Saturday, March 17, 2012

KENYA

Kenya Tribes

Kenya Tribes are consisted of 40ethnic groups. They have a lot of variety in life style, language, rituals, and religions and so on. Kikuyu (21%), Meru (5%), Kalenjin, Luyah, Luo (14%), Kisii, Kamba, Maasai, and Turkana are the main Kenya tribes. El Molo with very small population also comes under this list.

The Bantu came from Western Africa during Bantu migration. The Nilotic people, originated from Sudan and the origin of the Hamitic group are Ethiopia and Somalia. They are pastoral tribes.

The Kikuyu are the largest Kenya Tribe. They are mainly farmers, who live in the foothills of Mount Kenya. There communities are based on family unit. Many families together form homestead which is a part of the sub-group. They cultivate banana, maize, yams etc and also raise cattle.

Another Kenya tribe, the Maasai with 350,000 populations, live in the southern Kenya. They raise cattle primarily. They are nomadic herdsmen who refuse to settle and also reject cash economy.

Among the Kenya Tribes the Sambura tribe also lives in Northern Kenya. They are semi-nomadic pastorals. They mainly belong to warrior society. The Turkana is the largest nomadic pastorals of Kenya.

Other Kenya Tribes also contribute to the diverse culture o f Africa. For more information on Kenya tribes log onto the following sections: Information about kenya tribes is as follows:

Kenya Handicrafts

Handicrafts are a major source of income and employment in Kenya. Although there is an absence of a proper infrastructure in the handicrafts sector, Kenya handicrafts are still popular all around the world. Kenya Handicrafts help to flourish Kenyan heritage in the outside world.

Kenya is a nation often plagued by poverty and unemployment. Therefore, handicrafts serve as a means of employment for the Kenyans. Also these generate important revenue, which contribute to the overall Kenyan economy, and also serve to propagate to the rest of the world Kenyan and African cultural heritage.

Important products of Kenya handicrafts are crafts, carving and jewelry. These are eligible for export and include jewelry, bead ornaments, hand knit material, leather handbags, wallets and belts, traditional shoes, carvings and decorative plates. Wood carvings, soapstone carvings, sculptures, and burnt-earth or “Terra cotta” pottery are also interesting products.

The government, recognizing the potential of Kenyan handicrafts, is undertaking projects to enhance output and further develop the production of Kenyan handicrafts, through improving the infrastructure.

The Kenyan Crafts Village, founded in 1988, has been working towards improving Kenyan handicrafts. It encourages the production and promotion of Kenyan handicrafts, patronizes craftsmen from low-income groups including tribes such as the Masai, and nurtures all-round development of skilled craftsmen.

Institutions such as Heritage of Kenya, besides promoting tours and travels, also promote Kenyan handicrafts, and encourage export and selling of Kenyan handicrafts to global markets like the US and the UK. Folk art and handicrafts therefore gain wider exposure in the rest of the World.

For more information on Kenya handicrafts log onto the following sections:

Kenya Lifestyle

Like other countries the Kenya lifestyle is also unique to this place. There are different kinds of tribes in Kenya follows different lifestyle. Some of these tribes are the Masai, the Kikuyu, the Lou, and the Turkana.

The tribes and people of Kenya comprises of 42 groups which are different from each other thus dividing the lifestyles of Kenya into many varieties. The traditional diversity shows that there are many different types of social Lifestyles in Kenya. Among the Kenyan tribes the most outstanding is the Masai tribe who lives in the Mara Reserve. Through dance, arts, songs, foods, dresses, ways of life, etc. many kinds of Kenya Lifestyle can be seen.

The Masai of Kenya are regarded as the most famous warrior tribe. The lives and economy of the Masai are centered on cattle. They lives in huts and have no electricity. Their beds are made of woven branches.

The girls and women of Masai tribes milk the cows and bring water. They pick up the gourds and clean the inside part and decorates them with leather and beads. The things kept inside the gourds are milk, blood, water, honey and cornmeal. The Masai drinks the mixture of cow’s blood with milk when they don’t have sufficient milk of cow or goat for drinking. The Masai tribes believe that they were confided with the cattle by the God Himself. The Masai are very famous for making beautiful decoration of ornaments and work of beads in their bodies thus making Kenya Lifestyle very simple and beautiful.

