Seeking Land: The Era Of Exploring

Griffiths lost no time in staking out his claim, receiving both funds and permission from the United Methodist Council of England. In 1909 he walked, with one European companion and twenty-four Gikuyu porters, around the entire eastern slope of Mount Kenya, traveling the 171 miles from Nairobi to Nyeri and on to Meru by footpaths that were often little more than traces in the bush.

Griffiths's party arrived at "Fort Meru" in October 1909, to be met by Home. The district commissioner advised them against attempting to "penetrate deeper into the Meru country, which was still subject to the depredations and disturbances of young warrior bands," no doubt a reference to a band of former warriors with whom Home had clashed as the year began. To ensure both social contact and military protection, Horne decided to allot the Methodists a plot of land less than two miles away from his administrative headquarters.

Griffiths's subsequent report of this expedition electrified Methodist leaders back in London. Describing Meru as a land of "hills, valleys, and innumerable streams," he found it "unlike any other area in Africa":

Its hills are covered with ferns, hedges are thick with blackberry bushes, and in the streams watercress abounds . . . [and] mosquitoes are unknown. . . . We have been toiling for fifty years in the sweltering climate of the coast, contending with tremendous difficulties, bitter disappointments and deaths. We have been for years meditating upon seeking another and better country in which our men can live and labor and reap. SIR, HERE IT IS. THE FUTURE OF OUR EAST AFRICAN MISSION LIES HERE . I implore the committee to enter it.^[9]

By 1910, London members of the United Methodist church had responded to Griffiths's glowing report with the decision to extend their mission into Meru. Efforts began immediately to recruit a missionary, carpenter, and doctor to launch the project. The carpenter's position ("industrial missionary") was granted, in 1911, to Rev. Frank Mimmack. In January 1912 he and Griffiths left England to occupy the allotted site and begin construction of the first buildings.

To search for a minister and doctor took longer, Griffiths having declined both positions in favor of returning to the Kenya coast. Eventually, the posts were combined and awarded to Rev. Reginald T. Worthington. Worthington had entered the Methodist ministry in 1910. After a period in the Home Service he began to look abroad and was overjoyed at the prospect of pioneering in a virgin field. As a minister, however, he lacked medical training; thus he delayed his departure several months to acquire a basic knowledge of medicine.

Worthington sailed for Kenya in December 1912, joining Griffiths at Mombasa. Thereafter the two traveled up-country, tracking around Mount Kenya's eastern flank, where they were joined by three Gikuyu youths, Maina, Kamau, and Wanjoe (to the missionaries, "George"), who offered to serve as translators among the Meru. The group then made the final trek across Mount Kenya's northern slope to North Imenti, where Mimmack eagerly awaited their arrival.^[10]

Horne also greeted the new arrivals with pleasure. In anticipation of their coming he had supervised every detail of Griffiths's earlier negotiations for land. Arriving in March 1912, Griffiths had initially been dismayed to learn that government policy restricted him to a single five-acre plot. Horne, although bound to enforce the restriction, determined to place the Methodists on the most favorable site possible. Characteristically, he accompanied Griffiths to the area he had chosen, then proclaimed a baraza (public meeting) to discover who had the right to sell.

The land in question was owned collectively by elders of the Murathankari clan. Horne's demand placed them in a dilemma. On one hand they wished to see no further whites invade their homesteads. On the other they feared the consequences of a refusal. They resolved the problem by offering the single tract of land shunned by them all, the "spirit forest" (sacred grove) of Ka-Aga, today known as Kaaga.

Ka-Aga was indeed a spirit forest, known to the Meru as the "small place of curse removers [Aga]" and to Horne as the witch doctors' forest. Spirit forests existed everywhere in Meru, "sacred" in that they were reserved for the ancestors. Every clan had such a forest. Depending on the altitude, it consisted of a particularly dense tract of vegetation, woodland, or rainforest surrounding a gigantic wild fig tree. The tree was the most sacred point within the grove and home to the spirits that lived around it.

No living Meru dared enter a spirit forest. No one could hunt there, chase straying livestock, or even cut wood. To be caught and cursed by the spirits in such areas meant experiencing personal terror, subsequent physical illness, and communal ostracism, and requiring the services of a curse remover. In theory, therefore, the forests were never entered. In fact they were visited at night by Kiamas of the various Meru supernaturalists. Ka-Aga, for example, was used by the "Council of Aga," the curse removers, whom the British mislabeled as "witch doctors." Their songs, heard faintly through the darkness, were believed by the Meru to be sung by the spirits themselves.

This forest tract, always shunned by the men of Murathankari, was now offered to the Methodists in hope that the ancestral spirits would wreak traditional revenge. Horne, aware of the grove's reputation, initially objected. To his surprise, Griffiths accepted at once, declaring a forest of wizards and witches to be the most fitting spot possible to sow the seed of God.

The Roman Catholics had also grown interested in Meru. Bishop Perlo's imagination had also been kindled by the story of Horne's bloodless conquest. It seemed logical, as Horne's administration took root, to extend the influence of the Consolata into this untouched region, particularly because it was so near his own. Perlo's conviction was strengthened by the promise of future financial support. This appeared in the form of permission to engage in direct commercial activity to support the faith financially, actions previously forbidden by the Holy See.

