The Gikuyu healer and prophet Mugo wa Kibiru, also known as Chege (Cege) wa Kibiru, resided in Kariara, Murang'a, not far from Thika, during the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century.
According to Kikuyu mythology, Mugo wa Kibiru was discovered by a hunter by the name of Kibiru as he was checking his traps. His parents' identities remain unknown.
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Mugo Wa Kibiru the Great Sage of the Gikuyu
Kibiru, the hunter who discovered Mugo, belonged to the Gikuyu Anjiru clan, which was renowned for prophesy and potent medicine.
The origin of Mugo wa Kibiru in the forest is unknown. The fact that Mugo claimed to have been with Ngai (God) when Kibiru questioned him about his whereabouts in the forest makes the situation even more puzzling .
Unaware of how magnificent this youngster would grow to be, Kibiru chose to adopt the little Mugo and raise him as one of his sons. Cege became Mugo wa Kibiru because Kibiru the hunter changed the name of this unidentified boy.
The young Mugo helped the other boys in the neighborhood take care of his father's goats before he was circumcised. He would frequently separate from his age group in the field and enter the forest.
He had the ability to manage wild creatures from an early age, and they were oblivious to him. He would respond that he had been with God when other lads inquired about his whereabouts.
Cege wa Kibiru was the greatest and most well-known Gikuyu prophet and seer, and he resided in or near Kariara, near Thika.
He later became known as Mugo wa Kibiru, or Mugo, (Doctor), the son of Kibiru, since, like other great Gikuyu seers, he was to become a renowned healer or Man of Medicine, Mundu-Mugo.
Yet, he wasn't Kibiru's biological son; rather, he was adopted and formally baptized into the Kibiru family's Anjiru clan.
The Anjiru clan is one of the "ten" Gikuyu clans, and it is known for prophecy and potent medicine. As evidenced by contemporary Anjiru like the late Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Wangari wa Maathai, they were and are the outstanding healers of the tribe.
A Munjiru is considered to have something and a little bit more, or "Munjiru ari undu na kaundu kangi," which means that you can never understand the depths of a Munjiru's soul.
As a Diviner Priest, he wears a rugoci guard with a hooked neck so that, in contrast to a regular Medicine Man who wears a straight, narrow guard, he can always leave some divination beads and cowrie shells caught inside the shadowy unknown.
The Munjiru has a profound connection to all of nature, and he may call animals to a gathering, keep them at bay, or infest a whole community with the sound of his flute. In this fashion, they served as the guardians of the river's watering holes, ensuring that humans and their cattle could access them without danger of being attacked by wild creatures.
Also, they would pay a price to have charms and other props placed at cultivated fields, bee hives, and village gateways as protection. Without the protection of a Munjiru Man of Medicine, or in Gikuyu, a Munjiru Mundu Mugo also known as a Munjiru Mundu wa Mithaiga, no war group could leave. Three M. Indeed, strong medicine!
A Munjiru Man of Medicine calling the animals with his flute.
A Munjiru Man of Medicine calling the animals with his flute.
The hunter Kibiru discovered Cege in the wilderness when he was just a young child while checking his traps. Kibiru approached the youngster after spotting him wandering alone in the jungle and enquired;
Who are you, young man, and who is with you?
"My name is Cege and I am with God, Ngai, Mwene Nyaga," the boy retorted.
"And where are you from?" asked Kibiru.
"I have come from God, Ngai, Mwene Nyaga," Cege retorted.
Will you come with me, Kibiru?
“Yeah”, Cege
The boy was brought home by Kibiru and given to his first wife. The boy was subsequently given the proper purifications and adoption rites, becoming Cege wa Kibiru.
Gikuyu people had a significant transition from being hunters and pastoralists to mostly agriculturalists once working iron became common among the Cuma Generation in the late 17th century.
A Cege regiment from the Manduti generation is mentioned by the renowned Gikuyu historian and academician Muriuki, who placed it shortly before the Cuma.
As a result, the Cege people would be firmly established in the hunter-pastoralist era before Cuma.
Might the mention of a Cege in the Gikuyu chronicles indicate the time frame during which the renowned Warrior, Cege lived?
This dates these occurrences to the early 1600s.
Before getting circumcised, he worked as a young child by spending the entire day caring for his father's goats alongside other boys. He frequently dispersed from the other youngsters in the field and ventured into the forest unafraid of the predators.
He would say that he had been with God, Ngai, in response to their questions about his whereabouts.
When he was an adult, he started to predict. The following are the sayings that have been passed down to us, however it is impossible to build an exhaustive list of all of his sayings.
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Mugo wa Kibiru prophecy in 1919
1. A group of people with butterfly-like appearances will arrive from the East. You will be able to see the blood running beneath their skin, just like in the Ciengere, and their skin will be colorless, like that of the tree frog, Kiengere (plural). These individuals will also appear to be lepers.
