Day 12 Sintei's homestead and the little house on the hill

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Monday 14th February


After a feverish night I swallowed some paracetamol and got up early. The morning sun was shining through the flimsy curtain, and there were African morning sounds coming from outside; chickens, dogs barking in the distance, askaris talking softly to each other. Harriet had left breakfast for us as she had gone briefly to her office, which is just walking distance from her house.
We ate breakfast outside on the veranda, bacon, eggs and toast. Harriet’s houseboy Charles was in the kitchen cooking food for Dessie and the cats. We liked Charles immediately, he was a gentle person with a lovely smile. He absolutely adores the animals, and would miss Dessie I think more than anyone else when the family leave. The kittens had an eye infection and he would painstakingly put ointment in their eyes twice a day, very gently and with enormous care. Harriet does all the cooking and Charles does all the rest. His favourite thing is to iron, and if he has a big pile of ironing Harriet will sometimes say ‘Pole’ (sorry) and he will reply ‘no, no, say hongera!’ (congratulations).
I was sitting outside in one of the old-fashioned safari type canvas chairs, when I spotted someone standing by one end of the terrace. It was Sintei, Harriet’s Maasai friend whose home boma we were going to visit later in the morning. I went over to say hello and shake hands, and we managed to have some sort of a conversation in my extremely poor Swahili and sign language. I admired her bulging tummy - she was very near the end of her pregnancy, so much so that Harriet had been unsure whether we would be able to visit at all, if she had been in labour. The baby (or babies as it turned out) was still safe and snug though, and Sintei was blooming. She had walked for miles, how these people do it I don’t know, but now she was to get a lift back home with us.
Sintei is a remarkable woman. She was born an Akie Ndorobo, a tribe very closely related to the Maasai. They do not keep cattle like the Maasai, but were traditionally wild animal hunters, fruit gatherers and honey collectors from the wilderness. They are among the poorest communities in the Kiteto District (where Kibaya lies) and it is from this state that they got their name Ndorobo meaning ‘poor’ in the Maasai language. Akie is their own tribe name. They do not generally keep any livestock at all, but Harriet had been involved in a project to get them to keep goats and other small animal husbandry as a source of protein and milk, as their situation was becoming quite dire.
The main problem that I could see was that they intermarried with the Maasai, and as such diminished their own tribe to such an extent that only a few hundred ‘pure’ Akie were left. The Akie women are thought of as very beautiful, and the Maasai are keen to marry them and an added bonus is that the bride price is very much cheaper than a Maasai girl’s would be. Sintei was one such bride and she had indeed married a Maasai. She is unusual though in that she is literate and is the chairman of the local women’s group. She speaks Akie, Maasai and Swahili. Sintei has taught Harriet a lot about her life, and Harriet is always asking questions to find out more from this in our eyes fascinating culture.
Although Sintei has education, she is still very traditional. She lives in a home stead consisting of three households, with one shared husband. They all dress traditionally; the females in blue cloth and the males in red and their huts are made of cow dung and mud. There is naturally no electricity or running water and only a track leads to the boma.
This was the track we found ourselves on, Massud driving expertly through the bush. The homestead is about 10 kilometres from Kibaya, and the last half is really very poor. Sintei was sitting in the back which prompted Harriet to tell us a story about the last time she had driven north from Kibaya to Moshi to collect the children from ISM for Christmas. That time she had with her some Canadian students and also an old Maasai grandmother who was ill and had to get to a hospital in Moshi. This grandmother had never really been in a car before, but was bundled in with the students in the very back to sit on the floor. Her son had to basically push her in, ignoring her fear as he was so keen to get her to the hospital. They set off but after half an hour the Canadian students shouted stop and a hideous stench filled the car! Harriet rushed out, opened the back door and saw the poor grandmother crouched down with her ‘shuka’ (cloth) over her head and the Canadians scrambling to get out. She had thrown up her breakfast which consisted of cow’s milk and blood - the traditional Maasai food. One can only imagine the smell and Harriet got very agitated as she knew that Carita was very sensitive to smells and also got car sick quite easily and this she just would not be able to cope with. So she got the grandmother out, lined up everyone and made them share their drinking water to try and clean the car the best she could. For the rest of the journey the grandmother was allowed to sit like a queen in the front seat, from where she quickly got used to enjoying the ride!
Harriet had dressed up in a lot of Maasai jewellery given to her by Sintei, and she looked very fine. Sintei’s family was there to greet us when we arrived and we stepped out of the car and walked across the central yard towards Sintei’s house. There were a lot of children and young girls but no warriors, or Moran as they are called. We had brought with us a crate of soda, but no beer, as Harriet said we didn’t have time to stay so very long and if she’d brought beer then all the males would come and we wouldn’t be able to get away early. I would have liked to have seen the Moran, but I could see Harriet’s point - we only had two days left and a lot to do.
The homestead was just the 3 houses and a big enclosure surrounded by prickly bush cuttings to keep the animals in and predators out at night. The area around Kibaya is really very remote and there are a lot of wild animals. Only some months before Harriet had had a killed lioness dumped in her yard, it was an unfortunate animal that had started raiding cattle and could not be tolerated. She said that Dessie had at first run happily towards it, thinking it was another dog, but had shied away in horror as soon as she got a whiff of the scent!
