Proverbs are not simply relics of the past that provide entertainment and linguistic fun. As part of oral tradition, they contain historical and anthropological knowledge often missing from conventional sources. As condensed history, they assist in the reconstruction of the manners, characteristics, and worldviews of societies. They encode micro-histories concealed within their phraseology that provide unique historical information and pedagogical examples in ways that textual data cannot. Their origins can be traced through content analysis to reveal the historical and cultural contexts within which they were created and used.

This book presents a collection of two thousand proverbs of the Kamba of Eastern Kenya. It explores the proverbs as legitimate subjects of history, historical source material, and pedagogical tools, as well as conflict management tools. It draws from archival, herbaria, and museum data, oral interviews, as well as published sources of ethnographers, missionaries, pre-independence and post-independence collectors. The book traces the origins of each proverb within the cultural context of its appearance and later use.

The Kamba proverbs have defied modernity. Although their original meanings might have changed as modern generations apply them to their altered circumstances, in both urban and rural areas Kamba conversations are coloured with proverbs. The rise of social media in the early 2000s rejuvenated the use of proverbs among young Kamba despite their engagement with commerce and modernity or urban residence. As they acquired mobile phones and internet access, they exchanged proverbs via social media. Proverbial inferences can reveal vital information missing in conventional histories. They suggest that the Kamba were involved with the outside world in four successive periods of East African history: the Monsoon Exchange era from the age of the Roman Empire through the Islamic era to the end of 1497; the Vascon Exchange era from 1498 to 1799; the age of European imperialism and colonialism from about 1800 to the 1960s; and the era of independence since 1963.

The Kamba proverbs can redress this ‘silencing the past’ as relations of power came to shape sources, archives, narration, and a new corpus. They provide an archive of social dynamics in the lived past.