1. The Maasai -
East Africa’s Most Celebrated Indigenous Peoples
 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, scattered populations of Maasai can
be found in Kenya 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.
Page 2 Article on the Maasai People
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