Meru people
The Meru or Amîîrú are a Bantu ethnic group that inhabit the Meru region of Kenya. The region is situated on the fertile lands of the north and eastern slopes of Mount Kenya in the former Eastern Province.
The Ameru people comprise nine subgroups: the Igoji, Imenti, Tigania, Mitine, Igembe, Mwimbi, Muthambi, Chuka and Tharaka. The Tharaka live in the semi-arid part of Greater Meru and they, along with the Mwimbi, Muthambi and Chuka, form the Tharaka-Nithi County. The Ameru are unrelated to the Wameru of Northern Tanzania.
Languages
The Meru speak the Meru language, also known as Kimîîrú. Kimîîrú, Kikamba, Kiembu, Kimbeere and Kikuyu share critical language characteristics. The Meru language is not uniform across the Meru lands, but comprises several mutually intelligible dialects which vary geographically. Each dialect is a reflection of previous migratory patterns, the level of intra-community interactions, and the influences of other adjacent Bantu, Nilotic and Cushitic communities. As a whole language scholars have demonstrated that the Meru language exhibits much older Bantu characteristics in grammar and phonetic forms than neighbouring Bantu languages.History
The Meru people are an ethnicity of Bantu origin whose ancestors as recalled by the Igoji, Imenti, Tigania, Mwimbi, Muthambi and Igembe tribes the Ngaa people inhabited the coast likely around today's Manda Island. Sometime before 1700, coastal Arabs possibly from Persia arrived at the Ngaa's coastal settlement and proceeded to defeat the Ngaa. It is often said that the Arabs enslaved the Ngaa however this is probably not correct. As Fadiman writes in his book;The invaders are remembered as taller and lighter skinned than the islanders. They wore a single red cloth tied around their waists and at one shoulder, and bound another around their heads. Each carried a short sword of the scimitar type, of which the blade curved backward and only the outer edge was honed. They also carried several guns.After a time of submission, the Ngaa gradually grew much angrier at their overlords, refusing to work the fields or take care of the cattle which supposedly angered the Nguo Ntuni causing them to confront the Ngaa's Kiama who then proceeded to mock them for their supposed wisdom. The Nguo Ntuni demanded them to perform a number of incredibly ridiculous tasks. The first called for the elders to drop a small round fruit into a deep hole, then recover it without using either hands or sticks. Baffled, they turned to the community's ritual specialists, as was traditional in times of crisis. In this instance a Muga, recalled by the Meru as Koome Njoe, suggested they fill the hole with water, then float the fruit to the top. The 1913 version recorded by Meru's colonial administrator E.B Horne reads: “The Kiama held a shauri and decided... to fill the hole with water until it overflowed and the fruit floated out with the water. This they did, and the Nguntuni said yes you have performed the task but now we want you to do something else.” The second task was to provide the Nguo Ntuni with an "eight-sided cloth," a problem that again baffled the Kiama. Koome Njoe responded, however, by providing the council with a cob of maize. The husk, when peeled, had eight sides. A third task called for the provision of a calf that would produce white dung. Koome Njoe reacted by starving the calf for a week, then feeding it milk and lime for four days more. Thereafter, its droppings were white. The Nguo Ntuni then demanded a sandal with hair on both sides. This was accomplished by using the dewlap of an ox, which was cut from the still-living animal and stitched into the desired shape while still sufficiently fresh enough to be flexible.
Informants differ on the nature of the conquest. Some state that there was a single battle in which the use of the guns proved decisive. Others believe that the islanders did not resist. All agree, however, that the Nguo Ntuni victory was complete and that the pre-Meru entered a period of enslavement Contemporary informants refer unanimously to this period in their history as one of outright slavery. More likely, it consisted of an initial theft of whatever wealth was available, followed by the development of some form of tribute relationship. This hypothesis would seem to be substantiated by Nguo Ntuni behavior after the conquest. Evidently, some or all of them returned to the mainland, reappearing only at certain seasons. They normally lived on the mainland behind a log stockade. They had other slaves whom they used to cultivate their mainland gardens but spoke to them in a language that no islander could understand.