2. The tribal ways will undergo a severe upheaval as a result of the Ciengere, and nothing will ever be the same again. These discomforts will be the labor pains of both good and bad.
3. The Ciengere will construct an iron serpent and enter the Sea of the Sparrow (iria ria ihii) from the Sea of Rukanga (iria ria cumbi). A machete or spear will not be able to cut the snake.
4. The sleeping snake will be ridden by a kihinga, a live snake with a bushy head that bellows smoke. The Ciengere will be ingested and then vomited out.
5. A significant famine and a pandemic that will very certainly kill everyone will occur soon after the snake appears.
6. The Ciengere will be armed with fire-spitting sticks, so our men would be unwise to try to engage them with spears.
7. The land will be covered by the Ciengere.
8. The Ciengere's eyes will have stripes similar to mouse skin, and their skin will appear to have leprosy.
9. There will be babies born with merely holes for ears. They will renounce tribal customs and treat their parents and elders with disrespect.
10. Children will be born who will have mbugi (ear bells) in their ears and who will not pay attention to kirira (tribal teaching).
11. Youngsters will be born who won't be afraid to do heinous things, (migiro).
12. Waganu, the whole land would be filled with adultery and debauchery.
13. There will be theft and small-time criminality everywhere.
14. All around the nation, cooked food will be offered at marketplaces and along roadsides.
15. The Gikuyu people will obey the Aicakamuyu rather than the Anjiru Clan's guidance and cautions.
16. The Gikuyu will produce sugarcane and bananas near Lake Naivasha.
17. There will be farming and millet planting in the plains where the Maasai, or Ukabi, wander with their livestock.
18. One day, the massive forests of Mbage and Kiriti will merge to become a one forest.
19. Only then will the living iron snake devour the Ciengere and carry them to the Sea of Rukanga. Until then, the sleeping snake will shift and slumber near the Ngong Hills.
20. The country will never be free of the ills caused by the Ciengere nor enjoy the benefits of the good brought by them until the huge Thingira wa Iregi (Ruling Council house) shall be built in Githunguri kia Wairera and inaugurated with the proper ceremonies and cleansing rites.
21. Bururi, the country, won't ever be free until the giant fig tree Mugumo in Thika falls.
The Fulfillment Of Prophesy
A young man always responds with an annoyed "Yes, I can hear you" when I ask if he can hear me above the headphones and earbuds ringing bells in his ears.
Around Lake Naivasha in Cege's day, it was a paradise teeming with species, as if Noah's ark had just been unlocked. It was inconceivable that the Gikuyu would ever settle on the shores of Paradise Lost, much less grow bananas there. This prophecy has the terrible implication that one day the lake itself would vanish and turn into farmland. Thai! Thathaiya Ngai Thai!
It was inconceivable that cooked food would ever be offered for sale. It has been said that cooked food can never be sold, which is known as irio hiu itumaga mburi. Gikuyu traditions have traditionally required that cooked meals be freely shared.
After all, rather than the Ciengere themselves specifically, the spirit of the Ciengere will permeate the entire area. As a result, we will witness young people changing their appearance to resemble Ciengere, including their skin, hair, and habits. Then, the Ciengere will be visible everywhere.
The railway connecting Kenya's Indian Ocean Coast and Lake Victoria unified and united the new country under the name of Kenya, making it impossible to divide it up once more into distinct countries as there had been in the past. The connections are irreversible and cannot be broken. Prophecy states that it cannot be cut.
Going beyond the literal is important when reading and decoding prophecy because many of its components are merely symbols.
It's important to recognize that because every human being experiences cataclysmic catastrophes that necessitate the reconstruction of the great House of the soul at some point in their lives, they are all microcosms of the events that occur in the universe.
Because of this, even though we understand Cege's prophesies to have been focused on the events of the coming of the white man and the railway, we see that we must also witness the arrival of a technologically advanced age that will trap and consume the youth because, after all, the Mugumo, which had its roots in the underworld and connected the Gikuyu to their ancestral past, will have vanished.
Probably more than the actual military engagements, the Great Mugumo tree's collapse at Thika marked a turning point in the struggle for independence. The white man seems to comprehend that this was a spiritual conflict involving both the past and the present. (See more here.)
We must realize that the key to regaining the respect for the traditional prophetic Unjiru in us and the acceptance of the futuristic and daring complexity of the Uicakamuyu in us is the erection of the New Thingira, in every soul, in every home, not just the one Mzee Jomo Kenyatta erected in Nairobi or the one physically at Githunguri.
Every person needs to be connected to the past, present, and future. For the promised New Thingira to usher in the New Order in Gikuyu society, itwika, it must be spiritually constructed. Destiny is the actualization of prophecy rather than pre-ordainment since prophecy is a clear picture of the future. Living out the prophecy is the Gikuyu's fate. (See more here.)
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