The evolution of the heart/kitchen: a look at traditional and contemporarykenyan families

Felichism KaboUniversity of Michigan, USA

fkabo@umich.edu

Abstract

Space syntax research on housing has established, through configurational analysis, howhouses are configured to stage the potential behavior and relations of the inhabitants andvisitors. Usually, the assumption made is that it is possible to predict inhabitant-inhabitantand inhabitant-visitor relations since spatial configurations correspond to social structures.

A matter that has been poorly addressed to date is how easy it is to misinterpret thefindings of configurational analysis when the specific interior spaces of houses are at bestan ambiguous indicator of social relations and activities.

In this paper, the spatial development and form of a key “female” space in tradi-tional and contemporary Kenyan family housing – the hearth/kitchen - will be tracked.One of the strengths of syntactic research is the unearthing of probabilistic associationsbetween spatial form, configuration, and location and relations within groups of insidersand between these insiders and groups of outsiders. Syntactic analysis was performed onhouses representing two different family institutions - a pre-colonial, traditional family,and a post-colonial, contemporary family – so as to decipher probable relations encodedwithin these structures. The results of this analysis were compared to anthropological andethnographic accounts on the structure of these families to establish whether or not therewas congruence between the relations and activities of the inhabitants with respect to thekitchen, and the configuration and location of the space. The findings of this paper suggestthat while the spatial position of the kitchen in the pre-colonial family was directly cor-related to the family’s structure and relations among them, the link between the spatialposition of the kitchen in the two houses occupied by the contemporary family and theactivities and relations of the inhabitants is more ambiguous.

In the final analysis, despite the obvious strengths of configurational analysis, it canbe limited in certain situations and environments. These situations include those wheresocial norms prevail over spatial configuration, or where the configuration is alien to theexisting social relations and activities, and where the inhabitants are not at liberty tore-configure the space to suit their needs.

1. Introduction

Modern Kenya is characterized by the conflict between traditional and modern norms andsocial structures. Cities like Nairobi still have a significant number of people who, whilethey reside in the city for most of the year, still identify their rural places of ancestryas ‘home’. It is true that the younger urban generation self-identifies with the urbancenter more than it does the ancestral place of origin. However, the majority of the olderpopulation, the segment of the population that determines the type of housing suppliedby virtue of its financial status, can aptly be described as “urban villagers”. The term

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‘urban villager’ may best describe a person who is urban in some social dimensions butrural in other social dimensions. This would imply that while a foreign genotype may notbe suitable for the Kenyan housing market, neither may a strictly traditional genotype.

One way of assessing the congruence between spatial genotypes and spatial use is tocompare the measures derived from syntactic analysis with the data obtained throughethnographic studies of families and their use of domestic space. An even more preciseanalysis would track the development of a pivotal domestic space, see what changes havebeen made over time, and track to what extent these changes have led to a transformationof social relations within the family, or gauge whether changes to this space were inresponse to transformed social relations.

This would be the main utility of a space syntax research program. The central premiseof the space syntax research program is “that social structure is inherently spatial and in-versely that the configuration of inhabited space has a fundamentally social logic” (Bafna,2003).

Numerous syntactic studies have illustrated the links between spatial layouts and re-lations and social structure and relationships (see for example Hanson, 1998; Tahar andBrown, 2003; and Amorim and Loureiro, 2001). These and other space syntax studiesof the house type have heavily relied on analysis of configurational relationships. Con-figurational analysis can be viewed as an “elaboration on the inhabitant-inhabitant andinhabitant-visitor interfaces which are the fundamental social generators of buildings”(Hanson, p.22). It is possible to tease out social relationships from domestic buildingsusing configurational analysis because “a building is ...a domain of knowledge, in that itis a certain spatial ordering of categories, and a domain of control, in the sense that it isa certain ordering of boundaries” (Hillier and Hanson, 1984).

Typically, most syntactic analysis of the domestic building involves mapping all theconvex spaces on a graph. These convex spaces - also known as the ‘fattest’ spaces (Hillierand Hanson, p. 97-98) - are usually derived from building floor plans and abstracted intoa graph, typically referred to as the “justified graph” or j-graph. The descriptions arisingfrom this type of graph are rich in socially relevant information. While the informationconsists of topological descriptions, “these descriptions are more robust with respect todocumentation errors and so tend to be more reliable” (Bafna, p. 19). Moreover, “thetopological relationship of component units is much more essential as compared to othersociologically relevant spatial attributes” (p. 19).