Earlier funding for the mission's work in Kenya had come almost entirely from Canon Joseph Alamano, founder of the order. Now Perlo responded to his new commercial freedom by purchasing two sizable tracts of prime coffee land in the more distant regions of Gikuyu and arranging future purchase of a three-thousand-acre estate adjacent to the mission itself. Because Gikuyu labor was available in unlimited quantities and at minimal cost, the anticipated profits could be directed toward long-range financial support of apostolic expansion.

Thus in August 1910, Perlo sent Fathers J. Berlagnia and T. Gays to explore the Meru region. Like Griffiths one year earlier, they trekked across Mount Kenya's arid northern face, to enter what Gays later described as "a little earthly paradise, . . . rich with forests and streams, . . . fertile with regular rains, . . . and holding about 40,000 primitive and courageous warriors."^[11]

Like Griffiths the two priests proceeded initially to Fort Meru, intending to establish their station adjacent to Horne's administrative headquarters. On arrival they were crestfallen to learn of the earlier Methodist claim to the tract near Horne's log cabin. Colonial regulations, passed only months earlier, stipulated that each mission order be segregated from competitors, with Catholics and Protestants remaining at least ten miles apart and as far beyond that as geography would allow.^[12]

If measured at its base, Imenti was ten miles wide. Thus Griffiths's earlier Methodist claim blocked off the entire region to the Consolata. Nor did Horne show sympathy for the Italians' plight. As an

Englishman and member of the Anglican church, he had little use for either Catholics or Italians, especially those unable to speak English. Speaking to the two priests through Gikuyu interpreters, he tried first to impress them with the "savage" nature of the district and its people in the hope they would simply leave. When that failed, he suggested they extend their search south of Meru proper into the adjacent Mwimbi region.

After returning briefly to the Consolata mission in Nyeri to consult with Bishop Perlo, Father Gays again set out for Meru in 1911, this time accompanied by Father Giovanni Toselli. Following Horne's advice, the pair passed through Imenti and Igoji to lower Mwimbi. Finding no site there that met their needs, they returned to Fort Meru. There they petitioned Horne to allow construction of a single mission station in the region of Kiija, a flat, marshy plain that bordered lower Imenti and Tharaka.

Kiija was precisely ten miles from district headquarters and thus just outside both Imenti and the Methodist religious zone. Privately Horne objected, preferring that his personal colony be restricted to the British. Officially, the priests had clearly complied with government policy. Horne therefore permitted them to occupy not only the requested site at Kiija but also a second, still undetermined plot of land to be located somewhat farther south.

Gays and Toselli then returned to Nyeri, where Toselli was immediately charged with organizing a third expedition. In December 1911 he led three other missionaries and a file of forty porters into Meru once again. He was accompanied by Fathers Luigi Olivero, Giovanni Balbo, and Giuseppi Aimo-Boot. The priests reached Horne's headquarters after a four-day trek. After resting, they decided to move south, searching out the second site that Horne had promised within the relatively unknown regions of Igoji or Mwimbi.

Initially, they selected a tract of land at Thigaa, today a part of lower Mwimbi, which they described in subsequent reports as "wild and very low from a morality point of view."^[13] On further reflection they abandoned it completely, dividing into two parties to continue the search.

Aimo-Boot and Toselli traveled north and east (uphill) into Igoji, eventually settling on a site high on the mountain, on the banks of the Mutonga River and near today's Igoji Town. Thereafter they returned to ask Horne for permission to buy the tract from its original owner. Agreeing, Horne accompanied the two priests back to Igoji. On arrival he inquired of the person he had appointed blanket chief as to who

owned the land. Four men stepped forward. The group spokesman, M'Riria, listened patiently while Horne explained the Consolata offer, then flatly refused it. The other three supported his decision.

M'Riria's curt refusal fell clearly within Meru tradition. Land transfers were not settled within moments but emerged through long-drawn and complex negotiations. Ideally, adequate compensation would have had to be offered, not only to the plot's actual owners but also to each of their tenants who had previously negotiated cultivation or grazing rights. Deciding who might be eligible would take time.

Every Meru present at the scene instantly understood M'Riria's position as a bargaining ploy, the prelude to a long and satisfying period of negotiation. Voices from both sides rose, as Horne's police began to argue with the Igoji clansmen over how many goats they would in fact accept from the new whites, who clearly could afford so many. Horne, however, had little patience with Meru commercial traditions and none at all with the time they consumed. Unexpectedly, he cut short the rising babble of voices by striking M'Riria to the ground. Stunned and thoroughly frightened, the four landholders agreed immediately to the sale on the priests' original terms.^[14]

The other two members of the party were initially more fortunate. Fathers Balbo and Olivero had been selected to occupy the lowland site of Kiija. By prearrangement they were met at the location by R. A. B. Butler, Horne's newly assigned assistant district commissioner. Butler had no difficulty in convincing members of the Kiija Kiama to grant two pieces of land ("one for hut and one for garden") to the two priests in exchange for a specified number of goats. The real reason for their acceptance, however, lay in the elders' desire to acquire "white men of their own" to protect them from what they perceived as the rising power of Imenti clans higher up the mountain, increasingly arrogant because of their "possession" of Horne.