Commentaries
Abagusii: The ‘nation’ of soapstone carvers
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- Published on Tuesday, 24 July 2007 19:03
Once upon a time the Akamba wood carvers had almost the monopoly of expressing their art through wood carvings, until the Abagusii discovered the fortune in carvings using the soapstone. Even though, Abagusii have to employ some Akamba artists in carving some specialised items. In the meantime the Abagusii sugarcane farmer discovered the Nairobian sweet tooth for sugarcane, particularly women sold to the god of sugarcane by their pregnancy. The little yellow sweet bananas has been added to that sweet tooth of the Nairobian.
You can’t walk far in Nairobi without meeting the sugarcane seller with a wheelbarrow on which is a pack of sugarcane sticks. He carries a kitchen knife and nylon bags in which he serves the customer with the juicy peeled sugarcane cut up with professional dexterity. Part of the littering in the city is from sugarcane bargasse. The sugarcane consumer has no more interest in the bargasse after sucking the juice. He/she spits out anywhere in the street unconcerned about keeping the city clean. The consumer of the sweet bananas too litters the city with the peels that add to maize husks and milk-paper bags. The sweet banana doesn’t upset the stomach in spite of the large quantity consumed.
The Abagusii nation, small as it is, is to the Kenyan nations what Japan is economically to the world. Japan is smaller than Kenya, but while Kenyan mass hosts nearly 30 million people, Japan holds 120 million. Yet Japan fights it out economic supremacy with America, not by accident but by sheer hard work and planning, while the Kenyan government can’t even feed its small population.
The Japanese have discovered that you do not have to live in a big land mass in order to work hard and reach the economic peak. This is what the symbolism of the Abagusii nation is to the Kenyan giant nations.
The Abagusii industrious fight beats up the surrounding giants – the Luo, Kalenjin and the Maasai - who have a bigger land mass. It is by sheer hard work but not by accident that they beat them. One can even raise some important questions with regard to where the Abagusii learnt being industrious.
Who has influenced them? Certainly not Nyachae because as far back as in 1904, one Captain Jenkins gave a hit of the stuff out which the Abagusii spirit was and is made of. Abagusiis are not industrious by nature. They acquire that industrious culture by being into an industrious environment. In other words, nations are what they are because of the environment in which they are born and brought up.
While other communities in Kenya are struggling helplessly with how to adjust to the fast changing economic demands of the modern world, the Abagusii have one foot deeply into their tradition with the the other leg deeply into the modern world. For sure, they are more prepared in facing tomorrow’s challenges than most other ethnic communities in Kenya.
The soapstone carvings, the sweet banana and the sugarcane business is fairly new economic frontiers. The Abagusii have specialised in hauling and transportation of goods. Abagusii’s commercial buses and trucks have been enjoying a booming business to and fro Nairobi and other places. They command an incredibly big fleet of matatus in Nairobi and other Kenyan towns.
Who are the Abagusii then? There is a historical report that when the British declared Kenya a colony, the Abagusii said they would accept the order over their dead body. That was why in 1904 the British sent a punitive expedition under one Captain Jenkins to beat the Abagusii into sense. The Abagusii learnt it the hardest way that their refusal was no match to the British killing machine because they were shamefully beaten, many of them killed and the reminder conquered and colonised.
The Abagusii’s resistant response to the British barbaric behaviour left the British with a lesson which, put in Jenkins words, would say: “It’s an incredibly stubborn Bantu-speaking community which, for centuries, has resisted absorption by any neighbouring tribe however powerful it was. Even in the face of bullets, they resisted the British for the sake of their own independence.”
It looks as if Captain Jenkins caught the Abagusii’s belligerent character rightly. They are both a fearless and aggressive people. Among Kenyans who profess to know the Abagusii well, they would warn you, “If a Kisii says he’s going to kill you, start thinking about writing your will because; for sure, he’ll kill you.” The same warning is commonly delivered with regard to the Meru people who, by many ways including their language, are the closest temperamental people to the Abagusii, or they are simply cousins.
Could there be a bigger story in that to the south of Kenya there is the Meru mountain close to the Abagusii and, far out to the north of Kenya there is another community called the Meru who are incredibly similar?
Abagusii speak of Mogusii as the founder of their community. Mogusii is the person after whom their nation was named. The genealogy says Mogusii’s father was Osogo, son of Moluguhia, son of Kigoma, son of Ribiaka, son of Kintu – variously named Wantu or Mundu or Muntu.
Kintu is given the biblical lagend of having led the migration of the community from “Misiri” (Egypt) to Mount Elgon, where the community settled until they were forced by natural calamities to disperse.
