The Nandi of Kenya

The most important traditional social groups are the age sets , to one of which every male belongs from birth. The Nandi age grade system is of the cyclical type, with seven named grades covering approximately 15 years each, a single full cycle being years.

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Men advance through the warrior grades and, upon entering the grade of elder, hold political and judicial authority. No political authority transcends this local council of elders. General polygyny is the rule, with substantial bride-price in livestock expected. Nandi society was traditionally egalitarian. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles.

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Learn More in these related Britannica articles: Farther west the Nandi did not accept their new overlords until , after a series of British military columns had ranged through their territory. Cattle herding is thought to be ancient among them. Although the real economic importance of herding is slight compared to that of cultivation among many Kalenjin groups, they almost all display a cultural emphasis on and an emotional commitment to pastoralism.

In their late-nineteenth-century heyday of pastoralism, the Nandi and the Kipsigis approached this ratio; The staple crop was eleusine, but maize replaced it during the colonial era. Other subsistence crops include beans, pumpkins, cabbages, and other vegetables as well as sweet and European potatoes and small amounts of sorghum. Sheep, goats, and chickens are kept.

Iron hoes were traditionally used to till; today plows pulled by oxen or rented tractors are more common. The importance of cash crops varies with land availability, soil type, and other factors; among the Nandi and the Kipsigis, it is considerable. Surplus maize, milk, and tea are the major cash crops. Kalenjin farms on the Uasin Gishu plateau also grow wheat and pyrethrum. In most communities there are a few wage workers and full-time business persons shopkeepers, tailors, carpenters, bicycle repairmen, tractor owners with local clienteles.

It is common for young married men to be part-time entrepreneurs. Historically, women could brew and sell beer; this became illegal in the early s. Some men work outside their communities, but labor migration is less common than elsewhere in western Kenya. Traditionally, there were no full-time craft specialists. Most objects were manufactured by their users. The blacksmith's art was passed down in families in particular localities, and some women specialized in pottery. Traditionally, women conducted a trade of small stock for grain between pastoral-emphasis and cultivation-emphasis often non-Kalenjin communities.

Regular local markets were rare prior to the colonial era. Today large towns and district centers have regular markets, and women occasionally sell vegetables in sublocation centers.

There was little traditional division of labor except by age and sex. Men cleared land for cultivation, and there is evidence that married men and women cooperated in the rest of the cultivation process. Husbands and wives did not except during a limited historical period —and do not—typically cultivate separately, other than the wife's vegetable garden.

Today women do more cultivation if their husbands are engaged in small-scale business activities. Children herded cattle close to the homestead, as well as sheep and goats; warriors young initiated men herded cattle in distant pastures. Women and girls milked, cooked, and supplied water and firewood. Today boys are the main cowherds, and girls are largely responsible for infant care. The children's role in domestic labor is extremely important, even though most children now attend school. In Nandi, individual title to land replaced a system in which land was plentiful, all who lived in a community had the right to cultivate it, and a man could move with his family to any locality in which he had a sponsor.

Land prepared for cultivation, and used regularly, was viewed as belonging to the family that used it, and inherited from mother to son. The tenure systems of other Kalenjin were mainly similar. The Kerio Valley groups cultivated on ridges and at the foot of ridges, using irrigation furrows that required collective labor to maintain. This labor was provided by clan segments, which cleared and held land collectively, although cultivation rights in developed fields were held by individual families.

Garam Masala Appetizers are originally Indian food but of recent, many Kenyans use it. The Nandi are part of the Kalenjin ethnic group found in East Africa. They traditionally have lived and still form the majority in the highland areas of the former Rift Valley Province of Kenya , in what is today Nandi County.

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They speak the Nandi dialect of the Kalenjin language. Prior to the midth century, the Nandi referred to themselves as Chemwalindet pl. Chemwalin or Chemwal pl. Chemwalek [2] while other Kalenjin speaking communities referred to the Nandi as Chemngal [3]. It is unclear where the terms originated from though in early writings the latter term was associated with ngaal which means camel in Turkana and suggestions made that the name could be an " The name Nandi came into use after the midth century and more so after the defeat of the Maasai and the routing of the Swahili and Arab traders.

According to the Kalenjin narrative of origin, the Nandi section was formed from the separation of what had been a combined group of Kipsigis and Nandi.

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They had been living at Rongai near Nakuru as a united group for about a century before they were forced to separate due to antagonistic environmental factors, notably droughts and invasion of the Maasai from Uasin Gishu. Radiocarbon dating of archaeological excavations done in Rongai Deloraine have ranged in date from around to A.

D and have been associated with the early development phase of the Sirikwa culture. From here the culture radiated outwards toward the western highlands, the Mt. Elgon region and possibly into Uganda. The existence of the Nandi as a tribe dates from about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Within Nandi tradition it is understood as a distinct process through which various Kalenjin clans came to occupy the present day Nandi county. The traditional Nandi account is that the first settlers in their country came from Elgon during the time of the Maina and formed the Kipoiis clan; a name that possibly means 'the spirits'.

They were led by a man named Kakipoch, founder of the Nandi section of the Kalenjin and are said to have settled in the emet county of Aldai in south-western Nandi.

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One of the earliest Bororiet was named after Kakipoch and the site of his grave, still shown on Chepilat hill in Aldai was marked by the stump of an ancient olive tree. The account of his burial is that his body was laid on ox-hide, together with his possessions, and left for the hyenas. The system of social organisation was broadly similar to that of other Kalenjin communities. The Nandi territory was divided into six counties known as emet pl. The emotinwek were divided into districts known as bororiet borororisiek and these were divided into villages known as kokwet kokwotinwek.

The Nandi administrative system was unique among the Kalenjin in having the bororiosiek administrative layer. Within the wider Kalenjin administrative system, the Kokwet was the most significant political and judicial unit in terms of day to day issues. The kokwet elders were the local authority for allocating land for cultivation, they were also the body to whom the ordinary member of the tribe would look for a decision in a dispute or problem which defied solution by direct agreement between the parties.

Membership of the kokwet council was acquired by seniority and personality and within it decisions were taken by a small number of elders whose authority derived from their natural powers of leadership. Among the Nandi however, the Bororiet was the most significant institution and the political system revolved around it. The Nandi social system divided the male sex into boys, warriors and elders.

The female sex is divided into girls and married women. The first stage began at birth and continued till initiation. All boys who were circumcised together were said to belong to the same Ibinda and once the young men of a particular ibinda came of age, they were tasked with protecting the tribal lands and the society, the period when they were in charge of protection of the society was known as the age of that ibinda.

Historically, the Nandi had eight cyclical age-sets or ibinwek, however they dropped one for a total of seven. Legend has it that the members of this ibinda were wiped out in war.

For fear of a recurrence, the community decided to retire the age-set. The earliest recorded mention of Arab caravans in Nandi oral tradition date to the s during the time when the Sawe ibinda age-set were warriors. The contact was antagonistic with raids on the caravans carried out by Nandi warriors. By , the name Mararma "to ornament a dress" had been conveyed upon a sub-set of the Sawe possibly as a result of the very successful raiding of Arab caravans or perhaps as a result of the major defeat at Kipsoboi.

These were good years for the Nandi. The Nandi warriors had never encountered a foe armed with firearms before and they had to develop new military tactics to overcome the effectiveness of a large number of firearms. Like the Masai, the warriors drew the enemy's fire by a sudden rush at which time they went "go to ground.