Maasai Tribe in Kenya

There are about 42 tribes in Kenya and the Maasai is the most notable of them, due to their distinguished lifestyle and costumes. There are different Maasai tribes throughout Kenya. My sister and I visited Saikeri Village, which is about 2 hours on road from Nairobi city. This was the roughest dirty road from all the places I visited in Kenya. This is owed to the erosion after the many raining seasons. This land seemed like a place, which has been forgotten by the Kenyan government.

Maasai landscape

TWO AMAZING VOLUNTEER PROJECTS

NIGHT SCHOOL FOR THE MAASAI MEN
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This school was started by Kyle, a young volunteer from Perth, in Australia. Although, Kyle is now back to Australia his legacy is still felt by the Maasai men, as he continues to support the night school sending money every month to pay the school expenses, including the teachers’ salaries.
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This is a night school because during the day the Maasai men take their animals out to graze. Most men walked around 20kms to get to the school and another 20kms back home in the dark. We had a chance to meet with some of them, who were very keen to practice their English with us volunteers. The chance to attend this night school changed many of their lives. We could see that a world full of new opportunities opened up to them. Some of them were now on Facebook and had emails to keep in touch with volunteers and other friends.

Night School for the Maasai Men

Classroom ran by Solar Energy

BOARDING SCHOOL FOR THE MAASAI GIRLS
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This second project was started by Jane, another volunteer from Australia. She built a boarding school for Maasai girls, which currently supports 25 teenagers between 12 and 15 years old. Jane, with the help of Maggie, a Maasai nurse, opened this school to protect the girls from getting mutilated by their families or raped (both common practice in the Maasai tribe).
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Mutilation is now an illegal practice in Kenya and families caught doing this can pay a heavy fine. Although, we heard that this still happens in the community secretly.  Jane is also back to Australia but continues to support the boarding school financially. (If you'd like to learn more about this subject I recommend a book called “Infidel”, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali).

Young Maasai girls helping out with the daily chores

We also visited the only clinic in the Saikeri village, where Maggie works, with some very brave volunteers. Maggie gave a talk to our group, which was very inspiring. She is one of the bravest women I met in Kenya. She broke with all her tribe traditions when she legally divorced from her husband, due to domestic violence.
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Divorce rarely happens in a Maasai tribe. She also accessed tertiary education in the city, with some financial help, becoming a nurse. Later on, she decided to return to her village to help out the young Maasai women in her community, so that they would not have to go through what she went. I felt goosebumps listening to Maggie talking. What a warrior she is and what a wonderful job she is doing!

Since there was a teacher’s strike when we arrived in Saikeri, we slept in the school with the other volunteers. The Maasai community was so intrigued with all the new volunteers, that they couldn’t help coming in and out of the dormitory watching every single thing we did, from eating, to brushing our teeth. The lack of privacy was felt by all volunteers, but we couldn’t help laughing at the situation sometimes.

Boarding School - Girls' Dormitory

In the evening, the Maasai men made a nice fire for us, which we used to melt some marshmallows. It was their first time eating melted marshmallows and so was mine. Despite feeling so tired after a long day walking under the hot sun, it felt nice being there with Dine and the other volunteers, sharing a nice evening with the Maasai men and their children. That evening, we all went to bed without having a shower. We only had baby wipes to wipe our very dirty feet. J

Sharing our stories around the Fire

Dine and I were really postponing going to the toiled that evening, as it was an 8 minutes walking from the school, in the dark.  In the end, we went there in a caravan with other volunteers, with the help of torches. Dine and I held tied to each other’s arms watching out for hyenas in the bush. The toilet was a whole on the ground, which freaked out most volunteers. What an experience!

STRIKING FACTS ABOUT THE MAASAI CULTURE
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There were some striking facts about the Maasai culture which left me speechless. Firstly, the Maasai people would take the babies born with disabilities to the bush, tied them up to a tree, throw blood on them and leave them there to be eaten by wild animals, such as lions, leopards and hyenas. They did this because they considered disabled babies to be a curse to their families. They also did this to the elderly, when they could no longer take care of themselves, becoming a burden to the community. This practice is no longer accepted but our guides told us that in some tribes they still carry it out in secret.

Secondly, the Maasai men can have intercourse with any teenager/women in the tribe and it does not matter if the women are married or not. They can just knock on the door and ask permission to the husband. The Maasai men can also have many wives, while the women can only have one husband. Although, we heard from some Maasai men that nowadays this is changing and the younger generation of Maasai men are only sticking to one wife and having less children compared to their descendants. According to them, it is due to the ever increasing cost of life. On the photo below, the mother next to my right is 15 years old (she was a baby having another baby').

Dine and I with a Maasai family

The third fact, is that the Maasai women do all the heavy work in the tribe, such as building the family hut and repairing it as needed, cooking, washing taking care of the children, walking miles daily to get water, making jewellery etc. The job left for the men is to take their goats and cows to graze. The men will often walk many miles every day to look for food and water for their animals. For the Maasai, wealth is not weighed by the amount of money they have, but by the number of animals one has.
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Maasai woman carrying a roof sheet metal to her hut

Woman making jewellery with beads to sell in the market

We also visited a small Maasai market in this village, where they sold their colourful jewelleries and “shukas” (long pieces of cloth, which they wear around their upper bodies). Maasai people usually wear bright red shukas, as they believe this colour will protect them from being attacked by wild animals. Each man also carries a wood stick to assist them on their long walks.
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Maasai stool selling "shukas"

The forth, is that the Maasai men drink cow blood mixed with milk, as they believe it makes them stronger. They also make permanent tattoos on their bodies with fire. Volunteers, who wished to, could join the Maasai men in these practices. Although, no volunteer from our group took part on it.

BOMAS AND MANYATTAS

Visiting the "Bomas" was also very interesting. They are the compounds where the Maasai people live. All thes compounds we visited were surrounded by spike trees, like the one below.

Bomas - Maasai Compounds

Inside the Bomas there are "Manyattas", which are huts built by women with cow dung and tree branches.

Outside a Manyatta

We were allowed inside a manyatta from a beautiful and very friendly Maasai lady. She loved being in all photos and asked us to take more, opposite from other Maasai people, who did not want volunteers taking their photos at all. It was very dark and extremely hot inside the manyatta. It was a suffocating experience, which left us all dripping with sweat, especially after drinking a hot tea offered by our very smiling hostess.



Inside Mary's manyatta

After a nice bush walk with our guide and some Maasai students from the Night School, we stopped at the Great Rift Valley to rest while we watched a splendid sunset. The young Maasai men taught us about their culture, some medicinal trees and how they use a particular tree branch to brush their teeth. I  highly enjoyed spending time with the Maasai people.

Volunteer Group with some Maasai Men