Simon Mitambo with Rory Sheldon
Tharaka community members gather at the Gaaru (meeting place) for a spiritual ceremony and dance. Photo: Rory Sheldon
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Simon Mitambo, Earth Jurisprudence Practitioner and member of the council of Elders from Tharaka, Kenya. Photo: Andrew Pilsbury
My name is Simon Mitambo, and I was born and raised on the sacred slopes of Mount Kenya. I come from the Tharaka community, and my village sits on the banks of the Mutonga River, a place of spiritual significance for my people. As a child, I was deeply connected to these people, this place, and the traditional practices that bound us together. I spent my youth looking after grazing animals among the foothills, playing in the water, and living in harmony with our human and more-than-human community. I learned the laws of this living planet and how they support all beings when observed and upheld.
Like many of my generation, formal education tore me away from these deep roots. My academic schooling disconnected me from my culture, lands, and waters. It came at a great cost. As I advanced in school, I was taught industrial knowledge systems and left behind the wealth of wisdom ingrained in our traditional ways of life. This process of forgetting was experienced by so many of us that my community began to crumble. It was heartbreaking.
The laws of this living planet support all beings when observed and upheld.
However, an alternative learning process — The Gaia Foundation’s Trainings for Transformation — opened my eyes to communities in the Colombian Amazon who had remembered their story of origin. These peoples had returned to their ancestral rainforest, revived their Indigenous knowledge, and restored their own education systems. The land had subsequently been demarcated as theirs, and they were on the path to being recognized as the local government of the eighteen million hectares they call home, which they still steward today. I realized this was information worth bringing home.
The Mutonga River flows through Tharaka and is a Sacred Natural Site for the community. Photo: Andrew Pilsbury
Returning to my community with this story marked the beginning of a transformative journey. I began to understand that our earth-centered wisdom could help us meet current challenges, such as biodiversity loss, social injustice, and even climate change. My people and home had suffered for the sake of so-called development and became “poor,” but now I knew we had all we needed to regain our biocultural wealth.
We had all we needed to regain our biocultural wealth.
Elders gather in Tharaka to share sacred stories and revive traditional knowledge systems. Photo: Rory Sheldon
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The divine leader of the Tharaka people is known as Mugwe, and he leads prayers calling on the ancestors to help the community remember the way things were. Photo: Andrew Pilsbury
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Other spiritual leaders and Elders, such as M’Chabari M’Mwarania, are called upon to assist in building memory and mapping the way forward. Photo: Rory Sheldon
This journey began by engaging knowledgeable Elders. The deeper our dialogues became, the more they remembered. Thus, we united the whole community — both the old and the young — in weaving back the many strands of our lives. For example, Elders led us in mapping seasonal calendars, while our women seed custodians revived the use of local crop varieties. Customarily, my people planted crops based on specific types of rain that fell at certain times of the year. Reviving this traditional knowledge has improved agricultural abundance considerably, and we now have enough to eat. By regaining our food sovereignty and not selling what we grow, we also have maintained autonomy over our nutritional security, even when international supply chains are disrupted, as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reviving traditional knowledge has improved agricultural abundance considerably, and we now have enough to eat.
Salome Gatumi and Brennie Muthoni walk through a field. Reviving traditional agricultural practices has increased abundance and autonomy over nutritional security. Photo: Andrew Pilsbury
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Seed sharing now plays an important role in the community. Photo: Rory Sheldon
We have also reintegrated traditional weather forecasting into our planning. Unlike national weather forecasts, our methods are localized and specific. By observing nature, such as the behavior of bees or the direction of the wind, the people in Tharaka can make accurate predictions and prepare better. This powerful skill of “reading” land, water, and sky gifts us resilience in the face of increasingly chaotic weather patterns.
Maps help community members reconnect to the land and one another. Eco-cultural mapping processes, learned from peoples of the Colombian Amazon, document past abundance, present disorder, and ideas for restoration. From these flow other maps, such as seasonal calendars, which aid the community in reaching a shared vision of the future. Photo: Rory Sheldon
Another significant aspect of our work involves revitalizing traditional crafts. Women have returned to weaving, beading, and making dresses, while men focus on basketry and creating calabashes from which to eat and drink. These crafts not only preserve our own cultural identity and provide us with utensils, clothes, and jewelry, but they also generate supplementary income for families.
