How the Name Kalenjin Came About

Shared by William Kiptoo, adapted from an encyclopedia entry on the Kalenjin (Countries and Their Cultures).

From the 1940s, young men from the Kalenjin speaking groups who went off to fight in the Second World War began using the term kale or kole, the scarring of the breast or arm of a warrior who had killed an enemy in battle, to describe themselves. During wartime radio broadcasts, the announcer John Chemallan used the phrase kalenjok, "I tell you" (plural). Later, students from these groups at Alliance High School formed a "Kalenjin" club. There were only fourteen of them, a small minority in a school in Gikuyu country, and they wanted an outward sign of a shared identity. Those students went on to become the Kalenjin elite.

The identity was consolidated with the founding of the Kalenjin Union in Eldoret in 1948, and a monthly magazine, Kalenjin, in the 1950s. The movement was not only a people finding a name for themselves. According to this account, the colonial government supported it and sponsored the magazine, partly to encourage feeling against the Gikuyu during the Mau Mau Emergency (October 1952 to January 1960).

The Kokwet

Traditionally the basic unit of Kalenjin political organisation was the koret, or parish, a group of twenty to a hundred scattered homesteads. It was run by a council of adult men, the kokwet, led by a spokesman called the poiyot ap kokwet. He was chosen for his speaking ability, knowledge of customary law, forceful personality, wealth and standing. At public hearings he spoke first, but every elder had a chance to speak, and rather than deciding alone he expressed the group's opinion, always phrased as a group decision.

That system was replaced by the colonial administration of villages, sublocations, locations, divisions, districts and provinces, each with its elder, chief or commissioner.

See also Kip and Chep: The Meaning of Kalenjin Names and The Kalenjin Age Sets.

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