2. The kitchen and Gikuyu families

A key space in both traditional and contemporary Kenyan houses is the hearth/kitchen(hereafter simply referred to as kitchen). An analysis of houses from pre-colonial Kenya tothe present will show that the role and position of this space has changed with time. Oneconstant is that both traditional and contemporary kitchens are female domains. Giventhe interactive and inverse relationship between space and society, we should expect thatthe role and position of the kitchen within the house should either change in responseto transformations in social relationships, or that transformation of the kitchen ought toresult in some changes to social relations within in the family. This picture gets complicatedwhen changes in spatial layout are both exogenous to the family and also when suchchanges are so incongruent with social relationships in the family and society that thesociety-space logic cannot be followed. One such example is the place of the contemporary

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western-style kitchen within most Kenyan families. In this paper, the position and natureof the kitchen is examined through configurational analyses of houses occupied by Gikuyufamilies in pre- and post-colonial Kenya. The Gikuyu are Kenya’s largest ethnic group, andwere the earliest group to get educated and urbanized during Britain’s colonial occupationof Kenya. However, an analysis of Gikuyu homes and modern ethnographic accountsreveals that some traditional social structures have been retained in latent form, and thatthese structures are reflected in the patterns of spatial use even while they may remainhidden and inaccessible to configurational analysis.

The traditional pre-colonial family’s house was located in Kiambu District (adjacentto Nairobi), while the contemporary family had two different houses for each of the twowives in the household. The first wife lived in rural Nyeri District - about 65 miles fromNairobi - while the second wife lived in an exclusive neighborhood of Nairobi with thehead of the household. As I noted earlier, many older urban Kenyans still retain elementsof an older social structure in their lives. It is not uncommon for many middle- and upper-class Gikuyu males to have a rural wife whose main charge is to oversee their upcountryholdings or estate and another more public wife in the city whose role more approximatesthe Western model. As such, it was hardly a surprise for many Kenyans when they learnedthat their new president had an “unofficial” wife back in his rural home in addition to theofficially recognized First Lady (Daily Nation, 2004). What Kenyans found shocking, evenscandalous, was the fact that he later “disowned” his rural wife following the First Lady’sboycott of the presidential New Year’s party, and because of negative international press.

In the traditional Gikuyu family, the wife had her own house, the “nyumba”, distinctfrom the husband’s “thingira”. Food preparation was a female activity, and as such thekitchen was located in the “nyumba”. Being an entirely masculine space, the “thingira”did not have any kitchen as the male was not expected to cook. Figure 328 shows a typicalKikuyu homestead, consisting of one man and four wives.

To the furthest extent possible, each wife and her children were viewed as a self-contained entity, and were expected to be self-sufficient. This was a mechanism devised toobviate open conflict between different wives. By inhabiting a space completely differentfrom that of his wives, the man was supposed to be socially equi-distant from all of them,and this was also a (spatial) device for lessening conflict. In fact, this arrangement mayhave resulted in less conflict between wives despite their geographical proximity as opposedto the scenario in modern Kenya where the man resides with his urban wife.

Being the main sitting area for the family, the kitchen was also the main socializingspace in a pre-literate and oral Gikuyu society. Though the “nyumba” was primarily usedonly by the woman and her uninitiated children it was the main domestic interior spacethat served as the setting for the enactment of the family’s rites and rituals.

3. Methodology

Plans of the “nyumba” were mapped using j-graphs, and descriptions of the social life ofthe Gikuyu family were used to aid in the interpretation of these plans. Leakey’s (1977)anthropological account of the pre-colonial Gikuyu is the most comprehensive tome onthe subject to date. His descriptions of the “nyumba” and the activities and functionsperformed in it – with special attention to the role and position of the woman, and of thekitchen - were used to evaluate the extent of the space-activity congruence as predictedby the j-graph analysis.

