A very resourceful thread this one!!!

Fafanua. Which hako? Like "hako ka mtu" or "uuki wa hako", "ngoima ya hako" or in what context?

this has always been a pet project of mine. My thesis is a bunch of bantus always wanted to go east but if you look the nilotes and cushites have always blocked them. The Maasai to me are more cushitic than nilotic as genetic studies have shown they have 20% ethio-somali makeup. but back to my point. the western side of South Sudan has bantu people who are indistingushable from some kikuyus - the Azande people. their east wards movement was curtailed when they met the Nilotes of Central Equitoria and the Dinkas. Same thing happened in UG and those that managed to cross (possibly before the luos got to the lake) were stopped on their tracks by the groups we call "kalenjin" and to my knowledge no bantu group ever migrated through maasai lands they had to go south and circumvent the maa people then come north. their northern movement was stopped by the cushitic people. some of the traditions these bantus have were actually borrowed from the maa people who in turn borrowed them from the hamitic groups. for example circumcision is not common south of the maasai it's only in pockets here and there.

Your pet project....makes the 2 of us. The assertion that Bantu oriented towards East makes lots of sense. But I think the northward movement was curtailed more by lack of arable land north of mt. Kenya (after mt kenya, the rest of N.E Africa is semi- or desert). Those who went south - if we take dispersal point is tropical forests of central Africa - never encountered a dry schism as they kept S.E trajectory. All the way to the Cape.

Same theory as to why Nilotes and cushites did not venture further south...as there was abundant savanna rangelands (plaine nilotes) and water (river-lake) around the great lakes region. Could 'mfecane' have taken place just as River Nilotes were going round the great lakes curve thus preventing nilotic discovery of the Zambezi?

Human migration is a continous, unstoppable process. Many indicators point to another major wave of movements akin to Euro-American migration 300yrs ago.

When dust settles in next 100 years, methinks major ethnic blocks in the world will be Afro-Chinese (mixed race) and Indians in south east hemisphere incl Pacific, Arab-Turkik in Europe and northern Asia (complete with their religion) as Latino dominates all of America, North and south.