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Concept
Sonjo people
Summary
The Sonjo or Batemi (Wasonjo, in Swahili) are a Bantu ethnic group from northern Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region in Tanzania.
In 2002, the Sonjo population was estimated to number around 30,000 individuals (Ethnologue). The term Sonjo is the name given to the people by the Maasai. Group members prefer to call themselves the Batemi people.
The Sonjo people speak Sonjo, a Bantu language. They refer to it as Kitemi or Gitemi. The language, whose closest living cousins are those found around Mount Kenya (Meru, Kikuyu etc.). They dwell in six communities in northern Tanzania, on the hills between the upper and lower western escarpments of the Rift Valley, above Lake Natron. The climate is semi-arid, with an annual rainfall of 400-600 mm. This is focused in two wet seasons, March-April and November/December. There were records of a maximum of 752 milimetres and a minimum of 508 milimetres throughout an eight-year period in the 1950s, when rainfall was above average.
Sonjoland is administratively part of Arusha Region's Ngorongoro District. The District Headquarters are currently located at Loliondo, 20 kilometers to the north-west across the hills from the main Sonjo villages (as the crow flies). The area was historically part of the ancestral land of the Sonjo. Sonjo left Hajaro in 1987 owing to pressure from the Maasai. The Maasai renamed it Pinyinyi. Wards in Monduli district like Orokhata were renamed Sale. The Sonjo names are only used when speaking in ki-Sonjo or referring to the former village site.
Fosbrooke in 1938 defined the Sonjo as "an island of agricultural Bantu in a sea of nomadic Masai". Although the Maasai currently irrigate in Pagasi (where some Sonjo also live) and Peninyi, the irrigation of the Sonjo is a notable aspect of an otherwise pastoral area. In 1963, Robert Gray published the only comprehensive study of the Sonjo as "an irrigation-based society".
Sonjo have moved in and out of Peninyi during the last few decades. Sonjo are claimed to have arrived in the 1950s by current (Maasai) locals.
Official source
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