Matayos

Matayos
Matayos Location of Matayos Area, Busia County, Kenya.
Coordinates: 0°22′N 34°10′E / 0.36°N 34.17°E / 0.36; 34.17Coordinates: 0°22′N 34°10′E / 0.36°N 34.17°E / 0.36; 34.17
Country	Kenya
County	Busia County
Elevation	1,214 m (3,983 ft)
Time zone	EAT (UTC+3)

Matayos (also Matayos, Western, Kenya is a settlement in the Busia District of Kenya's Western Province. Matayos is a small township of about two thousand inhabitants along the Kisumu-Busia Highway (Kenya, B1), sixteen kilometres from the Busia border point, and about two kilometres east of the Sio-River bridge. Matayos Division whose seat is at Matayos centre is a very small borough covering the stretch of about twenty-two kilometres from Korinda junction near Busia town at its extreme west-point to the Rakite stream depression near Bumala junction to the east. The division is home to about eighty-thousand people.

Matayos is a cross-roads trading centre, formed from the confluence of dirt-roads that serve the hinter-regions of Funyula, Mulwanda, Namboboto to the south, and eLugulu, Nasewa sugar-belt and Nambale district headquarters to the North. Matayos township at Lwanya area, is the administrative seat of Matayos Division in Busia County, and has been administered by a divisional officer continuously since the year 1990, when it was carved by presidential decree out of the larger Nambale Division of Busia District.

The name Matayos is an off-shoot of colonial Christian influences. Elderly residents recount the name of the man whose land it was that was transformed into the public forum (baraza) seat of the colonial Chief's, as having been Matayo, baptized as such by Italian missionaries of the early 20th century. With the establishment of farmers co-operatives in the 1950s and sixties, Matayos was on of the early townships to host a cotton seed distribution store and a milk-collection centre.

A contested base for both the Church Missionary Society and the Roman Catholic Church, Matayos area retains schools and other symbols of the two christian sects. The Catholics run their affairs from the eastern end at Lwanya, while the Anglicans have made Busende to the west their local fiefdom. The township is therefore known by its English rendition, as Matayo's market, later turned into Matayos, much in the same sense as Mumias town was derived from Nabongo Mumia's base at Elureko.

In the administrative system of Kenya's Civil Service, the country was governed through eight provinces (each under a provincial commissioner directly responsible to the country's president). Each province was divided into a number of districts (managed by a district commissioner). A district was further divided into at least two divisions, under the tutelage of a district officer. Electoral regions for parliamentary representation still are roughly based on the boundaries of a division, eventhough some constituencies would be large enough to cover several divisional areas.

Matayos area, a new constituency to be represented in Kenya's 11th Parliament under the new constitutional dispensation, was one such division, previously combined with Nambale to the North and Busia Township to the West, to form the carved-up Nambale Constituency represented in the 8th through the 10th Parliaments by Kenya's former energy, trade and later finance minister Chrysanthus Okemo. Matayos is a medium potential area, well served by streams and bisected by the River Sio as it flows form Mount Elgon toward Lake Victoria. Matayos is hilly to the south-east, with the land generally slanting to its lowest points in the Sio swamp, and rising again as it sprawls towards the international border with Uganda.

The inhabitants of Matayos are subsistence farmers who mainly grow cassava, white and yellow (Nyayo) maize, sweet potatoes, sorghum, finger millet, [[yams[[ and beans on small pieces of land, usually an acre or less. They raise livestock on a similarly small scale, mainly cattle which acts as draught animals for ploughing purposes, some goats ,sheep and usually some free-range chickens. Matayos area has been rapidly influenced by national economic and development policy, with efforts aimed at literacy, basic healthcare and water provision. There has been sustained effort by the Constutuency Development Fund (CDF) of the national government to develop and equip schools, provide piped water and supply drugs at the local health centre, one of the oldest in the country.

The area has six public secondary schools and more than twenty primary schools, all run by the government. In national affairs, Matayos has produced several public figures, including the longest-serving former Attorney-General of Kenya, Amos Wako, and the current chair of the Law Society of Kenya, Kenneth Akide. Located some sixteen kilometres away from the international border, blessed with an abundance of construction materials (sand from the Sio and stones from the Nangoma,Ganjala,Odiado hills complex) and served by one of Kenya's main highways, Matayos is viewed as a favorite candidate to become the County seat of Busia, away from the insecurity and hustle of the Busia border town.

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