LIFE IN KENYA.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 11327, 3 October 1930, Page 3

LIFE IN KENYA.

CTYJT.TSIN'G A PRIMITIVE PEOPLE.

Writing of educational experiments among the natives of Kenya, a rnntrihutor of the ‘‘Round Table 1 ’ ‘‘for Juno gives a description of tlm apparently hopeless material upon which progress i i being made. The villages of these natives, who are kuown as the Akikuya, are extremely squalid. The young men on a gala day shining ivith eii and bright with feathers, and red clay, may be a fine sight, but. they are not clean ; nor ore their dressed skins or blankets. When elm oil and the red mud go, caked dirt remains. In the dust and ashes of the village the children play, the diseased with the healthy, and all unclean. The women arc no better. They prepare food with hands that are never washed in pots that are never cleaned. At night the people, together with the goats and calves and fowls, eram i to rest in mean airless unlit hovels, tilled with smoke and with the stench of animals and man : and countless rats abound. The people are intelligent. but they have little knowledge. Tho birth-rate K high. Under such .conditions children are • born, and children die or miraculously live to old-age. l?nt i'ear is never far away. j’lagne and pestilence come, in tho night : the young men die and the cattle sicken, the rains fail, and the-locust-cloud looms upon the horizon, and stark famine stalks through the land. To haw witch doctors in snob < iron instances is only common sense, and if these doctors, bred of fear, come ultimately to batten upon it, who can wonder? Till a few years ago the dying were cast from the huts into tho hush,, there, even while living, to be devoured by hyenas, It is • a law of the people that no one may touch tho dead, and the dying must be removed in time to avoid that danger. It would be wrong to call this people cruel. Custom is cruel, but the people are only ignorant and afraid. r l hey are being weaned from this custom of casting out the sick, but it -is still impossible to persuade a Kikuya to touch a dead body. Because of tho innumerable taboos' of native life it is exceedingly difficult for Europeans, however well intentionod, to work among these people. They are-.continually offending where they wish only to help. What is being done, therefore, is carefully to select the more intelligent of ihe natives and to train lliorn fo work among their own. people. These teachers are trained in hygiene, better methods of living, agriculture, and everything that is associated with the village life. Where possible a married man and his family are pm into training, and tho wife has a definite part to play in influencing Dio women in mat tews beyond the reach of a man. It is impressed upon the native teachers that the objective is to influence not only the children, but also their parents. The woman teacher is taugfit to knit, sew and cook. After two years the teachers ore returned to their villages, and the man is faced with the difficult task of educating his follows to a bettor way of living. Without power, without prestige, the teacher goes back .to his district to battle with custom, prejudice and disease, to ceach and to inspire his people with an enthusiasm for new things, and to do this without losing or wasting whatever may be of value in native life and custom as it is now to remake rural Africa. Despite all the difficulties in the way, slow, but real progress is being made.