Kikuyu people

The Kikuyu (Gikuyu), 8.1 million people and 17 percent of Kenya, farm the fertile central highlands around Mount Kenya where the Thagicu settled long ago. Nine clans, Anjiru, Ambui, Agaciku, Aceera and their sisters, order land, marriage and ritual under councils of elders; land itself is mother, and no true Kikuyu is landless in the old telling. Coffee, tea and macadamia from highland shambas feed Nairobi and the world. The Mau Mau rising of the 1950s, fought largely by Kikuyu forest fighters, forced Britain to the table and opened the road to independence; Jomo Kenyatta, first president, was its political heir. Kikuyu banks, matatu empires, churches and vernacular stations carry the highland work ethic everywhere, and circumcision, dowry and clan exogamy still mark the passage into adulthood. Nine clans still divide land and ritual duties in every ridge village. Thagicu ancestors settled the highlands long before the British came. Highland coffee earns Kenya its foreign exchange.