African driver ant

Most of us know them as siafu and try to avoid them at all costs but here are a few interesting facts about  African driver ant. A typical column  of siafu can contain about a million individuals ants a column the size would consume about fifty thousand prey items a day. Their prey item are insects, arachnids’, and warms, particularly grasshoppers, scorpions and large hairy spiders, but they will often attack larger prey if they have the chance, typically snakes or other reptiles trapped in their holes or nestlings unable to fly. Any injured creature is also at risk if it cannot move out of the ants’ way. A local village tell of cooped chickens or cows in bomas being stripped to the bone in a matter of days.

Unlike the other ten thousand or so ant species, African driver ants do not build complex underground nests. This is because they clear an area of prey quite quickly and need to move from one place to another. Instead they dig a large chamber underground, and then link their bodies together into a massive basket known as a bivouac. Inside this mass of siafu bodies, live the queen and her brood. The brood could be up to a million white maggots with a huge appetite for meat. Almost every siafu is a sterile daughter of the queen and these daughters care for the brood, defend the nest and kill the prey.

These sterile females are all blind. The male are fat and clumsy. The males are produced once a year from special clutch of eggs laid be the queen. These eggs develop into giant winged males that leave the colony on a nuptial flight.Unlike females, the males have very good eyesight, which they need  to find a new colony once he has found the colony he must impress the guards with his size, if he fails, they will cut him to pieces and feed the colonies and feed the colonies young with him; if he succeeds, then he will be allowed to mate with the queen, after which he is discarded.

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People of Kenya

The 42 tribes of the people of Kenya enjoy diversity ,unity and harmony .They comprise the Cushitic, the bantu, the nilotes, as well as the non –Africans(Asians, Europeans and Arabs)Although the local language strongly exist, Kiswahili is the national language while English is the official language. Interaction with the friendly people in their habitats leaves a most memorable impression.

Masai People,Kenya

At the cost, one will be proudly pleased to visit the Mijikenda hut that looks exactly like half a coconut fruit with a small door. Mijikenda literally means 9 homes or villages, (Miji is homes; Kenda is 9) and the huts may have been designed to cover the nine tribes that constitutes the mijikenda tribes o=f Giriama, Digo, Chonyi, Duruma, Jibana, Kambe, Kauma, Rabai, and Ribe. It is said that mijikenda are the best cooks in the world. Their music ranges from the soothing Taarab to the more vibrant chakachaka. The word Swahili is derived from the Arabic word sawahil, an Arabic word that means coast.

Further inland, and mainly in central Kenya, there is dominance of the Bantu tribes comprising mainly of the kikuyu, Meru, Kamba, and Embu. One begins to experience the diversity in culture, seen in the mode of house construction, dress and food. Traditional house took the shape of the grass thatched roof with smoothened mud walls and earth floor. The arrangements of house within the home stead were defined by strict traditional and cultural rules.

The rift valley and its environs are mainly inhabited by the masai and the Kalejin communities. These tribes are traditionally pastoralists who depend on their animals for food. On interaction with these communities, one immediately notices the strict adherence to traditional culture by way of dress and behavior.

Western Kenya is the home to mainly the Luhya and the luo. There is dramatic change in culture and way of life, method of dress, food, music and dance.

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