Mythologies of the Bajuni Tribe

The Bajuni tribe (Swahili: Wabajuni) are a Bantu ethnic group who live primarily in the city of Mombasa in Kenya. Many relocated from southern Somalia to Kenya due to war with the Oromo clan Orma, who drove them out from their ancestral territory. The Bajuni people group originally principally inhabited the Bajuni Islands in the Somali Sea. Many also traditionally reside in Kenya, mainly in Mombasa and other towns in that country's Coast Provin The population's members trace their origins to diverse groups; primarily coastal Bantu peoples along the Swahili coast and Somalis from the mainland. They additionally trace their ancestry from later arrivals such as Arabs, Persians, and Somalis who have migrated there from other regions of Somalia.[4] Some also have Malay and Indonesian ancestry.[6] Bajuni clan names are of two kinds, one of Bantu origin while the others are southern Somali in origin, and one clan is even called the Garre.[7] The Katwa clan are also of Somali origin. The Bajuni follow the laws of Islam to conduct their affairs. Being Shafite Muslims, their lives revolve around the mosque and daily prayers. In the course of saying five prayers a day, they also wash at least five times. Every Muslim parent insists on giving his child the basic Islamic education. A Muslim judge, or kadhi, handles the criminal and civil disputes of the community. When a child is born, it is held up by the father, a friend, or a teacher, who recites the traditional call of prayer into its ear. From the moment of birth, the child is instructed in the basic teachings of Islam. Men are the working breadwinners. A woman's place among the Bajuni is usually in the home. She customarily leaves the house only to visit or to go to the market. Her visiting is done late in the afternoon when the housework is finished and the children are playing. The husbands like to gather at a men's meeting place or the mosque. The Bajuni are traditionally fishermen and sailors. Some also pursue other trades such as metalwork.


Bajuni, Barawe, and Banaadiri are all the same people. I myself identify as Banaadiri. Banaadir means people of the coast, and the people are called Banaadiri. Historically, the Banaadir region started north of Mogadishu, in the city of Warsheik, and stretched all the way down to Lamu, Kenya to Mombasa. The Banadiri people all don’t share a similar ancestry like the Somalis who are homogeneous. This is also the case for JareerWayne as well as all of their ancestors are different. The Bajunis are mixture of slaves mostly from Zanzibar and Arabs. They also have subclans as well. They are not only found in Lamu, Mombasa, Bajuni Islands, & Kismayu, but also inhabit Mogadishu. Barawe is a city and the people are referred to Barawanis. The most known Barawanis subclan is the Hatim. They are descendants of Omanis who went to Zanzibar before settling into the coast of Somalia. Barawanis people, although mainly inhabit the city of Barawe, they can also be found throughout the coast. I think many are confused about the Bajuni and Barawanis not being Banaadiri because they have a language similar to Swahili, but even some Banaadiri elders believe the reer Xamars also spoke a different language centuries ago but they were Somalized. The Banaadiri people are collection of many different tribes. They do not have a common ancestor. There are Banaadiris that trace their ancestry to Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, The Indian peninsula, and more. To add on, even when they trace their ancestry to those countries, they all may say a different tribe or family they come from. At the same time, what all Banaadiris have in common is that they have Bantu ancestry because intermarriage between Banaadiris and Bantus were common historically and still are today. Another thing Banaadiris have in common is that they all didn’t come to the coast of Somalia at the same time, but in different stages and purposes. Some from trade & business to spreading Islam. Mogadishu, in the modern day districts of Shingani, Xamar Wayne, and Xamar JabJab are the oldest settlements in Mogadishu. There are three ethnic groups in Somalia; which are Somali, Bantu, & Banaadiri. The Somali is a nomad and can be found in the desert lands. The Bantus are farmers and can be found around Juba & Shebelle regions, which are the agricultural regions. Banaadiris are found on the coast, which they mainly fish, trade and are merchants. But my summary is that those groups you listed do not view themselves to be different from each other. I have family who are Bajuni and Barawanis and although I’m not neither, we all call other selves Banaadiris.


The Bajuni people are a Bantu ethnic group mainly residing on the Bajuni Islands of Somalia and surrounding coastal areas between the port city of Kismayo and Mombasa area of Kenya and Somalia’s southern border. Within the Lamu archipelago lives a marginalized Bantu community with less than 100,000 people that most people do not know exists. The community have remained true to its customs and traditions. They migrated from Shungwaya(Somalia) due to conflict with the Cushitic communities, who pushed them from their native land to their current location. This tribe arose from intermarriages between Arabs and Africans many centuries ago, and with time, the Arabs influenced their cultural and religious beliefs. The Bajuni principally inhabit the tiny Bajuni Islands in the Somali Sea. Many also traditionally reside in Kenya, mainly in Mombasa and other towns in that country's Coast Province. The population's members trace their origins to diverse groups; primarily coastal Jareer a descendant of free or enslaved Bantus . And they trace their origins to the Khoisanoid hunter-gather groups, as well as later additions such as Arab, Persian and Somalis immigrants. Some also have Malay and Indonesian ancestry. The Bajuni follow the laws of Islam to conduct their affairs. Almost all are Shafite Muslims. Their lives revolve around the mosque and daily prayer. In the course of saying five prayers a day, they also wash at least five times. Every Muslim parent insists on giving his child the basic Islamic education. A Muslim judge, or kadhi, handles the criminal and civil disputes of the community. When a child is born, it is held up by the father, a friend, or a teacher, who recites the traditional call of prayer into its ear. From the moment of birth, the child is instructed in the basic teachings of Islam. Men are the working breadwinners. A woman's place among the Bajuni is usually within the home. She customarily leaves the house only to visit or to go to the market. Her visiting is done late in the afternoon when the housework is finished and the children are playing. The husbands like to gather at a men's meeting place or the mosque. The Bajuni are traditionally fishermen and sailors. Some also pursue other trades such as metalwork.


