Kit Mikatyi – The Luo Shrine – Out of the bustling lakeside city, life lies Kenya’s most dramatic cultural site, a vast granite rock tower called Kit Mikayi. The rock, which is about 80 feet tall, is located 30 kilometers to the west of Kisumu city.

While doing the activity we get to learn more about the myth behind Kit Mikayi which in Luo dialect means “the stone of the first wife” is a: Long time ago, there was an old man by the name Ngeso who was in great love with the stone.

Daily, Ngeso would wake up in the morning, walk into the cave inside the stone and spend the whole day there. This would force his wife to bring him breakfast and lunch on a daily basis. Having fallen passionately in love with this stone to the extent that people would ask the wife his whereabouts, she could answer that he has gone to his first wife (Mikayi) hence the stone of the first wife (Kit Mikayi).

To the Luo tribe, the explanation about the rock takes a slightly different twist. The rock’s features and components represent the Luo cultural polygamous family which had the first wife’s house (Mikayi) built further in between on the right-hand side was the second wife’s house (Nyachira) while the third wife’s house (Reru) was built on the left side of the homestead.

Kit Mikayi is also seen to have a nuclear family composition whereby the father (Ngeso) is the middle stone followed by the bulky Mikayi (first wife), then Nyachira (second wife) followed by Reru (third wife), and further in front, they have the child which is representing Simba, which is the house for the firstborn boy in the homestead.

For ages, a long time, Kit Mikayi has been a sacred place for the villagers, politicians, strangers, and visitors equally who pay pilgrimage for various reasons and at different times of the year.