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Table 36: (kitchen in bold numbers)NYUMBA

Space With Exterior Without Exterior0 0.55475 –1 0.986222 0.4922 0.8876 0.9843 0.8876 0.9844 0.8876 0.9845 0.8876 0.9846 1.479333 1.37767 1.479333 1.37768 2.958667 6.888

Mean 1.22319 1.7589DF 0.567013 0.229125

The plans of the Nyeri and Nairobi houses were drawn based on the author’s own fieldexperience. An ethnographic account of the larger post-colonial Gikuyu family occupyingthe two houses was also made, and this served as a basis for comparison with predictionsbased on the calculation of integration values for these two houses.

4. Houses’ Analysis

4.1. The “nyumba”

Pre-colonial Gikuyu had an oral culture, and education of the young was done informallyby parents, grandparents, and other elders. Within the “nyumba”, the kitchen was notonly a food preparation space, but was also the main socialization space (not counting theexterior courtyard). In Figure 328, we see that the kitchen was centrally located withinthe “nyumba”, and that it controlled access to the bedrooms1, the store, and the fatteningpen. In contrast, modern kitchens are located along the perimeter, and are usually locatedaway from bedrooms and other rooms that are inaccessible to visitors.

Syntactic analysis of the “nyumba” using j-graphs reveals that the kitchen is the mostintegrated space both when the exterior is mapped onto the graph, and when the exterior isexcluded. The interior-exterior relation does not change the centrality of the kitchen withinthe “nyumba”. When the j-graph is drawn with the kitchen as the root, and including theexterior, the kitchen is twice as integrated as the next most integrated space (Table 36and Figure 329, left). The kitchen is also more than twice as integrated as the mean forhouse. Drawing the same j-graph but disregarding the exterior - that is, only includingthe interior spaces – reveals that the kitchen is five times as integrated as the next mostintegrated space (Table 36 and Figure 328, right). Moreover, the kitchen is almost fourtimes as integrated as the mean of the house.

The high integration value of the kitchen is not unexpected given that it was the mostcentral interior space both in terms of location and use. This is a prediction that is easilydone using syntactic analysis given that there is a high correlation between configurationand use in the case of the “nyumba”.

1 The boys slept in the sheep and goats pen.

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Figure 328: Plans of the “nyumba”

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Figure 329: Syntactic analysis of the “nyumba” using j-graphs

The integration ranking of the “nyumba” spaces with the exterior considered is: Hearth> Sleeping pen = Firewood Area > Porch > Fattening pen = Girls’ bedroom = Store= Woman’s bedroom > Exterior. Without the exterior, the integration ranking becomes:Hearth > Sleeping pen = Firewood Area > Fattening pen = Girls’ bedroom = Store =Woman’s bedroom > Porch.

The overall effect of disregarding the exterior connection for the “nyumba” is that theconstituent interior spaces “become more differentiated. Because the way in which eachcell features within the configuration is strongly affected by the way the complex relates tothe exterior, the inhabitant-visitor interface is implicated in the sociogram of this buildingat least as much as the relations among its inhabitants” (Hanson, p. 29). Alongside thisincrease in spatial differentiation - note the decrease in the difference factor in Table 1 –is an increase in the integration value of the kitchen and the four spaces (fattening pen,girls’ bedroom, store, and woman’s bedroom) not on the two internal rings.

This tells us that even though the inhabitant-visitor interface was important in the“nyumba”, the inhabitant-inhabitant interface was more crucial. The high integrationvalue of the kitchen also emphasizes the central role the woman played in the “nyumba”,particularly in the informal education of the children, and food preparation. More im-portantly, comparing the evidence from the anthropological record with the informationfrom the syntactic analysis reveals that the pre-colonial Gikuyu house had a high degreeof congruence between the spatial configuration of the building on the one hand, and theinhabitants’ activities and relations on the other.

4.2. The Nyeri House

The layout of this house (Figure 330) is quite typical of contemporary housing located oncountry estates in Nyeri District. Built in the early 1980s, the Nyeri House is occupied bythe first wife of an upper middle-class entrepreneur who resides in Nairobi. As a type, itbears heavy influences from colonial housing in the area, and especially housing formerlybuilt for colonial administrators - who were British. Therefore, while the house was builtin the 1980s, it has elements of spatial genotypes from the early twentieth-century to the1950s.

