Bantu Beliefs and Magic / With particular reference to the Kikuyu and Kamba tribes of Kenya Colony; together with some reflections on East Africa after the war

by C. W. Hobley

If a child touches the ground at the time of its birth it is considered very unlucky. A ram, a mwati (young ewe) or an arika (young female goat) is killed, and a bracelet made of the skin is placed on the mother’s wrist. This is done for the sake of the child. The skin of the animal sacrificed is used for carrying the child on its mother’s back.

It is again very unlucky when an infant cuts its upper teeth first, but the child is not killed, and is merely sent to its maternal grandmother. This only refers to those belonging to the Kikuyu circumcision guild. The child is termed kingu. To avert the ill luck, a friend is asked to cohabit with the mother for a month, after which the husband returns to his wife.

The birth of twins is a great misfortune either in human beings or domestic animals, but only when it occurs the first time a woman or animal bears.

It is believed that the father will die if he cohabits again with the mother; a case was cited of a man who did so and was killed by a train a few days later.

Formerly twin infants were always suffocated, and in such cases were thrown into the bush by the old woman who assisted at the birth. This probably still occurs in the remoter parts of Kikuyu, but the elders stated that in the more civilised parts they are no longer killed but are given to a member of the clan of the father to rear. [[155]]

In order to free the mother from the curse, the husband hands her over to another man called a mundu rohiu, and when she has borne to him, her husband takes her back. A ram has to be killed and the woman adorned with a rukwaru before she is taken back.

This only refers to those belonging to the Kikuyu circumcision guild.

If a person, who is a twin, crosses a river, he or she must stoop down and fill the mouth with water and, facing downstream, spit it out into the river, saying, according to their sex: “May I not beget (or bear) twins as my father (or mother) did.”

Anyone seeing this ceremony might well mistake it for a propitiatory offering to a river spirit, and the error indeed has occurred. The root idea, however, is that the flowing water may carry away the kind of thahu which results in such an unlucky tendency as that of bearing twins. They can give no explanation as to why twins should be of such ill omen if they happen to be the first children of a married couple or of a domestic animal. They do not appear to believe, as in some countries, that twins have any influence over the weather. If a woman bears twins a second time, one of the children will be given to another man to bring up.

The Hon. C. Dundas made some inquiries on this point in Kyambu district, and he states that in S. Kikuyu the birth of twins is considered unlucky excepting in the case of a woman who has borne other children; the younger the woman the more unlucky the occurrence, and if the first birth is of twins, no medicine man can remove the evil, and the only course is to throw the twins into the bush or to give them to another man of a different tribe or clan. In Kenya Province it is said that twins are sold to other tribes, but in Kyambu district the elders held this to be a bad custom. The foster-father becomes sole owner of the twins and if they are girls receives dowry for them. In such case if the twins were the first birth of a woman, the father can accept no part of the dowry, but if they were second [[156]]or subsequent births, he receives the whole dowry from the foster-father and returns ten goats to him.