Dancer's Son

Mbiyu Wa Koinange, which means Mbiyu, son of Koinange, is the son of Koinange Wa Mbiyu, which means Koinange, son of Mbiyu. In Bantu "koinange" means "dancer," Koinange Wa Mbiyu, chief of 800,000 Kikuyu tribesmen in British East Africa's Kenya Colony, was a good dancer in his youth but he never learned to read & write. Last week Mbiyu Wa Koinange, who will soon succeed his aged father as chief of the Kikuyus, got his A. B. degree at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio.

Mbiyu Wa Koinange (friendly classmates call him Peter) thinks he is about 26 years old. That is the age of a missionary's son he played with as a child.

He came to the U. S. in 1927 because a Scottish pedagog told him it was cheap and had good Negro preparatory schools. His greatest handicap at Virginia's Hampton Institute (for Negroes) was his ignorance of English. Baffled by Bantu, Hampton professors could not help him much. But when he departed after four years a classmate said, "A noble person goes on his way, conscious of his nobility."

Trouble with English kept his marks low at Ohio Wesleyan for two more years, forced him to bolster his scholarships by cooking for a professor. Then, mastering English, he made money by lecturing on Africa before Ohio lunch clubs and church groups, finished his course with a creditable record. A devout Episcopalian, he has been active in Y. M. C. A. and student welfare work, once served as president of Cosmopolitan Clubs in 17 Ohio colleges including his own.

Peter Koinange's worst fright came during his first cold spell, in Ohio. Numb, he thought he was growing paralyzed. Of U. S. phenomena he has been most im-pressed by the Statue of Liberty, skywriting, Negro spirituals, politicians. He took readily to collegiate sweaters, rejected knickers as undignified. Having specialized in sociology, he hopes to make his people yearn for knowledge. Now the Kikuyu's prime ambition--which he achieves only by years of prying and pulling with coils of wire, disks of wood, cane pegs, gourds--is to make his ear lobes touch his shoulders.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.