The Kalenjin are called Highland Nilotes because they live in the Highlands of the Rift Valley and are related to the people in the Nile area of Sudan and Uganda.

The Kalenjin are sometimes considered as a tribe made up of many clans.  The different clans are the Nandi Terik, Tugen, Keiyo, Marakwet, Pokot, Sabaot and the Kipsigis.  Marakwet is actually a blanket term for the Endo groups and the Talai.

The Okiek (also called Ndorobo), though originally of Cushitic... Read More

For both males and females, becoming an adult in Kalenjin society is a matter of undergoing an initiation ceremony. Traditionally, these were held about every seven years. Everyone undergoing initiation, or tumdo, thereby becomes a member of a named age-set, or ipinda.

After male youths were circumcised, they were secluded for lengthy periods during which they were instructed in the skills necessary for adulthood. Afterward, they would begin a phase of warriorhood during which they act... Read More

Kipsigis say that both they and the Nandi come from a place called "To," which some of them locate in the vicinity of Lake Baringo. In the course of their southward migration, sometime between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Kipsigis and the Nandi separated. Today the Nandi are their immediate neighbors to the north. Pushing farther south, Kipsigis displaced the Luo, Kisii, and Maasai, the descendants of whom are currently their neighbors to the west and south. The Kipsigi... Read More