Kenya History and Culture

Location and Geography. 

Kenya is positioned in East Africa and borders Somalia to the northeast, Ethiopia to the north, Sudan to the northwest, Uganda to the west, Tanzania to the south, and the Indian Ocean to the east. The us of a straddles the equator, protecting a complete of 224,961 rectangular miles (582,six hundred rectangular kilometers; more or less two times the dimensions of the nation of Nevada). Kenya has extensive white-sand seashores at the coast. Inland plains cowl 3-quarters of the us of a; they're basically bush, blanketed in underbrush. In the west are the highlands in which the altitude rises from 3 thousand to 10 thousand feet. Nairobi, Kenya`s biggest town and capital, is positioned withinside the primary highlands. The maximum point, at 17,058 feet (5,two hundred meters), is Mount Kenya. Kenya stocks Lake Victoria, the most important lake in Africa and the primary supply of the Nile River, with Tanzania and Uganda. Another giant function of Kenyan geography is the Great Rift Valley, the extensive, steep canyon that cuts via the highlands. Kenya is likewise domestic to a number of the world`s maximum stunning natural world, together with elephants, lions, giraffes, zebras, antelope, wildebeests, and plenty of uncommon and delightful species of birds. Unfortunately, the animal populace is threatened through each looking and an increasing human populace; natural world numbers fell extensively via the 20th century. The authorities has delivered strict rules regulating looking, and has installed a device of country wide parks to shield the natural world.

Demography

According to an estimate in July 2000, Kenya's populace is 30,339,770. The populace has been substantially decreased through the AIDS epidemic, as have the age and intercourse distributions of the populace. Despite this scourge, however, the start fee remains substantially better than the loss of life fee and the populace keeps developing. There are extra than 40 ethnic businesses withinside the us of a. The biggest of those is the Kikuyu, representing 22 percentage of the populace. Fourteen per cent is Luhya, thirteen per cent is Luo, 12 per cent is Kalenjin, eleven per cent Kamba, 6 per cent Kisii, and six per cent Meru. Others, together with the Somalis and the Turkana withinside the north and the Kalenjin withinside the Great Rift Valley, incorporate about 15 percentage of the populace. These ethnic classes are similarly damaged down into subgroups. One percentage of the populace is non-African, basically of Indian and European descent.

Linguistic Affiliation. 

The reliable languages are English and Kiswahili (or Swahili). Swahili, which comes from the Arabic phrase meaning "coast," is a combination of Arabic and the African language Bantu. It first advanced withinside the 10th century with the advent of Arab traders; it changed into a lingua franca that allowed unique tribes to speak with every different and with the Arabs. The main language businesses local to the area consist of Bantu withinside the west and alongside the coast, Nilotic close to Lake Victoria, and Cushitic withinside the north. English is the language typically utilized in authorities and business. It is likewise utilized in maximum of the schools, even though there was motion in the direction of the use of Kiswahili because the coaching language. English isn't always spoken completely through the elite, however best human beings with a sure degree of schooling talk it.

History and Ethnic Relations

Emergence of the Nation. 

The Great Rift Valley is notion to be one of the locations in which people originated, and archaeologist’s operating withinside the valley have located stays of what they speculate are a number of the earliest human ancestors. The first acknowledged population of present-day Kenya have been Cushitic-talking tribes that migrated to the northwest area from Ethiopa round 2000 B.C.E. Eastern Cushites commenced to reach approximately 1000 years later, and occupied plenty of the us of a's modern vicinity. During the length from 500 B.C.E. to 500 C.E. , different tribes arrived from diverse elements of Africa. Tribal disagreements regularly brought about battle at some stage in this timein the 900s, Arab traders arrived and installed buying and selling facilities alongside the coast of East Africa. Over the following 8 centuries, they succeeded in changing many Kenyans to Islam. Some Arabs settled withinside the vicinity and intermarried with neighborhood businesses.

Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed at Mombasa in 1498, after coming across a crusing direction across the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese colonized plenty of the area, however the Arabs controlled to evict them in 1729. In the mid-1800s, European explorers stumbled upon Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, and commenced to take an hobby withinside the herbal sources of East Africa. Christian missionaries got here as well, drawn through the massive numbers of potential converts.Britain step by step expanded its area withinside the area, and in 1884–1885, Kenya changed into named a British protectorate through the Congress of Berlin, which divided the African continent amongst diverse European powers. The British built the Uganda Railway, which related the ports on Kenya's coast to landlocked Uganda. The growing financial possibilities introduced heaps of British settlers who displaced many Africans, regularly forcing them to stay on reservations. The Africans resisted—the Kikuyu specifically placed up a sturdy fight—however they have been defeated through the advanced army energy of the British.During the early 20th century, the British colonizers pressured the Africans to paintings their farms in digital slavery, and saved the higher hand through making it unlawful for the Kenyans to develop their personal food. In the early 1920s, a Kikuyu named Harry Thuku commenced to inspire insurrection amongst his tribe and based the East Africa Association. He changed into arrested through the British in 1922, scary a famous protest. The British reacted violently, killing twenty-5 human beings in what got here to be known as the Nairobi Massacre.Desire for self-rule persisted to construct and in 1944 the Kenya African Union, a nationalist party, changed into based. In 1946, the Kikuyu chief Jomo Kenyatta back after 16 years in England and commenced agitating for Kenyan independence.

National identity. 

Kenyans primarily equate with tribes or ethnic groups, and secondarily with the whole country. The Kikuyu, who are represented by the independence movement and continue to dominate the government, are more likely to be identified as Kenyans than other groups. 6. Ethnic relations. The Kikuyu are the largest tribes in the highlands and tend to dominate the politics of the country. Over the centuries, they strengthened their power by exchanging some of their crops for land to hunter-gatherers and through marriage. This gradual rise of power was peaceful and involved a mixture of different ethnic groups. The Kikuyu were the most powerful in the post-independence government, but were also hit hardest by the brutal British policies of the colonial era. The Kikuyu have traditionally been hostile to the Masai, and the two groups often attacked each other's villages and herds. At the same time, there was a lot of marriage and cultural borrowing between the two groups. Relationships between various other ethnic groups are also tense, which is a major obstacle to creating a unified Kenya. These conflicts are partly a legacy of colonial rule. Britain exaggerated ethnic tensions and forced one group to play against another in order to strengthen their power. Under British rule, various ethnic groups were restricted to specific geographic areas. Ethnic tensions continue to this day and are the cause of violence. In the early 1990s, tribal battles killed thousands and left tens of thousands homeless. In the late 1990s, conflicts broke out again between the Pocots and Marakwetu, the Turkana and Samburu, and the Masai and Kisii. Kenya has a fairly large Native American population, mainly those who came to East Africa to work on railroads in the early 20th century. Many Indians later became merchants and shopkeepers. During the colonial era, they occupied the racial Netherlands. They were abused by the British (though not as bad as the blacks) and resented by the Africans. This resentment continued after independence, with half of India's population leaving the country.