Meet the Taita

The Taita people are a Kenyan ethnic group located in the Taita-Taveta District, which is in the Coast Province northwest of Mombasa and southeast of Nairobi.

The Taita people migrated to Kenya through Tanzania. This migration occurred in five groups, each settling at different places of the present Taita Taveta district. Traditionally the Taita tribe consisted of lineages; each lineage occupied its own territorial area of the hills. These lineages were autonomous political units, and, before the colonialism, there did not develop an idea or a consciousness of a unified Taita tribe. Mwangeka, a legendary figure for the Taitas, resisted the British colonists from approaching the lands of the Wataita.

They speak Taita, a Bantu language full of shared words from the Chagga, Wakamba, Pare, Maasai, Kikuyu, Mijikenda tribes, as well as the Cushitic communities they lived with during their migration.

Photo credit: Getty Images