My male friends from other communities can’t understand why we sons of Mumbi proudly wear our mothers’ names like ribbons on our chests.
Equally, they get baffled when a man whose father is alive refers to himself as the son of Njeri or Njambi. Unknown to them, this is a strictly followed centuries-old decree issued by our matriarch Mumbi herself. If you really want to make a Kikuyu man gel, refer to him as the son of his mother. It doesn’t matter whether he is Baba Ngina or the average bloke in the street.
Among our people, men belong to their mothers. That’s why our entire tribe refers to itself as the House of Mumbi. Our founding matriarch, who started this tradition, had it all figured out: your mother is your only true parent. That old geezer whom you call dad could probably be ‘baba wa mkate’ if you get the drift.
This fondness for our mothers is exemplified by how we mountain dads relate with the daughters whom we have named after them. This is evident during school closing days.
For many dads from the mountain region, it is a week to shout into their phones, ‘I am going to pick my mother from Kahuhia Girls or Ngandu Girls.’ If a dad with a daughter in high school owed you money, their standard answer during the week is, ‘let me pick mother from school, then we’ll talk after that.’ That’s how seriously we take our daughters.
When such a girl gets home, the dad will order the local butcher to get him a fat cock for ‘mom’ is around. It’s not lost to mama watoto that in the course of that week, she had requested her hubby to get her salon money, to which he curtly replied that he didn’t have.
Pampered princess
A son of Mumbi will drive for miles through potholed rural roads to pick his daughter from school. But when his wife asks him to drop her off at a wedding, he will feign tiredness or suddenly get busy.
By the same token, he will take her daughter to a hotel, treat her to pizza and snacks equivalent to the family’s weekly shopping, but saunter home with a measly quarter of meat for the family. Plus, a toothpick dangling from his lips.
Due to the pizza treats, the daughter believes his dad is a king, even when his wife considers him a cracked egg. The daughter also enjoys dad’s dotting company, for what she is when she is with him, a pampered princess who can do no wrong.
While a relationship with a boy demands many impossible things, a girl’s healthy relationship with his dad doesn’t involve issuing dangerous declarations like ‘I will never leave you’. Bearing his dad’s mother’s name is enough.
The relationship between a man and his son somehow ebbs when he gets hitched to a woman. In contrast, the delightful camaraderie between a man and the daughter named after his mother doesn’t end when she gets married.
A Kikuyu man will always adoringly refer to his married daughter as ‘maitu’ and grin ear to ear anytime ‘maitu’ visits home. The reason is that fathers and daughters are just friends, and don’t try to be anything else.