The Modern Peoples

Abstract

This section describes something of the life of the modern peoples of Kenya and Northern Tanzania. Even today we are painfully ignorant of most of the old customs and particularly among the Bantu and the Nilotes, the societies are changing so rapidly that much of what was written only a few years ago is now hopelessly out of date. A vast effort is required to record and work out the customs and inter-relationships of all these peoples but the number of research workers currently involved in this task is painfully small. Fortunately the Hamites and Nilo-Hamites are changing relatively slowly but for many of the Bantu and Nilotes it may already be too late. Table i shows the main African groups living in the region today. There are many other small tribes, particularly among the coastal Bantu, which have been omitted for reasons of simplicity.