Kenya

Kenya lies in East Africa, straddling the equator, between the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria. It runs from the tropical beaches of the Swahili coast to the snows of Mount Kenya, Africa's second-highest peak, by way of savannas full of big game. Some 56 million people live there; the capital, Nairobi, has become the region's main business and technology hub. Kenya is also where some of the oldest fossils of our distant ancestors have been found.

The country is split from north to south by the great Rift Valley, the fault where the continent is slowly tearing apart, dotted with lakes and volcanoes. On either side rise cool, fertile highlands, where tea and coffee grow and most people live. To the east the land falls away into savanna (the Maasai Mara and Amboseli, home to lions, elephants and the great wildebeest migrations) down to the hot, reef-lined coast of the Indian Ocean. The drier north opens onto desert and Lake Turkana.

Kenya has many peoples: the Kikuyu, the Luo, the Luhya, the Kalenjin of the highlands, who produce the greatest distance runners in the world, and the Maasai, herders and warriors dressed in red. Early on, the Bantu towns of the coast, trading with Arabia, Persia and India, developed the Swahili civilisation, with its stone towns and its language. Then came the Portuguese, the sultans of Oman and finally the British, who made the country a settler colony. Independence, won in 1963 after the Mau Mau uprising and its brutal suppression, brought Jomo Kenyatta to power.

Kenya has two official languages: English, inherited from colonial rule, and above all Swahili, a Bantu language rich in Arabic loanwords that has become the great common language of East Africa. Alongside them are dozens of languages, one for each people. The country is mostly Christian, with an older Muslim minority, mainly on the coast, and traditional beliefs that are still present.

Kenya is known around the world for the safari (a Swahili word meaning "journey") and the great herds of the savanna. Its culture goes much further: distance running, where its athletes lead the world, is a national passion; benga music gets people dancing; and harambee, pulling together as a community, is the national motto. At the table people share ugali, a stiff maize porridge, with vegetables and grilled meat, nyama choma. The Swahili coast has its own spiced cooking, with flavours from India and Arabia.