The Kikuyu tribes are Kenya’s largest tribes. The Lifestyle of Kenya's Kikuyu is also somewhat different. They are farmers. Sugarcane, bananas, yams, different kinds of vegetables, etc. are grown by them. Cattle are also raised by them which help in providing skin for sandals, bedding, etc. For purgation and religious sacrifices animals like sheep and goats are utilized.

Kenya's Lifestyle is very simple. If you ever visit Kenya you get to see different Kenya lifestyle.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Deep look at Kenya

Culture

Culture of Kenya

Dressed up Maasai warriors

Kenya is a diverse country. Notable peoples include the Swahili on the coast, pastoralist communities in the north, and several different communities in the central and western regions. The Maasai culture is well known because of tourism, despite being a minor percentage of the Kenyan population. They are renowned for their elaborate upper body adornment and jewelry.

Kenya has an extensive music, television and theatre scene.

Literature

Literature of Kenya

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is one of the best known writers of Kenya. His book, Weep Not, Child is an illustration of life in Kenya during the British occupation. This is a story about the effects of the Mau Mau on the lives of black Kenyans. Its combination of themes—colonialism, education, and love—helped to make it one of the best-known novels in Africa.

M.G. Vassanji's 2003 novel The In-Between World of Vikram Lall won the Giller Prize in 2003. It is the fictional memoir of a Kenyan of Indian heritage and his family as they adjust to the changing political climates in colonial and post-colonial Kenya.

Since 2003, the literary journal Kwani? has been publishing Kenyan contemporary literature.

Music

Music of Kenya

Kenya has a diverse assortment of popular music forms, in addition to multiple types of folk music based on the variety over 40 regional languages.

The guitar is the most dominant instrument in Kenyan popular music. Guitar rhythms are very complex and include both native beats and imported ones, especially the Congolese cavacha rhythm; music usually involves the interplay of multiple parts and, more recently, showy guitar solos.

Lyrics are most often in Swahili or English. There's also some emerging aspect of Lingala borrowed from Congo musicians. Lyrics are also written in the indigenous languages, though urban radio will generally not play music in one of the "tribal" languages. This however has been seen through the emergence of vernacular radio stations that broadcast in native languages.

Benga music has been popular since the late 1960s, especially around Lake Victoria. The word benga is occasionally used to refer to any kind of pop music. bass, guitar and percussion are the usual instruments.

Zanzibaran taarab music has also become popular, as has hip hop, reggae, soul, soukous, zouk, rock and roll, funk and Europop

Sports

Sport in Kenya

Kenya is active in several sports, among them cricket, rallying, football (soccer), rugby union and boxing. But the country is known chiefly for its dominance in Middle-distance and long-distance athletics. Kenya has consistently produced Olympic and Commonwealth Gameschampions in various distance events, especially in 800 m, 1,500 m, 3,000 m steeplechase, 5,000 m, 10,000 m and the marathon. Kenyan athletes (particularly Kalenjin) continue to dominate the world of distance running, although competition from Morocco and Ethiopia has reduced this supremacy. Kenya's best-known athletes included the current 800m world record holder David Rudisha, the legendary Kipchoge Keino four-time women's Boston Marathon winner and two-time world champion Catherine Ndereba, former Marathon world record-holder Paul Tergat, and John Ngugi.

Top Kenyan middle-distance runner, David Rudisha.

They won the inaugural World Cricket League Division 1 hosted in Nairobi and participated in the World T20. Their current captain is Collins Obuya. They participated in theICC Cricket World Cup 2011. Kenya is represented by Lucas Onyango as a professional rugby league player who plays with Oldham Roughyeds. Besides the former European Super League team, he has played for Widnes Vikings and rugby union with Sale Sharks. Rugby union is increasing in popularity. It is popular in Kenya especially with the annual Safari Sevens tournament. Kenya sevens team ranked 9th in IRB Sevens World Series for the 2006 season. Kenya was a regional power in soccer but its dominance has been eroded by wrangles within the Kenya Football Federation. This has led to a suspension by FIFA which was lifted in March, 2007. In the motor rallying arena, Kenya is home to the world famous Safari Rally, commonly acknowledged as one of the toughest rallies in the world, and a part of the World Rally Championship for many years until its exclusion after the 2002 event owing to financial difficulties. Some of the best rally drivers in the world have taken part in and won the rally, such as Björn Waldegård, Hannu Mikkola, Tommi Makinen, Shekhar Mehta,Carlos Sainz and Colin McRae. Though the rally still runs annually as part of the Africa rally championship, the organisers are hoping to be allowed to rejoin the World Rally championship in the next couple of years.

