Kenya travel guide

Some of the most ancient hominid fossils ever found were unearthed in Kenya – this really is the birthplace of man, with evidence dating back up to six million years. Even describing “modern” Kenyans requires travelling back in time some 4,000 years, as tribes travelled from the west and north into East Africa, joined some 2,000 years ago by Arabs, Persians, Indians, Chinese and Indonesians, sailing here to trade goods with the darkest of pasts: ivory, rhino horn, gold, tortoise shell – and slaves. Commercial outposts rose up along the coastline, and the pidgin Bantu used to communicate became Swahili.

Waves of Omani, Portuguese, English German and Dutch traders and settlers followed, and the coast and islands today remain largely Muslim, despite Kenya being mainly Christian; the legacy of the missionaries who founded missions in the 19th century.

In 1895 Britain’s East Africa Protectorate swallowed most of Kenya, bringing with it coffee plantations and a controversial railway line that stretched from Mombasa to Uganda – the fire-spitting black snake, as prophesied by a tribal leader. Many of the Indian construction workers who migrated here to work on the line remained in Africa, further shaping the cultural face of the continent, influencing its cuisine and business, as the railway finally opened up Africa’s interior to outsiders. As white settlers claimed more and more of Kenya’s fertile land, using the forced labour of native workers to farm it, the Maasai and the Kiyuku – the largest ethnic group – were pushed further and further into the arid plains.

A series of sporadic campaigns and protests by Kenyans culminated in the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. Making their presence known through terrorism and assassinations, culminating in a four-year war, the militant independence movement suffered heavy losses but their voice was finally heard – and for the first time, Africans were able to form political parties and play a role in the leadership of their country.

The Kenya African National Union party, led by Jomo Kenyatta who was heavily involved in the Mau Mau uprising, won the 1963 elections, and Kenya gained independence later that year. Despite the suppression of the opposition and questionable land redistribution policies, and he political stability and economic growth that followed paved the way for Kenya to become a leader in African tourism.