There were several other tasks, each more difficult than the last as the conquerors grew increasingly angry. One demand was for a "dog with horns," a problem that momentarily baffled even Koome Njoe. In the earliest versions, however, he advised the Kiama as follows: "They caught a dik-dik , took its horns, then put them into the head of a dog, carefully sewing up the cuts in the skin." The elders completed the operation by smearing gum around the base of each horn, placing the animal's hair in the gum to conceal it, then immobilizing the animal until the entire incision had healed.
According to oral history, the Nguo Ntuni became angry and demanded the murder of several Kiama elders. The old men responded by withdrawing from the invaders' camp to hold a final feast, at which every family was to present a goat. When the time came, blood from the slaughtered animals was allowed to run into the waters that flowed from the point the elders had chosen for their feasting into the Nguo Ntuni camp. Spokesmen for the islanders' warriors then appeared with the blood of the slain animals still on their spears to report to the Nguo Ntuni that the murders had been carried out. The Nguo Ntuni then gathered the remaining elders together and assigned what was to prove their final task—the forging of a single spear so long that it would reach the clouds. Neither Koome or any of the elders could find a solution and they thus turned to another ritual specialist known as Mururia who proposed that the Ngaa should flee the island.
Escape from Mbwaa
To avoid Arab detection, Mururia suggested that the elders of the oldest age set still alive be sent to the Nguo Ntuni daily with ever increasing lengths of rope that were purportedly a sign that the spear's construction was still in progress. The elders informed the Nguo Ntuni that the smiths had completed the construction of a gigantic forge that would apparently send a great glow into the sky that same night. The Ntuni were warned to keep away from the forge lest the flame burned them. In the meantime the plans of escape were still being crafted. Specific clans had been chosen to carry and protect objects of importance along the way. Yams for instance were carried by the Abwekana,''Kiniamburi carried the goat etc. Objects of religious significance would be carried by the Omo,the clan most associated with the Meru God Ngai and from which the Mugwe were derived from. Informants describe that the Ngaa divided themselves into individual clans so that "if one was lost,all clans would survive". The first unit composed of warriors,were to defend the community and act as an advance guard. The second unit was made up of elder and middle aged men who could be called to fight incase disaster struck and the last consisted of women,children and the elderly. The whole group was led by the prophet as in accordance with the Ngaa's beliefs,it was only he who ik the power of magic and blessings of the ancestors could protect such a group. When night fell, every village would set a fire providing the great glow the Nguo Ntuni had asked for.At this time the warrior band set out immediately leaving by the moon of which it is said that their descendants would be called Nyaga/Njiru. The second group set out at dawn and would be called Ntuni and the final group left in daylight and would be called Njeru''.
Coordinated Escape
Initially the plan had almost entirely failed as the channel between Mbwaa and the mainland was under water. According to kiMeru legend, the prophet requested that 3 men be willing to sacrifice themselves for the people. The first, Muthetu, was to be an altar on which the sacrificing would occur. The second, Gaita would have his stomach cut open so that the prophet could read omens from his intestines and a third man, Kiuna was to act as a viable replacement incase Gaita's courage would fail. After the sacrifice the prophet placed powder on an animal's tail in his hand of which he scattered it onto the waters which parted the waters.
This rather obviously fictitious mode of escape is probably a consequence of absorbing some of the narratives of Abrahamic religion as this is a common theme in both Islam and Christianity. The Bajuni have a similar origin story in which they supposedly crossed the Red sea to Somalia with a higher figure to help, that is, the sheikh, the ritual specialist. It therefore seems likely that the Ngaa had learned of such stories from the Nguo Ntuni and had conveniently twisted it. What is most likely is that tidal action on the channel made the waters shallow enough to cross through
Once the Ngaa had reached the mainland however, informants claim that they had to climb a mountain and filed across a narrow "gate" to avoid leaving any tracks. On descending, they had reached the banks of a supposed "red sea" which was described as having red fresh water that were slow and shallow and quite wide as migration supposedly took "many days" to cross from which they followed the left of the river, which was probably the Tana River in a "westward" direction which should be take to mean "inland" or loosely as "uphill" as at the time they generally denoted the same direction from modern day Meru's steep slopes. As Laughton had showed that the words for right hand, left hand and high also meant north, south and west and so it is likely that the Meru language developed where the west was roughly equivalent to "uphill".