African Tales_Tribal Folklore of the The Nine Month Coup

BURU BURU SHOPPING CENTER, Kenya - Aug. 6, 2014 - PRLog -- But there’s one exception form the history books, a woman who both reversed the constraints of her sex and, if the unusual story behind her removal from power is to be believed, fell prey to the pitfalls of gender in a way only a woman could appreciate.

These are the facts as we know then: Wangu wa Makeri was a Kikuyu, born in the second half of the 19^th century. In 1901 she was appointed headman of Weithaga, the only female ruler in the colonial Kenya. Accounts agree that she was a rigid and authoritarian ruler, but whether or not this was a good thing seems to have been a matter of opinion, largely determined by the presence or lack of a Y chromosome. Wangu made a point of literally determined using men as furniture, discarding traditional Kikuyu stools for the backs of Kikuyu males. Perhaps unsurprisingly, stories suggest her rule was warmly approved of by kikuyu women.

And to the wily (and more pertinently, fertile) men of the Kikuyu tribe hatched a plot, one of the most unique coups in history (disclaimer: we are now leaving the realm of history and enter the more entertaining, if less reliable, space of tribal folklore). They did their husbandly duty and impregnated their wives, including Wangu, more or less simultaneously. This ensured that in nine months, the chief and her supporter’s were wither in labor, nursing or too heavily pregnant to prevent the re-ascendancy of male Kikuku-dom.

Additional rumor holds there was a drastic shortage of pickles in ice-cream in Kikuyu-land during this period.

The Kikuyu tribe hails from the Central Highlands of the fertile Kenyan country. Recently, know as Nyeri Country. Cruzeiro-Safaris. com can get you accommodation places at Mweiga and the Aberdares national park