Luoland (historically "

Kavirondo Kavirondo is the former name of the region surrounding Kavirondo Gulf (now Winam Gulf) as well as of two native peoples living there under the regime of British East Africa (The " Nilotic Kavirondo" and the " Bantu Kavirondo"). Broadly, this was d ...

") is the tribal homeland of the Kenya Luo (also called Jo-Luo or Kavirondo), a people of western Kenya, also extending into eastern Uganda and northern Tanzania. This area consists roughly of the basin surrounding

Winam Gulf Winam Gulf is a significant extension of northeastern Lake Victoria into western Kenya. Formerly known as Kavirondo Gulf, Nyanza Gulf, and Lake Nyanza Gulf, it is a shallow inlet and is connected to the main lake by Rusinga Channel ( wide), which ...

Lake Victoria Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. With a surface area of approximately , Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropics, tropical lake, and the world's second-largest fresh water lake by surface are ...

. Non-Luo tribal areas abutting upon Luoland include those of the

Padhola The Adhola people, also known as Jopadhola, are a Nilotic ethnic group of Luo peoples that live in Tororo District of Eastern Uganda and comprise about eight percent of the country's total population. They speak Dhopadhola, (a Luo language), ...

(to the west, in

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

), the

Luhya Luhya or Abaluyia may refer to: * Luhya people * Luhya language {{disambig Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...

and

Nandi Nandi may refer to: People * Nandy (surname), Indian surname * Nandi (mother of Shaka) (1760–1827), daughter of Bhebe of the Langeni tribe * Onandi Lowe (born 1974), Jamaican footballer nicknamed Nandi * Nandi Bushell (born 2010), South Afr ...

(to the north), the Kipsigis (to the east), and the Gusii and Kuria (to the south). The first Luo migrants to present day Luoland arrived from present day Uganda sometime around 1500 AD. The first European to enter Luoland was Joseph Thomson who struggled into the Kavirondo village of Kabaras on 28 November 1883. Thomson was shocked and made much ado over the habitual nakedness of the Luo which was in marked contrast with the tribes he had previously travelled among, but he ultimately decided that "morality has nothing to do with clothes" because the Luo were "the most moral of all the tribes in this region".

Kisumu Kisumu ( ) is the third-largest city in Kenya located in the Lake Victoria area in the former Nyanza Province. It is the second-largest city after Kampala in the Lake Victoria Basin. The city has a population of slightly over 600,000. The ...

is the largest town in Luoland, and also the third (or fourth) largest city in

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

References

Regions of Kenya Geography of Kenya {{Kenya-geo-stub