The family tree software is now fully integrated into the website and it's required that we do a geneology map of the Matelong family. Perhaps this will spill over to inform you of the generic (or is it genetic?) link between the Matelong family and a large Kipsigis family (Kap Mugeni) who are identified as the ancestors of the Salat family and Hon. Wilson arap Leitich. Please give me your info, however sketchy it is. The software has a subtle feature for ancestry/descendancy mapping which can link you to a root person in the family no matter where you begin your input. It would add value if we got pictures for your parents/siblings/yourselves so that these are added as media. Click the link on the left, under 'About us' menu to navigate to the "Family tree" link.  Please register and then you can be guided on adding your family to the database. As soon as I approve, your addendum will be available to view. Please note that you don't need to append your family to any existing family, this can be done later. Obwaa kechigilgei, Kap Matelong! Kongoi

The wealth of any language is the ability to intersperse speech and writing with proverbs (wise-sayings) and idioms (and occassionally phrasal verbs). The Nandi language, in spite of not being outright flowery is built on some cautious balance between a free flow of the idioms and proverbs accumulated over time from great thinkers. The distinction between the idioms and the proverbs is sometimes vague, even sublime. However, without the need to draw a clear boundary, it would be safe to lift some of the few that I gathered from my ever-wise grandmother, Kopot Tera (Kap Koisamoo). Here below is a list of some of the idioms that decorate the Nandi language and for which explanations will be solicited from you readers.

The Nandi political life was ordered around 'bororiet' which is distictly different from oreet (clan) but is probably an expanded form of the advanced order of the 'kokwet' or village system. As explained earlier, people of the same oreet were not necessarily restricted to one bororiet. However, some families were advised, perhaps to avoid recurrent catastrophes, not to live in certain bororiet. A case in point is the long-standing banning of Kap Matelong (and all Kipkenda?) from inhabiting Chesumei which is populated by the relatively obscure but conservative borioriosiek of Cheptol, Kapno and Tibingot.

Clan as it applies to the Kalenjiin here means the larger unit of family that is defined by a totem as an emblem. So we take reference from the totem, be it animal, bird, insect, reptile, or such heavenly phenomena as sun and lightning. The people loved their totem "animal", tyoondo, and identified so closely with it. No-one was allowed to kill an animal that was held as a totem by a section of the community without cause and permission from the particular clan. Like in cases of execution of capital offenders, the family members were given the last opportunity to expel the erring animal from the clan before it could be set upon. A member of the clan was required to throw a leaf instead of a spear, club, or arrow, at the animal - symbolically throwing the first stone - before the rest could hurl real weapons at it. This rule may have had an animal preservation motive in mind. The ancient Egyptians went to an even greater limit in expressing love for their animal totem. Both the Kalenjiin and the ancient Egyptians observed clan rules under the ethical rules of Maat - precisely under the same name, maat, you may need to know. The ancient Egyptians went ahead and domesticated where they could, their totem animal in very large numbers, treated them as family members, and embalmed them upon their death as if they were human. Such have been found in plenty in tombs. Christianised Roman emperors, notably Justinian, banned the maat system in Egypt around the fifth/sixth century AD, calling it zoolatry - worship of animals (This intro courtesy of: Kagiptai).

The Nandi society's organisational structure was premised on two principles. The first  kind of organisation (in no particular order of significance) was political structuring. Perhaps no other Kalenjin community had as elaborate an arrangement as the bororiet of the Nandi. There are eight (again note the multiples of four, probably a significance that these are men-only affairs!) bororiosiek. These are made up of five large and three minority but fiercely conservative bororiosiek. It is instructive that people of one oreet could live in different bororiosiek but with no change in the clan. The Kipkenda clan is represented in the populous Kap Chepkendi, Kap Melilo (the only bororieet with a totem symbol, cheplangeet) and Kaptalam but are all Kipkenda. It is the authors contention that the bororieet was a precursor and a Nandi civilisation form of multipartyism. However, much on this topic is to come later.