must go through circumcision. My paternal grandmother left a word before she died that the girl child named after her name would  never live uncircumcision (kīrīgū). I was the oldest female in the family and my sister followed me. I must be circumcised first and then she had to follow or else she might die of a curse that  our grandmother mentioned for her living uncircumcised (kīrīgū-singular, irīgū-plural).  

My mother feared that the family might invite me to visit them and get me circumstanced as it happened to her unaware. She was accompanied by her oldest cousin. On listening to the message, my stomach was full of water. I was sad. I didn’t  want to show sadness on my face since I loved my mother. I loved my mother. Love her. I believed she wouldn’t lie to me. My father loved me. I did not have any different feelings toward him. I remained loving him till the end. I cried a lot when he died.