How it started

Fossils found in East Africa suggest that protohumans roamed the area more than 20 million years ago. Recent finds near Kenya's Lake Turkana indicate that hominids lived in the area 2.6 million years ago.

Cushitic-speaking people from what became Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia moved into the area that is now Kenya beginning around 2000 BC. Arab traders began frequenting the Kenya coast around the first century AD. Kenya's proximity to the Arabian Peninsula invited colonization, and Arab and Persian settlements sprouted along the coast by the eighth century. During the first millennium AD, Nilotic and Bantu peoples moved into the region, and the latter now comprise two thirds of Kenya's population. Swahili, a Bantu language with significant Arabic vocabulary, developed as a trade language for the region.

Arab dominance on the coast was interrupted for about 150 years following the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498. British exploration of East Africa in the mid-1800s eventually led to the establishment of Britain's East African Protectorate in 1895. The Protectorate promoted settlement of the fertile central highlands by Europeans, dispossessing the Kikuyu and others of their land. Some fertile and well watered parts of the Rift Valley inhabited by the Maasai and the western highlands inhabited by the Kalenjin were also handed over to European settlers. For other Kenyan communities, the British presence was slight, especially in the arid northern half of the country. The settlers were allowed a voice in government even before Kenya was officially made a British colony in 1920, but Africans were prohibited from direct political participation until 1944 when a few appointed (but not elected) African representatives were permitted to sit in the legislature.

From 1952 to 1959, Kenya was under a state of emergency arising from the
"Mau Mau" insurgency against British colonial rule in general and its land policies in particular. This rebellion took place almost exclusively in the highlands of central Kenya among the Kikuyu people. Tens of thousands of Kikuyu died in the fighting or in the detention camps and restricted villages. British losses were about 650. During this period, African participation in the political process increased rapidly.

The first direct elections for Africans to the Legislative Council took place in 1957. Kenya became independent on December 12, 1963, and the next year joined the Commonwealth. Jomo Kenyatta, an ethnic Kikuyu and head of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), became Kenya's first President. The minority party, Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), representing a coalition of small ethnic groups that had feared dominance by larger ones, dissolved itself in 1964 and joined KANU.

A small but significant leftist opposition party, the Kenya People's Union (KPU), was formed in 1966, led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a former Vice President and Luo elder. The KPU was banned shortly thereafter, however, and its leader detained. KANU became Kenya's sole political party. At Kenyatta's death in August 1978, Vice President Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin from Rift Valley province, became interim President. By October of that year, Moi became President formally after he was elected head of KANU and designated its sole nominee for the presidential election.

In June 1982, the National Assembly amended the constitution, making Kenya officially a one-party state. Two months later, young military officers in league with some opposition elements attempted to overthrow the government in a violent but ultimately unsuccessful coup. In response to street protests and donor pressure, parliament repealed the one-party section of the constitution in December 1991. In 1992, independent Kenya's first multiparty elections were held. Divisions in the opposition contributed to Moi's retention of the presidency in 1992 and again in the 1997 election. Following the 1997 election Kenya experienced its first coalition government as KANU was forced to cobble together a majority by bringing into government a few minor parties.

