[3] According to Meru oral literature, the Ngaa identity formed at the point when the migrants from Mbwaa turned "westward" into "what tradition explicitly calls a desert" during their journey.
[citation needed]See; In the narratives of various Meru informants, contact with Nilotic communities occurred on the star grass zone or lower forest ranges of Mount Kenya.
[8] Meru traditions recorded in Mwimbi and Muthambi recount that the pastoral Lumbwa lived in association with a hunting community remembered as Agumba (or Gumba).
The Gumba were said to live in "Agumba pits", large or squarish depressions, located along a line that runs roughly along the zone at 7,000–7,500 feet.
[citation needed] The narrative of the 'elephant's footsteps' notes that during their stay at Kirorero, the initiation of an age-set Nkuthuku occurred and that from this place the migrants moved 'either north or west'.
The latter saw the emergence of descendant Kwavi communities who occupied territory north and west of Mount Kenya, one of which was the short-lived Guas'Ngishu.
The Ngiithi and Rimunyo communities began to raid the Muoko from the north at the same time that Tiganian pressure intensified in the south.
The later stages of this journey are associated with extreme aridity, the people of Ngaa survived 'only by digging holes ("to the height of two men") in seasonal riverbeds".
At some time during this period the people of Ngaa passed an area remembered as Kiiru (raised place) where "four white peaks" could be seen.