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    Kenya - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
    Kenya - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
    Kenya - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
    Ebook239 pages2 hours

    Kenya - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

    By Jane Barsby

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    About this ebook

    Culture Smart! Kenya provides a cultural bridge that will carry you beyond the gloss of the hotels and deep into the warp and weft of everyday life; beyond the game parks and into the intricacies of community and wildlife coexistence; beyond the bounds of tourism and into the freedom of cultural understanding and exchange. A true "insider's take" gleaned over years of living and working in the country, it delivers key insights into the forces, ancient and modern, that have shaped Kenya—and practical guidance on how best to enter into the modern Kenyan business and social environment. Due to its high-action pursuits, cultural treasures, wealth of wildlife, and glorious beach life, it is one of the world's most popular tourist destinations, and the unrivaled "safari capital of the world." As to its people, Kenya is a cultural microcosm comprising more than seventy ethnic groups. Each has its own distinctive cultural identity. All extend the warmth of welcome that has proved to be Kenya's most valuable asset to tourism.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKuperard
    Release dateApr 1, 2017
    ISBN9781787029880

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      Book preview

      Kenya - Culture Smart! - Jane Barsby

      chapter one

      LAND & PEOPLE

      GEOGRAPHY

      Named after Mount Kenya, or Kirinyaga (Mountain of Whiteness), which lies almost in the center of the country, Kenya straddles the equator and covers an area of just under 225,000 sq. miles (583,000 sq. km). Bounded to the east by the Indian Ocean, it shares borders with Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania. Most of the north and northeast of the country is either uninhabited or sparsely inhabited desert.

      The Kenyan landscape is divided into two distinct halves: the eastern half slopes gently to the coral-backed seashore; the western portion rises more abruptly through a series of hills and plateaus to the Eastern Rift Valley, known in Kenya as the Central Rift. West of the Rift is a westward-sloping plateau, the lowest part of which is occupied by Lake Victoria. The highest point in the country is the snowcapped peak of Mount Kenya, at 17,000 ft (5,199 m) the second-highest mountain in Africa and one of the largest freestanding mountains in the world with a base diameter of 124 miles (200 km). The coastline extends some 333 miles (536 km) from the Tanzanian border in the southeast to the Somali border in the northeast. The main rivers are the Athi/Galana and the Tana. The major lakes are Victoria, Turkana, Baringo, Naivasha, Magadi, Jipe, Bogoria, Nakuru, and Elementeita.

      CLIMATE

      Kenya displays great contrasts in topography and climate: snowcapped peaks give way to deserts, palm-fringed beaches to rolling savannah plains, alpine highlands to the lunar semideserts of the northeast. Since the country lies on the equator, the climate remains stable all year. The days are sunny and hot, but the nights can be cool.

      Broadly speaking, January to February is dry; March to May is wet (long rains); June to September is dry; October to December is wet (short rains). The coast is always hot with an average daytime temperature of 81–88°F (27–31°C). The average daytime temperature in Nairobi is 70–79°F (21–26°C), while the temperatures elsewhere depend on altitude. The period July to August marks the Kenyan winter.

      FLORA AND FAUNA

      Kenya’s flora is diverse: along the coasts are forests containing palm, mangrove, teak, copal, and sandalwood trees. Forests of baobab, euphorbia, and acacia trees cover the lowlands to a height of around 3,000 ft (915 m) above sea level. Extensive tracts of savannah grassland, interspersed with groves of acacia and papyrus, characterize the terrain at heights from 3,000 to 9,000 ft (915 to 2,745 m). The principal species in the dense rain forest of the eastern and southeastern mountain slopes are camphor and bamboo. The alpine zone, above 11,600 ft (3,550 m), contains large plants of the Senecio and Lobelia genera.

      Despite the tremendous losses inflicted by hunting and poaching during the twentieth century, Kenya teems with wildlife. There are eighty major animal species, ranging from the Big Five (elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros, lion, and leopard) down to tiny antelopes such as the dik-dik, which is slightly larger than a rabbit. At least thirty-two endemic species are endangered.

      An ornithologist’s paradise, Kenya is the finest country in Africa for bird-watching, boasting 1,137 species of birds and sixty IBAs (Important Bird Areas). It is common to spot more than one hundred bird species in a day.

      Kenya’s wildlife conservation area is 17,000 sq. miles (44,400 sq. km) or 7.6 percent of its total area. For national parks and reserves, see pages 119–21.

      ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

      Deforestation is a major problem. With one of the highest population growth rates in the world, Kenya requires ever-increasing amounts of agricultural land for crops and firewood for fuel. However, some 10 million trees have been planted over the past two decades with the help of private groups and tree nursery programs. There is soil erosion and desertification in some areas. Significant water pollution has followed the increased use of pesticides and fertilizers, and contamination of supplies means that only about 50 percent of the rural population has access to safe drinking water.

