Dying Voice

Appendix B: Nandi Age-Sets

Dying Voice APPENDIX B NandiAge-Sets1 There are seven age-sets with fixed names which are all in existence simultaneously and serve in a recurring cycle. Below are the names in the present (2001) order. 1. Nyongi 2. Maina 3. Chumo 4. Sawe 5. Kipkoimet 6. Kaplelach 7. Kimnyigei NB: The age-set of Korongoro, that was the eighth, ceased functioning after its warrior members perished in Kavirondo war. Due to the misfortune it could not be remembered again.In the year 2001, there were very few Nyongi age-set members who where then still alive but in the isolated cases. Most of them are women who were married later in advanced age by departing age-set. At the time of going to the press, there were a few known aged men over on hundred and ten years but mostly were in the juniormost group of the Maina age-set, inaugurating a new age-set of Nyongi amounts to a total massacre of the older generation of the same. Such a thing is totally abhorred and was seen as an abomination to the living. Kimnyigei age-set groups got circumcised as from mid nineties (90s), and by the year 2003, a new age-set of Nyongi aged below thirty have started being circumcised. _______________________________ 1 The Nandi word for age-sets is Ibinwek (singular, Ibinda) ...