If you happen to hail from the region and interact with people who are in their 60s, you will hear weird stories about the founding father and his family.

Other than his political contributions that led to Kenya gaining its independence, there are mythical stories told about his leadership and to an extent his family - that have not left out his son, Uhuru Kenyatta, who ended up the country’s fourth president.

Other than the baby boomer generation that lived through his era as president, several authors have captured myths around Mzee Kenyatta beginning with the reverence and adoration he attracted to being treated like a semi-god within the Agikuyu community.

Some regarded him as ‘a black Moses’, a feeling that has spread to his family which could explain why the Mt Kenya region was quick to stand with Uhuru in 2013 allowing him to clinch the presidency.

In Lee Njiru’s President’s Pressman - a Memoir, the longest-serving scribe at the presidency in Kenya’s history shares the myths that his Embu natives had about Mzee Kenyatta. One was that he was not an ordinary man and that his tongue was hairy. The other was that his eyes were smoldered like fire, and were on his forehead.

“The other one was that he could read people’s minds. This belief by Kenyans emanated from Kenyatta’s assertion that he had used magic spells, magnetic and hypnotising power to successfully woo women, the confession contained in his seminal booklet Facing Mt Kenya,” Njiru writes in his memoir.

He said the Agikuyu grew up holding Kenyatta whom many had not seen in great awe. And that “he was a veritable bogeyman until I met him physically.”

When Njiru received orders to report to Nakuru State House to start working as Mzee Kenyatta’s press officer, he trembled. The fear emanated from the frightening stories he had heard about him. Njiru was forced to deploy his wife on a journey to Runyenjes in Embu to ask his mother to pray for him as he appeared before Kenyatta.