Masai

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Whilst staying just outside the Masai Mara national park we had the opportunity to visit a local masai village:
Villages are normally of about 120 people (20 families) surrounded by a fence built by the men with a separate entrance for each house. The boys stay in the village and the girls marry into other villages and when a new wife arrives in the village it is the women that build her house for her. These houses are built with sticks and mud with a compartment inside for sleeping and cooking, and another compartment for the goats and cattle at night. We were shown how they make fire rubbing soft and hard wood together and smelt some of their local brew made from sausage trees. They eat meat, blood and milk and veg which they have to buy in since they don't grow any themselves. The whole village move every 9 years due to termites and set up their houses in a new location.

The masai people are very tall and thin- men wear bright coloured blankets with shorts underneath and always carry a stick for moving cattle and a wooden hammer to defend themselves against wild animals, women dress very colourfully with lots of jewellery and when married wear an ankle bracelet. At the age of 10 their ears are pierced with a knife and stretched over time to look pretty.

At birth all children are given a nickname and then at 5years old they receive a masai name. Girls are circumcised at 13 and boys at 15 by a local medicine man. No signs of pain or screaming must be revealed otherwise they will never be seen as a real man. Boys, with their heads dyed red from the leaves of an ochre plant, then head into the bush in groups of about 15 (plus an elder for guidance) for 5 years to learn to become warriors. They learn to jump high, hunt, and fend for themselves and during which they must kill a male lion and collect its teeth and mane.

When back in the village boys marry at 25 and girls 17. The higher the boy can jump the less cows his family have to pay for the dowry.

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