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T he Arabs and Persians
who brought the Islamic faith and culture to the East Africa Coast carried
out trade with the local natives and developed city-like towns. They
intermarried with the East Africa natives and gave birth to a mixed Arab-African
tribe - the Waswahili, whose language Swahili, is today spoken over nearly
half the African Continent. The enlightened coastal traders - the
Arabs and the Waswahili expanded their trading enterprises to the hinterland
looking for ivory, spices, rhino horn, gum-arabic, tortoise shells and
slaves whom they used as porters to transport the rest of the commodities
down to the coast. The Nilotic Maasai of the interior, for example,
defended their territories courageously against any intruders. Not
even the organized Arabs and Swahili caravans could traverse their kingdoms
without paying heavy prices for permission to cross their country.
From 1886, British pioneers began to move inland following the old
Arab caravan routes. They were learning the social organisation set
ups of the African tribes. They also sought ways in which to unite
the warring tribes and establish their authority over the locals in order
to form an orderly Government.
Apart from the Arabs and the Waswahili, there was a group of closely
related tribes, the Mijikenda along the Kenyan Coast. Inland from
coast before reaching the slopes of the Central Highlands were the Wataita
and the Wakamba - both pastoralistic and hunting tribes who traded in ivory
and rhino horn in exchange for beads, ironware and clothes from the Arabs
and the Waswahili merchants. On the eastern slopes of the Central
Highlands was the Gikuyu and their close relatives the Embu and Meru, both
agricultural tribes. The Maasai, a strictly pastoralistic tribe,
occupied the dry acacia woodlands and open grasslands including the floor
of the Great Rift Valley and down the valley to northern Tanganyika (Tanzania).
The Kalenjin, another pastoralistic tribe of Nilo-Hamitic origin occupied
part of the Northern Rift Valley and western slopes of the Central Highlands.
The Gusii and the Luhya, both agricultural tribes of Bantu origin occupied
the land between the Western slopes of Central Highlands and the Lake Victoria
basin. The Nilotic Luo inhabited the lake basin and lived on
fishing and subsistence farming. The much drier North and North-Eastern
Province was occupied by the Hamitic and Islamic Galla, Boran and Somali
tribes who are traditionally more related to the Arabs than African origins.
The rest of the country was occupied by splinter sub-tribes of the major tribes, mostly of
Bantu origins.
To help in the construction of the railway, the Government brought
in over 32,000 Indians from India. After the construction work in
1901, many Indians went back home but some decided to stay and carry out
business in the country to benefit from the prosperity of the railway they
had helped to build. The British Government decided also to bring
in white settlers to develop commercial farming in the Central Highlands.
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