Kenya Tag Archive

12 Stunning High Quality Photos of Kenyan History

By Nathan Tama It is rare to bump onto high quality images of colonial and precolonial images such as these. 

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Nairobi was Never Meant to be a City

The first men and women who landed in Nairobi considered the brackish swamp land perfect. The area was picturesque, with hills in the horizon and rivers crisscrossing the plains. The land was not suitable for farming, and certainly not for settlement, but it was perfect for grazing.

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Former US President Teddy Roosevelt’s Drunken Rampage in Nairobi

Number 26, Teddy Roosevelt, holds two crowns. He was the youngest person to assume the US presidency, and the most badass of them all. He did many things to earn that second title, but none of them featured a drunken spree in Nairobi that nearly caused a diplomatic mess in 1909.

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From ‘Shifta’ War to Al Shabaab: Why Kenya is her own worst enemy

When Kenya faced an insurgency problem in the 1960s, it tormented a people into submission. When it faced another in the 21st century, it secretly recruited their children to fight its war. The plan failed miserably, bringing Kenya to war with itself.

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How Kenya almost became the New Zion (Israel)

Lost within the Kenyan story are proposals that would have redefined history. Three of those plans stand out: the establishment of a freed slave settlement, a Jewish settlement in the Mau Plateau, and a responsible government under a white settler minority.

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When Kenya had a really ugly flag

Before Kenya had its current flag, it had a flag that was so poorly designed that the lion in it looked like it was in the middle of a sad dance. Whoever put that lion there had either never seen one, or had a poor memory. Or had let his three-year-old have a go at it designing the colony's flag.

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How Kenya got The Ten-Mile Coastal Strip

The ownership of Kenya’s coastline has been a matter of contention since the Sultan of Zanzibar officially signed it away in 1963. The claims for secession are often accompanied by the history of the great Zanzibar sultanate which once stretched to what is today the Kenyan coastline.

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7 Unsolved Murders of Young Women in Kenya

On the morning of Valentines Day 2012, Careen Chepchumba's brother accessed her apartment at Santonia Court, off Kirichwa Road. She had been incommunicado since February 12th. In the bedroom, he saw her in bed, tidily covered with a bed sheet. There was music playing from a laptop placed on the bedside table. Nothing looked amiss. Except that Careen had been dead for 18 hours.

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The Politics of the Miniskirt (and hippies) in Africa

This article was first published on Medium. Read the edited version on Mail and Guardian Africa.  The recent #MyDressMyChoice protests in Kenya have rekindled a debate that has plagued Africa since independence in the 1960s. Most African countries gained independence at about the same time two trends were catching on in the West.

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