Kaya Mudzi Muvya

Kaya Mudzi Muvya is a coastal lowland dry deciduous forest in Kilifi County of southern Kenya. It became a World Heritage Site in 2008.[1] A large portion of the forest is an area protected by the Kenya Forest Service under The Forests Act of 2005,[2] and as a national monument under the Antiquities and Monuments Act Cap 215.[1] The forest is sacred to the local Mijikenda people, known as the Rabai (Warabai in Swahili).[1] The forest has suffered deprevation over the past hundred years.[3]

Sacred forest

Among the Mijikenda the forest is their home. Each group has a kaya, or sacred forest.[4] Kaya means both home and sacred forest. The Kaya Mudzi Muvya was one of the three kaya of the Rabai people.[1] Traditionally they lived in the forest, although now they live in communities outside the forest.[5] Nonetheless, the kaya plays an important role in the lives of the Rabai, as the home of their ancestral spirits and the locus for various ceremonies. The forest also provides the source for various traditional herbs.[6]

Actual ritual places are considered private and are closed to the public, but a replica has been constructed in Rabai as part of an ecotourism project.[4]

Notes and references
  1. Gachathi, Francis; Mbuvi, Musingo Tito E.; Wekesa, Linus; Wekesa, Chemuku; Leley, Nereoh (2016). A Field Guide to Valuable Trees and Shrubs of Kaya Mudzi Muvya Forest in Kilifi County, Kenya. Nairobi: Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI). Archived from the original on 30 November 2017.
  2. Parliament of Kenya (29 November 2005), "Supplement No. 88: Forest Act, 2005 (Act No. 7 of 2005)", Kenya Gazette (PDF), Nairobi: Government of Kenya, pp. 229–305, archived (PDF) from the original on 8 August 2012
  3. Krijtenburg, Froukje (2013). "'Keeping this Land Safe': Stakeholder conceptualisation of protection in the context of a Mijikenda (Kenya) World Heritage Site". In Evers, Sandra J. T. M.; Seagle, Caroline; Krijtenburg, Froukje (eds.). Africa for Sale?: Positioning the State, Land and Society in Foreign Large-Scale. Leiden: Brill. pp. 275–300. ISBN 978-90-04-25193-9.
  4. Tinga, Kaingu Kalume (2004). "The Presentation and interpretation of ritual sites: The Mijikenda Kaya Case". Museum International. 56 (3): 8–14. doi:10.1111/j.1350-0775.2004.00476.x.
  5. Spear, Thomas Turner (1978). The Kaya Complex: A history of the Mijikenda peoples of the Kenya coast to 1900. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau. OCLC 6401340.
  6. Pakia, M.; Cooke, J. A. (2003). "The ethnobotany of the Midzichenda tribes of the coastal forest areas in Kenya: 1. General perspective and non-medicinal plant uses". South African Journal of Botany. 69 (3): 370–381. doi:10.1016/S0254-6299(15)30320-3.

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