Kakamega

The hills around Kakamega have been farmed by Luhya communities — Isukha and Idakho closest to the town, Tiriki, Maragoli and others nearby — for centuries, in a countryside of smallholdings, clan land and homesteads rather than large settlements. Trade routes to the Wanga kingdom at Mumias and to the lake passed through, and the surrounding forest supplied timber, medicine, honey and game.

The modern town dates from the colonial period, when a small administrative station and mission were established in the district. Its moment came in the early 1930s, when gold was found in the area and a rush followed, fuelled in part by the reports of the geologist Albert Ernest Kitson, and for a few years Kakamega had a reputation out of proportion to its size. The deposits proved modest, the rush faded within the decade, and the town settled back into its role as a district centre, though small-scale gold mining still goes on in the county.

Kakamega became the headquarters of the old Western Province and then, under the 2010 constitution, the capital of Kakamega County, one of the most populous in Kenya. The university that carries the name of the politician Masinde Muliro opened on the edge of the town and grew quickly. The forest, meanwhile, shrank — cleared for farms, grazing and charcoal over the twentieth century — before protection as a national reserve and the arrival of birdwatchers gave the remaining fragment a new value.

Kakamega is Luhya heartland, and the Luhya are not one people but a cluster of sub-groups with their own dialects and customs. Around the town the Isukha and Idakho are best known for isukuti, a fast drumming and dance tradition played on short drums covered in cowhide, widely known across Kenya and heard at births, weddings, funerals, church events and political rallies alike. In 2014 the Isukuti dance of the Isukha and Idakho communities was inscribed on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.

The other tradition the county is famous for is bullfighting, which in Kenya means two bulls pushed head to head in a field while crowds, drummers and the animals' owners follow the contest. Bulls are kept and fed for the purpose, matches draw large crowds on holiday weekends, and the winning animal is paraded home. Rites of passage matter here too: circumcision ceremonies mark the passage to manhood among several Luhya groups, with their own seasons, songs and feasting.

Chicken, prepared as ingokho, is the formal gesture of hospitality, and its parts are traditionally shared by seniority. Christianity is dominant, with large Sunday congregations, and football rouses strong feeling, with AFC Leopards the club most closely associated with Luhya support. Respect for elders, extended family obligation and the pull of the ancestral home shape daily behaviour.

About 107,000 people lived in the town at the 2019 census, in a county of some 1.87 million and one of the most densely settled rural landscapes in Kenya. Almost every family farms: maize and beans, bananas, sweet potatoes, cassava, tea on the higher ground and sugar cane towards Mumias and Butere, most of it on plots of a few acres subdivided again with each generation. Land pressure is the county's defining economic fact.

The town lives on administration, trade and education — the county government, the referral hospital, schools and Masinde Muliro University are among the largest employers — along with the market, transport and small workshops. Small-scale gold mining continues in parts of the county, hard and often hazardous work. Many households depend on remittances from relatives working in Nairobi or abroad.

Mornings start early with produce coming into the market and motorbikes ferrying people in from the villages; afternoons are often broken by rain; and evenings are quiet outside the bars and the student quarter. The forest edge is where the pressures show most clearly, with firewood, grazing and new farms pressing against a reserve that is also a source of tourism income and of water for the streams below.

Western Kenyan cooking is built on obusuma, the Luhya name for ugali, made from maize meal and eaten with almost everything. The dish of honour is ingokho, free-range chicken stewed slowly with tomato and onion, served to guests and at celebrations. Beef and goat appear as nyama choma, roasted over charcoal and eaten by the kilo with kachumbari, and mutura, a grilled sausage, is sold from evening stalls.

Vegetables are taken seriously in a county where they grow easily. Traditional greens — murere or omurere (jute leaves), likhubi, tsisaga (African nightshade) and lisebebe (pumpkin leaves) — are cooked with milk or groundnut paste and eaten with obusuma. Beans, green grams, sweet potatoes, cassava, arrowroot and boiled bananas fill out everyday meals, and termites and other insects are a seasonal delicacy after the rains.

Sugar cane from the mills to the west is chewed and sold everywhere, and the county grows tea on its eastern hills. Chai with mandazi or chapati is the standard breakfast, busaa and other traditional brews are still made in the villages, and bottled lager is drunk in the town's bars.