In October 2002, a coalition of opposition parties formed the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). In December 2002, the NARC candidate, Mwai Kibaki, was elected the country's third President. President Kibaki received 62% of the vote, and NARC also won 59% of the parliamentary seats. Kibaki, a Kikuyu from Central province, had served as a member of parliament since Kenya's independence in 1963. He served in senior posts in both the Kenyatta and Moi governments, including Vice President and Finance Minister. In 2003, internal conflicts disrupted the NARC government. In 2005 these conflicts came into the open when the government put its draft constitution to a public referendum--key government ministers organized the opposition to the draft constitution, which was defeated soundly. In 2007, two principal leaders of the movement to defeat the draft constitution, Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka--both former Kibaki allies--were presidential candidates for the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party and the Orange Democratic Movement-Kenya (ODM-K) party, respectively. In September 2007, President Kibaki and his allies formed the coalition Party of National Unity (PNU). KANU joined the PNU coalition, although it was serving in parliament as the official opposition party.

On December 27, 2007, Kenya held presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections. While the parliamentary and local government elections were largely credible, the presidential election was seriously flawed, with irregularities in the vote tabulation process as well as turnout in excess of 100% in some constituencies. On December 30, the chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya declared incumbent
Mwai Kibaki the winner of the presidential election. Violence erupted in different parts of Kenya as supporters of opposition candidate Raila Odinga and supporters of Kibaki clashed with police and each other. The post-election crisis left about 1,300 Kenyans dead and about 500,000 people displaced. In order to resolve the crisis, negotiation teams representing PNU and ODM began talks under the auspices of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Panel of Eminent African Persons (Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania and Graca Machel of Mozambique).

On February 28, 2008, President Kibaki and Raila Odinga signed a power-sharing agreement, which provided for the establishment of a prime minister position (to be filled by Odinga) and two deputy prime minister positions, as well as the division of an expanded list of cabinet posts according to the parties' proportional representation in parliament. On March 18, 2008, the Kenyan parliament amended the constitution and adopted legislation to give legal force to the agreement. On April 17, 2008 the new coalition cabinet and Prime Minister Odinga were sworn in. The Kofi Annan-led political settlement also set out a reform agenda to address underlying causes of the post-election violence. The focus is on constitutional, electoral, land, and institutional reform as well as increased accountability for corruption and political violence. The new constitution was approved in a referendum on August 4, 2010.

Republic of Kenya

Republic of Kenya

Geography

Area: 580,367 sq. km. (224,080 sq mi.); slightly smaller than Texas.

Cities: Capital--Nairobi (pop. 2.9 million; 2007 est.). Other cities--Mombasa (828,500; 2006 est.), Kisumu (650,846; 2005-6), Nakuru (1.3 million; 2005-6), Eldoret (193,830; 1999).

Terrain: Kenya rises from a low coastal plain on the Indian Ocean in a series of mountain ridges and plateaus which stand above 3,000 meters (9,000 ft.) in the center of the country. The Rift Valley bisects the country above Nairobi, opening up to a broad arid plain in the north. Highlands cover the south before descending to the shores of Lake Victoria in the west.

Climate: Tropical in south, west, and central regions; arid and semi-arid in the north and the northeast.

People

Nationality: Noun and adjective--Kenyan(s).

Population (August 2010 est.): 39 million.

Major ethnic groups: Kikuyu 6.6 million, Luhya 5.3 million, Luo 4 million, Kalenjin 5 million, Kamba 3.9 million, Kisii 2.2 million, Mijikenda 1.9 million.

Religions: Christian 82.6%, Muslim 11.2%, traditional African religions 5%, Hindu/Sikh/Baha'i/Jewish 1%.

Languages: English (official), Swahili (national), over 40 other languages from the Bantu, Nilotic, and Cushitic linguistic groups.

Education: First 8 years of primary school are provided tuition-free by the government. In January 2008, the government began offering a program of free secondary education, subject to some restrictions. Attendance--92% for primary grades. Adult literacy rate--74%.

Health: Infant mortality rate--57.4/1,000. Life expectancy--55.3 yrs (2007 est.).

Government

Type: Republic.

Independence: December 12, 1963.

Constitution: 1963; new constitution approved in an August 4, 2010 referendum.

Branches: Executive--president (chief of state, commander in chief of armed forces), prime minister (head of government), and two deputy prime ministers. Legislative--unicameral National Assembly (parliament). Judicial--Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, various lower and special courts, including Kadhi (Sharia) courts.

