Legend of Mugo wa Kibiro
This is the story of a true legend. A man whose prophecies became legend. Mugo wa Kibiru as he was known was a Kenyan prophet from the Gikuyu tribe. He lived in the 18th and early 19th century. His birth and death remain a mystery. He was believed to have been born in Kiariara, Muranga near Thika. Mugo’s parents were unknown since according to kikuyu’s folklore he was found alone in the forest by a hunter called Kibiru who was inspecting his traps.
Kibiru had no idea how Mugo came to be in the forest and when asked he said that he had been with Ngai (God). Kibiru then decided to take the boy home with him and adopt him as his own. He raised the boy in his clan the Gikuyu Anjiru clan who were traditionally know for prophecy and powerful medicine. Mugo’s initial name was Cege wa Kibiru but it was later changed to Mugo which meant healer. Kibiru had no idea that he was raising a great man in his household.
Mugo chores before circumcision included herding his father’s goats with other boys but he often left them to wander in the forest without fear of animals. This was common among medicine men of his time since they possessed power to control wild animals. When Mugo was asked where he would wonder of into the forest his response was that he had been with God.
As he grew up, he began to prophecy where he predicted the coming of the white man. His description of the was that a strange race of people whose skin color was like that of a small pale frog that lives in water (kiengere) and that their blood could be seen flowing under their skin just like the frog. He also described their clothes as colorful like butterflies (ciihuruta). He warned his people of the foolishness of fighting the pale strangers with spears because they had magic sticks that produced fire (guns). He also said that they carried fire in their pockets (matchboxes). Mugo told his people that there would be cultural erosion since some of the Kikuyu youth would adopt the ways of the strangers.
These though were not his only prophecies. He foretold that cooked food which in Kikuyu custom was never sold would be sold by the road side, plains where Maasai grazed their cattle would be turned to farm land and great famines would occur before the coming of the strange men. He also described an iron snake which had many legs and swallowed white men, spitting them when it stopped. He added that it would have a bushy head that produced smoke. This was a description of the Kenya- Uganda railway.
Mugo foretold the colonization of many tribes in Kenya by the strange man predicting that it would end after many years (68 years) when the strange men would leave Kenya. Mugo advocated for his people to learn from the white man but reject their vices. One of his most famous predictions was of a fig tree growing in Thika that would die only after the white man left the country. This prophecy proved accurate prompting the Kikuyu to regard the fig tree as sacred. Even the white men acknowledged the power of Mugo’s prophecies and tried to fence the tree in an attempt to prevent anything from happening to it. Shortly after independence the tree was struck by lightning and began to wither rapidly. On 12 December 1963 when Kenya officially became independent, the tree decayed and died fulfilling Mugo wa Kibiru’s prophecy over a century earlier.
