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Turkana
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Turkana youth wearing traditional headresses Thematic map of East Africa displaying major cultural and linguistic regions, with areas shaded for Bantu, Cushitic, and Nilotic language groups. Red lines mark cultural region boundaries and rift areas, with numbered labels identifying specific ethnic groups and languages across countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, and parts of neighboring nations.
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Turkana youth wearing traditional headresses
Turkana youth wearing traditional headresses Turkana youth wearing traditional headresses, Kenya.

Turkana

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Turkana, a people living in the arid, sandy expanse of northwestern Kenya, from Lake Rudolf (Lake Turkana) to the Ugandan border. The Turkana speak an Eastern Nilotic language of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Their language closely resembles that of the Teso. They apparently moved to their present lands about 200 years ago from an area now in northeastern Uganda where the closely related Jie and Karimojong still live. The Turkana resisted British conquest, and a...

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