Syntactic analysis of the house reveals that the kitchen is not as integrated as it was inthe “nyumba”. Table 37 and Figure 331 show that, when calculated with the exterior, thekitchen has only 10% of the integration value of the most integrated space – the corridor -

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Figure 330: Plans of the Nyeri house

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Table 37: (kitchen in bold numbers)NYUMBA

Space With Exterior Without Exterior0 0.885 –1 0.885 0.68852 1.475 1.3373 1.3275 1.3374 0.698684 0.6125 1.475 1.10166 1.10625 1.10167 1.10625 1.10168 1.10625 1.10169 1.10625 1.101610 13.275 5.508

Mean 2.22238 1.50705DF 0.219135 0.398728

Figure 331: Syntactic analysis of the Nyeri house

and roughly 60% as integrated as the mean of the house. When the exterior is disregarded,the kitchen is 25% as integrated as the corridor, and just over 91% as integrated as themean of the house.

Counting the exterior, the integration ranking of the Nyeri House spaces is as follows:Corridor > Living room = Vestibule > Kitchen > Bathroom = Boys’ bedroom = Parents’bedroom = Girls’ bedroom > Porch = Exterior > Store. When the exterior is excluded, theintegration ranking becomes: Corridor > Living room = Kitchen > Vestibule = Bathroom= Boys’ bedroom = Parents’ bedroom = Girls’ bedroom > Porch > Store.

The effect of disregarding the exterior space on the integration ranking is slight; inthe main, the kitchen becomes more integrated than the vestibule. When the exterior isdisregarded, there is less spatial differentiation among the interior spaces, implying thatthe inhabitant-visitor interface may not be as salient as inhabitant-inhabitant relations.

During the day, the inhabitants spend more time outdoors than indoors unless they

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Table 38: (kitchen in bold numbers)NYERI HOUSE (without rear entry)

Space With Exterior Without Exterior0 0.531 –1 0.829688 0.68852 1.475 1.3773 1.206818 1.3774 0.66375 0.6125 1.021154 1.10166 1.021154 1.10167 1.021154 1.10168 1.021154 1.10169 1.021154 1.101610 3.31875 5.508

Mean 1.193707 1.50705DF 0.509221 0.398728

are receiving visitors. This means that they do not spend as much time in the kitchen asthe integration values might suggest. At night, however, the inhabitants typically spend asmuch time in the kitchen as they do the living room. This is reflected in the high integrationranking of the kitchen when the exterior is not taken into consideration - typically, guestsare only entertained during the day as there are very few overnight visitors. So whileconfigurationally the interior-exterior relations do not have a significant impact on theintegration ranking of the kitchen, the time of the day does have an impact as it determinesthe nature and pattern of activities. Compared to the pre-colonial house, the Nyeri Househas a weaker degree of congruence between the spatial configuration of the kitchen space,and the inhabitants’ relations and activities.

Given that the inhabitants use the rear entry infrequently, analyzing the Nyeri Housewith the assumption that the rear entrance is sealed off (Figure 332) reveals that, whilethe integration ranking of the kitchen remains the same, the kitchen is more integratedrelative to the other interior spaces (Table 38). This is a slight change given that it does notaffect the integration order of the spaces in the Nyeri House. However, when the exterioris included in the integration calculations, the difference factor ends up being greater thanwhen the exterior is excluded (Table 38). This tells us that the constituent interior spacesof the Nyeri House become more spatially differentiated when the exterior is excluded,meaning that the configuration is strongly influenced by the interior-exterior relation. Byimplication, the inhabitant-visitor interface is at least as relevant in this building as theinhabitant-inhabitant interaction.

The j-graph of the Nyeri House including the exterior space (Figure 333) reveals thatthe kitchen has 36.36% of the integration of the most integrated space, and is roughly equalto the mean integration of the house. Interestingly, when the exterior space is disregarded(Figure 333), the kitchen has 25% of the integration value of the corridor, and about 91%of that of the mean integration value for the house.

