Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Akan
The Akan comprise a cluster of peoples living in southern and central Ghana and in southeastern Ivory Coast. They form a series of distinct kingdoms and share a common language, known as Twi, which has many dialects. Twi is a tonal...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Afar
The Afar occupy an area of Djibouti and northeastern Ethiopia, sometimes called the Afar Triangle. There is a long history of hostility between the Afar and the surrounding groups; the Afar are often considered fierce and warlike. The...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Kpelle Kinship
The Kpelle are the largest ethnic group in the West African nation of Liberia and a significant group in neighboring Guinea. They are arguably the most rural and conservative of the major Liberian peoples. The only significant kin group...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Kurds
The Kurds have inhabited an area of rugged mountains and high plains at the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for over two thousand years. Their traditional mode of subsistence is pastoralism and agriculture. The territory...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Lango
The Lango are one of the largest of the non-Bantu ethnic groups in Uganda. Since Ugandas independence, the Lango have become integrated into national political life. Music and dance are important aspects of Lango life; the finger piano,...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Lobi Dagarti Peoples
The terms "LoDagaa" and "Lobi-Dagarti" (or Dagara) are used for a cluster of peoples situated across the frontier of Burkina Faso and Ghana. Hoe farming of cereals (sorghum, pennisetum [pearl millet], maize), together with some yams are...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Lozi
The Lozi consist of a number of interrelated ethnic groups located along the Zambezi River in Barotse Province of western Zambia. The term "Lozi" refers both to the Lozi proper and to those groups that have become subject to and...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Luba of Shaba
The patrilineal Luba of Shaba differ in their descent system from the Eastern Luba by their culture and language, they are distinct from the Western Luba. Most live in southern Zaire. The Luba practice slash-and-burn agriculture; fields...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Lunda
"Lunda" is the most widely used English term to refer to literally hundreds of social groups whose oral histories link them in varying ways to a far-flung empire that controlled trade and tribute in much of Central Africa from the...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Maasai
The Maasai comprise a federation of tribal sections whose economy is based on nomadic pastoralism. Because each tribal section is effectively autonomous, both economically and socially, there is a considerable diversity in custom between...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Mangbetu
The Mangbetu live in the northeastern corner of Zaire. They are the founders of one of the few centralized political systems in Central Africa. The Mangbetu achieved a very high level of technological and material development, as...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Mende
The Mende are a group of people who live primarily within the southern third of Sierra Leone. They live primarily in villages of 70 to 250 residents. There is little or no mechanization; farmers use hoes and machetes, but few other...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Mijikenda
The group known as the Mijikenda is made up of nine closely related but distinct peoples - the Kauma, Chonyi, Jibana, Giriama, Kamabe, Ribe, Rabai, Duruma, and Digo - who live along the coast of Kenya and share a common linguistic and...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Mongo
The Mongo inhabit the Congo Basin of central Zaire. They speak a dialect or language within a larger group of Mongo languages. Ideological and moral principles and social reality are mirrored in the culture of the Mongo, particularly in...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Nandi and Other Kalenjin Peoples Kinship
Nandi; about one-third of all Kalenjin and second-largest of the Kalenjin subgroups, they are geographically the most centrally located. The Kalenjin live mainly in the highland of western Kenya, although the Sebei and some Pokot are...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Ndebele
The people refer to themselves as "Amandebele," or "Ndzundza" or "Manala," denoting the two main tribal groupings. Early writers used the term "Transvaal Ndebele" to distinguish them from the Zimbabwean Ndebele. The majority of Ndebele...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Ndembu
The Ndembu inhabit the western portion of Mwinilunga District in Zambia's Northwestern Province. The Ndembu, numbering about 40,000 in Zambia, constitute about 1 percent of the total population. Some 40 percent of Ndembu are now...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Nestorians
The designation "Nestorian" connotes both a religious rite and a linguistic minority, a phenomenon that is often misunderstood. Nestorians today, some 100,000 of them, have found a lasting home in the mountains of Kurdistan, the...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Nubians
The Nubians are a non-Arab Muslim population who lived in the geographical region known as Nubia in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Aswan High Dam Lake forced relocation for 120,000 beginning in 1964. Among the Egyptian Nubians this...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Nuer
The Nuer speak of themselves as "Naath," or "human beings." Nuerland is located in the southern Sudan. The Nuer believe that all life comes from Kowth and returns to the same divinity at death. The Nuer pray for health and well-being to...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Nuristanis
The area known as Nuristan is located at the southern end of the Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan. There are limited amounts of arable land in the Hindu Kush, but there are abundant amounts of pastureland well suited for...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Nyamwezi and Sukuma
The Nyamwezi and Sukuma are two closely related ethnic groups that live mostly in the region to the south of Lake Victoria in west-central Tanzania. Beliefs in a High God are widely held but involve no special cult. Belief in witchcraft...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Okiek
"Okiek" is the name of a Kenyan people who formerly lived by hunting game, making beehives, and gathering and trading honey; it is also the name of their language. The collective name "Okiek" includes over two dozen local groups, each...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Pashai
The Pashai are an ethnic group located in the northeast corner of Afghanistan. They are estimated to number about 108,000 (1982). "Pashai" is the term used to refer to a specific language, to the speakers of that language, and to the...