Back in the early 2000, I had the honor of spending some time with Kenyan traditionalist group that espoused Gìkùyù religion. It worked perfect as I was a graduate student in Anthropology and was also in a deep journey of self discovery. My ethnicity also happens to be Gìkùyù.
After a long decade in the Diaspora, my longing for home and a clarity of who and whose I was could not be suppressed much longer. I just happened to be reading James Baldwin masterpiece The Fire Next Time. It definitely contributed to my desire to define myself to myself.
Unlike James Baldwin, my fire was unwilling to wait for next time. But in his spirit of self-defination, I was eager to strech mine a bit deeper. In his famouss words. “I am not your Niggar “, I was was attempting to answer the next natural question of to “whose” I was.
Baldwin’s book was a great backdrop to the work I was embarking on. It was my form of coming of age intellectually for a person of African descent living under a culture whole meteoric rise was predicated upon the demise of Africanity.
Baldwin did the heavey lifting for this son of the soil. He had been a preacher and experienced first hand the hypocrisy behind that industry. There was so much I appreciated about Baldwin's journey.
That did not mean that I too had my own lifting to do and there was no escaping that.
I therefore took up an internship at U.N headquarters in Nairobi for three months, with an additional 6 weeks for research. The bulk of my research was spent with adherents of a traditional group was popularly known as Thaai, which is a derivative from the Gìkùyù word thayu, which means peace.
The group would be later pressured into taking a formalized name of Tabernacle of the Living God. The spiritual system the group followed closely mirrored the traditional worship of the Gìkùyù people before the coming of the White man.
The story of the group is very instructive about how modern African governments often suppress traditional spiritual systems as they are fertile ground for fomenting resistance. The group has faced a lot of persecution in the hands of the government. The leader of the group, Ngonya wa Gakonya was a thorn on the side of the government of the former autocratic president and the regime that followed to the last day.
During the time period in question, I happened to be reading the Black Jacobins and a few other books about Cointelpro that was conducted by the FBI against the revolutionary groups in the U.S.
What I was not ready for is to realize that the government of Kenya had a similar program against this Gikùyù traditionalists. The group was later dividend and undermined until the leader passed away in 2006 when the group was just a shadow of its hay days. The songs below are songs captured during the funeral of leader.
The music I heard during the groups meetings at a public roundabout at the edge of Nairobi was the closest thing to the songs and dance of the Gìkùyù before colonialism. There was a lot nuances that one can pick up from the way these people were relating to each other. It is one of the most precious and memorable example I know that demonstrates a functional people who are proud to exercise their culture as a form of struggle.
The another observation that become quite clear was that there are very blurred lines between politics and spirituality. I have since come to realize that African spirituality is not something that you believe in but more of what you do on a daily basis. Secondly, It is extremely difficult to exercise spirituality in the face of oppression. It is no wonder that our people have fallen for foreign religions that reflect those who had usurped their power to govern themselves.
It should be the priority of Africans to be totally free first and foremost. It is difficult to conceptualize African spirituality in the global injustice we face as a people. Not too far behind in significance, you can't eat slave food and practice African spirituality. Food is the the greatest mark of our vibration and dead vibration produces slaves and so does slave food.
You can never fully colonize or enslave any group of people until you colonize and enslave their food. Thus, the road to African Spirituality is a wonderful one to travel but it is strewn with struggles for justice, food and freedom. We have to overcome those struggles before we can fully achieve or arrive at African Spirituality. At the heart of the above struggles is the ability to define one's identity and the food that feed that identity. On the front, the fire to win that battle is now, otherwise there might never be any fire next time. It is easier to proclaim whose were are not, but if the person we donounce continues to feed you ultimately will own you.