Wanjiku's Journey to Womanhood

A Historical Fiction about a Gikuyu Girl in Colonial Kenya

Abstract

'Irua was a way of doing what the ancestors had done. It was a way of staying part of them.’ This is how Wangeci, a Gikuyu women born in 1930, describes why Irua is important to her. This quote is from Voices from Mutira: Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women, 1910-1995 by Jean Davison. Davison's book recorded seven life histories from Gikuyu women in rural Mutira, Kenya. The Gikuyu are the largest ethnic group in Kenya making up approximately 20% of the contemporary population. Historically, the Gikuyu have lived in the highland area of south-central Kenya. As a group, they were the most dramatically affected by the white settlers in the colony of Kenya. Irua now is not a common ceremony practiced anymore. Times have changed, traditions and their meaning have changed. This historical fiction piece tells a story which takes place in the 1940s in Kenya under British colonial rule. Wanjiku is a Gikuyu girl living amid change and this is her story about experiencing Irua, its meaning and how she experienced the changing socio-political landscape. It focusses on Irua, the process of initiation into female adulthood, which in Gikuyu society includes female circumcision, sexual education and ceremonial rituals. Fictionalizing Wanjiku's journey allows for the historical narrative to be centered around and told from the voice of a girl as she becomes a woman.

Women’s bodies have been subject to policies made by male authorities in Kenya during and after colonial rule. This statement also holds true for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as well. This has caused the undermining of women’s ability to regulate their own cultural practices and has virtually erased traditional forms of female leadership, such as the age-set system of mariika, for example. Formerly, the mariika was a foundational social structure in Gikuyu society that organized individuals into gendered assigned groups based on shared stages of life. Colonial ideas have impacted on women’s reproductive rights and family structures, including the practice of Irua. Showcasing how women dealt with this change and disruption, will highlight the resistance and power women had in Kenyan history.