The Zulu peoples may have been the true warriors of Africa,
but the Maasai are the ones which now best represent tribal Africa.
Although they only account for less than 5% of the population in Kenya and
Tanzania, the Maasai have a very high visibility with the men wearing their red
plaid blankets, carrying a club and spear, and with bright plate like
necklaces, and considerable body decorations including burn scars and
tattooing, as well as ear lobe cutting, sometimes twisting and contorting them
into near knots. Descendents from Nilotic people who 1,000 years ago migrated
from the Sudan
south to the Serengeti, these tall, slim, striking, nomadic herdsmen, to this
day, tenaciously maintain their traditional life style.
Aside from the thousands we saw tending their herds of cows,
goats, and sheep, we had occasion to visit a Maasai village in the Mara. Our
guide was named Benson. He spoke near perfect Queen’s English but he wore all
the traditional clothing and trappings, the red plaid blanket, the neck
jewelry, his ear lobes had holes in them, he carried a club and spear. We were
first welcomed by Maasai warriors doing their traditional jumping dance,
bounding straight up and down while they chanted and sang. Then the women did a
dance to greet us. Then we were shown how they make fire rubbing sticks
together (in case they were to lose their lighters which are usually tucked
into their belts with their cell phones, I guess). This is all pretty standard
tourist stuff.
The village itself consisted of about 30 huts formed into a
tight circle. To protect their animals from predators, at night the cattle are
driven into the circle and the gate closed, so the center courtyard is really
just mud and cow shit. The houses are the most primitive I have ever seen
anywhere. It seems the warriors’ job is to tend the herds while the women do
most everything else including making the houses. They are made from branches
with twigs woven into them and then this frame is plastered with cow dung. That’s
it, branches and cow shit. Nothing else. Houses are quite small and the
doorways even smaller, so the men, many of them 6½ feet tall, have to stoop
very low to enter.
While viewing inside a house just being built, a stick bug
dropped on my hand. When Benson saw it he insisted this was great good fortune
for me and led me to his house where I was taken inside. It was very dark, just
a little sunlight making its way in through two very small windows, and filled
with smoke from a small fire smoldering away in the middle of the floor. In the
hazy darkness, I could make out that the home was only about 14’ x 12’, roughly
divided into three rooms. Five people lived in it. Benson had his mother pour
some milk on my stick bug and then once back outside; he carefully picked it
off my hand and set it on a tree branch. I am not sure what it was all about.
In the past, all young men left their village for a period
of years where they tended a herd and were accorded ‘warrior’ status after they
had killed a lion. With diminishing land, and lions, available to them, this
tradition is dying. I did meet one young warrior, James (he had brothers Joseph
and John), who told me he had killed a lion. He was only 16 years old and I
expressed some considerable skepticism. He insisted it was true and showed me
an ugly scar on his thigh from the lion’s claw, claiming he had killed the lion
when it attacked his cows. I believed him, and I was later to learn he was only
one of five true warriors in the village of 380 people.
As nomadic herdsmen, Maasai cultivate little if anything. Rather,
their diet consists largely of milk mixed with cow’s blood, and a few herbs and
plants which they can pick. They ‘harvest’ the blood about once a month from
each cow, tapping into the carotid artery. About one litre is taken each time. They
do slaughter their livestock but actually eat meat infrequently.
The Maasai tenaciously defend their culture in the face of
considerable outside pressures. I consider myself a solid ‘liberal’ in my view
on the equality of man. I recall the sign over the door of the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City which I visited many years ago,
and which made a great impression on me.
“All mankind seeks to satisfy
the same needs. No one way is more valid than another.”
In my liberal view, I have readily accepted that I am better
than no others. It is quite humbling to meet people living in houses made of
dung and subsisting on milk and blood who feel infinitely superior to me,
totally reject my way, and determined to maintain theirs. I suppose accepting
that fact will make me a true liberal.
Maasai People & Village
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