Cows got uhuru early as Kenyans were herded into mud huts

Kenya is celebrating Madaraka Day today. The ‘mahewa generation’, the breed that never experienced the Nyayo presidency, might not comprehend what Madaraka Day, which commemorates the attainment of internal self-rule, in 1963, is all about.

But attaining Madaraka was preceded by the freedom struggle that saw the colonial government erecting round mud huts in rural Central Kenya in the seven years of the State of Emergency that lasted to 1959. The huts were smeared with white clay to resemble whitewashed houses in rural north England.