Maasai

For the past month, I've been living amongst the Maasai in Kenya. Our camp lies on the edge of Masai Mara Reserve and is surrounded by traditional Maasai bomas. Maasai warriors serve as our guards.

I find this tribe fascinating. The safari industry has made them a bit of an icon or attraction, but it is not for show. They maintain their culture. They remain herders by nature, moving every few years to new grazing land. They are not nomadic, but migratory; villages are typically deserted every 4-6 years. The Maasai tribe is organized into family clans, clustered in these small manyatta villages. Clans have chiefs and mzee elders who still take multiple wives. A Maasai elder may marry first at 17 or 18 years old, and three or four more times through the age of 60. As such, families are enormous, and manyattas typically form around one elder head-of-household. Wealth is indicated by the size of the herd; chiefs can have hers of thousands of cattle.

Within the household, women essentially do all the work. Children are the herders; from the age of 4 until adult passage, young boys lead goats and cattle to graze. The women work all day, gathering firewood, fetching water, cooking, etc. They even build the simple mud-caked huts themselves. The husband is usually employed and away from the home for weeks on end, often working somewhere in the safari industry. Once a man becomes an elder, he often spends the day resting, discussing politics with the rest of the wazee council, drinking tea and beer.

The Maasai are striking in appearance. They wrap themselves in traditional red or green blankets, with bare legs and hooped ears. They are rail-thin, with small heads, very dark and smooth-skinned. Men and women keep their heads shaved. They have piercing stares and fantastic smiles. Many of the women are beautiful.

They still practice their traditional ceremonial rites. Boys pass into adulthood through circumcision rite; marriages are weeklong celebrations. Maasai warriors are inducted in a special ceremony, after which they must withdraw from society to hunt and learn tactics. They select a bow or a spear, and many of them still earn their rights to return to society through killing a lion (although conservation agreements have shut this practice down in some areas). They have a devastating poison concoction for dipping their spearheads and arrowheads in - some infusion of roots and leaves and animal remains that can bring down an adult elephant after one shot. They also select a few young men to become medicine men. The Maasai warriors are traditionally most feared in Africa.

These are our guards, or askaris. They patrol around camp in silence. Often I am walking around and look left or right to find one of them a couple of feet away, just watching and smiling. They tend to pop out of nowhere like that. It is something special to watch them in action, when a stray buffalo or cat (they leave elephants alone) comes too close to camp. They run like the wind, then move silently through the bush to surround the animal and drive it out, rarely resorting to a fight. However, I'm told our 60-year-old senior askari (the one I piss off in a few paragraphs) can still bring down a lion from 100 yards with his bow. And their senses for picking out animals are incredible. Last week, staring over a vast valley in the Mara, my spotter Soombe located a pride of lions and a rhino from over a mile away. Both were invisible to my naked eye (even through binoculars), but he can see their contrast or locate them by watching the behavior or birds or other animals close by.

As much as any other people I've encountered, the Maasai have held to their traditional culture; they have forced a booming safari industry to respect and bend around their traditions, rather than compromising for the sake of wealth. But they continue to encourage development, and they realize that their business interests lie in wildlife conservation. I think they have struck a balance, using the industry to their advantage while maintaining their customs.

The Maasai have formed partnerships with safari camps that least their land. They are benefitting from conservation initiatives and their leaders serve as shareholders in these camps. They are using profit shares to build clinics and schools. While a few of the Maasai youth are leaving to attend universities and trading their red garments for clothes in our style, the culture remains essentially untainted by the outside world.

While I view these partnerships as innovative and effective, they are not without issue. The process of negoitating with the Maasai community is long and tedious, and very political. Camps agree to employ tribesmen in various roles, but there is a fine line of trust between both parties. The Maasai are fiercely protective of their land rights, and simple border disputes can drone on for months, or even edge on the point of conflict.

I learned this first-hand. Here I have a story to demonstrate. As part of one of our conservancy projects, I am doing a lot of gps-mapping and logging. A couple of weeks ago, reading off of old maps and data, I went out to put in a couple of border posts. We have been marking boundary points to keep herds from drifting into protected areas to graze. At one point, I put a new marker in at an area that was obviously grazing ground. Bad judgment call. Somehow, in the five minutes time it took me to walk back to camp, our askari (the senior one) whose land it was had heard all about it, and was at the office tent already - absolutely livid. We heard him lighting up the radio before we got there. When we arrived, he was waiting, spitting, kicking dirt, yelling to nobody in particular, had one of his arrows out, staring at me with the look of death. In that moment, I represented the second colonial era to him - the white man coming to steal more land. It was a piss fit, to be sure. So a group of us went out and pulled the stake. Sometimes we just have to choose battles here. Though it was in the correct point, it would have meant conflict and countless meetings with the surrounding community. After we pulled the stake, he was the happiest man around, smiling and laughing and thrilled to have his land back. Now, every morning, he walks up and shakes my hand with both of his, smiling a huge toothless smile.

Random note - I was musing last week about how much I miss music. This past weekend, James - one of my Maasai friends - somehow pirated three CD's for me. He gave me Jack Johnson, Matchbox 20, and George Strait. I could have cried in gratitude. One of the best-timed gifts I have ever received.

Peace & Love.