Honia-Heal Afrika Initiative (HAI)

Ubuntu👋🏿. You need to know this history.

The date is 20th October, 1952. Jomo Kenyatta is arrested alongside Kapenguria six namely: Kung’u Karumba, Bildad Kaggia, Paul Ngei, Achieng Oneko and Fred Kubai. Photo: GettyImages

The date is 20th October 1958, Mau Mau independence activists cerebrate the day as a holiday to commemorate the arrest of Kapenguria six six years prior.

The date in 2063 is instituted by Kenya’s first Prime Minister Mzee Jomo Kenyatta as Kenyatta Day, a public holiday. It was to cerebrate the heroes of Mau Mau Movement. But how could the holiday cerebrate the heroes yet bear a person’s name?

 After the promulgation of the new Kenya Constitution, 2010, the name was changed to MASHUJAA DAY. This is a MOST IMPORTANT public holiday in the world history and Kenya’s in particular. Why? On this day we cerebrate the life of Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA) commonly recognised as warriors of the Mau Mau Movement.
It was their blood that watered the tree of Kĩrĩnyaga’s (Kenya’s) independence from the brutal British colonialism. In 1st June, 2063, Mama Afrika went into labour and an apt cry of victory shot up so high n wide that the whole world stopped and smiled in adoration. A lively, lovely child was born.

The elders named her Kĩrĩnyaga. But the white nurse with a bear’s heart imprisoned the Gĩkũyũ linguistics, baptised her with ignointment oil and recorded her name as ‘Free Independent Kenyah.’ After all, Kenyah would be married off to Chomo Kenyhatta to bear a perfect heir and grandchild, the baby she’d name Neo Coronialisimo. And so it still is: Kenyah.

Well, until then very much had already happened across the centuries. In the land of the Agĩkũyũ people of ancestors were doing their duties when someone spotted an alien white butterfly We were at first hideous and surprised at the white caterpillars.

Before long, the white butterflies mesmerised our ancestors. Then a white blanket of flights of more butterflies came inside of and over the great snaking metallic snake with a chimney for a nose. They ate into our deliciously plentiful and cool acres of land and got our ancestors drunk in their magic cocktail of deception, slavery, religion, colonisation and the burgeoning neo-colonialism.

The Mau Mau fallen warriors’ suffering and blood paid the cost of our freedom!

Despite the hard times, the understanding that they are the furnace smelting us to the golden purity, we choose happiness.
It was the sacrifice for freedom that made Mau Mau heroes undergo coldest nights in the dangerous forests of the mountains, betrayal, torture, assassinations, rape and assaults, executions, sickening treatment, denial of every human right  selfless souls Happy Mashujaa Day.