Kenya's more than 500 thousand square kilometers fit approximately into a parallelogram, two sides more or less north-south, the other two northwest-southeast. Also running north-south, well west of center, is the Great Rift Valley. It is most obvious in the very north, as the salty Lake Turkana(1), and in the south, where it cuts through the southwestern high plateau. That plateau, which falls off toward the shores of Lake Victoria(2), rises above 4,000 meters at Mounts Elgon(3) and Kirinyaga(4), and nearly so high in the Abedare Range on the Rift Valley's edge.
Beyond the southwest, most of Kenya, while lower, is still above 200 meters. The north is semi-arid--even desert southeast of Lake Turkana.
Two rivers flow southeast from the east side of the high plateau to the Indian Ocean: the Tana and, to its south, the Athi. Southwest of the Tana, the coast is mangrove swamps and is fringed by coral reefs. Near the Somali border is the coast-hugging Lamu Archipelago.
There is no majority first language among the more than 30 million people living here. Swahili, a minor first language, is the pre-eminent lingua franca, far ahead of English. The Central Narrow Bantu language group does represent two-thirds of first language speakers. Among its members are Gikuyu(5), one in five; Luyia, aorund three(6) in 20, Kamba, nearly one in ten; and Gusii, more than one in 20. Nilotic languages account for almost three in ten; that group includes Luo, more than one in ten; and Kalenjin, around one(7) in ten.
Almost two-thirds of Kenyans are Christian--more Protestants than Roman Catholics. About one in four follow local beliefs--and, of course, some of these persist among Christians. These beliefs typically include a deus otiosus creator, such as Ngai(8) or Murungu for the Gikuyu. More connected with humans are various classes of spirits--producers of good or evil, or vengeful ghosts.
A little over one in five are Moslems, mostly along the coast.
The capital, Nairobi, is the only city with more than one million residents: the city proper boasts nearly three million, with about another million in the suburbs. Best known to wildlife-loving outsiders is the Thorn Tree Cafe, with messages between travelers posted to the tree trunk.
The Bantu arrived in the Lake Victoria area more than two thousand years ago and spread to the coast by the first centuries C.E.(9) Swahili became important for communicating with Arabs, Persians and people from India.
The Nilo-Saharan languages, which include the Nilotic, have been in and around waters of north central Africa, including Lake Turkana, for many thousands of years.(10) The Kalenjin many have migrated further south in the 14th century.
English speakers conquered Kenya starting in the late 19th century, and relinguished control in the 1960's. They left behind them English and--helped by other Europeans--Christianity.
northwest
north of Lake Turkana
north
northeast
southeast
southwest
west
(1) Africa's seventh largest lake, Formerly called Lake Rudolph.
(2) Africa's largest lake, the world's third.
(3) Some map show the peak in Uganda; the mountain straddles the border.
(4) Also called Mount Kenya.
(5) Or Kikuyu.
(6) Luyia can be narrowly defined, 13%, or broadly defined, 17%.
(7) Kalenjin can be defined narrowly, 9%, or broadly, 12%.
(8) Also spelled Ngei.
(9) Oral traditions of migrations as late as the 15th century are discounted by most linguists.
(10) J.E.G. Sutton and Patrick Munson identified the language group with the phyiscal 'aquatic tradition' of the eighth millenium B.C.E.