Unlike many other African countries, Kenya is a melting pot of peoples, whose features, customs and languages may be completely unrelated. Migrations from the Nile Valley, the central African forest region and the Arabian peninsula brought people together that are possibly as different as Ukrainians and Eskimos, or Finns and Spaniards. Kenya is the home of over forty tribes, drawn from four basic groupings​—Bantu, Nilo-Hamitic, Nilotic, and Hamitic. In addition to the large population, now around fourteen million, speaking a few dozen different languages, there were problems of tribal customs, illiteracy, immorality, and the scattered form of settlements where most people live separately in small homesteads surrounded by their fields.

The religions of Christendom, with a great variety of churches, had established missions in much of central and western Kenya. Along the coastal strip the Arab influence had spread the Islamic religion. Other peoples, resisting all outside influence, retained their traditional forms of worship.

The Wakamba, Bantu people who inhabit the cultivated hills and plains east of Nairobi, are known for their fine wood carvings, their traditional attachment to land and cattle, and their past polygamous way of life.

In the fertile highlands west of the Great Rift Valley, green carpets of tea plantations decorate the countryside. The rugged people of this area, belonging to the Nilo-Hamitic group known as Kalenjin, were fierce warriors in bygone days. Today they are just as proud of the fact that some of the world’s most famous and successful long-distance runners come from their number. Many of their old customs remain intact, including long initiation ceremonies with circumcision rituals and much instruction in the traditions and customs of the tribe.

Moving farther westward, we reach the very shores of beautiful Lake Victoria and the home area of the only Nilotic people in Kenya, the Luo. The Luo, who migrated from the Upper Nile Valley, have a series of initiation ceremonies in which some young men submit to the removal of two or more teeth from the lower jaw in order to prove their bravery. Extensive burial and mourning rites express their strong belief in communicating with dead ancestors.

Inhabiting the high ground northeast of Lake Victoria up to the foot of Mt. Elgon, 4,322 meters (14,178 feet), are the Abaluhya, a collective name given a large group of Bantu peoples.

Among all the tribes and peoples of Kenya, the Masai are probably the most internationally known. They have a reputation for fierce courage and aristocratic independence. Many of their age-old customs remain unaffected by the influences of Western civilization. You see them in their striking red-ocher dress and beadwork decoration, living on a diet consisting mainly of milk enriched with cow’s blood. The “moran” system, where young men are segregated and subjected to a rigid code of self-denial, sex excepted, until they graduate as an elder, is still intact. An unusual feature of the Elgeyo/​Marakwet people is that they solemnize the marriage only after pregnancy.

Yes, among all the peoples of Kenya of whom we have mentioned only a few here, personality changes are being made. From the glaciers of Mt. Kenya, higher than any in the American Rockies or the European Alps, to the lovely, tropical, sandy beaches of the coast, and from the dry, desert areas of the north, through mountainous forests and rich highland farm areas to the grassy plains of the Masai Mara, on the edge of the Serengeti plains, people are hearing the Bible’s message and making their minds over.