Kenya Culture

National and tribal culture.There are between 40 and 70 tribes in Kenya, depending on how you count. Although their role in Kenya culture is slowly diminishing, it’s still one of the most important facts of social life. As a result, national consciousness is quite weak.

Kenya Lifestyle.Within Africa, Kenyans enjoy a reputation as hard workers and at 7 o’clock the streets are crowded. However, Kenyans take it easy and have a casual approach to time. The phrase “Hakuna Matata” (which you may know from the Disney movie, The Lion King), meaning “don’t worry and enjoy life” is actually Swahili, which is the official language of both Kenya and Tanzania. You’ll hear that a lot, especially along the coast. When meeting someone, a Kenyan will greet him extensively. Shaking hands is normal between men when meeting and departing. Women also shake hands with each other, but with men only in more sophisticated circles. Kenyans naturally touch each other easily, like in Latin culture. Be aware of the fact that the left hand is seen as unhygienic. So use your right hand to pass things to someone, to touch somebody, etcetera. However, this rule is not always followed and just ignore it then. Pointing your finger at someone is seen as rude.

Kenyans dress conservatively. Kenyan men wear shirts and long trousers, often with a blazer or sweater. Women wear long trousers or skirts below the knee. This is even more so at the coast, where the majority are Muslim. But you won’t get into trouble for wearing shorts and T-shirts. Contrary to their conservative dressing, the sexual mores are pretty loose, although there are differences between tribes and religions within Kenya culture. In Muslim areas, religious rules on sexuality are interpreted liberally. The age of consent is 16. Be aware that HIV/AIDS is a big problem. Around 7% of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS (not only through intercourse, but also through their parents and receiving infected blood.)

Kenya Religion

Most Kenyans are nominally Christians, although many mix it with traditional religious beliefs. You’ll encounter for example a widespread belief in witchcraft. Witches are thought to cause illnesses and can put a spell on women so that no man will ever look to her again. Religion is important in Kenya culture. Gospel music is popular and especially in cities you’ll often see street preachers, who offer religion as a solution of the many social ills in Kenya. There are more than 4,000 registered churches in Kenya, belonging to an innumerable variety of denominations. They can range from very mainstream churches, to lesser-known evangelical and gospel offshoots. Churches in Kenya are predominately Christian, though many different denominations and congregations exist within the population. Overall, more than three quarters of the population identify themselves as Christian (either Protestant or Roman Catholic). However, many Kenyans mix their Christian beliefs with traditional beliefs (such as belief in witchcraft).

Kenya Art

Benga is a truly Kenyan music style. Benga is high-energy dance music that originated after the 1940s when Luo musicians started playing traditional tunes with modern electrical instruments. Most other popular music styles have received influences from abroad. Taarab is the traditional Swahili music played at the coast, and is heavily influenced by Arabic and Indian music styles. Lingala – modern upbeat party music - came from Congo, where the deteriorating political situation made many artists flee to East Africa. American hip hop and gangsta rap has infiltrated Kenya like a virus. Pictures of 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg are everywhere in Nairobi.

Dance

The hypnotic swaying and leaping in Masai and Samburu dancing, are the best known forms of Kenyan dancing. In their energetic dancing, warriors display their strength by leaping high in the air. The Masai and other tribes perform regularly for tourists who visit their villages. In tourist venues along the coast, Mijikenda dance groups often give performances.

Theatre and performance

There are several theatre groups in Kenya, most of them based in Nairobi. Names to remember are the Mbalamwezi Theatre Group and the Phoenix and Miujiza Players. They often perform at the foreign cultural centres in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu. In Nairobi, there’s the Kenya National Theatre. It’s known for the controversy it created with the production “I Will Marry When I Want” by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ngugi wa Mirii, which brought them into confrontation with the government. Kenyans reportedly also like of satire and stand up comedy. One popular group is Redykuylass (‘Rediculous’) which featured in a weekly TV program with a mix of political and social satire.

Literature

In Kenya, oral narratives are the oldest form of literature. Oral stories are still important in many communities. Written literature, in Swahili and English, emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century. However, only after Kenya’s independence (1963) a body of national literature came into being. An important author (novelist, playwright and essayist) is Ngugi wa Thiong’o. As a child on missionary school, he was a devout Christian, but later he rejected Christianity and became a fierce critic of colonialism. He changed his name from James Ngugi to Ngugi wa Thiong’o in 1976 and embraced his native Kikuyu culture, as well as Marxism. While having written the first novel in English by an East African author - “Weep not, child” (1964) – he published his first book in Kikuyu in 1980: “Caitaani Muthara-Ini” (Devil on the Cross). He now argued that literature written by Africans in a colonial language is not really African literature. In 1992 Ngugi became professor of literature at New York University.

Cinema

There is a small film industry in Kenya, which is struggling to stay alive, like elsewhere in Africa. However, a new generation of Kenyan film makers is emerging, inspired by the success of the Nigerian video industry. One such film director is Kibaara Kaugi, who in 2004 produced the acclaimed “Enough is enough” - a narrative of the famous Mau Mau uprising – on a minimal budget. Also, foreign film makers have used Kenya as a backdrop for their works. The most famous example is of course Sydney Pollack’s “Out of Africa” (1985) with Merryl Streep and Robert Redford, which is about the life of Danish author Karen Blixen, who emigrated in the 1910s to Kenya to become a coffee farmer. A recent international movie is “The White Masai” (2005), after the real story of the Swiss woman Corinne Hofmann who married a Samburu warrior and joined tribal life. There is no happy ending here.. Some Nairobi cinema houses are 20th Century Cinema (Mama Ngina Street), Fox Drive-In Cinema (Thika Road) and Nairobi Cinema (Uchumi House, Aga Khan Walk).

