The Kipsigis or Kipsigiis are a Nilotic group contingent of the Kalenjin ethnic group and speak a dialect of the Kalenjin language identified by their community eponym, Kipsigis. It is observed that the Kipsigis and another aboriginal group native to Kenya known as Ogiek have a merged identity. The Kipsigis are the biggest of the Kalenjin. The latest census population in Kenya put the Kipsigis at 1,972,000 speakers, accounting for 45% of all Kalenjin speaking people. They occupy the highlands of Kericho stretching from Timboroa to the Mara River in the south and the Mau Escarpment in the east to Kebeneti. They also occupy parts of Laikipia, Kitale, Nakuru, Narok, the Trans Mara District, Eldoret and the Nandi Hills.
The Kalenjin are a group of tribes indigenous to East Africa, residing mainly in what was formerly the Rift Valley Province in Kenya and the Eastern slopes of Mount Elgon in Uganda. 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.
The Nandi are part of the Kalenjin, a Nilotic tribe living in East Africa. The Nandi ethnic group live with close association and relation with the Kipsigis tribe. 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. They speak the Nandi dialect of the Kalenjin language.
Kericho is the biggest town in Kericho County located in the highlands west of the Kenyan Rift Valley. Standing on the edge of the Mau Forest, Kericho has a warm and temperate climate making it an ideal location for agriculture and in particular, the large scale cultivation of tea.
Kerio Valley lies between the Tugen Hills and the Elgeyo Escarpment in Kenya. It sits at an elevation of 1,000 meters in the Great Rift Valley.
Dr. Elisha Kipyegon Taaitta Arap Toweett, also known as Taaitta Arap Toweett, was a scholar, writer, linguist and a Kenyan politician.
Sotik Constituency is an electoral constituency in Kenya established for the 1997 elections. It is one of five constituencies in Bomet County. Sotik has one major river, River Kipsonoi. Sotik is also a hilly place with the main crops being grown are tea and maize. The Nairobi Kisii highway passes through Sotik. Recently, many developments have occurred; Sotik Market was put up by the former governor Hon Isaac Ruto, since then infrastructure has been improving. Sotik is also a religious center with over 10 churches set up in the area, e.g., Bethel AGC, St Joseph's Sotik catholic church and Gustavo D' Kerich chapel.
Traditional Kalenjin society is the way of life that existed among the Kalenjin-speaking people prior to the advent of the colonial period in Kenya and after the decline of the Chemwal, Lumbwa and other Kalenjin communities in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
The Kalenjin people are an ethnolinguistic group indigenous to East Africa, with a presence, as dated by archaeology and linguistics, that goes back many centuries. Their history is therefore deeply interwoven with those of their neighboring communities as well as with the histories of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.
The Lumbwa were a pastoral community which inhabited southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. The term Lumbwa has variously referred to a Kalenjin-speaking community, portions of the Maa-speaking Loikop communities since the mid-19th century, and to the Kalenjin-speaking Kipsigis community for much of the late 19th to mid-20th centuries.
The Settlement of Nandi was the historical process by which the various communities that today make up the Nandi people of Kenya settled in Nandi County. It is captured in the folklore of the Nandi as a distinct process composed of a series of inward migrations by members from various Kalenjin ortinwek.
The Misri legend is an origin myth common to a number of East African communities. In it, it is usually claimed that the community originated in a land called Misri located in the North of African continent. This land is in many accounts identified or associated with Egypt and sometimes an association with one of the lost tribes of Israel is implied and occasionally directly stated.
Kalenjin folklore consists of folk tales, legends, songs, music, dancing, popular beliefs, and traditions communicated by the Kalenjin-speaking communities, often passed down the generations by word of mouth.
Mutai is a term used by the Maa-speaking communities of Kenya to describe a period of wars, usually triggered by disease and/or drought affecting widespread areas of the Rift Valley region of Kenya. According to Samburu and Maasai tradition, two periods of Mutai occurred during the nineteenth century. The second Mutai lasted from the 1870s to the 1890s.
The Chemwal people were a Kalenjin-speaking society that inhabited regions of western and north-western Kenya as well as the regions around Mount Elgon at various times through to the late 19th century. The Nandi word Sekker was used by Pokot elders to describe one section of a community that occupied the Elgeyo escarpment and whose territory stretched across the Uasin Gishu plateau. This section of the community appears to have neighbored the Karamojong who referred to them as Siger, a name that derived from the Karimojong word esigirait. The most notable element of Sekker/Chemwal culture appears to have been a dangling adornment of a single cowrie shell attached to the forelock of Sekker women, at least as of the late 1700s and early 1800s.
The Uasin Gishu people were a community that inhabited a plateau located in western Kenya that today bears their name. They are said to have arisen from the scattering of the Kwavi by the Maasai in the 1830s. They were one of two significant sections of that community that stayed together. The other being the Laikipiak with whom they would later ally against the Maasai.
The Siger people were a community commonly spoken of in the folklore of a number of Kenyan communities that inhabited regions of northwestern Kenya at various points in history.
In June 1905, 1,850 ethnic Kipsigis men, women and children were killed in a punitive expedition dubbed Sotik expedition by the colonial British government forces led by Major Richard Pope-Hennessy. This was as a result of a raid by the Kipsigis on the Maasai which saw the Kipsigis part with Maasai cows, women and children to which the government demanded redress and return of the spoils of the raid but to which the Kipsigis returned in insults and turned down the warning. In effect, this led to alienation of tribal land to what would become part of Kenyan White Highlands.
Sotik town is an urban centre situated in Sotik Sub-county within Bomet County in the Western region of Kenya and managed by Sotik Town Council. Initially, it was the home of Mugenik Barngetuny Araap Sitonik, a prominent Kipsigis prophet of the late 19th century. Sotik is a metropolitan town with a majority of the residents from the Kipsigis ethnicity and a minority being from other ethnicities from Kenya including notably, Somalis and Indians. The town is home to Kalenjin music artist Philip Yegon, Kenyan athletes: Paul Kipsiele Koech and Mercy Cherono; and Kenyan politicians: Lorna Laboso and the late Joyce Cherono Laboso.
Raphael Kipchambai arap Tapotuk, better known by the stage name Kipchamba, was a Kalenjin singer-songwriter and musician who rose to popularity in the late 1970s. He specialized in rhumba sung in the Kipsigis dialect of the Kalenjin language. While performing as a singer, Kipchamba preferred wearing a suit and presenting himself in a formal slant.
