Thread by @HistoryKE

#HistoryKeThread: Who were the Segeju?

The present-day Segeju live in the coastal strip, between Tanga and the Kenya-Tanzania border.

From findings of various researchers including pioneer missionary Ludwig Krapf, Ali bin Hemedi el-Buhury and E.C. Baker, who authored a publication called Notes On The History Of The Wasegeju, we learn a great deal about this community.

The Segeju speak varieties of both the local Swahili dialect and Digo.

Oral traditions of the community describe a close relationship between them and the Dhaiso, a small community living at the foot of he Usbara mountains.

According to ethno-historian and anthropologist Derek Nurse, the Dhaiso speak a Central Kenya Bantu (Thagicũ) language....

and some Segeju recognize that their ancestors once spoke this too, and that they are distantly related to the Gîkûyû and other peoples of Central Kenya.

The dominant themes in recorded Segeju traditions have it that the community had its origins in Arabia.

Subsequent migrations saw them move southwards towards Mount Kenya, and towards Singwaya, a.k.a. Shungwaya.

Overall, researchers agree that there is overwhelming linguistic evidence that the Segeju/Dhaiso originated from the same area as other Central Kenya Bantu speakers, probably somewhere on the upper reaches of the Tana River.

It is therefore not surprising that to this day, members of the Gîkûyû community refer to the Thagicũ and some Meru consider those found to the East of Tana River (Tharakas, some say) to have descended from the Thagichû/Thaicû.

Thaiso was also the name of a community that neighbored the Kamba of Kitui, and which may have been assimilated by the latter.

The Kamba and Dhaiso form a single branch of Central Kenya Bantu, and it is reasonable, therefore, to assume that the Segeju/Dhaiso originally came from the region on the upper Tana where their name is still used.

A Jesuit Father, Monclaro, made a journey up the East African coast in 1571 and described the Segeju thus:

“These Moors [the inhabitants of Malindi] have as neighbours in the interior a race of Kaffirs different from all the others of the coast.

They are called Moceguejos, and the name also declares their barbarity. They have neither holy days, cultivated lands, nor houses; they live in the fields or woods, and cover their heads with stinking clay, the smell being caused by its being mixed with...

...different oils, and to them it is very delicious. They have large numbers of cattle, and subsist upon their blood and milk mixed together, which they eat raw, and they have no other ordinary food, according to report; they bleed the oxen on alternate days.

They are very warlike, and it is said that their habit in warfare is to cut off foreskins and swallow them, afterwards casting them up out of their mouths when they appear before the king, that he may make them knights.

Their dress consists of the skins of animals, and they have many other very barbarous customs. The Moors here are much molested by these Kaffirs, and to prevent them from spoiling their crops and making war upon them, they buy them off with cloth and other things....

.... but their usual dress is made of skins, as I have said.....”

Usambara mountains, I meant.