Camus people
The Chamus ( Il Chamus, Camus, Tiamus or Njemps ) are a Maa- speaking ethnic group with about 7,000 other reportedly 19,000 members who live south and southeast of the Baringosees in Kenya. They are related to the Samburu closely and speak a language that is so similar to the Maa of Samburu, that it is considered to be partly their dialect.
History
The Chamus were referred to as " rural Maasai ." In the 19th century, its economy was based on agriculture with irrigation and the sale of grain to trade caravans towards Uganda, as well as on trade in ivory. Cattle kept the Chamus but scarce, as this was often stolen by the neighboring pastoralists of Turkana and Maasai. In times of drought their territory offered refuge for impoverished herders of Samburu and the Uasin Gishu - and Laikipiak - Maasai. So go numerous clans of Chamus partly due to Samburu and Laikipiak.
Beginning of the 20th century allowed the British colonial rule with the " pacification " of neighboring peoples, a transformation of the economy, the Chamus. They restricted agriculture a strong and started as ranchers between the hills of the hill in the Laikipia District and the marshes at Lake Baringo moving about. Grain they now bought at the farmers of the virtues of traveling traders or in stores. This change was, until the late 1920s so far advanced that the colonial authorities assumed that Chamus would be since ever been ranchers and could possibly be persuaded to agriculture.
The cattle peaked in the 1940s and 1950s. More recently (1966-1982) the Chamus have, however, taken up farming again, even as the prices of consumer goods such as maize and finger millet were increased more than the revenues that they could achieve for animals, hides and skins. They built irrigation systems again and, next to them operate with sufficient rain and dry farming, especially with corn. Chamus in areas where irrigation is not technically possible to continue to live mainly on livestock and wage labor; they were recently most vulnerable to drought and diseases.
Swell
- Ethnic group in Kenya
- Ethnicity in Africa