“Whats ‘Full Nine’?” One reader asked when I launched the book ‘Mũmbi and the Full Nine’ last week. “Do we have a half nine or quarter nine? I don’t get it,” he continued.
The Agĩkũyũ number system is very interesting, magical even. As a people, they had a prohibition from counting living things to the last item, believing that a bad predicament might befall them. To curtail that, ten becomes full nine, a code for completeness.
When a young man is being asked to pay one hundred goats as dowry for his bride, the elders will ask him for ninety-nine goats. But his cultural training will tell him that they mean one hundred.
Translating some of our complicated African concepts like this one from Gĩkũyũ to English, without losing the nuanced meaning can be challenging, more so in a world where Eurocentric lens dominate worldview. This is the dilemma I struggled with when coming up with the title of this book.
When Prof. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote about the ten daughters of Mũmbi, he called them ‘Perfect Nine.’When I penned my version, I settled for ‘Full Nine.’ This,I must add, is not an attempt to compare myself with the mercurial Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
But titles carry spirit. They carry memory. They carry fire.’Mũmbi and the Full Nine’ is my small act of telling our stories on our own terms.
Grab a copy of this book and delve into a fantastical world where the full nine daughters of flame and one boy of light must restore what was stolen and remember what must never be forgotten.
Available at Nuria Bookstore at only Ksh 1,000. You can also get in touch directly for a copy.