Meet the Ameru

The Ameru are a Bantu tribe that inhabits the Meru region of Kenya. They speak the Meru language. The Ameru are a community living primarily on the fertile agricultural northeastern slope of Mount Kenya, in the Eastern Province of Kenya. The Meru are primarily agrarian, with some animals kept mainly in the northern part of the region.

The Meru were traditionally governed by elected and hierarchical councils of elders from the clan level right up to the supreme "njuri ncheke" council that governed the seven sections of Meru, making Meru perhaps the only pre-colonial democratic nation in sub-Saharan Africa. The Njuri is the only traditional judicial system recognized by the Kenyan state and is still powerful when it comes to political decision making amongst the Meru.

Taken as a whole, the Meru have one of the most detailed and potentially confusing oral histories and mythology of any people in Kenya. It is also one of the most deeply intriguing, at least from a western point of view, as it contains extremely strong Biblical similarities that suggest to some that they may once have been one of the lost tribes of Israel, and to others that they were once Jewish. This history includes a good part of both Old and New Testament stories: a baby in a basket of reeds who becomes a leader and a prophet, the massacre of newly born babies by an evil king, an exodus, the parting and crossing of the waters by an entire nation, Aaron's Rod in the form of a magic spear or staff, the leadership of a figure comparable to Moses, references to ancient Egypt (Misiri), and so on. In brief, it recounts that the Meru were once enslaved by the "Red People". They eventually escaped, and in their exodus came across a large body of water called Mbwaa or Mbwa, which they crossed by magical means. The details of the tradition are replete with parallels to the Old Testament, and also contain references to events described in the New Testament.

Photo credit: TRMS