With the exterior included in the configuration, the integration ranking of the spacesis: Corridor > Living room > Kitchen > Vestibule = Bathroom = Boys’ bedroom =Parents’ bedroom = Girls’ bedroom > Porch > Store > Exterior. Without the exterior, the

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Figure 332: Plans of the Nyeri house with the rear entrance sealed

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Figure 333: Syntactic analysis of the Nyeri house with the rear entrance sealed

integration ranking becomes: Corridor > Living room = Kitchen > Vestibule = Bathroom= Boys’ bedroom = Parents’ bedroom = Girls’ bedroom > Porch > Store.

The relative importance of the inhabitant-visitor interface when the rear entry is as-sumed to be inaccessible has a significant correlation with the ethnographic evidence. Forinstance, the kitchen becomes slightly more integrated when the exterior is disregarded,which would correspond with night-time activities in the Nyeri House which are usuallyabout relations among the inhabitants as opposed to inhabitant-visitor relations. In theconfiguration with the rear entry sealed off, the Nyeri House has a higher degree of congru-ence between the spatial layout of the kitchen and the inhabitants’ activities and relationsthan was the case in the original configuration of the house. Even so, the Nyeri House’saltered configuration still has a significantly lower degree of congruence between the spa-tial configuration of the kitchen on the one hand and the activities and relations of theinhabitants on the other in comparison to the pre-colonial house.

4.3. The Nairobi House

Located in an exclusive neighborhood of Nairobi, this house was built by the colonialadministration in the 1940s using labor from Italian prisoner-of-war camps. While theoverall layout was influenced by British colonial planners (Figure 334), some Mediter-ranean elements were introduced by the construction workers, such as the use of adobewalls.

The intended occupant for this type of house was a senior administrator - the servantswere housed in servants’ quarters behind the main house. Colonial domestic layouts wererather explicit about separation of the white family from the black servants. In this case,those spaces that were used by servants, especially the kitchen, were put on a different ringthan those spaces that were frequently used by the family such that interaction betweenthe family and servants was kept to the bare minimum. The rear entry through the kitchenwas adjacent to the servants’ quarters, meaning that the servants working in the kitchenwere not expected to occupy the spaces beyond the adjoining pantry/store unless theywere in the act of fulfilling an immediate request or command (Figures 334 and 335).

The family member who was expected to use the kitchen most was the wife sinceshe had to supervise the servants. In fact that is the logic behind the placement of the

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Figure 334: Plans of the Nairobi house

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Table 39: (kitchen in bold numbers)Nairobi House

Space With Exterior Without Exterior0 1.1016 –1 1.836 1.4793332 0.6885 0.554753 0.6885 0.554754 1.1016 0.9862225 0.786857 0.7396676 0.786857 0.7396677 0.786857 0.7396678 0.786857 0.7396679 1.836 1.7752

Mean 1.039963 0.923214DF 0.826821 0.766413

pantry/store between the living room and the kitchen. The wife spent most of her day inthe living room, usually entertaining her friends. It was much easier to monitor the storefrom the living room in this layout than if the store had been placed deeper in the houseas in the Nyeri House. It was necessary to monitor the store to ensure the servants didnot pilfer anything - pilfering by servants, real and imagined, was a big concern for Britishcolonial families.

The spatial layout of the Nairobi House was designed with a colonial family in mind.As such, there is a high degree of incongruence between the configuration of the houseand the activities of the Gikuyu family that now resides there. For instance, despite theirsocial status, the cook prepared most of the family’s food with a charcoal stove called a“jiko”, which was usually placed outside in the space between the kitchen and servants’quarters for several reasons, least of which was to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning.

Given that the kitchen was considered a space primarily for the use of the servantsunder the supervision of the wife, it is not a surprise that it is the most segregated spacein the Nairobi House. The kitchen has an integration value that is 37.5% of that of themost integrated space, the corridor - calculated including the exterior space. When theexterior space is disregarded, the kitchen has an integration value that is 31.25% of thatof the corridor.

When the integration values are calculated with the exterior space, the integrationorder of the Nairobi House spaces is as follows: Living room = Corridor > Exterior =Store > Bathroom = Bedroom 1 = Bedroom 2 = Bedroom 3 > Kitchen = Garage.Calculated disregarding the exterior space, the integration order of the Nairobi Housespaces is: Corridor > Living room > Store > Bathroom = Bedroom 1 = Bedroom 2 =Bedroom 3 > Kitchen = Garage.

