Mt Kenya Culture Village Centre Self-help Group
This group of women have organised themselves to provide one or two days of traditional Kikuyu cultural activities. A day visit from our hotel base on Mt Kenya gives a fascinating insight to the lives of the people who live on the mountain slopes, enhancing your Mt Kenya experience and also helping their attempts to provide a sustainable income for themselves.
Description of the cultural program in the group’s own words:
“Our group was started by poor women in a small village on the slopes on Mt Kenya around Naromoru Location of Nyeri District. We women started by arranging folk songs which were sang by our tribe (Kikuyu) during different occasions. These songs are sung to maintain our culture to our people and also to teach our young children how to maintain our culture. We also make our traditional food, beer and also flour while acting and show exactly what was done traditionally. Our guests can try their hands at making baskets and grinding corn and making sisal rope from the leaves of the sisal plant. Wedding ceremonies, healing ceremonies and also birth ceremony dancing.
The group also has an old medicine man who is making traditional medicines from trees to treat people with difference types of diseases. The medicines were used to heal people at the old days when there were no hospitals. Our guests can see acting of this man doing his work.
Our group consists now of about 30 members both men and women. We have already registered this group with the Social Services Department and it is now a Self Help Group. The group members live in a traditional but congested village which is also not given to us officially by the Government.
The cultural programs we produce are quite educative to people who would like to study about Kikuyu traditional systems of living. The group is now performing culture dancing in hotels, schools and also clubs to generate money for their living and to pay school fees and future needs.
The group is located in an area with a nearby tourist attraction, that is the area is in Naromoru Location situated between Mt. Kenya and Aberdares ranges with a very clear view of both mountains.
We hope to advance in this project thorough our friends who would like
to come and see what we are doing or invite us to perform a show and see
the Kikuyu traditional culture.”
