KENYAN HISTORY

 For the understanding of his novels an acquaintance with Kenya's typical people and their tribal
way of living is essential. Kenya is known as the republic of East Africa. It was a colony of the
British. The British made their appearance in 1887 as the Sultan leased the northern coastal strip
to the British East Africa Company and then the British established the East Africa Protectorate.

 Grolier International Encyclopedia mentions the entry of the white settlers on the land: "The
railroad from Mombasa to Nairobi and Lake Victoria was built in the last decade of the 19th
century, and as white settlers began to enter Kenya, large area of the Kenya Highlands-later
known as the White Highlands- were subsequently alienated from the Africans and reserved for
white-only settlement. In 1920 the interior regions were organized as the British crown colony of
Kenya while the coastal strip remained a British protectorate over lands nominally ruled by the
Sultan of Zanzibar." (Encyclo. Post Colo. Lite. 1991:56)

KENYAN HISTORY

 The native population tried to resist the British authorities. On the other hand the British
appointed the blacks as chiefs to handle administrative duties and to make these native people
to fight amongst each other so that they would get diverted from their struggle for freedom
against the whites.

 Kenyan tribal people known as 'Kikuyu' strongly fought under the leadership of Jomo Kenyatta,
which was recognized as historical 'Mau Mau movement' in 1950s. Though Jomo was imprisoned
in 1953 the terrorism continued, and the British rulers declared emergency, which was in effect
from 1952 to 1960.

 The positive change in the attitude of the government came in 1960 that accepted a multiracial
representation in a system mentioned in the constitution. Jomo Kenyatta was freed in 1961 and
the Kenyan African National Congress [KANU] got a decisive victory in the elections in 1963.

 Kenya formed a totally independent government on December 12, 1963. Jomo Kenyatta became
the first Prime Minister of the Kenyan Republic.

KENYAN HISTORY

 The British invaded Kenya in 1895. The country became a military base for the British in the First
World War. After the war the British introduced new taxes and reduced wages due to which the
natives united and built a nationalist movement called ‘Young Kikuyu Association’ against it.

 The Kikuyu revolt was against the acquisition of land and biased market economy of the white
settlers. Kenya once again became the military base in the Second World War and the natives
were forced to join military from the side of the Europeans.

 Although the Mau Mau revolt was an unsuccessful attempt it clearly led the natives to unite and
forced the British government to work for political reform. The movement was a controversy due
to benefit of the Kikuyus and marginalization of the other ethnic groups.

 Colonization was officially-sanctioned theft on an unimaginably large scale - that of entire peoples
and, ultimately, of their cultures.
KENYAN CULTURE

 Of Kenya's forty-two officially-recognized tribes (there are many more in reality), about half -
roughly 70% of the population - have lost most of their traditional ways.

 Their essential cultural institutions have been almost entirely 'Westernized' - society, laws,
religions, cultures, marriage customs, their economic mode of life, dress, and music.

 Christianity is the most visible agent of change in Kenya, though the religion has its roots in the
colonial experience. It was used by European administrators to create an African elite - albeit one
far beneath the rank and influence of the European settlers - which served the colonial
administration.

 Christianity was also used as a 'pacifying' influence, through which it was hoped that the 'natives'
would recognize the moral superiority of the colonists, and so not oppose them.

KENYAN CULTURE

 The East African Republic of Kenya is a young nation which did not even exist 150 years ago, and
which only achieved its independence from the British in 1963, after a long and bloody struggle
against its colonial oppressors.

 Kenya was not even conceived by Africans, but by European politicians, militarists, colonists and
administrators at the end of the nineteenth century, who had between them agreed respective
'spheres of influence' in East Africa.

 This period, is seen by historians as one of the crucial stages in the escalation of inter-European
rivalry which ultimately led to the First World War and was called the 'Scramble for Africa’.

 The arrogant disregard shown by the new overlords was even set down in black and white in the
form of Kenya's borders, which were determined not by the languages or distribution of its
peoples, nor by their cultures or traditions, and not even by geography, but by military interests
and even haphazard whimsy.

KENYAN CULTURE

 The period of colonialism which followed was a litany of abuse, oppression, fear and misrule.

 Within a decade of venturing into the Kenyan interior, vast tracts of Kenya's most fertile land were
being stolen by the British for their own farms and estates. To make way for these farms, millions
of people were uprooted and forced to settle elsewhere, often in crowded 'Reserves' or
'protected villages' (nothing other than concentration camps) on inferior land controlled by the
British, where the movements and activities of the 'natives' were severely restricted.

 Ngugi points the oppressive power of colonialism to erase, alter, divide and destroy an entire race
of people.

 Kikuyu land was of course highly attractive to the Europeans, and over the seventy years that the
manifold abuses of colonialism lasted, it led to degeneration of the Kikuyu way of life.

KENYAN IDENTITY
  Kenya consists of forty different ethnic groups but the largest and politically most active tribe is
Kikuyu. Swahili is recognized as their official language in 1974 and that is still in use.

 Kenyans also use English as their official language. Most of the population follows their traditional
ethnic religions but one third of the population is Christian. The Kenyan literature has no history
as such because they had oral tribal literature.

 There are approximately forty to sixty different groups of people in Kenya (depending on how you
count and define them), each with their own traditions and histories, cultures, languages and
dialects, territories, religions and beliefs, ways of dressing, music and dance.

 Their tribal identity - be it Maasai or Kikuyu, Luo, Kalenjin or whatever - invariably comes first. As
a nation, Kenya is deeply fractured. The notion of "us and them" pervades every level of life. The
future of Kenya looks grim.

KENYAN IDENTITY

 Yet there is, a growing feeling that all Kenyans are 'in this together'. Through no choice of their
own, they were given their Kenyan identity. Unless Kenya's borders are redrawn (which would
entail the fragmentation of the nation into several smaller states), Kenya - all Kenyans - will share
a common destiny.

 The first president of independent Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, identified this spirit of brotherhood or
'togetherness' as essential for the well-being and prosperity of the fledgling nation state.

 It is now over a century since colonisation began, and over a century and a half since the first
Europeans ventured inland beyond Mombasa and Malindi.

 Colonialism caused the destruction, both directly and indirectly, of almost everything that had
been there before.

KENYAN IDENTITY

 Entire peoples were evicted from their ancestral lands and forcibly resettled elsewhere; old
traditions such as rites and rituals connected to remembrance were abolished on the grounds of
their being 'pagan' or 'Satanic'; the way of dressing was changed to accord with European ideas
of decency; and of course the very unity of tribal societies was deliberately undermined by the
British so as to weaken any opposition to the colonial regime.

 To reconstruct the Kenyan identity and restrict the cultural obliteration many of the traditions
which nurtured traditional Kenyan societies have to be restored.

 The majority, certainly in Kenya, are now poorer in both money and material terms than they
were immediately after independence. Culturally, their entire ways of life have been changed,
from their sense of identity to their religions and their methods of existence.