Taveta, Kenya

Taveta is town in the Taita-Taveta District of Coast Province in Kenya. The town has an urban population of 11.500 (1999 census [http://treasury.go.ke/cbs.go.ke/pdf/authority.pdf] ). The town of Taveta is wedged into a projection of Kenyan territory surrounded on three sides (north, west, and south) by Tanzania. The irregularity in the border was created c. 1881 when Queen Victoria gave Mount Kilimanjaro away as a wedding present to her grandson, then Crown Prince of Prussia and later Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Subsequently, the border was adjusted so that Kilimanjaro would fall within the boundaries of the German colony of Tanganyika instead of the British protectorate of Kenya.

Taveta thrives as a point of commerce between Kenya and Tanzania, with a twice-weekly outdoor market especially large for a town of its size. The market is fueled in part by Taveta's distinctive rail connection through Voi with the Mombasa-Nairobi-Kampala line, built by the British during the era of the Kenya protectorate and celebrated in the 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness. Large numbers of people walk across the border from socialist Tanzania to buy and sell wares in Taveta; smuggled goods such as Tanzanian rubies and coffee are occasionally available there.

In addition to Mount Kilimanjaro, Taveta also enjoys proximity to Lake Chala, a volcanic freshwater lake of extraordinary depth.

Local people are mostly of the Taveta tribe.