Abagusii traditions have it that Moluguhia had a number of sons who founded some of the Abaluyia clans, and that among his remembered sons were Osogo and Mogikoyo, and Osogo’s descendants are said to have founded the Gusii, Kuria, Logoli and several other tribes. The descendants of Mogikoyo became the Agikuyu, Meru, Embu and, according to some elders – the Akamba as well.
Today, among the Akamba clans, there is a Mukisii Clan whose totem is the liver. That is, the clan is banned from eating any type of liver. Are these the descendants of the Mogikoyo? Mugikuyu is a Kikuyu person. Would Mogikoyo not be the etymology of Mugikuyu too?
Two white linguistics, Greenburg and Whitely, who studied the Gusii and other Bantu languages, have come to a common agreement that the Gusii, Logoli, Kuria, Kikuyu, Embu, Kamba, and Meru languages are closely related.
The Gusiis, are a small and overcrowded community that occupy the most southerly part of the cool and fertile western section of the Kenyan Highlands. Communities unrelated to them through languages surround them. These are the Maasais, Kipsgis, and the Luos. They have outstandingly overtaken their neighbours economically even in their move to adjust to the modern economic demands.
Both fast growing population and economy of this small nation have forced them to seek settlement outside the Gusii land. The fastest property buying powers in Nairobi today are both the Kikuyu and the Gusiis, who are literally buying out land sellers in Ngong area. In Nairobi they are plunging in every business. They have even emigrated to America and there are some places in America where you find them in crowds.
There is a claim that – true or false – during Simeon Nyachae’s tenure as Head of the Civil Service, about forty percent of scholarships offered to Kenya to study outside the country, benefited the Kisii people. No wonder, for example, you find so many Kisiis in America, even more than the number of Luhyias or Kambas in spite of the latters’ bigger population. Nevertheless, with or without Nyachae’s helping hand, that stubborn Bantu-speaking and hardworking nation has correctly discovered today’s economic joints for them to cut out the Abagusii share in the Kenyan economy.
Although the Abagusii’s tradition is subjected to their fast changing world, they are still bound by the Gusii traditional forces. Those forces have not given much room to women for modern advancement. The Abagusii male’s polygamous taste has made sure that there are no free girls on the marital register for outsiders to marry. It is not common to find Gusii girls married outside their community. Whereas in Kikuyuland or Kambaland you hardly find young polygamous men, that is not the case with Abagusii. Out there girls are too valuable to be left unmarried. This is why, as of today, it is hard to find a Gusii prostitute in Nairobi. But on the other hand this is equally why Nairobi and other big towns in Kenya are plagued by Kikuyu and Kamba prostitutes. Both Kikuyu and Kamba men have decided to become polygamous impotent. Hence, they would not care a damn to marry the surplus population of girls in their communities.
The natural ratio of sex births is usually 51 percent women and 49 percent men. That is, ethnic communities have to bear the 2 percent surplus of females looking for marriage partners. Initially, this is the percent that made it possible for men in those communities to be polygamous.
Polygamy has been playing a major role in balancing the woman value to men. In a situation where men find it easy to divorce and find replacement spouses easily, the value of women goes down as it has happened among the Kikuyus and Kambas. Where it is not easy to divorce and find a replacement easily, the value of women goes up as among the Abagusii, Maasais, Kurias, Kalenjins and so on.
Among Kikuyus and Akambas, woman’s value is made worse by the fact that men have better access to go outside their communities for higher studies and some of them return home with foreign wives while women who should have been married by them are still waiting for them. One good but never asked question is, “Is it progressive or retrogressive for a community to exercise polygamy?” I reserve my answer for personal reasons.
Ask an Agusii, “Why are there hardly women politicians in Gusii land?” Some honest men might tell you, “Male’s hand over the fate of women is very powerful in that land. Most men perceive women politicians as square pegs in round holes.”
Or, perhaps, women have not come out of the Gusii traditional woods to take up their place in the modern world. This trend is equally visible among the Meru people too, although the Merus feel allied to Kikuyus.
The Abagusii’s main shortcoming, it can be argued, lies in the manner in which the male leaders handle the gender equality issue. If men are left alone to be the designers of the socioeconomic structure of the community, then a serious gender war is in the offing, brought about by the selfish designs that the male will put in place for handling women particularly in tomorrow’s world where both women and men are supposed to participate on equal basis. One of those grave mistakes has been promoted by putting more emphasis of education on the male child, and lack of initiative to re-educate the society to appreciate sex equality in sharing socioeconomic opportunities.
