It is a little-known fact that cultural studies proper started in Africa in the 1970s. To be more precise, cultural studies originated at the Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre in the village of Limuru, Kenya in 1977. Its principal constructors were Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ngugi wa Mirii, and the membership of the Centre. The central project around which it became manifest was a collective theatrical production involving the writing of a play, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), building a theatre, rehearsals, and the actual staging of the play. Of course there were other beginnings in other places (Culturulogy in Russia in the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, the Negritude Movement in France, francophone Africa, and the French West Indies in the 1930s, and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, England, in the 1960s), but all of these were at best rather unsatisfactory precursors of the praxis of cultural studies developed at Kamiriithu.