Administrative subdivisions: 140 districts, joined to form 7 rural provinces. The Nairobi area has special provincial status. Under the new constitution, which is in the process of being implemented, the primary administrative subdivisions will be 47 counties, each with an elected governor.

Political parties: Over 40 registered political parties. Two coalitions, the Party of National Unity (PNU) and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), dominate the political party scene. PNU membership is filled by parties representing Kikuyu and closely related ethnic groups; ODM membership ranks are filled by parties representing nearly everybody else. PNU and ODM agreed in February 2008 to form a coalition government in a power-sharing arrangement that ended the political crisis erupting after disputed national elections in December 2007.
Suffrage: Universal at 18.

Talking in Kenya

Languages in Kenya

Kenya is a multilingual country. The Bantu Swahili language and English are widely spoken as lingua franca, and are the two official languages.

According to Ethnologue, there are a total of 69 languages spoken in Kenya. This variety is a reflection of the country's diverse population that includes most major ethnic, racial and linguistic groups found in Africa (see Languages of Africa).

The two major language families spoken in Kenya are the Bantu and the Nilotic groups. There is also a Cushitic minority, besides Arab, Hindustani and British immigrants.

Multilingualism

Kenya is a country where multilingualism is profoundly practiced.

Next to over fifty indigenous languages and dialects, neither Swahili nor English, both official languages, can be considered a true lingua franca of Kenya. Swahili is also the national language while English is the international language, an otherwise common situation compared to the rest of the world.

Not everyone in Kenya can speak Swahili or English. In everyday communication, most people prefer using their mother tongue. People living along the coast speak better Swahili than people living in central highlands of Kenya. This can be attributed to the fact that some primary schools in Kenya (especially those in very rural Kikuyu land), teach vernacular in lower grades (1,2,3) and pupils are tested on it. The reason why they are taught vernacular is because all the pupils come from surrounding regions and speak the same dialect.This is not the case with every school in Kenya.

On the other hand, schools in western, Northern, and South Kenya don't do that normally because there are pupils who have different dialects and therefore not possible to teach the regional dialect. This could be the underlying factor of why people in Western and Coastal Kenya speak Swahili more fluently than any other part of the country.

There are forty different people groups in Kenya today and approximately the same number of dialects. Most of them are confined to specific regions. e.g., Kikuyu in central Kenya, Luo in western and Nyanza, Kamba in eastern and so on.

What They Believe, How They Live

Religion

Religion in Kenya

Holy Ghost RC Cathedral in Mombasa-Kenya

The vast majority of Kenyans are Christian (83%), with 47.7% regarding themselves as Protestant and 23.5% as Roman Catholic. Sizeable minorities of other faiths do exist (Muslim 11.2%, indigenous beliefs 1.7%). Sixty percent of the Muslim population lives in Coast Province, comprising 50 percent of the total population there. Western areas of Coast Province are mostly Christian. The upper part of Eastern Province is home to 10 percent of the country's Muslims, where they constitute the majority religious group. In addition, there is a large Hindu population in Kenya (around 50,000), who have played a key role in the local economy. There is also a small group of Baha'is.

Health

Health in Kenya

Despite major achievements in the health sector, Kenya still faces many challenges. Recent life expectancy estimates are approximately 55 years in 2009 - five years below 1990 levels. Too many women and children still die at birth or within the first year of life. More die before their 5th birthday.

Preventable diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, pneumonia, diarrhea and malnutrition are the major child killers and responsible for much morbidity. Weak policies, inadequate health workers, weak management and poor leadership in most public health facilities are largely to blame. According to 2009 estimates, HIV prevalence is about 6.3% of the adult population. However, the 2011 UNAIDS Report suggests that the HIV epidemic may be improving in Kenya, as HIV prevalence is declining among young people (ages 15-24) and pregnant women.

The total fertility rate in Kenya is estimated to be 4.49 children per woman in 2012. Maternal mortality is high, partly because of female genital mutilation. This practice is however on the decline as the country becomes more modernised and the practice was also banned in the country in 2011.

Another Deeper Look

Culture

Culture of Kenya

Literature

Literature of Kenya

M.G. Vassanji's 2003 novel The In-Between World of Vikram Lall won the Giller Prize in 2003. It is the fictional memoir of a Kenyan of Indian heritage and his family as they adjust to the changing political climates in colonial and post-colonial Kenya.

