Yaaku people

The Yaaku (often Mukogodo-Maasai) are a people living in the Mukogodo forest west of Mount Kenya, a division of the Laikipia County of The former Rift Valley Province, Kenya. Former hunter-gatherers and bee-keepers, the Yaaku assimilated to the pastoralist culture of the Maasai in the first half of the twentieth century, although some still keep bees. The reason for this transition is mostly one of social prestige. The Maasai look down upon hunter-gatherer peoples, calling them Dorobo ('the ones without cattle'), and many Yaaku consider the Maasai culture superior to their own. As a result of this decision the Yaaku almost completely gave up their Cushitic language Yaaku for the Eastern Nilotic Maasai language between 1925 and 1936.