The Luyia (Abaluyia), who number approximately 5 million people, are the third largest cultural community in Kenya. Their numerical strength has partly allowed those to play an influential role in Kenyas politics, economic, and cultural development. They belong to the Niger-Congo Bantu-speaking linguistic group. They are mainly within american Kenya north of Lake Victoria where they form the major concentration in American Province. Some, however, live over the boundary in neighboring Uganda while a few are available in northern Tanzania. Probably, the name Luyia might have derived from the word Oluyia, a fireside by which household members convened in the evenings for trainings on the history and traditions of clan lineages.
A distinctive feature of the Luyia is the numerous sub-ethnic categories that constitute the community, each speaking different but related dialects. The groups are Abalogoli, Abanyala, Abanyore, Abatachoni, Abedakho, Abesukha, Abashisa, Abamarama, Ababukusu, Abasamia, Abawanga, Abatirichi, Abakabaras, Abamarachi, Abakhayo, and Abasonga. The Luyia of Uganda mainly belongs to the Abasamia, while those of Tanzania constitute an Abalogoli Diaspora. The Luyia will be the third largest populous community in Kenya, numbering about 4 million people. The spot they occupy lends itself among the most densely populated in Kenya. The ration between land and human population denseness, for example, is highest in districts occupied by the Abalogoli, Abanyole, and Abatirichi.
The lifetime of different dialects attests not to an absolute variety of the Abaluyia, but instead, to the clan lineages from which they descended. The minds and founders of these respected clans can be traced to one common ancestor. Subsequently, each one of these sub-groups have a shared history, as well as ethnical qualities as illustrated in their traditional religion, rites of passing such as circumcision. The progression of these and other aspects of the community's culture may took place in the reason for their long record of migration and pay out in their present homeland.
Most migration accounts in Luyia customs indicate that the ancestors of the many sub-groups comes from Misri (probably Egypt). Gideon S. Were, a respected historian on the Abaluyia, has surmised that Misri could have been located in top of the Nile region of Karamoja or about the Lake Turkana area. It was from here that the various Luyia clans migrated southwards into the highland parts north and east of Lake Victoria where they resolved in the second millennium BCE. Most journeyed into eastern Uganda from where they migrated into their present locations between 1598 and 1733. Whereas natural factors (especially drought) makes up about their initial migration using their company ancestral homeland of Misri, their second and most significant influx of migration from Eastern Uganda was caused by dynastic and local disputes, overcrowding, and the search for more land for cultivation.
While they maintained almost all of their original procedures such as farming as they migrated, the Luyia implemented some cultural practices from other neighborhoods they encountered in their final area of destination in the Lake Victoria region. For instance, following generations of conversation with the Nilotic communities like the Nandi and the Maasai, the Luyia arrived to apply male circumcision, a rite of passing that continues to be observed by the majority of the sub-ethnic teams, but in a most passionate way by the Ababukusu, Abatachoni, Abakabras, and Abatirichi. Inversely, these Nilotic areas also became "Bantuised" by the new Luyia migrants from whom they purchased new liquistic conditions. These inter-cultural connections increased with the arrangement, in the first 1 / 4 of the sixteenth and the middle of the seventeenth century, of some Maasai clans in the northern Luyia area occupied by the Abatachoni and Abakabaras. Further south close to Lake Victoria, the arrival of the Luo during the last one half of the sixteenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth hundred years not only resulted in the displacement of some Luyia who possessed resolved here, but also to some people of the later, such as the Abasamia, Abawanga, and Abamarachi, who followed Luo words and customs.
Religion played an important role in the day-to-day life of the Luyia individuals. Ancestor worship was common but Were was thought to be the supreme deity. Notion in life after death was a key component of this notion system, as were sacrifices performed by elders at the family level. Since such sacrifices involved pet animal and agricultural products, faith was thus intertwined with modes of production. The Luyia will always be farmers and land is regarded with greatest economic and social value. In the pre-colonial times, land was communally-owned and put under the trust of the liguru, a clan elder. Cattle were stored by individual households for communal functions such as payment of dowry. Trade, mainly of the proper execution of barter exchange, was normal with the neighboring Nilotic communities.
