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On Sunday last week, Kenyans woke to the news that Madonna was in the country. This was after she tweeted & Facebooked a “Good Morning Kenya” photo of countryside that looked distinctly Kenyan.

Kenyans online being their usual funny selves started asking whether she had come to adopt a child. @RonohKechem even offered Jimmy Gait for adoption, must have been due to his latest song ” Yesu ndiye sponsor”. 

Things to a turn for the worse when she tweeted a photo taken with Samburu morans where she indicated that she was in the Kikuyu Valley in Samburu. This is when KOT responded in not so kind words that there was no such thing as Kikuyu Valley in Samburu. Understandably geography was a boring subject to many as such the thinking was that she did not know what she was saying. 

Here are some of the responses from KOT.

However, KOT have been forced to eat humble pie after it was revealed by William Mengo that there exists such a valley which is refered to as “Soito elKokoyo” which apparently translates to Valley of Kikuyu stones.

Kikuyu Valley

I hope this serves as a lesson to the keyboard warriors on the need to research before sending out tweets.

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One Response

  1. Wambui

    There is something wrong here that we are all missing, so you know when we were colonised, and people couldn’t say our names, the first thing they did was give us other names, which were Christian, and easier for them to say. Or when they were naming our streets they gave them English names that rolled off their tongues with ease. Apart from that, our language was a bit of an inconvenience, so they taught us there own, which up to this day perseveres so that I am typing this in English. But no matter how hard there names are, as a matter of respect we learn them and pronounce them clearly. My issue here is why did Madonna not just use the original name, why did she have to translate it into English and use it to describe a part of Kenya. No wonder people are confused we don’t know a Kikuyu valley, because that’s NOT what it’s called, it’s not what we call it, it’s NOT it’s name. Besides the fact that the translation seems to be a bit off. In all of this Ma
    donna is just behaving like the colonists before her. She came to Africa liked something, and with a complete disregard and lack of respect to culture or people, decided that the original name was to much of a bother for her to TYPE and made it into something easier and digestible for her white audience to understand. And here we are apologising to her? Pfffff, in about a year they’ll start selling tours to Kikuyu valley, and yet another bit of the little that we have left our language ancestory and culture will be erased from our history.