World cultures shape Kenyans’ way of life

By BEATRICE WAMUYU

KENYA: Kenya is a melting pot of world cultures.

Historians say due to migrations that were common in the early years of human history, the region started interacting with other world cultures as early as 2000BC. (That is 2000 years before Jesus Christ walked the earth). The first Arabs landed at the Kenyan coast in about 100AD

 According to the 2009 census, there were 40,700 Kenyan Arabs, 46, 700 Kenyan Asians, 5,000 Kenyan Europeans and 2,400 Kenyan Europeans.

 Non-Kenyan Asians totaled 35,000, and there were 27,000 Europeans, 6,000 Americans, 112 Caribbeans and 719 Australians.

There were almost 400,000 people from African nations living in Kenya, according to the census.

The effects of these visitors on culture have been tremendous. They manifest themselves in the way we dress, the food we eat, the languages we speak, the crops we grow, the gods we worship, how we build our homes and in education, among other fronts.

Among the first visitors were Arabs, who came to the Coast for trade including the slave trade. As the first Europeans set foot here and travelled onwards to Asia, more people from the sub-continent came to Africa, with the earliest landings at the Somalian and Kenyan coasts.

This partly explains why people of Arab and Asian descent form the highest population of “outsiders” who now call Kenya home. Kiswahili, one of the country’s national languages alongside English, was born of the Bantu’s interaction with Arabs.

In the 1880s, thousands of Indians known as coolies came to Kenya to provide labour for the new Kenya-Uganda railway, which was under construction. Most of these settled in Kenya after that, and their descendants today form a substantial number in the country’s population.

One of the most visible effects of the Arab and Asian interaction is the food at the coast, as well as the long gowns worn by men and women.