ABSTRACT
In Turkanaland the basic family group which emerges in actual life as a legally independent, stock-owning, more or less self-sufficient unit will here be called the nuclear family. This may be described in a preliminary way as a man and his wives and children. A daughter leaves it when she marries and she then joins her husband's nuclear family. Sons remain within the group together with their wives and children, though they tend increasingly to achieve a considerable degree of autonomy together with physical and economic separation. The Turkana refer to this group by the general word awi, which means literally ‘a homestead’ in the physical sense of thorn fences, huts, kraals, etc. By extension, awi also means the people who normally occupy the homesteads of an independent man and who join in the care and use of the domestic stock kraaled there.
