Dahalo People and their Culture in Kenya

Dahalo is an endangered South Cushitic language spoken by at most 400 Dahalo people on the coast of Kenya, near the mouth of the Tana River.

Imagine tribesmen, for whom the sight of any visitors is more than often a huge intrusion. People, who only the elderly among them can speak their language, whose culture has been assimilated and is still under siege, and who are now fighting for their identity.

They are about 400 people who are able to speak the language. It is unlikely that children are still being taught the Dahalo language of this Kenya tribe.

The Dahalo are dispersed among Swahili and other Bantu peoples, with no villages of their own, and are bilingual in those languages.

Dahalo has a highly diverse sound system using all four airstream mechanisms found in human language: clicks, ejectives, and implosives, as well as the universal pulmonic sounds.

It is suspected that the Dahalo may have once spoken a Sandawe- or Hadza-like language, and that they retained clicks in some words.

They are often referred as the remnants of Africa's oldest cultural group the san.

They were hunter/gatherers, with traditionally about 80% of their diet consisting of plant food, including berries, nuts, roots and melons gathered primarily by the women and the rest 20% composed of meat from wild animals.

Their social structure was not tribal since they didn’t have a paramount leader.

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