Kenyans under lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic are enjoying cultural site and museum virtual tours, thanks to a National Museums of Kenya-Google partnership.
Google says new pictures and video clips are regularly added onto its Arts and Culture platform thereby giving locals, diaspora Kenyans as well as tourists from around the world a chance to sample Kenya’s cultural collections held dear since time immemorial by various communities.
Google virtual tours have increased tremendously in April as Kenyans and e-tourists from other parts of the world sought to learn Kenya’s past history on community culture as well as colonial past.
“The Google Arts and Culture platform has amassed a rich trove of pictures, audio-visual clips and pictures from 2,000 museum and archives from across the world,” it said in a statement released during the World Heritage Day on April 18.
Nairobi, Kiambu, Kajiado, Nakuru and Machakos are the hardest hit due to high Covid-19 reported cases that saw curfew hours put at between 4am and 8pm while the rest of the country remains at between 4am to 10 pm.
“The Google Arts and Culture mobile App is at hand to showcase the technology used for heritage preservation for various collections in the custody of the National Museums of Kenya (NMK),” it adds.
Google’s new platform was mooted in October 2019 after the tech firm partnered with NMK to launch the ‘Utamaduni Wetu, Meet the People of Kenya’ project that captured collections held in various museums and heritage sites across Kenya in high-resolution images.
The project implementers visited various national museums, cultural sites as well as heritage sites where interviews with local people were held as well as fresh input injected by NMK researchers.
Preserved for posterity
Following the completion of the one-year project, Google said the entire “cultural and historical” content has been preserved for posterity with viewers required to download the Google Arts and Culture App from Google Play and the Apple Playstore to access the images and video clips.
Among the projects captured are historical information about Kenyan communities as preserved at the National National Museum that was built in 1929 to house collections of Kenya’s history, nature, culture and contemporary art.
Virtual visitors will also view skeletons of Ahmed, the Elephant, who was known for his large tusks, and the Turkana Boy who is approximated to be 1.6 million years old with a realtime streetview of the entire museum also available.
The Nairobi Gallery aka Point Zero from which all distances are measured in Kenya is an interesting stop for school children who will learn about measurements and map work.
The Murumbi African Heritage Collection that includes African artefacts and the works of African artists are also included.
An e-tour is also available of Uhuru Gardens Memorial Park on Langata Road where a mugumo (fig) tree was planted on Kenya’s birthplace, the spot where the Union Jack (British flag) was brought down and Kenya’s first national flag hoisted on December 12, 1963.
Nyeri’s museum used as a colonial native court and the Lord Baden Powell Memorial remain must-visit locations by global tourists as well as local school parties.
Kariandusi archaeological site with its rich 700,000 to one- million- year history of being a factory site of the Acheulean period remains intact.
Globally known Karen Blixen Museum and Olorgesaille prehistoric site aka the largest “factory of stone tools” in the world has its collections of excellently preserved biological and cultural evidence about the evolution of man preserved.
Hyrax Hill Museum, Thimlich Ohinga archaeological site. among other prehistoric sites in Turkana and Mombasa. have also been captured on the site.
