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I Say To You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya. By Gabrielle Lynch. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 201 1 . Pp. xiii, 283; 2 maps. $80.00 cloth, $27.50 paper.
Given historians' interest in the invention of tribes, it is surprising that the Kalenjin of Kenya have gone without significant scholarly attention. Perhaps their invention was too obvious, for it can be located with jarring precision. In the 1940s, a Nandi radio announcer opened broadcasts with "I say to you"- kalenjin. A variety of groups soon adopted the term as a tribal signifier to unite peoples linguistically related, but with little prior sense of cultural or political kinship, and who were spread across hundreds of miles of Kenya's Rift Valley. Our ignorance of this "tribe" is yet more surprising given that former president Daniel arap Moi is Kalenjin. That much of the post-election violence of 2007-2008 took place in the Rift Valley increases our need to understand their history
In this fascinating book, Lynch offers a strikingly new interpretation of Kalenjin politics over the past seventy years. This is a full, rich book, brimming over with the personalities and intrigues typical of Kenya's high-stakes, soap operatic, political world. Lynch disabuses us of most of what we thought we knew about...