The challenges of running a private community-based museum, Lari Memorial Peace Museum

Stanford N. Chege

Lari Memorial Peace Museum was registered with the Ministry of Heritage on 29 May 2001. The idea to start one was mooted by a Mr Kariuki, who has since died. He had contacted Dr Sultan Somjee, of the Community Peace Museums Programme (CPMP), who was coordinating 29 museums in different parts of Kenya. On coming to Lari to commemorate the Lari Massacre on 26 March 2001, the party was confronted by the police and their activities were stopped. Mr Kariuki and another stakeholder spent some time in the police cells at Uplands Police Station.

Then Muthee Thuku, who then worked as Keeper of Peace Trees with the CPMP, came to Lari in April 2001 and, on contacting a few senior citizens, a meeting was convened at Mr Chege Nganga’s home on 21 April 2001. (Chege Nganga has since died).

It was at that meeting that a resolution was reached to register a Peace Museum with the Government. The objectives were to collect, document and preserve artefacts for posterity, as well as rewriting our history, which has often been found to be lopsided depending on those who wrote and on which side they served. This is because the Lari massacre of 26 March 1953 had two bitterly opposing sides – the Mau Mau nationalists and the Home Guards, the Loyalists.

The main objective of the Lari Memorial Peace Museum was to bridge the divide between these two opposing sides. Many a times [sic] a Mau Mau man would stop his son getting married to a daughter of a Home Guard, even though the Mau Mau uprising is now 50+ years old.

In our enrolment we therefore have Home Guards and the Mau Mau who have now buried the hatchet and are working together. The Chairman [of the museum committee] is one of the Githunguri 26 who only cheated death through an appeal. Mr Joseph Kaboro Tumbo is a retired postcolonial Assistant Chief and he has been joined on the committee by Mr Douglas Kariuki Wainaina, a Home Guard.

It is the example of these two that has brought our work to fruition.

We have also been of service to Kariobangi in Nairobi which experienced cross- cultural ethnic cleansing in 2003, and the elders from the Nyeri and Lari Peace Museums were called upon to bring about peaceful coexistence.

Three years ago we were visited by nine chiefs from Northern Uganda who wanted pieces of advice on how we may have resolved our Mau Mau/Home Guards conflicts. We duly advised them and we have had an open invitation to visit them in Uganda to see whether they have put our advice to good use.

We also advise the pupils/students in the neighbouring schools on their cultural heritage, and two years ago we organised a workshop to sensitize the public on checking the spread of HIV/AIDS through the use and revival of our cultural safety nets of good behaviour and respect across the generation divide. We taught/talked [sic] on symbols of our sexuality – bringing the best from our cultural traditions.

We have collected artefacts but there is a challenge of having no adequate finances. These we keep in a single room hired at the local shopping centre. We sometimes run into debt with the landlords.

We applied for a plot to construct a cultural centre which would house the Peace Museum, but the government organs dealing with plot allocations are corrupt and/or disorganised. Whenever we visit the Commissioner of Lands there is one pretext or another delaying this allocation. Should the land be available we intend to put up a Cultural and Resource Centre incorporating the Peace Museum, to rewrite our history.

The history of the Lari Massacre needs rewriting because those who died were not well documented. There are four categories of those who lost their lives in the massacre:

1. Those whom the Mau Mau killed, accusing them of collaborating with the colonial masters (Home Guards).

2. The Home Guards also retaliated and killed in revenge on the day following the massacre (27 March 1953).

3. Those caught in crossfire and killed by accident.

4. Those killed by either side for personal vendetta and not necessarily because of the struggle. (Settling old scores. Some simple villagers died so their beautiful wives could be taken up by the Home Guards!)

Plan of Action

We have written to the Minister for Lands and hope to be allocated a plot at a place called Nyambari, near Uplands. Should this happen we intend to raise funds from well-wishers in the donor community to construct a Conference, Training and Resource Centre incorporating a Cultural Centre and Peace Museum.

The reason for this amorphous institution is so that there is sustainability in training and research as we move our present Kenya into the new world of technology and the internet – ICT is the way to go.

We have major challenges in training the required personnel to man the Centre as well as the museum (1). It is in this regard that we wish to make a presentation to the law makers in parliament to enact laws which are friendly to the running of community-based museums.

(1) Our curator Samuel Waihenya Njoroge was trained by the Community Peace Museums Programme of Dr Somjee, but he requires more technical training and more personnel to assist him to take the museum to higher heights of community service.