Kitale Off The Beaten Path

It looked like the Pokot people forgot the time, while they were dancing. We really enjoyed their enthusiastic way of singing and dancing. Often one, two or three women danced by turns in front of the group. They jumped very high and were swinging their arms.

After we visited the compound and even when we left the village they were still dancing. For more pictures have a look at my travelogue.

When the Pokot women saw, that their warriors came back safely from the fighting, they started to sing and dance very exuberantly, welcoming them back home.

It was great to just in the middle of it. All the people were very enthusiastic. Some old women of the village first came to look at the dances, but after some time they couldn't stop themselves from dancing. So the join the dancing younger women.

Just beside the compound we were invited to sit down in the grass waiting for what would happen. The dance performance started with the men coming back from war against their neighbours from Uganda, not far from here.

It was a very fascinating view, the men approaching the compound with their sticks with the most impressive mountaineous scenery, you can imagine, at their background.

In the village the women welcomed us and we could have a look in some of the traditional huts. The Pokot women wear lovely necklaces and headdresses of beadwork, brass jewelry and large looped earrings.

They told us, that some Pokot women after marriage also pierce their lower lip with a small decorative plug. We didn't see it ourselves here in Kenya, like we did see in southern Ethiopia.

Sirikwa Safaris introduced us in a Pokot tribal homestead after the visit to the waterfalls. It's amazing to see how they exist in this dry valley, though there are ancient irrigation channels fed by the falls.

The Pokot people are divided in the sedentary farmers or cultivating corn people, the so called ''pi pa pax'' and the nomadic herds people or cow people, the so-called ''pi pa tix''.

In recent years the economy of the pastoral Pokots had changed a lot by population growth, droughts, degradatrion of the grasslands, reduction of stock due to epidemies and ethnic conflicts.