The Maasai - East Africa's Most Celebrated Indigenous Peoples
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1. The Maasai - East Africa's Most Celebrated Indigeous People
The
Maasai are East Africa’s most celebrated
indigenous peoples. Tall, dark and slender, they have for long remained
contemptuous of modern lifestyle. They are a fearless, proud, and
freedom loving
people, who have always infatuated romantic esterners, since the
appearance of explorer Joseph Thomson’s book “Through Maasailand” in
1885.
Their interpreters to the world have included such gifted writers as
Karen Blixen and Ernest Hemingway.
The
Maasai are a pastoral tribes-group native to southern Kenya and
north-central Tanzania, along the Great Rift Valley plains. They are
great herders of cattle who live in the open wild, sharing their habitat
with wildlife.
They deem themselves as sons of enkai –a monotheistic God, who gifted
them with cattle – in fact all the cattle in the world. With this
certain
knowledge, they do not associate cattle raids with any guilt, but more
like a restoration to the rightful owners.
Thought to have
originated from
the Nile Valley in Sudan, the Maasai migrated southward sometimes
between the 14th and 16th centuries, probably in search of greener
pastures for their
beloved cattle. Along the way, they fiercely fought and displaced tribes
they encountered. Around the 18th and 19th centuries, these nomadic Maa
speaking
Nilotes settled in their present domains in Kenya and Tanzania.
News
of the Maasai’s military prowess travelled far and wide and Arab slave
traders and European explorers avoided them. Their African neighbours
feared them and to secure the peace, the more calculating established
trade and
marriage relations. The ascendancy of the Maasai over rivals at this
time imbued them with an arrogance and belief in the correctness of
their way of life
that persists to this day.
From around the 1830’s, Maasai
strength was sapped by civil war. This internal weakness led to gradual
loss of
territory to long-suffering neighbours such as the Nandi and Kipsigis.
With the arrival of the British in the late 19th century, the Maasai
suffered a series
of severe setbacks from which they have never fully recovered.
Around
the decade 1880-1890, their cattle were ravaged by diseases such as
rinderpest
that saw herds diminish by about 80%. The human population was not
spared either; an unholy combination of smallpox,cholera and famine
brought down the
population from about 500,000 to 40,000.
Thoroughly weakened, the
Maasai succumbed -after some attempts to resist, to the British plan to
settle
over the best of their lands. The 1904 Maasai Agreement saw to the loss
of two thirds of Maasai territories. This was followed by forced
relocations to the
mostly marginal lands they occupy today. Throughout British rule,
various devices- such as a levy on Maasai cattle during World War II,
were employed to
limit their demands for land.
The departure of the British from
Kenya in 1963 did not result in any significant restoration of their
land rights,
but indeed brought about further losses, such as that which came with
the establishment of the Maasai Mara game reserve. They did not fare any
better in
Tanzania.
Today, when you take a cultural safari in Kenya,
you can find scattered populations of Maasai in
Naivasha, Laikipia and regions south of Nairobi including Narok and
Kajiado, and the Trans-Mara region bordering Tanzania. Tanzania’s Maasai
population
can be found at Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Mondulai, as far as Arusha,
and the Maasai Steppe area south of Pangani River. Still, 80% of these
areas are
reserved for wildlife conservation.
Traditional Maasai society
had no centralised political structures, and governance relied heavily
on the age-set
system. Among men, there were pre-adolescent herds-boys, warriors and
the elders –each with a team leader. The senior elders sat on top of the
heap;
they were paramount and their decisions final. The women and children
fell under the male head of the home. In addition, a laibon - a
spiritual leader with
grand powers, including healing, divination and prophecy, presided over
religious matters and determined when to wage war.
Ownership of
cattle is
the key measure of a man’s wealth and status. The more cattle a man has,
the more wives he may marry. This in turn leads to more wealth by way
of
children, for children are another measure of wealth. Indeed a common
Maasai prayer is: "May the Creator give us cattle and children”. The
Maasai
are passionate about their herds and take great pains to ensure their
increase- by means fair or foul.
They also keep other low status
livestock
such as sheep, goats and chicken, and donkeys for use as pack animals.
Farming, a sedentary lifestyle, and the implied loss of freedom to
wander the fields
bequeathed by enkai, are frowned upon as unworthy of such an honourable
people.
The Maasai are generally splendid specimen, who revere
physical
beauty and wear such adornments as to enhance it. You will find them
bedecked with heavy handmade bead jewellery, and their elongated
earlobes dangling with
beads and shapely objects. They also wear large disks or single strand
beaded necklaces, anklets, wristlets, headbands, waistbands, and rings.
And for those
who cannot see all this, they attach small metallic pieces to their
clothes that chime as they walk along.
Bright red is by far the
Maasai’s
favourite colour. In traditional regalia, the young warriors dress in
short crimson wrap-skirts and smear their hair with red ochre. The
elderly men dress in
long red wrap-robes and sash in red shukka –blankets, while the women
dress in colourful clothing, red being the dominant shade. Blue is the
colour
every married woman has to wear to attract enkai’s blessing of children.
Green is the colour of blessing, like the grass for their cattle.
The
Maasai are keen about hair and skin. But only three categories of people
are allowed to wear hair: an unnamed child, a barren woman and a moran
–warrior. Warriors spend good time braiding their hair; they then apply
red ochre, which they also use to embellish their skin. Such grooming is
invaluable in attracting girlfriends at this stage of their life.
Song
and dance is a part of the living culture, and Maasai’s perform a dance
at every ceremony and sometimes for mere entertainment. Adorned in huge
beaded neck disks, the women move rhythmically and lithely as the men
make sudden
vertical leaps to amazing heights of up to 5 ft off the ground. Usually
after the evening meal, families gather round a fire and tell stories
and myths, then
round off the night with some dance and chanting.
Among the
Maasai, childbirth is an occasion of great joy. The newborn is given a
nickname, until
about six months when the child undergoes its first ritual –embarnoto e
nkerai, which is an equivalent of christening. The child’s head is
shaven
clean, and thereafter given a proper name.
At about the age of
five – ten years, girls and boys are separated and each trained
according to
gender expectations. The boys learn to herd cattle as the girls are
taught to be useful around the homestead. This period is challenging for
the boy child,
as he begins to spend days away from his mother. In the macho Maasai
culture, it is believed that having a boy hanging around his mother for
long may pulp
his character.
On the contrary, the girls are expected to keep
even closer to their mothers, from whom they learn crucial life skills.
One important
thing she must learn is to build a manyatta –the Maasai traditional
house. This house is loaf shaped, built with closely woven sticks and
sealed with
grass and leaves. The structure is then plastered with fresh cow-dung
and urine mixed with clay, creating a hard cement-like shell.
The
hut is
usually low, smoky and dark inside, though small holes are punctured on
the sides for ventilation. It takes months to build one and this task is
specifically
reserved for women. 10-20 manyattas built to form a circle make a
homestead, accommodating more than one family and a cattle Kraal.
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The
Maasai are a pastoral tribes-group native to southern Kenya and
north-central Tanzania, along the Great Rift Valley plains. They are
great herders of cattle who live in the open wild, sharing their habitat
with wildlife.
They deem themselves as sons of enkai –a monotheistic God, who gifted
them with cattle – in fact all the cattle in the world. With this
certain
knowledge, they do not associate cattle raids with any guilt, but more
like a restoration to the rightful owners.
