Mulungu, more often called Ngai, is the supreme and essentially monotheistic God of the Akamba of the Machakos and Kitui highlands of eastern Kenya. Invisible and transcendent, he dwells on high (ituni) and is approached not so much by his proper name, which is uttered with great reserve, as through a cluster of descriptive titles: Asa, 'the Father' and strong Lord; Mumbi, 'the fashioner', who moulds every creature as a potter works clay; and Mwatuangi, 'the divider' or 'distributor', who apportions the parts of the body and separates the waters from the dry land. He is the giver of children, cattle, food and above all rain, which is spoken of as his saliva; prayer for rain is directed to him alone and never to the ancestral spirits. Communal sacrifice on his behalf was offered at sacred groves of fig or baobab, the mathembo. In the creation narrative he fashioned the first human pair and lowered them from the sky onto the rock of Nzaui.