Mt Kenya walk set for next week

By Job Weru

Hundreds of faithful are on Tuesday next week expected to attend the fourth annual prayer walk around Mt Kenya, with the organisers saying they have acquired a permit from the government.

The national prayers and pilgrimage - which are organised by the Gikuyu and Mumbi Cultural Museum are held every December 27 since 2008, and are attended by Kenyans of different ethnicities.

According to Mr Samuel Kamitha and Ms Ruth Wanjiku Muli who are in the organising committee, the faithful will drive along roads circling Mt Kenya where they will make seven stopovers and pray.

The faithful, however, have to make the trip in an anti-clockwise motion around the mountain.

In the 2008 and 2009 prayer walks, the faithful - who mark their vehicles with blue ribbons - were intercepted and roughed up by police officers from the General Service Unit and the elite, rapid Deployment Unit from the AP who feared that the deadly Mungiki gang had infiltrated them with intention of holding rituals on the mountain.

Kamitha and Muli said the prayer drive is the fourth oldest pilgrimage in the world.

"Egyptians used to make the pilgrhttps://cdn.standardmedia.co.ke/images after losing their loved ones, where they would come and pray for three days. But in our contemporary civilization, walking has been replaced with driving and this has reduced several days of walking to just a day of driving," said Kamitha.

The faithful use blue ribbons which they hang on their motor vehicles for identification. Kamitha said the blue colour is associated with orators.

Muli noted that all communities are welcome to attend the prayers, noting that the faithful will also pray for national unity and integration ahead of next year's elections.

"We want a Kenya free of chaos and violence like the one we experienced in 2007. We will also urge the faithful to pray so that we can face better economic times, since the current situation has forced millions of Kenyans to suffer," she said.

"We urge all other Kenyans who wish to attend to come and pray for our country. These are not prayers just for Kikuyu community, but for all Kenyans," she said, adding that the Gikuyu and Mumbi Cultural Museum intends to convert the annual event to a global prayer day.