Ongamo

The Ongamo, also called Ngasa, are an Eastern Nilotic people of the northeastern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, whose language is a close relative of the Maa tongues spoken by the Maasai and Samburu. In the 1100s Ongamo speakers spread onto the plains north of the mountain, when their speech was still mutually intelligible with proto-Maa; their retained vocabulary shows they grew sorghum and finger millet.

Over the following five centuries the immigration of Bantu-speaking Chagga farmers up the mountain slopes steadily enclosed and reduced the Ongamo communities, who gradually gave up their language for Kichagga and were absorbed into the Chagga chiefdoms of Kilimanjaro.