Since 2003, the literary journal Kwani? has been publishing Kenyan contemporary literature.

Music

Music of Kenya

Kenya has a diverse assortment of popular music forms, in addition to multiple types of folk music based on the variety over 40 regional languages.

Lyrics are most often in Swahili or English. There's also some emerging aspect of Lingala borrowed from Congo musicians. Lyrics are also written in the indigenous languages, though urban radio will generally not play music in one of the "tribal" languages. This however has been seen through the emergence of vernacular radio stations that broadcast in native languages.

Zanzibaran taarab music has also become popular, as has hip hop, reggae, soul, soukous, zouk, rock and roll, funk and Europop

Sports

Sport in Kenya

Kenya is active in several sports, among them cricket, rallying, football (soccer), rugby union and boxing. But the country is known chiefly for its dominance in Middle-distance and long-distance athletics. Kenya has consistently produced Olympic and Commonwealth Gameschampions in various distance events, especially in 800 m, 1,500 m, 3,000 m steeplechase, 5,000 m, 10,000 m and the marathon. Kenyan athletes (particularly Kalenjin) continue to dominate the world of distance running, although competition from Morocco and Ethiopia has reduced this supremacy. Kenya's best-known athletes included the current 800m world record holder David Rudisha, the legendary Kipchoge Keino four-time women's Boston Marathon winner and two-time world champion Catherine Ndereba, former Marathon world record-holder Paul Tergat, and John Ngugi.

Kenya won several medals during the Beijing Olympics, five gold, five silver and four bronze, making it Africa's most successful nation in the 2008 Olympics. New athletes gained attention, such as Pamela Jelimo, the women's 800m gold medalist who went ahead to win the IAAF Golden League jackpot, and Samuel Wanjiru who won the men's marathon. Retired Olympic and Commonwealth Games champion Kipchoge Keino helped usher in Kenya's ongoing distance dynasty in the 1970s and was followed by Commonwealth Champion Henry Rono's spectacular string of world record performances. Lately, there has been controversy in Kenyan athletics circles, with the defection of a number of Kenyan athletes to represent other countries, chiefly Bahrain and Qatar. The Kenyan Ministry of Sports has tried to stop the defections, but they have continued anyway, with Bernard Lagat the latest, choosing to represent the United States. Most of these defections occur because of economic or financial factors. Some elite Kenyan runners who cannot qualify for their country's strong national team find it easier to qualify by running for other countries. Kenya has been a dominant force in women's volleyball within Africa, with both the clubs and the national team winning various continental championships in the past decade. The women's team has competed at the Olympics and World Championships but without any notable success. Cricket is another popular and the most successful team sport. Kenyahas competed in the Cricket World Cup since 1996. They upset some of the World's best teams and reached semi-finals of the 2003 tournament. They won the inaugural World Cricket League Division 1 hosted in Nairobi and participated in the World T20. Their current captain is Collins Obuya. They participated in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011. Kenya is represented by Lucas Onyango as a professional rugby league player who plays with Oldham Roughyeds. Besides the former European Super League team, he has played for Widnes Vikings and rugby union with Sale Sharks. Rugby union is increasing in popularity. It is popular in Kenya especially with the annual Safari Sevens tournament. Kenya sevens team ranked 9th in IRB Sevens World Series for the 2006 season. Kenya was a regional power in soccer but its dominance has been eroded by wrangles within the Kenya Football Federation. This has led to a suspension by FIFA which was lifted in March, 2007. In the motor rallying arena, Kenya is home to the world famousSafari Rally, commonly acknowledged as one of the toughest rallies in the world, and a part of the World Rally Championship for many years until its exclusion after the 2002 event owing to financial difficulties. Some of the best rally drivers in the world have taken part in and won the rally, such as Björn Waldegård, Hannu Mikkola, Tommi Makinen, Shekhar Mehta,Carlos Sainz and Colin McRae. Though the rally still runs annually as part of the Africa rally championship, the organisers are hoping to be allowed to rejoin the World Rally championship in the next couple of years.