Jomo Kenyatta, the grandson of a Kikuyu medicine man, was among the foremost leaders of African na- tionalism and one of the great men of the modern world. In the 193O's he studied at the London School of Economics and took his degree in anthropology under Bronislav Malinowski, one result of which is this now famous account of his own Kikuyu tribe. Facing Mount Kenya is a central document of the highest distinction in anthropological literature, an invaluable key to the structure of African society and the nature of the African mind. Facing Mount Kenya is not only a formal study of life and death, work and play, sex and the family in one of the greatest tribes of contemporary Africa, but a work of considerable literary merit. The very sight and sound of Kikuyu tribal life presented here are at once comprehensive and intimate, and as precise as they are compassionate.
...THE COUNTRY of the Gikuyu, whose system of tribal organisation will be described in this book, is in the central part of Kenya. It is divided into five adminis- trative districts: Kiambu, Fort Hall (Murang'a), Nyeri, Embu, and Meru. The population is approximately one million. Owing to the alienation of agricultural and pastoral land, about 110,000 Gikuyu live mostly as squatters on farms on European land in various dis- tricts of Kenya. The rest of the population inhabits the Gikuyu Reserve and the towns. The Gikuyu peo- ple are agriculturists; they herd large flocks of sheep and goats, and, to a less extent, cattle, since their social organisation requires a constant supply of stock for such varied purposes as "marriage insurance," pay- ments, sacrifices, meat feasts, magical rites, purification ceremonies, and as means of supplying clothing to the community....