Taveta
Taveta is the name of a tribe of
East Africa, the name of the principal town in the land of the Taveta people, and also the name of the surrounding subdistrict of
Kenya.
The Taveta tribe is one of the
Bantu ethnicities in south central
Kenya in
East Africa. The people are sometimes referred to as the Wataveta, which is the plural name of the people in their own language, Kitaveta. The Tavetan population is commingled with other tribes, notably the
Taita,
Kamba,
Chaga, and
Maasai. Because of their frequent contact with these others, most Tavetans are fluent in (Ki)
Swahili as a second language, and may also acquire some
English or other local languages.
The Wataveta inhabit mainly the lands between
Tsavo National Park and the
Tanzania border, up to the slopes of
Mount Kilimanjaro. Many Tavetans are occupied by
subsistence farming, but some work the local
sisal plantations, and a few take advantage of special local commercial activities (see below, on the town of Taveta).
The Wataveta land and people won brief international attention during
World War I, when German and British colonial forces clashed there. Author
Isak Dinesen (a.k.a.
Karen Blixen) and the film
Out of Africa describe this history.
Most Tavetans practice some form of
Christianity, roughly thirty percent affiliated with each of the
Anglican Church of the Province of Kenya, the
Roman Catholic Church, and
Pentecostal churches. While Tavetans rarely profess traditional
animism, old customs concerning healing or cursing are not unknown.
Taveta remains close enough to the East African coast that approximately ten percent of Tavetans practice
Islam. According to Tavetan lore, the tribe was first exposed to Islam when
Kamba raiders began to seize members for
Arabs managing the Indian Ocean
slave trade.
The town of Taveta is wedged into a projection of Kenyan territory surrounded on three sides (north, west, and south) by
Tanzania. The irregularity in the border was created c. 1881 when
Queen Victoria gave
Mount Kilimanjaro away as a wedding present to her grandson, then Crown Prince of
Prussia and later Kaiser
Wilhelm II of
Germany. Subsequently, the border was adjusted so that
Kilimanjaro would fall within the boundaries of the German colony of
Tanganyika instead of the British protectorate of
Kenya.
Taveta thrives as a point of commerce between
Kenya and
Tanzania, with a twice-weekly outdoor market especially large for a town of its size. The market is fueled in part by Taveta's distinctive rail connection through
Voi with the
Mombasa-
Nairobi-
Kampala line, built by the British during the era of the
Kenya protectorate and celebrated in the 1996 film
The Ghost and the Darkness. Large numbers of people walk across the border from socialist
Tanzania to buy and sell wares in Taveta; smuggled goods such as Tanzanian
rubies and
coffee are occasionally available there.
In addition to
Mount Kilimanjaro, Taveta also enjoys proximity to Lake Chala, a volcanic freshwater lake of extraordinary depth.
