 Koriba was raised in the mainstream modern world and has several graduate degrees, but came to resent bitterly how "Western" ways displaced African traditions.Later, he led a group of Kikuyu colonists to Kirinyaga to recreate a traditional Kikuyu society.A generation later, the residents live as their pre-modern ancestors did, as illiterate subsistence farmers and herders, with no access to or even knowledge of the larger world.