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Author: monika

Nyangoma Catholic Mission, Bondo

View on the Mission Grounds and the Middle of the Mission the Church
”Holy Heart Jesu”

Entrance to the ”Girls Primary Boarding School”

Chapel for the Mother of God on the Main road before the entrance
of the Mission, to the Missionchurch

Eingangstor zum ”Technical Institute for the Deaf” Auspildungsstätte der gehörlosen Jugendlichen

Entrance to ”Father Oudaraa Secondary School for the Deaf”

Eingangstor zur St. Mary’s Primary for the Deaf

Entrance to the Convent of the Mission Brothers
”Carles from Lwanga” and their guesthouse

Suroundings of the Missionstation near to the Lake Victoria

Market outside the Mission


Landscapes which invite you to relax in Nyang’oma

Kitale Museum, Kitale Kenya

Startet by a private Collector (Colonel Stoneham) of insects, the core collection has now grown to an impressive local museum of the ethnography dedicated to the local Pokot people, with an agroforesty section and Nature Trail.

he museum was the first of the Inland museums to be developed in Kenya. It used to be known by the name the Stoneham Museum. It got its name from an amateur naturalist who lived in Kitale, by the name Lieutenant colonel Hugh Stoneham. He had a collection of insects, other animals and books from 1894 when he was only five years old. He continued his collection until 1966 when he died. Mrs. Linda Donley a peace Corp volunteer was the first curator in 1974.

In 1926, he founded the Stoneham Museum, a private museum and later willed his collections as well as funds for a new museum building to the Kenya Nation. A new building was erected on five acres of land on the outskirts of Kitale town. In December 1974, the National Museums of Western Kenya was opened and became the first regional museum in the Kenya Museum Society.

The Kitale Museum has a lot of ethnographical materials collected from surrounding ethnic groups in addition to Stoneham’s collections.

The museum now practice environmental conservation. It has a nature trail and Olof Palme Memorial Agroforestry – center, which was started in 1983. Its aim (the center) was to promote agroforestry in West Pokot district.

Kitale Museum
The museum’s nature trail was worked on beginning in August 1977. The work involved building bridges and cutting steep sides of the stream bank through which the trail runs.

The period from July 1974 until June 1975 had been spent in acquisition of materials for the museums exhibits. In April 1987, the museum acquired 30 acres of a natural riverine forest. The forest has been used for conservation of various plant species and wild animals.

From Col. Stoneham’s extensive Lepidoptera collection, scientists in Western Kenya specimens can access them in study given the excellent manner and organization that they have been handled with.

The Education department in Kitale museum has been organizing programs for Secondary schools and colleges where various people have given lectures and relevant films have been screened.

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

Kitale Museum
Kitale museum is located at (233, 124) on the grid of Top Sheet 75/3. Kitale is in Trans-Nzoia district of the Rift Valley province. The museum is within the town about 1 km from the town center. The town itself is about 380 km from Nairobi the capital city. It lies Northwest of Nairobi.

Kisumu Museum, Kisumu Kenya

One of the most entertaining museums in Kenya, if rather down-at-heel and at times a little distressing, Kisumu is a sprawling complex that includes a collection of live crocodiles, snakes and amphibians, the requied selection of dead animals including a ferociously snarrling stuffed lion attacking a suitably terrified wildebeest, a well documented ethnographic display plus various reconstructed village houses that offer exelent explanation of local Luo culture.

LOCATION AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Kisumu Homestead
Kisumu Museum is located in Kisumu town along the Kisumu – Kericho highway. It was opened to the public in 1980.The museum stores and disseminates information on cultural and scientific issues with emphasis on Western Kenya. Exhibits include cultural history. The museum provides educational services to schools in its neighbourhood.

Striking features of the museum include a diverse collection of flora and fauna species. The most notable animals are reptiles and amphibians, collected from Nyanza and neighbouring provinces. A traditional Luo homestead and other traditional Luo artifacts constitute part of the exhibits the museum keeps.

Kisumu Homestead
Research activities also feature prominently. In recent years, the Kisumu museum has participated in multinational investigation on limnology (a scientific characteristic of fresh water lakes) of Lake Victoria conducted from the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) at Mbita in Kisumu.

Kisumu museum is also a gravity point for seminars and workshops both international and local.
Attached to Kisumu museum are a number of sites and monuments of historical significance including Fort Tenan, Songhor, Thimlich Ohinga and Rusinga Islands.

SITES AND MONUMENTS IN KISUMU
Tom Mboya Mausoleum

Tom Mboya Mausoleum
It was built in honour and remembrance of the late Tom Mboya. This is a burial place of Tom Mboya. It has information on the family, and Luo history. Tom Mboya?s role as an international agent of Kenyan government is also presented. The transfer of this mausoleum to the care and protection of the National Museums of Kenya has led to its proper management and conservation.

The Mausoleum will form an infrastructure of the greater museum to come on the Rusinga Island.

Kanam prehistoric site

Kanam Prehistoric Site
Kanam is situated along the shores of Lake Victoria on Homa Peninsular around Homa Mountain. The site was gazzetted in August 1933. In 1932, Louis Leakey?s expendition discovered a fossil human mandible together with Pleistocene fauna and pebble tools in the early Pleistocene Kanam beds at Kanam West. Initially, it was thought to be australopithecine. Doubts were thrown against this specimen, and Leakey suggested that the fossil was that of Homo sapiens but later Leakey supported Sir A. Keith?s view of australopithecine. Today, they are seen to be Neanderthaloid. Recently, researchers found palaeontological bones dating between 1 and 6 million years ago at the site.

Simbi Nyaima

Kapenguria Museum, Western Kenya

The cells where six of the founding fathers of African nationalism, including Jomo Kenyatta, were imprisond now form a tiny museum dedicated to Kenya’s nationalist struggle, along with displays on the Pokot people and slavery.

The Kapenguria museum was opened in 1993. It is located in Kapenguria town, at the site where the six most influential leaders in the struggle for independence were detained. To preserve the history of the struggle for independence, the National Museums of Kenya with financial support from the Dutch funded Arid and Semi-Arid Lands project in West Pokot preserved and rehabilitated the prison.

The Kapenguria six were the founding fathers of the Kenyan Nation – Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Kungu Karumba, Mr. Fred Kubai, Mr. Paul Ngei, Bildad Kaggia and the Hon. Ramogi Achieng Oneko. All of them have passed on although their legacy will always remain alive.

Displays in the Museum include books and documents in a memorial library in honour of all heroes who participated in the struggle for independence.

The cells, the ethnographic galleries and the Pokot homestead provide the foundation of Kapenguria museum. The Pokot gallery houses artifacts and photographic collections on the Pokot people. The creation and establishment of this gallery is credited to Mrs. Anny Mulder, an anthropologist who carried out work in this area among the Pokot people.

Other sections of the museum are the political development exhibits, a section containing exhibits revealing pre-colonial Kenya, slavery, the arrival of Europeans, African resistance to colonial rule and activities of pioneer nationalists.