We are safeguarding the richness and resilience of our culture, spirituality, and ecology.
Beyond our fields and homesteads, we are restoring our Sacred Natural Sites, the beating hearts of my people and this place. They are where we perform rituals to restore balance between humans, nature, and ancestors, and they’re also biodiversity hotspots, having been protected since time immemorial. Like living monitoring systems, their current state offers a glimpse into how our environment is changing and how strong our spirit remains. By protecting these places through customary governance and teaching the next generation to do the same, we are safeguarding the richness and resilience of our culture, spirituality, and ecology.
Simon Mitambo sits with Brennie Muthoni at a Sacred Natural Site on the banks of the Mutonga River. Photo: Andrew Pilsbury
As we work to revive our Sacred Natural Sites, we are also taking steps toward strengthening traditional governance. The cornerstone of my community has always been the Gaaru. This special meeting place, located near a Sacred Natural Site, serves as a venue for teaching, initiation rites for young people, and councils of Elders, as well as representing a center for community cohesion.
We had to rebuild the Gaaru and its importance. Our structures, both physical and theoretical, had broken down, leaving us fractured. Now, the Gaaru is where young people learn the customary laws of the land during their rites of passage. The Elders guide them in understanding how to care for the territory, just as I experienced growing up. The Gaaru ensures that this governance is grounded in our cultural values of respect and love for Mother Earth. It brings clarity, providing a practical framework steeped in tradition and able to respond to new challenges from a stable root.
Simon Mitambo leads a community discussion at the restored Gaaru in Tharaka. Photo: Rory Sheldon
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Community members stand with Simon (back row, center) in front of the newly constructed Gaaru in Tharaka. Photo: Rory Sheldon
In 2013, I co-founded the Society for Alternative Learning and Transformation (SALT), together with friends from Tharaka, formalizing the work that we had been doing for years. SALT is now a member of the African Earth Jurisprudence Collective, a home for graduates and facilitators of the Trainings for Transformation. Across the continent, we are accompanying fragmented communities, enabling them to regain coherence. Our vision is for empowered communities to inspire their neighbors, believing — as the physicist Ilya Prigogine says — that we can be “islands of coherence in a sea of chaos.”
Agostine Mwanaah, Program Coordinator at SALT, leads a dance with Elders after morning prayers at a SALT meeting. Photo: Rory Sheldon
Restoring our seed, seasonal calendars, Sacred Natural Sites, governance, and more means we can generate income in ways that do not destroy people or places. But beyond that, we have learned that we were, and can be, rich in more than money: Indigenous knowledge gifts us abundant food, traditional medicine, community cohesion, and a flourishing home.
Indigenous knowledge gifts us abundant food, traditional medicine, community cohesion, and a flourishing home.
Pauline Karuru takes part in singing and dancing — an intrinsic part of storytelling and coming together for the people of Tharaka. Photo: Rory Sheldon
Today, my community has enough confidence and clarity about its values to navigate the challenges we might face. Reviving a diversity of peoples and places around the world is not just about looking to the past, before colonial and industrial powers homogenized our paths. It is about rooting ourselves in a spiritual, cultural, and ecological identity from which we are able to envision a bioculturally abundant future in this changing world.
Intergenerational learning is a core part of the process in Tharaka. Elijah Mutwiri is in Grade 9. His face is marked as part of the rite of passage for boys with a paint extracted from a sacred stone known as ira. Photo: Rory Sheldon
Support the Cause: The African Earth Jurisprudence Collective is reviving Indigenous lifeways to enhance future resilience. Together, the members are a uniquely African hope, both ancient and innovative. Find out more and support the movement at earthjurisprudence.africa
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Simon Mitambo was born and raised in the Tharaka Indigenous community of Kenya. He is an Earth Jurisprudence Practitioner and a member of the African Earth Jurisprudence Collective. As co-founder of the Society for Alternative Learning and Transformation (SALT) and The Kithino Learning Centre, he accompanies the Tharaka clans in regenerating biocultural diversity. Read more from Simon Mitambo.
Rory Sheldon grew up in Botswana and became a video, photo, and print journalist across Africa and Latin America. Now living in South Africa, he also works as a video consultant for Bloomberg News and serves as the director of The African Wild, a social enterprise that specializes in conservation through ecotourism. As an Earth Jurisprudence trainee, Rory helped edit this story, accompanied by The Gaia Foundation.
