page_title: Kalenjin people
section_title: Traditional way of life
hierarchical_section_title: Kalenjin people / History / Traditional way of life
context_page_description: The Kalenjin are a group of Southern Nilotic peoples indigenous to East Africa, residing mainly in what was formerly the Rift Valley Province in Kenya. They number 6,358,113 individuals as per the Kenyan 2019 census. They are divided into nine culturally and linguistically related clans: Kipsigis, Nandi, Keiyo, Marakwet, Sabaot, Pokots, Tugen, Terik and Ogiek. They speak Kalenjin languages, which belong to the Nilotic language family.
context_section_description: The nineteenth century saw massive upheaval among the Sirikwa societies, old identities such as the Maliri and the Chok were annihilated or assimilated giving way to new identities such as the Pokot. Others like the Sengwer and Lumbwa acculturated to the new reality, merging and dropping their old identities to become Nandi and Kipsigis. These new societies retained many elements of their old way of life - like the iron-age Sirikwa societies they were primarily semi-nomadic pastoralists. Their economy revolved around raising livestock and cultivating sorghum and pearl millet on the western highlands of Kenya as it had since at least the last millennium B.C. 
  There appear to have been areas of specialization across different regions, communities living on the Elgeyo escarpment for instance traditionally focused on irrigated cultivation. A variety of crops had been borrowed from the neighboring Bantu communities and New World foods introduced following the arrival of the Portuguese on the Swahili coast during the fifteenth century. Of these, indigenous vegetables and herbs, beans, pumpkins, sweet potatoes and tobacco were grown widely while maize and bananas were also cultivated though in small quantities.
  They traded locally for goods such as honey, pottery, tobacco pipes and weaponry as well as medical and magical services while connections to international markets supplied foreign goods such as iron wire and cloth in exchange for ivory. The long tradition of beadwork benefited from the introduction of a variety of beads from European markets.
  Their territory was not as a whole recognized as a geographic locality. However, there was a standardized set of classifications for geographic localities across the respective territories. Of these geographic classifications, the Kokwet was the most significant political and judicial unit among the Kalenjin. The governing body of each kokwet was its kokwet council; the word kokwet was in fact variously used to mean the whole neighbourhood, its council and the place where the council met.
  Social order was regulated by Kamuratanet and cultural life largely revolved around its teaching through folklore and observation of the various tumwek (rituals), the important one's being Tumdo (Initiation) and the tumwek of marriage such as Koito. The Saget'ab eito ceremony was held every number of years to mark the change of 'ages' and the Kipsundet festivals celebrated every September (Kipsunde) and October (Kipsunde oeng) to mark the change in seasons.
  To a significant extent however, the Maasai era fundamentally changed the character of the Sirikwa/Kalenjin-speaking communities, the magnitude of which still remains unclear.
caption: Beads were used for adornment by most of East Africa's pastoral communities and were a popular import good
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