The Degere are a Mijikenda-speaking group of former hunter-gatherers of Kenya and Tanzania, now settled along the Ramisi, Mwena and Umba rivers, with a few along the coast.
[1] A former arrow-poison trader reported that when he visited the Degere at Mkoseka in northern Tanzania in 1959, among themselves they spoke their own language, which he said was similar to Waata.
[2] Half of the words were clearly related to Waata, though with some differences in pronunciation and meaning, but the rest were obscure and could not be identified with a known language, though this was complicated by the difficulty of recall, and possibility that errors or distortions crept in over time.
[1] The Waata say they had a language of their own before shifting to Oromo, so another possibility is that the Degere split from the Waata and traveled south, away from Oromo influence, before that shift was complete, and so retained part of that earlier language in their lexicon.
[3] The name 'Degere' is the root of the Mijikenda name, mudegere (sg) / adegere (pl), from the verb kudegere 'to roam', presumably reflecting their former hunter-gatherer economy.