There is no single account of where the Tachoni came from, and the Trust does not intend to manufacture one. What follows is what elders have told us, set out separately, so that you can see where they agree and where they do not.

The account most often given

A long migration from El-Matruh on the Egyptian coast, southward along the Nile and into the lakes region. It is shared in broad outline with several Luhya groups and it is the version most people have heard.

It is also the version most often repeated online without a source. We record it because elders give it, not because it has been established.

The Kalenjin thread

A second tradition places sustained contact with Kalenjin-speaking peoples during the southward movement. This is the explanation usually offered for the features of Olutachoni that set it apart from the speech of our Bukusu neighbours — and for practices we share with communities to the east rather than the west.

Of the accounts held, this is the one with the most independent support: the language itself.

The Sirikwa question

A third account connects the community to the Sirikwa — the name attached to the people who left the hollows and cattle enclosures scattered across the western highlands. Some elders use Sirikwa as an old name for the Tachoni themselves. Others treat it as a separate people we encountered.

The archive holds both positions. Neither is presented as settled.

What we can say with confidence

• The community has been recorded under at least five names — Kitoki, Kitosh, Sirikwa, Evekwe, Tashone — which is why its history is filed in several places and often under someone else’s heading.
• Olutachoni differs from neighbouring speech in ways that point to contact rather than simple descent.
• The clan structure is intact and can still be recorded from living memory. That will not be true in twenty years.

How to read this page. Where an account is attributed, the archive holds the recording it came from. Where it is not, it is circulating without a source and we say so. If your family carries a version that is not here, that is precisely what we want to record.

In draft, awaiting elder review.