Luyia Nation: Origins, Clans and Taboos

Unbeknownst to most, the Luyia Nation is a congeries of Bantu and assimilated Nilotic clans principally the Luo, Kalenjin, and Maasai. Created seventy years ago, the Luyia tribe is still evolving in a slow process that seeks to harmonize the historico-cultural institutions that define the eighteen subnations in Kenya alone. Available records indicate that geophysical spread of Luyia-speaking people extends beyond the Kenyan frontier into Uganda and Tanzania with some Luyia clans having extant brethren in Rwanda, Congo, Zambia, and Cameroon. The 862 Luyia clans in Kenya are amorphous units united only by common cultural and linguistic bonds. The political union between these clans is a pesky issue that has eluded the community since formation of the superethnic polity. Although postindependence scholars dismissed oral accounts of Egyptian ancestry, new anthropological evidence links the Bantu, including those in West Africa, to ancient Misri (Egypt). A major historical and cultural change in Buluyia occurred a little more than a century ago when natives first made contact with the Western world. The meeting in 1883 by a Scottish explorer, Joseph Thomson, with Nabongo Mumia, the Wanga king, laid the foundation for British imperialism in this part of Africa.