The effect of disregarding the exterior is slight and does not affect the integration rankorder of the kitchen. The main effect is that the kitchen becomes slightly more segregated.There is more spatial differentiation among the interior spaces of the house as a whole,implying that the inhabitant-visitor interface is important in the Nairobi House.

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Figure 335: Syntactic analysis of the Nairobi house

5. Discussion

The “nyumba” exhibits a high degree of correlation between the spatial configurationof the kitchen on the one hand, and the activities and relations of the inhabitants onthe other. The integration value of the kitchen in the “nyumba” reflects the centralityof the space in the daily functions and social relations among the inhabitants. There isa direct correlation between the high integration of the kitchen and the fact that life inthe “nyumba” revolves around it. Configurational analysis of the “nyumba” can thereforedivulge rich sociological knowledge about the role and nature of the kitchen in relation toall other interior constituent spaces, and the position of the wife in relation to the otherinhabitants of the “nyumba”.

In contrast to the “nyumba”, the Nyeri House has a weaker association between spaceand inhabitants’ activities and relations in both its original (with rear entry) and altered(without rear entry) confirgurations. However, the altered configuration has a higher de-gree of correlation between spatial configuration and activities and relations than theoriginal configuration. As is typical of other residents of rural Nyeri District, the inhab-itants of the Nyeri House spend more time in the exterior of the house during the daythan they spend indoors, unless the weather is inclement. The inhabitants also usuallytake their meals indoors. However, the integration value of the kitchen is one-and-a-halftimes higher than that of the exterior, a finding that is incongruent with the ethnographicevidence. This incongruence persists when the integration calculation is done assumingthat the rear entry is sealed off given its periodic and infrequent use. In that case, theintegration value of the kitchen is more than twice that of the exterior. It should also benoted that the mean integration values of the house, and the nature of the interior-exteriorrelations, changes significantly when the floor plan is analyzed in its original form versuswhen ethnographic accounts of actual spatial use are taken into account. In the formercase, assuming access to the rear entry, when integration values are calculated with andwithout the exterior, the mean integration value is lower in the second case; it is roughly

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68% of the mean integration value of the first case. In the second case, assuming the rearentry is sealed off to reflect the infrequency of its use, when integration values are calcu-lated with and without the exterior, the mean integration value is higher in the secondcase; it is roughly 126% of the mean integration value of the first case.

The Nairobi House is configured in a manner that was more appropriate for a colonialBritish family than for a post-colonial Gikuyu family. This situation was exacerbated bythe fact that the Gikuyu family was forbidden to make any spatial adjustments to thehouse by their landlord. The family therefore had to make do with some spaces that wereincongruent with their activities, and with the relations among them. As I mentionedearlier, much of the preparation of food was done outside the kitchen on a “jiko”. An-other example of space-activity incongruence is the fact that the wife spent more timein the kitchen (and the space outside of it) in a manner that was akin to that of hertraditional Gikuyu counterpart, but very unlike that of a colonial British wife. Whereasin the “nyumba” the woman was able to do her kitchen activities and yet still be at thecenter of social life in the family, the wife in the Nairobi House was forced to spend timein what were conceived of as servants’ spaces. This meant that she performed her kitchenactivities at the expense of a closer connection to the rest of the family. The wife endedup physically and socially isolated from the rest of the family. Rather than being at thecenter of family life, she was shunted to the periphery; the spatial configuration put herwhere servants in the colonial family used to be.

Capturing the inhabitants’ activities and relations in the “nyumba” was a straight-forward process given the high degree of congruence between spatial configuration on theone hand, and the set of activities and relations. However, syntactic analysis of the NyeriHouse and the Nairobi House, and the latter more so, suggested certain linkages betweenspatial configuration and inhabitants’ activities and relations, linkages that turned out tobe questionable when compared to ethnographic accounts. The space-activity incongru-ence of the Nyeri House, to a lesser extent, and the Nairobi House, to a larger extent,cannot be easily captured using the configurational analysis typical of the space syntaxresearch program. This does not lessen the impact syntactic analysis has had on our un-derstanding of space and society. However, it does suggest that caution would be prudentwhen doing configurational analysis of genotypes that may wholly or partly have a foreignorigin as is the case with the Nyeri and Nairobi houses.

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