New book sheds light on the Meru tribe in Mt. Kenya
“LISTEN! YOU CAN HEAR THEM! THE VOICES OF OUR ANCESTORS”
BY JEFFREY FADIMAN, M.A, PH.D, DIP ED. (BRITISH)
The history of Mt. Kenya’s Meru goes back 300 years. It was a “living” history, alive in the minds of the tribe’s oldest men, who learned it from their grandfathers, who learned it from theirs. This book is really two books, for these ancient oral traditions included both the struggles of the living—Meru History—and the constant evolution of the sacred rituals used to contact and converse with those ancestral spirits who guided them—Meru religion.
After 1906, however, the conquering British told the Meru that since these events had never been written, they did not exist. Thus, they had no history. The British relabeled their ancestral contacts as “witchcraft,” informing the Meru that they also had no religion—and no other aspects of civilization either.
All this, of course, was racist rubbish. Meru historical and religious traditions burned like invisible flames, alive in the minds of every Meru elder. When I arrived—sixty years ago—I sought out the oldest of the old, asked about the past, then listened as the tales poured joyfully out of their hearts into my tape recorder. I listened to over 100 elders. Each one asked me to “write their words into a book, so that the Meru yet unborn could read and learn what it meant to be truly Meru.” I did. Here are those words—their words. All I have done is woven them together to create a magnificent and unforgettable history.
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Jeffrey A. Fadiman is a professor of Global Marketing at San Jose State University in California, and a Language and Area Specialist for Eastern and Southern Africa. A graduate of Stanford University with two years at the Universities of Vienna and Free Berlin, this Fulbright scholar taught both U.S. and global marketing tactics at South Africa’s University of Zululand. He first experienced Africa in 1960 by canoeing up the Niger River to Timbuktu. Thereafter, he lived in Meru, Kenya, where he rediscovered the traditional history of the Meru tribe, which had been crushed by British Colonialism. Fifty years later, the Meru accepted him as the first White Elder of their nation. Professor Fadiman has supported both Tanzanian AIDS orphans and the schools to which he sent books, pens, paper, and hope.
Click below to check out the following articles about Professor Fadiman’s extensive involvement in Africa
How a 24-year-old White American discovered Timbuktu in 1960
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