PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT - NOTICE TO VACATE KIKUYU CULTURE

To all my public and private friends, acquaintances, official and unofficial partners; be hereby informed that today henceforth, I have vacated Kikuyu culture. You therefore must immediately cease and desist from identifying me in public or in private as a member of the Kikuyu tribe.

After coming to the full realization that my current understanding and living out of contemporary culture does not correspond to the Traditional Kikuyu Cultural Expectations, I wish to notify all and sundry that I am no longer a member of the Traditional Kikuyu tribe. 

This permanent and non-rescindable decision has been necessitated by irreconcilable differences between the traditional understanding, practice and expectations of a Kikuyu man and my contemporary understanding and practice of the following cultural elements:

Language: I no longer use the Kikuyu language as the predominant form of communication. Even when communicating with close family members, I tend to use Swahili or English. Since the latter is the official language in Kenya, and I spend over 8 hours daily in the office, I have had no other choice but to make English my primary language of communication. 

Customs & Traditions: I no longer believe in or support many Kikuyu traditional practices. I no longer support female circumcision in fact even male circumcision, flogging dead bodies – which by the way, I now urge of all Kikuyus to bury instead of migrating to a different villages after a death in the family. Moreover I no longer keep goats and sheep as a sign of wealth and/or social respect, nor do I live in a round hut in my father’s compound. I am constrained to see which Kikuyu customs and traditions I practice.

Religion: I never got the opportunity to practice Kikuyu traditional religion – never prayed at the big fig tree, or ever faced Mt. Kenya. I like the concept of Ngai; [the concept of the Absolute Mugai – Sharer, is one I like very much because as it is rooted in the deeper Ubuntu spirit of interconnectedness), but no one believes in the Absolute Mugai – Ngai, am left with no choice but to give up the Kikuyu traditional religion; an important attribute of Kikuyu culture. 

Forms of Government: I am not a member of any elder’s council. Am not a junior or senior elder, and do not plan on joining any such council – just like many presumably Kikuyu men my age. 

Social Organizing: Just like many men my age, I do not belong to any age-set a constitutive element of the Kikuyu social organizing. As for my marriage I have yet to officiate it through any Kikuyu traditional ceremony. For some reason the Kikuyu traditional marriage ceremony had appropriate practices for same-sex marriage for women but not for men. I guess I could appropriate the traditional practice as carried out by woman-to-woman marriages, but I wonder whether that would count as a traditional practice.

Economic Systems: I do not keep goats, sheep nor have I married many women to labour in my farm. Instead, I work in a formal organization, and instead of goats and sheep, I get paid in cash - money. I do not practice traditional economic system. 

Arts & Literature: Lastly, I no longer partake in Kikuyu cultural music and dances nor do I partake in oral folklore, or even sit around fire in the evening narrating [wise] sayings and stories to children. I do not even drink muratina for crying out loud!

For those who feel being gay is against Kikuyu [or African – as if there ever is an African] culture, then they now need to worry anymore. I am not against Kikuyu culture any more than a Luo or Kamba or Taita or Masai is. I from today henceforth vacate the Kikuyu culture.