The Luo moved south from the upper Nile between the 15th and 18th centuries, crossing what would become Uganda before settling along Lake Victoria's eastern shore. They came in waves, not as a single migration, following the Nile's tributaries until they reached Nyanza. The journey reshaped them. By the time they arrived in western Kenya, they were no longer simply Nilotic pastoralists but a people whose identity would be defined by the lake, by fishing, by a language that carried memory of the river they left behind.