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· Kenya has been selected by the UNESCO for listing in the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices
· The listing is aimed to protect the intangible cultural heritage, which makes people and communities distinguishable in terms of their history, nationalities, languages, ideology and values
Kenya has been selected by UNESCO for listing in the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices. The listing is aimed to protect the intangible cultural heritage, which makes people and communities distinguishable in terms of their history, nationalities, languages, ideology and values.
Researchers and scientists became aware of a decline in the country’s food diversity in 2007 due to a change in lifestyles and the growth of less nutritional convenience foods. The colonialists, they claim, encouraged locals to look down upon their traditional sources of food. That led to differences in farming practices, such as spraying traditional vegetables with pesticides, which they used to grow naturally. The crops used to be applied with natural fertilizers and rainfall for water in the earlier times and not chemical fertilizers.
Meat is seen as prohibitively expensive for most ordinary people, although silver fish, called omena or dagaa, from Lake Victoria is fairly cheap and becoming popular.Chickens are kept but mainly sold to cover the financial needs of the household. They are slaughtered for special occasions.
Now Kenyans are increasingly resorting to growing vegetables and other crops based on traditional methods and for their own consumption and the surplus is sold in the market. This has been inculcated very carefully by making people aware of the nutritious value of crops grown naturally without the use of harmful pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Yet, it is difficult to believe things are hanky dowry since the message of good agricultural practices would take time to sink in among communities.
