How the Bantu people surged across two-thirds of Africa
Very interesting read. I am a Bantu from Kenya and I&#x27;d like to tack on something to this.<p>First of all, it&#x27;s incredible how intellectually insatiable the HN community is; I never imagined a post like this would end up on the HN&#x27;s home page because of how niche it is.<p>I happen to speak up to 4 languages - Eng, Swahili, my native language Kikuyu and very rusty French. It may surprise you to know that when I listen to other Bantu tribes even from countries as far as South Africa, one or two words will often stick out and I might even get the context of a conversation even though it is indeed true that we Africans don&#x27;t all speak the same language. As a matter of fact there thousands of languages and were it not for a language like Swahili, it might have been very difficult for a region such as East Africa - where Swahili is largely spoken - to have any sort of cohesion and communication.<p>Swahili emanates from a mix of Bantu languages and Arabic. When you hear greetings like &#x27;alaikum salam&#x27;, the first thing you probably think of is Islam but when I was in school - and I was brought up as a Christian(now not so much but that&#x27;s another day&#x27;s tale) - we&#x27;d greet our Swahili teachers that way everyday.<p>Lastly, there are two other families other than Bantu; Cushites and Nilotes. We have both families in Kenya. Cushites are mostly comprised of Somalis and similar tribes from neighboring Ethiopia.<p>Nilotes come in three sub-groups; River-Lake Nilotes, Plains Nilotes and Highlands Nilotes.<p>There has been a lot of hatred between the Bantu speaking communities and Nilotes in Kenya. Growing up I didn&#x27;t know this. Our parents largely shielded us from negative ethnicity until the year 2007.<p>For those of you who remember, in 2007, it was the bloodiest post election violence (PEV) experienced in Kenya. Growing up, I had friends from other communities and never gave it much thought. In fact, my best friend and double-decker-mate in boarding school was from a Nilotic community known as Luo. However, when there was the contested election in 2007, it became apparent that there was deep rooted hatred between our communities. For those unlucky enough to live in &#x27;cosmopolitan&#x27; areas, neighbors were turning against each other, looting and killing one another like nobody&#x27;s business. I was a tad mad at myself for such naiveté - how could I not have seen it all around me was the question I asked myself. It was always there; my bringing up just shielded me from its apparent nature.<p>My neighbor&#x27;s grandparents lived in an area surrounded by Nilotes(Kalenjins to be more specific) and when the PEV came about, their grandfather was shot with an arrow in the chest and he died a very painful death. The grandma survived as she had left earlier before things got thick. She had to relocate and they lost their land. There were countless similar stories - some more horrific than others.<p>I despise negative ethnicity regardless of who&#x27;s doing it and I think it&#x27;s incredibly myopic, just to set the record straight.<p>Things are relatively calm now but there&#x27;s an upcoming election in August. Based on previous experience, I will take a vacation in Tanzania come election week. I will only return once things are certainly calm.