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Concept
Kalenjin people
Summary
The Kalenjin are a group of tribes designated as Highland Nilotes and are descended from Maliri people (thus related to Daasanach of Ethiopia.) The Kalenjin are cousins with Datooga people of Tanzania. In contrast, their designation groups them with other Nilotes including Maasai, Luo, Turkana and Nuer, Dinka among others. They are indigenous to East Africa, residing mainly in what was formerly the Rift Valley Province in Kenya and Eastern slopes of Mount Elgon in Uganda. Upon their arrival in the forest region of Mau, the Kalenjin assimilated the aboriginal hunter-gatherer people known as Okiek. They number 6,358,113 individuals per the Kenyan 2019 census and an estimated 273,839 in Uganda according to the 2014 census mainly in Kapchorwa, Kween and Bukwo districts. They have been divided into 11 culturally and linguistically related tribes: Kipsigis (1.9 million), Nandi (937,000), Sebei (350, 000) Keiyo (251, 000), Marakwet (119, 000), Sabaot (296,000), Pokots (778, 000), Tugen (197, 556), Terik (23, 000), Sengwer (10, 800), and Ogiek (52, 000). The Kalenjin speak the Nandi–Markweta languages but can also be inclusive of Akie language in Tanzania and Pokot language spoken in Kenya; all being classified collectively as Kalenjin Language; while in combination with Datooga languages of Tanzania, this cluster is called Southern Nilotic languages.
History of the Kalenjin people
Nilotic peoples
Kalenjin folklore
Linguistic evidence points to the eastern Middle Nile Basin south of the Abbai River, as the nursery of the Nilotic languages. That is to say south-east of present-day Khartoum.
It is thought that beginning in the second millennium B.C., particular Nilotic speaking communities began to move southward into present-day South Sudan where most settled and that the societies today referred to as the Southern Nilotes pushed further on, reaching what is present-day north-eastern Uganda by 1000 B.C.
Official source
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