We Left the City to Look for the Green Gold of Meru. Meru to Maua Town

Maua is located 60 km North of Meru Town on the northwestern slopes of Nyambene Hills and west of Meru National Park. Maua is the headquarters of Igembe South Sub-County and in the former Constitution, dispensation hosted a municipal council’(Under the new Constitution, the country was divided into 47 counties and Maua is but a town. Maua municipality has a population of 50,826, of whom 13,763 are classified as urban
Maua is one of the economically viable towns in Meru County. Ikweta Country Inn and Conference Centre, Soldat Teachers College, and Methodists Nursing School are among the landmarks in Maua.
Maua town is the center of the Khat trade in Kenya and the world. Income from khat exports to Europe was sharply cut when the UK declared the stimulant a class C drug and banned all imports in June 2014. Unusual for a town its size Maua has a wide mix of ethnicities, with Ameru, Somali, Kikuyu, and Luo among the dominant residents. Places near Maua are Meru, Isiolo, and Kathwana
Khat or qat (Amharic: ጫት ch’at; Oromo: Jimaa, Somali: qaad, khaad or khat, Arabic: القات al-qāt) is a flowering plant native to the East and West Hararghe zones of Ethiopia. Khat contains the alkaloid cathinone, a stimulant, which is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite, and euphoria. Among communities from the areas where the plant is native, khat chewing has a history as a social custom dating back thousands of years analogous to the use of coca leaves in South America and betel nut in Asia.
The khat plant is known by a variety of names, such as qat and gat in Yemen, qaat and jaad in Somalia, and chat in Ethiopia. It is also known as jimaa in the Oromo language, mayirungi in Luganda, and as miraa in Kenya. In the African Great Lakes region, where Catha edulis is in some areas cultivated, it is known as miraa, muhulo and muirungi
The World Health Organization (WHO) classified it in 1980 as a drug of abuse that can produce psychic dependence,[3] although the WHO does not consider khat addiction to be a serious problem
Khat has been grown for use as a stimulant for centuries in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. There, chewing khat predates the use of coffee and is used in a similar social context. Its fresh leaves and tops are chewed or, less frequently, dried and consumed as tea, to achieve a state of euphoria and stimulation. The leaves or the soft part of the stem can be chewed with either chewing gum or fried peanuts to make it easier to chew.
In Uganda, it is grown in the central region, especially in Kasenge (Wakiso), Butambala District, Mabira Forest, and in some parts of the western region of the country.[2] In Kenya, it is grown in Meru County.
Meru is a town in eastern Kenya. It is the headquarters of Meru County and the seventh-largest urban center in the country. Meru forms a municipal council with a population of 240,900 residents Meru town is the Commercial capital of Northern and Eastern Kenya. It hosts a Central Bank of Kenya’s Currency Centre serving the North Eastern Half of Kenya. Meru has 22 bank branches. while several micro-finance institutions are also available. Mwalimu Cooperative Savings & Credit Society Limited, (Mwalimu Sacco), the largest Sacco in Kenya, maintains a branch in Meru. The town is the business and agricultural center for north-eastern Kenya. Meru County is one of the 47 counties of Kenya, located in the former Eastern Province. It borders Isiolo County to the North, Tharaka/Nithi County to the East, Nyeri County to the South West and Laikipia County to the West. It covers a total area of 7,006 Km2 out of which part of it 972.3Km2 is gazetted as forest. It has a population of 1.55 million people. Meru County is the home of the Ngaa people (Meru), who are related to other ethnicities living around the Mount Kenya region: the Kikuyu, Embu people and to some extent the Kamba people Also, peoples from the east coast of Kenya, along the Indian Ocean, like the Bajuni, Swahili, Mijikenda, and further inland, the Taita, Taveta and westwards to the Lake Victoria coast, the Kisii and Maragoli as well as other Luhya people, are all related to the Meru.
Source:Wikipedia Merutown
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