Kenya culture is a fascinating way of life that blends the traditions of thousands of years of African social evolution with the modern influences of the 20th century. The multifaceted culture of Kenya is expressed in different forms, ranging from its people and language, food, music and dance, art, artifacts, theatre and literature to its ethnic values and ethical norms. Combined with other traditions, these forms of expression and lifestyle form an identity that is uniquely Kenyan.

People & Language

The Kenyan population is comprised of more than 40 ethnic groups, each with its own unique dialect. As Kenya's national languages, Swahili and English bridge the communication gap and unite Kenyans as a single nation.

Kenya Food & Diet

The Kenyan diet is comprised of foods rich in ethnic diversity. Popular staple foods includeugali, rice, bread, chapatti (a type of Indian bread), beef, chicken, goat, tilapia and an assortment of fresh vegetables and fruits.

Nyama choma is regarded as Kenya's national dish. Nyama choma is a form of charcoal-grilled beef or goat meat, and is very popular in authentic Kenyan restaurants and pubs. In times of celebration and on special occasions such as Christmas and wedding ceremonies, it is customary for Kenyans to kill and roast a goat or cow. The Kenyan diet also includes tea. In fact, in Kenya, anytime is tea time. When it comes to drinks, Kenya tea in the form of Chai (tea with milk and sugar) is the beverage of choice. It is served for breakfast, at mealtimes and also during Kenya's regular teatime. Clearly, Kenya culture embraces many different cultural influences: teatime is a custom borrowed from the British colonial past and the Chai style of cooking tea originated in India. Another popular social drink, and one that also makes a good accompaniment for nyama choma, is Kenya's signature-brand beer - Tusker.

Kenya Art & Artifacts

Another fascinating aspect of Kenyan culture is the art and artifacts

that Kenya's different ethnic groups craft manually, using readily available local materials. Beautifully carved wood sculptures showing exquisite detail and craftsmanship are produced in large quantities and sold to tourists both locally and abroad. Other popular Kenya artifacts include colorful hand-woven sisal baskets, Maasai beaded jewelry, gold and silver jewelry, musical instruments, soapstone sculptures, tribal masks, figurines, paintings, prints, batik cloth, kangas and the beautiful traditional Kikoys (African sarongs).

Location and Geography. Kenya is located 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 country straddles the equator, covering a total of 224,961 square miles (582,600 square kilometers; roughly twice the size of the state of Nevada). Kenya has wide white-sand beaches on the coast. Inland plains cover three-quarters of the country; they are mostly bush, covered in underbrush. In the west are the highlands where the altitude rises from three thousand to ten thousand feet. Nairobi, Kenya's largest city and capital, is located in the central highlands. The highest point, at 17,058 feet (5,200 meters), is Mount Kenya. Kenya shares Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa and the main source of the Nile River, with Tanzania and Uganda. Another significant feature of Kenyan geography is the Great Rift Valley, the wide, steep canyon that cuts through the highlands. Kenya is also home to some of the world's most spectacular wildlife, including elephants, lions, giraffes, zebras, antelope, wildebeests, and many rare and beautiful species of birds. Unfortunately, the animal population is threatened by both hunting and an expanding human population; wildlife numbers fell drastically through the twentieth century. The government has introduced strict legislation regulating hunting, and has established a system of national parks to protect the wildlife. Paleontologists believe people may first have inhabited Kenya about 2 million years ago. In the 700s, Arab seafarers established settlements along the coast, and the Portuguese took control of the area in the early 1500s. More than 40 ethnic groups reside in Kenya. Its largest group, the Kikuyu, migrated to the region at the beginning of the 18th century. The land became a British protectorate in 1890 and a Crown colony in 1920, called British East Africa. Nationalist stirrings began in the 1940s, and in 1952 the Mau Mau movement, made up of Kikuyu militants, rebelled against the government. The fighting lasted until 1956.

A woman in a traditional Kenyan outfit

Kenya has no one culture that identifies it. With such diverse regional peoples such as the Swahilialong the coast, several pastoralist communities mainly in the North and the different communities in Central and Western regions, having a mutually acceptable cultural identification is difficult. There are about 42 different ethnic groupings in Kenya - each of these with its own unique culture, but majority of them with intertwining cultural practices brought about by the close resemblance in the languages, the similar environment and physical proximity of the ethnic groups. The ethnic groups are grouped into larger sub-groups - based on their cultural and linguistic similarities. There are three major unifying categories of languages: the Bantu speaking people of the Coastal region, the Central Highlands and the Western Kenya Region, The Nilotes who are mainly found in theGreat Rift Valley and the Lake Victoria Region and the Cushites who are mainly composed of pastoralists and nomads in the drier North Eastern part of the country. Of note is that these sub-groups span a vast area of not just Kenya, but the East, Central and Southern African Region as a whole. The Maasai culture owes its widespread identification to the tourist industry which has exploited them for purely commercial purposes. Historical and current politics of division practiced first by the colonizers and then by subsequent community leaders has led to a situation where Kenyans themselves barely know their own culture let alone that of their neighbours. The colonial administration in partnership with missionary activities and formal education wiped out most cultural practices leaving a gap that was filled by Western cultural attitudes and identification especially by the youth. The recent attempts at coming up with a national dress testifies to the difficult nature of Kenyans' cultural identity. The top-down formula employed rendered the entire process irrelevant as it only involved the urban areas hence the better educated and wealthier segments of society. The result was basically a restricted set of pre-approved national dresses and outfits with questionable aesthetic appeal to the majority of Kenyans.