The Register
Be counted. It takes two minutes.
Record
We write down what has only ever been carried in memory — clans, lineages, age-sets, and the accounts that differ.
Read More
EN
Kis
The Tachoni Register
We are not fewer.
We simply stopped being counted.
118,363 Tachoni were recorded in 2009. 85,597 in 2019. Our people did not vanish — our name did. The Trust is rebuilding the record: the clans, the language, the elders, and the count.
The Record
What This Register Holds
Clans
Every Tachoni clan and sub-clan — territory, totem, elders, and the families that carry the name. Corrected by those who know.
The Archive
Elders recorded on video and audio, transcribed and catalogued. The oldest voices first, because we are running out of time.
Olutachoni
A working dictionary of a language colonial policy broke apart, kept with its pronunciation and its proverbs.
Our People
From the defenders of Chetambe in 1895 to the doctors, teachers and engineers carrying the name now.
Who Convenes This
Edward Masai Simiyu Founding Convener
This register exists because the Tachoni have never had one. Not a council, and not another voice competing with the ones we already have — a record. Somewhere the clans are written down, the elders are heard while they are still with us, the language is kept, and our numbers can be checked by anyone who cares to check them.
Edward Masai Simiyu convenes the Trust. He is the founder and chief executive of GusaPay Technologies, which builds payment infrastructure for rural Kenya, with its first deployments in Bungoma schools.
- Convener, Tachoni Heritage Register
- Custodian of the Tachoni Charter
- Working with elders across Bungoma, Kakamega and Trans Nzoia
Our Work
Record · Preserve · Count · Convene
Four things the Trust does, and nothing it does not.
What our community is asking for, written down.
The Calendar
Gatherings
12
Sep
The Tachoni Bible — public launch
10:00 -
15:00
Webuye, Bungoma County — venue to be confirmed
From the Archive
The August cycle recorded in full — the bird hunt, the age-set naming, the elders' instruction.
Accession TA-2026-0014
Ndivisi ward · video, 48 min
Family testimony carried down from 1895. Where this account differs from others in the archive, both are kept.
Accession TA-2026-0009
Recorded in Olutachoni · audio, 31 min
A migration account. One of four differing versions the archive holds. None is presented as the settled version.
Accession TA-2026-0007
Matulo · video, 39 min
Voices we have recorded
Dispatches
News from the Trust
What the Trust is doing
The register is how the Trust keeps in touch — one list, one consent, and you can leave it whenever you like.
The Tachoni Heritage & Development Trust keeps the register, the archive and the record of the Tachoni people.
The record
Our people
Find us
Webuye Town
Bungoma County, Kenya
By appointment — write to us first