ABSTRACT
Kamı˜rı˜ı˜thu˜ is one of several villages in Limuru originally set up in the fifties by the British colonial administration as a way of cutting off the links between the people and the guerrillas of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, otherwise known as Mau Mau. Even after independence in 1963 the villages remained as reservoirs of cheap labour. By 1975 Kamı˜rı˜ı˜thu˜ alone had grown into a population of ten thousand.
[. . .] the peasants and the workers, including the unemployed, were the real backbone of the centre which started functioning in 1976.
