Kenya National Parks
The word safari is Swahili for "travel," and Kenya is where it all began. Great historical figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway immortalized this country. Kenya is now the most popular of the safari countries, with over 700,000 visitors per year. Visitors to Kenya can enjoy game viewing, bird watching, hot-air ballooning, mountaineering, scuba diving, fresh¬water and deep sea fishing, and numerous other activities.
Kenya is well known for the magnificent Serengeti migration (shared with Tanzania) of more than one million wildebeest and zebra, and for the colorful Masai, Samburu and other tribes that contribute so much to making this a top safari destination.
Kenya has one of the most diversely majestic landscapes on the continent. The Great Rift Valley, with the steep walled valley floor dropping as much as 2000-3000 feet (610-915 m) from the surrounding countryside, is more breathtakingly dra¬matic here than anywhere else in Africa.
The eastern and northern regions of the country are arid. Most of the population and economic production is in the south which is characterized by a plateau ranging in altitude from 3000-10,000 feet (915-3050 m) sloping down to Lake Victoria in the west and a coastal strip to the east.
Over half the country is Christian, about 25 percent indigenous beliefs, and six percent Muslim concentrated along the coast. The Masai are found mainly to the west and south of Nairobi, the Kikuyu in the highlands around Nairobi, and the Samburu in the north.
Bantu and Nilotic peoples moved into the area before Arab traders arrived on the Kenyan coast by the first century A.D. The Swahili language was created out of a mixture of Ban¬tu and Arabic and became the universal trading language.
The Portuguese arrived in 1498 and took command of the coast, followed by the Omani in the 1600s and the British in the late nineteenth century. Kenya gained its independence within the Commonwealth from Britain on December 12, 1963. Key foreign exchange earners are tourism, coffee and tea.