Those on the wrong side of his political satires felt the sting of his poetic compositions more scorching than the fiercest of fires.His use of the 'cama'
gikuyu dialect, spoken in his Gatanga backyard and the greater Murang'a, appropriately spiced with doses of original proverbs and sayings, was authentic, eloquent, unpretentious and very deep.
Lakini tulipofika Jordan tukapata mamba na tukaona heri tujenge daraja (When we reached at River Jordan we found it was infested with crocodiles and changed tact- build a bridge to safely go across)," Raila said during the burial of legendary
Gikuyu benga musician Joseph Kamaru in Muthithi, Murang'a county, in October last year.
The coherence and interrelatedness of various practices of SF around the world might be better grasped by way of what Kenyan and
Gikuyu writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o calls "globalectics":
The imperial Qing-Dynasty China and the
Gikuyu people of Kenya at the end of the nineteenth century were pronouncedly different in many aspects, but they partake of the same anguished anxiety about how to deal with western learning, hence, hence their respective articulations of such universal anxiety.
The Wisdom and Philosophy of the
Gikuyu Proverbs: The Kihooto Worldview.
While wa Thiong'o (1986) was among those who championed the promotion of local/African heritages and actually wrote some works in
Gikuyu and Swahili besides those written in the English language, and Ubesie (1973, 1974) who wrote some works in Igbo, others like Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka who actually went on to win very prestigious international prizes advocated dominant use of Western languages and conceptual frameworks.
I was thinking I'd write the novel in
Gikuyu. I didn't know how long that would take.
He gave the example of Waiyaki wa Hinga who actively led his
Gikuyu people against British colonialism.
"I will take
Gikuyu classes, when I am done with diversiddy and advertising, when I am driving a good car.
In what was then considered a seminal piece of anthropology (but which has attracted some criticism long since), Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta (later the first president of Kenya), he recounts the
Gikuyu story of Chege wa Kibiru, a seer who alarmed his family when he woke up in his bed one morning looking as though he had spent the night in a vicious fight.