Pokomo
The Pokomo (Wapokomo) are a Bantu ethnic group in Kenya who live on agriculture and fishing on the Tana River . Their population is around 50,000.
history
The Pokomo came to their present area from the north in the 17th century due to armed conflicts (in connection with the expansion of the Oromo ). Today they are divided into two groups, the Upper Pokomo on the upper reaches of the river (about 75% of the total population) and the Lower Pokomo on the lower reaches.
The Lower Pokomo were Christianized from the 1870s through the work of missionaries and were practically completely converted to Christianity by 1914. In 1887 employees of the Neukirchen Mission began to work among the Pokomo. As early as 1893, many Pokomo gave up their animistic view and turned to the Christian faith. The New Testament was translated into the Pokomo language at this time. With the First World War the Neukirchen missionaries were transferred to British internment camps in India, so that work had to be stopped. It was not until 1926 that the Neukirchen Mission could resume this work. Even without white missionaries, the number of Christians baptized had more than doubled from 1914 to 1926.
The Upper Pokomo , on the other hand, have been Muslims since the first half of the 20th century. Many pre-Christian and pre-Islamic Pokomo traditions are only followed by older people. The Korokoro upstream neighboring the Upper Pokomo are sometimes referred to as Pokomo; they only speak the language of the Orma , a smaller subgroup of the Oromo.
Way of life
The Pokomo live in small villages with 10 to 60 huts with grass roofs. Their livelihoods are the cultivation of corn, plantains and sugar cane and fishing in the river. The neighboring ethnic groups, the Oromo in the west and the Somali in the east, are mostly nomadic cattle breeders. There are occasional conflicts over water and land between them and the Pokomo.
language
The Pokomo language belongs to the Bantu languages and forms within it with Swahili , the dialects of the Mijikenda and the like. a. the subgroup of genetically related Sabaki languages . It can be divided into Upper and Lower Pokomo ; the particularly archaic Malankote is closest to these two variants of the Pokomo and is seen by the Pokomo as part of the Upper Pokomo , but is possibly more of a separate language. Upper and Lower Pokomo form a dialect continuum , between the ends of which there are differences in terms of the number of speakers and spatial distance are considerable. They are influenced by northern Swahili, by central Kenyan Thagicu languages (especially Meru ), Orma, Dahalo and Boni , the Malankote also contains influences from Somali and at least one unidentifiable language.
A Pokomo song, sung by mothers for their children, served as the basis for the melody of Kenya's national anthem .
literature
- Wilhelm Nitsch: The sowing of tears and the harvest of joy in East Africa - a review of 25 years of Neukirchen missionary work at the Tana , Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft , Neukirchen-Vluyn 1914
- Fritz and Hanna Gissel: One Hundred Years of Neukirchen Mission am Tana: 1887–1987 , Homo et Religio, Saarbrücken 1991, ISBN 3-812-30042-7
- Kai Merten: Drumming on Tana - The indigenous religion of the Pokomo in Kenya , Volume 13, LIT Verlag Münster, 2015, ISBN 978-3-643-12799-0 , pp. 95–116: The Neukirchen Mission
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Tribes Travel - Pokomo ( Memento of the original from June 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ^ A. Werner: Some Notes on the Wapokomo of the Tana Valley. In: Journal of the Royal African Society , Vol. 12, No. 48, 1913, pp. 359-384
- ↑ https://www.neukirchener-mission.de/ueberuns/historie
- ^ A b Derek Nurse: History from Linguistics: The Case of the Tana River. In: History in Africa , Vol. 10, 1983, pp. 207-238.
- ↑ Kenya State House - Origins of the National Anthem ( Memento of the original dated August 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
