Family, Kinship and Women
The Iteso are a patrilineal people with three levels of patrilineal descent. The nominal clans are nonexogamous name-bearing units associated with Iteso historical narratives and ideas about the inheritance of character. Nominal clans are divided into clans, within which marriage is forbidden. Exogamous clans are further divided into lineages, with genealogies three to five generations deep, whose primary duty is to supply support and attendance on ritual occasions such as funeral rites.
Marriages are alliances between spouses but also between two exogamous clans. Values associated with ideals of male and female achievement, particularly those connected with childbearing, are very significant for the Iteso. Traditionally, women were closely supervised from marriage through the end of their fertile period.
More than one-third of all men and a majority of all women are married polygynously. Men leave three kinds of property: land, cattle, and personal property such as shops and cash. Sons assume the right to family land when they marry; when an elder dies, any remaining land is divided among his unmarried sons. Cattle are inherited by the sons of each mother. Children leave their natal household at marriage, and women most often go to live with their youngest son when he has married. Divorce is rare3. Whenever divorced happened the parents of girl were required to return bride wealth that was paid when taking the girl from their parents.
The division of labor among the Iteso is characterized by the radical separation of the sexes in subsistence and ritual activities.
Women’s forms of social organization include special, ritually defined friendships, labour cooperatives, groups formed to heal illness caused by spirit possession, and, since the mid-1980s, church groups.
Arts, food and drink
Pottery making by women and musical-instrument making by men are widely practiced. The verbal arts—which include a cycle of trickster tales, proverbs, and storytelling are widely respected.
The primary context for local cultural learning was the grandmother’s hut, where many children used to spend considerable time learning folklore and customs, enjoying storytelling and the expressive arts.4
Teso are known to love their locally brewed millet beer. In Uganda a joke is often told that to prove an Itesot is dead, tempt them by placing a calabash filled with ajon (millet beer) by their mouth. If they don’t wake up, then indeed they are dead. They have a belief that neighbors are ‘people with whom one shares beer’. Millet is their staple food. Millet is often served on one plate which is shared communally. Other varieties of foods include pumpkins, wild berries, peas, groundnuts, peas, and beans, meat of both domestic and wild animals, milk, butter and fish.5
History
The Teso (or Iteso) are an African people that reside primarily in western Kenya and in northern and eastern Uganda. Iteso are of plain-nilotic descent, who have close relations to the Maasai and Turkana. They represent the last large-scale tribal movement into Western Kenya in the precolonial period. Teso traditions are said to have originated somewhere in Sudan and moved south over a period of centuries. There origins were in Ethiopia. There are people in Southern Ethiopia called Omuut, which is a typical Iteso name.
Much of the traditional culture and organization of the Teso was lost when they were conquered by the Ganda under Kakunguru at the end of the 19th century.6
Language
Teso refers to the traditional homeland of the Iteso – the plural meaning two or more Teso. Ateso is their language. Ateso is part of the Teso–Turkana language cluster. The Teso Branch is further divided into speakers of Ateso (the language of the Iteso) and those of the Karamojong cluster, including the Turkana, Ikaramojong, Jie, and Dodoth in Kenya and Uganda. Iteso of Kenya recognize three dialect groups, which have had different external cultural influences.
The organization Ateso teaches and promotes the Ateso language. ʻLearn Ateso Greetings’ is available from the Polyglotclub.com on YouTube.
Common Ateso words:
atesot is a female person from Teso
etesot is a male person from Teso
aijar ‘life’
alakara ‘happiness’
papa ‘father’
toto ‘mother’
apese ʻ girl’
etelepat/esapat ʻboy’
imukeru ‘baby’
ituŋanan ‘person’
akipi ʻwater’
akokor ʻhen’
akompiuta ʻcomputer’
emotoka ‘car’
Yoga ‘Hello’
Yoga noi (reply to Yoga)
Ijai biai (singular), Ijaasi biai (pl.) / Biaibo jo? ‘How are you?’
Ejok (reply to Biaibo jo?)
Eka’kiror ‘My name is …’
Religion and society
The Iteso believe in a divinity with different aspects, variously called akuj, “high,” or edeke, “illness.” Other entities in their pantheon included the Ajokin, little spirits of the bush, who invited people who met them to feast, providing they kept the invitation a secret. Catholic missionaries have had considerable influence among the Iteso.
Almost all indigenous religion has been replaced by Christianity. Nearly all Iteso had been baptized as Christians by the end of the 20th century.
Domestic ceremonies take place in the household and include naming rituals, the complex rites associated with marriage and birth, and rituals held to heal ill children. Mortuary rituals also take place within the household and involve ceremonies that invoke the social relations of the dead person.
At death, the body is separated from its eparait (spirit), which goes to live in the bush. Funeral rituals are a major focus of Iteso ritual life. The skeletons of dead people are exhumed after a number of years so rituals can be performed to “cool” them and make them more kindly disposed to the living.
3 Teso / Iteso. Africa 101 Last Tribes
4 Encyclopedia.com. Iteso. Citing Gulliver, Phillip H., and Pamela Gulliver (1953). The Central Nilo-Hamites. London: International African Institute.
5 National African Language Resource Center, Teso. Indiana University Bloomington
6 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Teso”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Feb. 2016,