Politically, two types of federal were discernible between the Luyia in the pre-colonial period. Clan-based federal going by elders was common among all the sub-ethnic groupings except the Abawanga. The elders made politics, economic, and communal decisions in issues of warfare, legislation, and use of land. Frequently, an influential, sensible, and impartial elder was appointed by the clan elders to lead the affairs of the clan. The elder was variously referred to as omwami, omukali, omukhulundu, omukasa, or weng'oma. This position was highly untenable since an omwami could easily be deposed in the event he changed unpopular. For a few, security of office was guaranteed by the hereditary character of this position. Amongst the Abawanga, however, a highly centralized government headed by the Nabongo (king) became the unique point of difference in politics organization with all of those other Luyia sub-ethnic organizations that utilised the clan-based federal.
The benefits of English colonial guideline in Traditional western Kenya at the start of the twentieth century observed the persistence of Luyia cultural systems, while change was also evident. The Nabongo and the Abawanga were used by the United kingdom to entrench colonial guideline amongst the Abaluyia but with its electric power emasculated by new administrative corporations such as the Local Local Council. Notable Religious Mission stations which were established around European Kenya with serious effect on the Luyia were the Friends Africa Industrial Quest (Quakers), Chapel of God, the Mill Hill Objective, and the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC, later, PAG). Benefits of the Catholic and Protestant Religious missions resulted in commitment to the Religious new religion by many Luyia individuals, but it was the new missionary universities and later colonial government schools in American Kenya that provided opportunities for clan minds and their homes solidify their influence over their people.
Amongst some Luyia areas like the Abatachoni and Abakabarasi, traditional faith remained influential. Between the Ababukusu, syncretism became common as evidenced in the Dini Ya Musambwa religious sect founded by Elijah Masinde in the 1940s. For others such as the Abatirichi and Ababukusu, traditional rites of passing such as male circumcision were continued to specify these areas' ancestral customs regardless of a strong presence of Quaker and Catholic impact. Yet another way where the Luyia looked for to define their cultural id through the newly introduced Christian organizations was the establishment of African-led indie churches. While they looked at the Christian religious beliefs as a required methods to uphold their interpersonal status, the Luyia leaders who broke away from these churches desired to assimilate Luyia ethnic aspects in their recently founded unbiased churches. Therefore, Zakayo Kivuli broke from the PAG and established the all-African African Israel Cathedral Nineveh in 1942, while Saul Chabuka led another breakaway from the PAG in 1952 to determine the African Divine Cathedral. Both these African churches have since expanded in European Kenya and amongst neighboring African areas especially the Luo. They are also nationally represented as they are also found in leading urban areas such as Nairobi, Nakuru, Kakamega, Kisumu, and Kitale.
The British colonial government's focus on agriculture as the prime economic activity in European Kenya perpetuated the economic need for land cultivation amongst the Abaluyia. Natural cotton and tobacco became important cash vegetation, but maize emerged as a leading staple and cash crop and has stayed the case to this day. Commercialization of agriculture possessed profound changes on Luyia indigenous land tenure patterns that shifted from communal to individual ownership. The life of the liguru within the new colonial buildings weakened their electricity over land relations as such electricity was used in chiefs, the Local Native Councils, and indigenous court tribunals. Commercialization of agriculture also possessed the unintended effect of creating a course of migrant laborers especially between the Abalogoli, Abatirichi, and Abanyore individuals where land continued to be important but scarce. It is not unexpected, therefore, that amongst the Luyia, these three sub-ethnic groups provided the majority of labor migrants to European farms in the White Highlands and into the main urban areas through the colonial period. This orientation towards wage labor was a natural response to lessening usage of arable land, but was also determined by the necessity to meet tax responsibilities as imposed by the state. The need to invest in agriculture, however, remained an ardent target. Many of them have applied their off-farm income to get land holdings in land-abundant areas of Western Kenya where they form a minority Diaspora.
