The Masai Tribe

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So after quite a heavy night getting to know each other we had a nice lie in and a good breakfast to cure our hangovers before going to the local Masai Cultural Centre.

The cultural centre was really interesting and we learnt a lot about how the Masai live, how they construct their houses (both their permanent villages and their temporary shelters). Olly our guide was really enthusiastic about telling us all about his tribe. He was wearing typical Masai shoes which looked like fairly hard wearing flip flops. Asking him how long these would last him he said that Masai walk on average about 10km per day, herding their cattle. His shoes last him about three years. Not bad going. I wondered why he did the job of a guide talking to people like us and he explained that he is studying wildlife at University and the extra cash comes in handy. The jewelery Olly was wearing was amazing and it suddenly occurred to a few of us that get hold of the beads to make the jewelery must be quite difficult but Olly said they just import it from Arabia.

Olly started telling us about the different sacred ceremonies the Masai Tribe have including Male and Female Circumcision. He then went onto say that although the Tanzanian government were trying to ban Female Circumcision, it was still a sacred ceremony to the Masai people and will always take place - they just need to make sure they are not caught! After the Cultural Centre we followed Olly on a 30-40 minute walk through the open plains, in the midday sun (god it was hot), to visit a local Masai village. We stayed in the village for about an hour where we asked lots more questions and played with the kids. A typical Masai Warrior will have 8 wives. There were 50 children in the village. All of whom shared the same father. They were really good natured and when I was struggling to put my watch back on my wrist at one point a gorgeous little girl called Ellen came along and put it on for me and then didn't let go of my hand for about 15 minutes. After we left the village we visited the school we had so eagerly made a large contribution to through drinking alcohol the night before and it was really impressive there. The library even had internet access. Finally,we visited the snake bite clinic which is part of the campsite and they told us about people they had treated in the area. What did I learn - don't get bitten by a Black Mamba!!

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Comments

[Chris E]

Pussy Wagon
Kill Bill taught me that pft!!!! Sounds Excellent sis. Did you try and snatch Ellen?