Mbugua is Kihika, Kariuki, and Mumbi’s father and Wanjiku’s husband. Mbugua does not play a large role in the story, though he is described as saddened by Kihika’s decision to go and fight despite the fact that Mbugua was a great warrior himself in his youth. After Kihika dies and is publicly hung from a tree, Mbugua urinates on himself when he sees the mangled, tortured body of his son, a tragic depiction of a parent’s pain at the loss of their child to a bloody cause.