British colonialism therefore provided both opportunities and problems to the Luyia. Where colonial threats proven insurmountable, the Luyia looked for to engage the colonial administration through popular mobilization as was reflected in the various colonial organizations. This ranged from the milder North Kavirondo Taxes payers Welfare Association founded in the 1920s, to the greater combative North Kavirondo Central Association created in 1932. The later was radicalized by United kingdom alienation of land in Kakamega for rare metal mining in 1931 which directly impacted on the livelihoods of the Abedakho, Abesukha, Abakabaras, and Abalogoli. The Relationship also mobilized rural protests against enforced English soil conservation steps between Luyia farmers in the 1940s, and in this, they were aided by Masinde's Dini Ya Musambwa. These agrarian protests illustrated the presence of more deep-seated pressure that colonialism stopped at on the Luyia community, and which became the reason behind them to join ranks with other areas in Kenya in the nationalist expressions of the 1950s as observed in the establishment of the Abaluyia Union in 1954. Luyia politicians performed a respected role in the emergent national politics leading to Kenya's self-reliance in 1963. These included W. W. W. Awori, Musa Amalemba, J. E. Otiende, and Masinde Muliro. The later was particularly influential within the main opposition get together at self-reliance, the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), which dissolved in 1964, per year after independence.
After freedom in 1963, the Luyia emerged as one of the three largest important ethnic groups in Kenya's nation-wide politics, the other two being the Kikuyu and the Luo. With nation-wide politics adorning a more ethnic orientation in the 1970s and 1980s, the Luyia Masinde Muliro offered a natural national displayed of the city, while Martin Shikuku emerged as an ardent critic of the ruling Kenya Country wide African Union (KANU) federal government that he was part of until early on 1980s. Muliro and Shikuku were some of the primary proponents of democratic multi-party movements that arrived to fruition in Kenya in 1991. These two only stand for the large numbers of Luyia politicians that contain been influential in Kenya's national politics. However, sub-ethnic loyalties have been a nemesis of any intended united forward in national politics, a as seen in just how various Luyia sub-groups have reinforced different political get-togethers seeking to lead to political and economical change in the united states.
Economically, most Luyia homes in land-scarce areas have diversified their farm development by embracing cash vegetation such as tea, coffee, and soybean production. However, maize remains the leading crop especially in land abundant areas in areas, while sugarcane farming is popular in places that cannot support other plants anticipated to existing land conditions. Pursuing spates of drought and food shortages in Kenya in the 1980s, even a government that tapped into cultural marginalization as a way of consolidating electric power found it difficult to ignore the maize reserves in Luyia agricultural areas. Most important, Luyia areas have remained some of the main labor-exporting zones to other areas of the united states, especially cities. High population denseness has compounded the challenge of land availability, with the result that the affected communities have desired for land in land-abundant areas including the Rift Valley region dominated by the Nandi community of the Highland Nilotic group. Following the "ethnicization" of Kenya's national politics especially after about 1980, the Luyia diaspora in such areas have grown to be goals in inter-ethnic politics conflicts, especially when they are recognized to pay allegiance to a politics powerbase besides that of these hosts. Consequently, and this dates back to the early period of self-reliance, the Luyia have tried to pursue with relative success, a political individuality that transcends their sub-ethnic divisions. That is aimed at reaching parity in nation-wide politics with communities such as the Luo and Kikuyu that are recognized to present their politics cause as unified entities.
Martin S. Shanguhyia
Further Reading
Bates, Robert. Beyond the Magic of the marketplace: The Political Economy of Agrarian Development in Kenya. Cambridge: Cambridge School Press, 2005.
Gertzel, Cherry J. The Politics of Independent Kenya, 1963-1968. Evanston, IN: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
Maxon, Robert. East Africa: An Introductory History, 3rd and Revised Edition. Morgatown: Western world Virginia University or college, 2009
Wagner, Gunter. The Bantu of North Kavirondo. Oxford: Oxford School Press, 1949
Were, Gideon S. A brief history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya c. 1500-1930. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967.
Wipper, Audrey. Rural Rebels: A Study of Two Protest Actions in Kenya. Nairobi: Oxford College or university Press, 1978.
