When members of the Kikuyu community want to tell you that they will wake up at the crack of dawn, some especially the elderly will incorporate this simile, 'ngokira tene ta Mara agithie gute nyina' (I will wake up early like when Mara was going out to dump his mother).
The simile is derived from a traditional Kikuyu folktale that tells of a story of how this man called Mara having taken care of his sick mother for a long time realised she wasn't getting any better.
On this fateful day, he woke up at the crack of dawn to go and 'dump' his mother in the bush so as to avoid the latter from dying inside the hut. But why?
Well, according to Gikuyu Centre for Cultural Studies (GCCS), it was a taboo (thahu) for any person including a child to die inside the hut.
"Because a person dying inside the hut rendered it unclean, and the hut had to be burned down, when a person was believed to be close to death he was taken out and built a small shelter in the bush where he could be cared for till he died," GCCS documents.
If the 'dying relative' somehow recovered while still being taken care of in the bush, GCCS notes, "he/she had to go through a purification ceremony before being accepted back in the homestead and the village they came from".
The cultural centre adds that "if the person died inside the hut, his/her body had to be removed before the hut was set ablaze. And since it was also a taboo to handle a dead body, a hole was perforated at the back wall of the hut so that hyenas can enter and remove the body".
"Alternatively, a person who was untouchable by the taboo (thahu) of a dead body was found and paid to remove the body," GCCS documents further.
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