Sparks snapped away from the flickering cookfire and into an East African night. My grandparents may have known, but I was too young to ask. "In the beginning, we were not called 'Meru.' In fact, no one now living recalls our tribal name. Men of Meru, thank you for what you have given me. Their love of this region and its people also makes them "men of Meru." Sillitoe, and several others, all of whom had served in Meru long before I began my work there. Howard Brassington, Father Bernard Bernardi, Rev. Their willingness to pass on their wisdom to a stranger will have preserved it for Meru generations yet to come. To M'Thaara M'Mutani, Matiri wa Kirongoro, Hezikiah M'Mukiri, M'Muraa wa Kairanyi, Gituuru wa Gikamata, and more than one hundred others, all men of the Miriti, Murungi, and Kiramana age-sets and thus in their seventies, eighties, and nineties when I collected this data. Their total dedication to the Meru people led to the recovery of this portion of their past. Bengi, Franklin Mugambe, Gerrard Kithinji, and a dozen others, all young men in their early twenties when I began my research in 1969. My thanks and thoughts go out to them, for their wisdom: Whatever this book contains is the result of the knowledge shared with me by the men of Meru, old and young. When We Began, There Were Witchmen: An Oral History from Mount Kenya. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1993 1993. Closest friend, sharpest critic, dearest wife,
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