Kavirondo

Kavirondo is the former name of the region surrounding Kavirondo Gulf (now Winam Gulf) as well as of two native peoples living there under the regime of British East Africa (The "Nilotic Kavirondo" and the "Bantu Kavirondo"). Broadly, this was defined as those who dwelt in the valley of the Nzoia River, on the western slopes of Mount Elgon, and along the northeast coast of Victoria Nyanza.

Suggested etiologies of the name "Kavirondo" include

(Both putative origins may be doubtful).

Kavirondo is the general name of two distinct groups of ethnic groups, the Bantu speakers and the Nilotic speakers. The Bantu appear to have been the first comers. The Nilotic ethnic groups, probably an offshoot of the Acholi, appear to have crossed Lake Victoria to reach their present home, the country around Kavirondo Gulf. Of the two, the Bantu now occupy a more northerly position than their neighbors, and are practically the most northerly representatives of that race (Hobley). The Nilotic Kavirondo in their turn had their wanderings arrested by an irruption of Elgumi people (themselves probably of Nilotic origin) from the east.

The Bantu Kavirondo are divided into three principal types: the Awa-Rimi, the Awa-Ware and the Awa-Kisii. Their Nilotic neighbors call the Bantu Kavirondo Jo-Mwa (singular: Ja-Mwa). The generic name for the Nilotic tribes is Jo-Luo (singular: Ja-Luo), but the Bantu Kavirondo call them Awa-Nyoro. The two groups have many characteristics in common.

The Kavirondo have many tribes, divided, Sir H. H. Johnston suspects, totemically.

A characteristic feature of the people was their traditional nakedness. Among the Nilotic Kavirondo married men who are fathers wore a small piece of goat-skin (Sembe), which though practically useless as a covering was worn according to ethnic etiquette. Even among men who have adopted European clothing this goat-skin must still be worn underneath. Contact with whites has led to the adoption of European clothing by numbers of the men (who were better travelled), but the women (who were less travelled), more conservative, remained in nudity or the scanty covering which they wore before the advent of Europeans. Among the Bantu Kavirondo married women wear a short fringe of black string in front and a tassel of banana fibre suspended from a girdle behind, this tassel having at a distance the appearance of a tail. Hence the report of early travellers as to a tailed race in Africa. The Nilotic Kavirondo women wear the tail, but dispense with the fringe in front. For dandy they wear a goat-skin slung over the shoulders.

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Wikipedia