Maasai

What would it be like if traditional Native American culture and practices were alive and well in the countryside? In East Africa, the Maasai are all around. They are very distinctive, swathed in bright robes of red, blue, and purple. The women wear a lot of jewelry and the men carry a staff. Both shave their heads.

Driving on the highways, you see them driving their cattle and goats and sheep along the footpath that parallels the highway. Children in their middle years normally have the job of taking the cattle out of the village to graze and bringing them back at night.



Mostly the Maasai are a closed culture: they live in their own villages in the traditional way with their livestock, and do not intermarry. There are some Maasai villages that welcome tourists for a fee. We visited one, and although this kind of cultural tourism is always strange, I enjoyed the experience a lot. I was very curious. We had a guide who spoke pretty good English and welcomed my questions. First the villagers did a welcoming dance for us, and helped us join in... super silly, I felt like I was straight out of a weird colonial National Geographic article, but what do I know? I am in no position to judge its authenticity. It was incredibly colorful and exotic, and to me, exhilarating -- partly because it was just so far out, I had to just decide to go with it.

Then they showed us a Maasai house. These are little domed dwellings made of sticks and thatch and cowhide. The front entrance is a bit of a sideways tunnel, so that you spiral inward; the design keeps the wind out. Inside is a little single room, with a hearth for cooking, and two bed alcoves, one for adults and one for children. It is smoky and dark. It seemed like nothing for a house, until I realized that the Maasai really live outdoors. Indoors is mainly for sleeping and cooking.

The Maasai's main livelihood is their livestock: they drink their milk as well as blood from the cattle, carefully harvested so that the cow is not harmed; they also eat meat. I wish I had asked if they eat any plants at all, but I didn't. Women build the houses and take care of the kids. Men protect the village and govern. Teenage men have a coming-of-age ritual in which they are circumcised, paint themselves black with white-patterned faces (very fierce and mysterious looking), and live on their own outside the village for six months, returning at night to eat and sleep. Young children go to school in a village schoolhouse, supposedly, although this was another thing that I am not sure how to judge; what would they be learning, and why? In any case all the children assembled there for us and sang us the alphabet. We gave them pens that we had brought for that purpose. This was great for Aaron, who needed some help getting over his shyness, understandably. (Jordan, who was getting over being sick, got overwhelmed and went back to the car with Dale and Dale's wonderful camera.)

I have to assume this is a pretty tough existence. But I wouldn't presume to know what is the right way for modern sanitation and other necessities (?) to interact with a traditional culture. Missionaries build hospitals and schools for the Maasai, and you would think that has to be a good thing; but really, what do I know. What would be the right thing to do if there were still traditional cultures alive and numerous in our own country?