      CITIES

      The capital, Nairobi, from the Maasai word Nyrobi meaning Place of Cool Waters, also known as the Green City in the Sun and Safari Capital of the World, has a population of around 3.9 million people (the unofficial figure is closer to 5 million). It came into being in May 1899 as a supply depot created by the European builders of the East African railway, located at Mile 327 from the coast, high enough above sea level to avoid the malaria mosquito. The largest city in East Africa, it is also one of the youngest, the most modern, the highest at 3,600 ft (1,700 m), and the fastest growing.

      Other urban centers are Mombasa (the main port on the Indian Ocean), Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria, Eldoret, Thika, and Nakuru.

      THE KENYAN PEOPLE

      Kenya is a cultural microcosm of Africa. Groups from all over the continent have migrated there for centuries, each with its own distinctive cultural features. As a result, Kenya has more than seventy ethnic communities, speaking close to eighty different dialects; all are united under the striped green, black, and red national flag (green for the land, black for the people, and red for the blood spilled in the struggle for freedom). Unity is expressed in the national motto Harambee, which translates as let’s all pull together.

      The Population

      For many years Kenya enjoyed the dubious distinction of registering the highest population growth in the world. Then, at the turn of the millennium, the growth rate slowed down dramatically. The high-speed growth had stemmed from the fact that, until very recently, a man’s social and economic status in Kenya was largely determined by the number of children he sired. And, since polygamy was also widely accepted, a man of consequence could boast of having fathered maybe a hundred children, often more. Kenyan tradition also dictates that, once married, a couple must name a child after each of their own parents; which means they must continue to produce children until they have two of each sex. Add to the above the fact that Kenyans universally adore children, and that most Kenyan women would not consider themselves fulfilled unless they had borne at least one child (whether married or not), and the reasons for the explosive birthrate are all too clear.

      As to the sudden decline in the population growth rate, this has resulted not only from the impact of AIDS on Kenyan society, but also from the growing realization, especially among the rural population, that today’s couples can neither support nor finance the education of so many children. The emergence of a Kenyan middle class has also affected the growth rate, with many professionals choosing to establish financial security before starting a family, and then opting to have only as many children as they can afford to educate to university level. The changing social structure has also introduced a new phenomenon, the professional, and often single, Kenyan lady, who increasingly chooses either to remain childless, or to have just one child.

      Officially the population of Kenya is around 46 million, though the actual figure may be much larger, and the forecast annual growth rate is 1.93 percent (2015 estimate), which reflects the expected increased death rate due to AIDS—more than 1.3 million Kenyans (5.3% of the adult population) are infected with the HIV virus. Under-fourteens account for 41.5 percent of the population. Urban Kenyans, constituting 25.6 percent of the whole, are concentrated in a few large cities such as Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and Nakuru, while 67 percent of the people live in rural areas, mostly in the high-rainfall arable areas of the central highlands, and Western Kenya. The north and east of the country, 80 percent of the land, contains only 20 percent of the population.

      LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

      As we have seen, more than eighty languages are spoken in Kenya. English is the official language and Swahili the national language; both are taught in Kenyan schools, Swahili at primary level, English at secondary level. Most Kenyans, however, speak at least three languages—English, Swahili, and their tribal or mother tongue. Some, who come from marriages of mixed ethnicity, speak more. In the rural areas, however, visitors may find that English is either only sketchily understood, or not at all. Broadly speaking, Kikuyu, Luo, and English are the most widely used languages; up country Swahili is spoken in varying degrees of grammatical accuracy, and safi (pure Swahili) is spoken almost solely on the coast. Most of the tribal languages fall into one of two groups: Bantu and Nilotic.

      ETHNIC MIX

      Kenya’s ethnic or tribal mix (the word tribe is still used both officially and in casual conversation) is approximately:

      Kikuyu 22%

      Luhya 14%

      Luo 13%

      Kalenjin 12%

      Kamba 12%

      Kisii 11%

      Meru 6%

      Other nationalities 10%

      ETHNICITY AND LANGUAGE

      Bantu-speaking people

      Luhya, Gusii, Kuria, Akamba, Kikuyu, Embu, Meru, Mbere, Tharaka

      Coastal Bantu: Swahili, Mijikenda, Segeju, Pokomo, Taita, and Taveta

      Nilotic-speaking people

      Luo, Maasai and Samburu, Turkana, Teso, Njemps, Elmolo, Kalenjin, Marakwet, Pokot, Tugen, Kisigis, Elkony

      Cushitic-speaking people

      Boni, Somali, Rendille, Orma, Boran, Gabbra

      What follows is a brief introduction to some of the major tribes that the visitor to Kenya is most likely to encounter.

      The Maasai

      The Maasai have long remained the ideal mental conceptualization of the Western European idea of an African noble savage. Tall, elegant, handsome; walking with a gentle spring of the heel, seemingly proud and indifferent to all but the most necessary external

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