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Mt. Kenya: The Mountain of Mystery
I n his Mashujaa Day speech delivered in Kirinyaga County in October 2021, President Uhuru Kenyatta introduced a new phrase in the Kenyan political lexicon, The Mountain of Mystery, in reference to Mt Kenya. This essay is an explication of this phrase with special reference to Kenyan politics.
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In an old colonial map drawn up around the time Kenya was declared a British Protectorate in 1895, long before the present boundaries were firmed up, the region known as Kenya is shown as a small territory in the middle of the chart.
Its neighbours were Ukamba, Northern Frontier, Jubaland, Tanaland, and Naivasha. Yet it is this tiny area around Mt Kenya, the mountain that donated its name to the modern Kenyan state, that was to become the nerve center of Kenyan politics.
The Kenya of that time comprised of the land adjacent to the great mountain that the Kamba chief, Kivoi wa Mwendwa, had pointed out to a missionary as the Kiinyaa, as the Kamba pronounced Kiri Nyaga, or the mountain with an inexplicable white patch, similar to the white feathers of an ostrich. The Gikuyu people who lived near the mountain named it in association with the nyaga, a word that has several meanings, all of which have a bearing on the mountain.
