ABSTRACT
'Rendille' in its widest sense denotes all those who speak Rendille. These include the nine clans of 'Rendille proper', or 'white' Rendille as they occasionally call themselves and are called by their neighbours. A clan is composed of between two and seven subclans and is the largest group which is exogamous for all its members. Exogamy can extend beyond clan boundaries, but this only concerns adoptive brotherhoods between single subclans. Odoola is not a clan, but, like its Gabbra equivalent, a phratry or confederation of clans. As Odoola, however, is smaller than the smallest subclan of many other clans, it is, in any enumeration, either listed as a clan or forgotten altogether. As internally differentiated communities of co-operation it is the single phratries, and not the whole of Gabbra, which in their age-set rituals resemble the Rendille tribe. The five phratries or 'tribes', gos, clearly appear as corporate units.
