The Migration...

The Karamojong originated in a group of peoples north of Lake Turkana, in what is now southern Ethiopia and Sudan. Traditions of the Karamojong group hold that the land they came from was mountainous and blessed with abundant rainfall, possibly pointing to an area known as Kaffa. Others have pointed to the Omo river valley, a tributary of Lake Turkana, as their point of origin.

Searching for New Pasture

Several hundred years ago, somewhere between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, a large migration of the original people (usually called the Plains Nilotes) began. The causes for the initial and following migrations was almost certainly the increase in human population and the corresponding increase in herd size. Both of these factors were stresses which drove the groups away from their origin and on toward lands of more plentiful and open grazing and watering.

Along the way of migration these simple migratory forces were modified and shifted by competition as indigenous peoples already in the new lands either blocked their way or drove them further on. In other cases the simple migratory push was affected by geography--inhospitable and impassible regions being examples.

Spreading Out to New Lands

These Plains Nilotic peoples fanned out heading to the west on one end and to the south on the other. Those who migrated due west (the Northern Plains Nilotes) became the Bari and Lothuko people and settled in areas of present-day southern Sudan and north-eastern Congo. Those moving out to the south (the Southern Plains Nilotes) became today's Samburu and Maasai, and settled in what is now Kenya and Tanzania.

The people migrating to the southwest (the Central Plains Nilotes) comprised the Karamojong group of peoples: the Karamojong, the Dodoth, the Jie, the Teso, the Toposa, the Turkana, and others. They first settled in a place that Karamojong tradition calls Moru Apolon--a plateau just east of the Uganda-Kenya border. Some Karamojong say that at this time, even the Samburu and Maasai dwelled with the Karamojong group, but little-by-little the other two groups moved away to the south, finally settling where they have lived to this day.

From the central group of migrating Nilotes, the Teso and Iteso reached as far as Lake Victoria and Lake Kyoga. The Toposa, the Jiye, and the Nyangatom seemed to retrace their steps to the northeast, almost returning to the point from which they began. They finally stopped at what is now the point where the borders of Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya come together.

Fatigue of the Ancients

The Turkana, the Jie, the Dodoth, and the Karamojong stopped near the regions they presently occupy in western Kenya and eastern Uganda. It is said that at this time of settling at the end of their migrations, the Karamojong acquired the name they now bear. It is supposed that the term Karamojong is derived from the phrase: "aikar (to stay) -- imojong (old men)," meaning: "the tired old men who stayed behind."