For at least five centuries, the Bajuni subsisted simply but fairly peacefully, fishing, trading, and

farming in a string of settlements from Kismayuu in southern Somalia down to the northern tip of Pate Island in Kenya, a distance of some 250 km. They were few, their mainland neighbours (recently Somali, formerly Oromo) were many, they were fairly defenceless, their mainland neighbours were armed and aggressive. The balance between them and the neighbours was fragile but stable. The main settlements were on the islands, with agricultural areas on the mainland opposite. When times got bad, Bajuni living or working on the mainland withdrew to the islands. There is little suggestion that their pastoral neighbours showed much inclination to cross over to the islands, probably because they were not too interested in what was on offer – a lot of fish, limited edible flora, and few domestic animals. In Somalia this all changed in 1991, with the fall of Siad Barre, the President of Somalia. In what follows, this period and the events from 1991 on are referred to as The Troubles. The historical balanc broke, ethnic Somalis rolled across the mainland settlements and flooded onto the islands. Ethnic Somalis (Hawiye, Darod/Marehan) decided to evict Bajunis from the islands where they had lived for centuries. Refugees tell horrific anecdotes of ethnic cleansing, involving chaos, theft, violence, rape, and murder: of mothers and daughters beaten and raped: of fathers and sons being beaten,  stabbed, shot, having their heads held under water till they drowned, being forcibly taken to Kismayu and never returning: of whole communities being moved to forced labour camps in Kismayu: of fishermen going on a fishing trip for several days and returning to find their village empty, devoid of people and families. In all likelihood, the Bajunis and their culture will be gone from Somali in the near future. At the time of writing, no one can be sure how many Bajuni remain in Somali but an informed guesstimate would be some dozens, maybe a couple of hundred. Linguistically, we can distinguish three periods in the history  of Bajuni spoken in Somalia. The first, early stage lasted for centuries up to about 1990, and in this long  period most members of the community learned Bajuni from their parents and most spoke it well.  In the second stage, which started with The Troubles in 1991, the ancestral language was no longer passed  down from one generation to the next, and has been replaced in the few Bajunis left by a Bajuni coloured  Swahili (Swahili with a Bajuni accent), where the Bajuni component varies from person to person, generation to generation, and place to place. This second stage will be short, to be soon replaced by silence, the third stage,  when Bajuni will no longer be spoken in Somalia.



Bajuni is spoken in a string of compact rural settlements,3 mainly on offshore islands, a few on the mainland, along a 250 km stretch of coast, starting in the north from Kismayu4 in southeast Somalia, down into the Lamu Archipelago in northeast Kenya, to a point on the coast opposite Pate Island. While each settlement was cohesive, most, including the island communities, controlled an agricultural area on the adjacent mainland, where crops were grown. In dangerous times, mainland dwellers moved over to the islands. During the 19th and 20th centuries, mainland settlements and the agricultural areas in Somalia were progressively abandonned, under pressure from hostile mainland neighbours. In the 19th century, Kismayu alone started to expand steadily, initially as a regional admininstrative centre, and became a magnet for non-Bajuni. It has been ravaged by war since 1991, outsiders have flooded in and it has several hundred thousand inhabitants today, of whom very few are Bajuni. Over the past centuries, Bajuni population size and distribution has changed. A half millenium ago, most of the Bajuni population seems to have lived in what is now5 Somalia. At that time, our sparse historical records suggest the total population was several thousand, perhaps a few tens of thousands, and it seems to have been a vibrant, even dominant presence on the coast of southeast Somalia and northeast Kenya (Strandes, 1971). But since then the population trickled south into what is now Kenya. Numbers today are not well known. In Somalia in 1990 the population was estimated at “a few thousand” (3,000–4,000?) (Cassanelli, 1993: 75) but today the people are much reduced in number since 1991 by ethnic cleansing and emigration. Bajuni there number at most a very few hundred, the language is largely gone. It has been described as the language of old people. In Kenya, numbers are also unclear but higher. Most Bajuni settlements were and are small, except on Pate Island, where Kidhingichini and Fadha each has today a few thousand inhabitants. While the populations of the settlements are healthy, use of Bajuni is widely replaced by Swahili in the settlements, partly due to the use of Swahili in the schools, partly due to commercial forces. There is a range of ability in Bajuni, from those few who speak mainly Bajuni (rural and older farmers, fishermen, poets, people in their homes) through the many who speak Swahili with Bajuni features embedded (many people in public), to the many who claim to be Bajuni or of Bajuni origin but speak no Bajuni (for instance in Lamu Town). No study exists of how many belong in these categories, and the census avoids the issue. In the past, the Bajuni would presumably have defined themselves in the classic way: shared language, history, and culture. Today, given the almost total loss of language, and the erosion of culture and knowledge of history, the classic definition is replaced by a feeling of ethnic Bajuniness.














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