The houses were of the traditional Maasai kind, rectangular, low and windowless, mud walls baked hard in the sun. There was an opening without a door in one end and through this we were invited to sit inside and enjoy the soda. First we greeted Sintei’s husband who was sitting inside. It was very dark and we could only just make him out in the shadows. We said ‘Shikamoo’ which is the polite greeting in Swahili to an elder and then he settled back down onto the big bed which took up almost all of the room. I took two pictures inside and only when we looked at them later did we ‘see’ the rooms and also what the husband actually looked like. The bed which the mzee (old man) was sitting on was made out of cow hide with no bedclothes. Next to the bed was a tiny room which Sintei used, and just by the entrance door to the right were her kitchen facilities with storage. The hallway from the entrance to the bedroom was used as a sitting and fire area; it was very well swept with a hard mud floor. I noticed on the photo later that the inside room was also very well swept and tidy, although bare with no ornaments of any kind. A kerosene lamp was hung on the wall above the bed. There were no chairs, but a couple of stools and plastic containers and buckets we could sit on. There were millions of flies of course which kept crawling into our Fanta bottles and landing on our faces - most annoying. The smell was not unpleasant; it was a sort of pungent animal smell with a urine overtone, if one can call it that. Harriet said the smell would linger in our clothes all day.
Harriet had already ‘warned’ us that we were to be given bead anklets (foot bands) whether we liked it or not, but we were of course delighted. I had admired Harriet and her family’s colourful anklets when I saw them last in Finland, and was very keen to get them. Sintei had asked Harriet whether we wanted traditional or fashionable ones, and Harriet had answered ‘fashionable’ of course. These turned out to be all white, rather than the vibrant ones Carita for example was wearing. Still, they were great, and it was amusing to be fashionable for once!
Sintei had asked her family to help in the task to thread and fit the anklets, as she understandably found it difficult to crouch with her huge stomach. So three girls sat on the floor at the entrance of the hut and made the ornaments there and then, using plastic string from an old sack of fertilizer. They threaded the beads on and then motioned to Anja to stretch out her leg. The beads were placed around her ankle and then the plastic thread was fused together with the glowing hot end of a stick heated in the fire. I thought Anja was brave as she didn’t pull her foot away when the burning hot stick got close, as she didn’t really know what was going to happen. The girls were very clever though and when it was my turn I didn’t feel a thing. Paul, being a man, got a very fancy set of anklets, done in a double row and I’m very envious of them. These anklets cannot be removed as they have no clasp, so we’ve got them on all the time. Paul and Scott do get people asking what they are, and one silly boy called Scott a ‘faggot’ at school in the summer, but he doesn’t care! He is proud of them.
Before long we were ready and went outside again. It really is quite extraordinary how these people live without everything that we take so for granted. Water for example needs to be collected from some water hole miles away, and the lack of transport if something goes wrong is perhaps what I would fear most. The Maasai have an enormously high infant mortality rate, but then the ones that do ‘make’ it to adult hood are generally very fit. Harriet had asked Sintei about many odd traditions which we just find impossible to understand. Female circumcision is one of them. Sintei’s firm view was that a woman is not an adult until she is circumcised. She had asked of Harriet, ‘how can a man make love to a mtoto (child) and how could one take such a mother seriously?’ and when Harriet had answered that as she herself was not circumcised, did Sintei think she was a mtoto? ‘Oh no, you are a mzungu (white person)!’ she laughed and as such completely different and outside Maasai values.
Death was another difficult issue which Harriet had tried to get to grips with. This subject was very hard to ask about, she said, and even Sintei who normally was talkative and keen to tell, clammed up. One of Sintei’s children had died in hospital some time before. Sintei had been distraught, but had refused to even look at the dead body. If the person dies at home, the body is put outside in the bush for the hyenas to dispose of, and it is very unlucky to have anything to do with the dead. Harriet and Jon-Erik organized the funeral for the little girl, and I remember them being very upset at the time.
A week or so after we got back home to England I had an e-mail from Harriet saying that Sintei had given birth to twin girls. No wonder she was so big! Here came another odd tradition which we find difficult to understand. The Maasai believe that twins have to be separated mentally by a witch doctor, as if one of them dies the other will not be able to live on. There are very few doctors who can do it and Sintei had to travel all the way to Morogoro to have the girls unconnected. They are thriving now though, so hopefully they will both survive.
It was now coming on towards lunchtime and we had to leave. We took some group photos outside the house and then we said a fond farewell to Sintei and her family. A little boy called Emmanuel was to drive with us, and he was dressed in shorts and tee-shirt, rather than a shuka, for the occasion. Harriet had noticed that Emmanuel had a terrible cough and when asked Sintei admitted this cough had been going on for months, if not a year. Harriet insisted that he had to get to hospital to get it checked out and this is why he came with us. He was a sweet soul, very quiet apart from the rattling cough. He was sitting at the very back, just behind Paul, and Paul was I think justifiably a bit worried about the spray emitting from the poor boy. Emmanuel had of course tuberculosis, and was admitted to hospital. He would get three months of free care if needed at the tuberculosis hospital, but I heard later that he had come back after just one. He had a twin brother who had died in infancy; whether he had been separated or not I don’t know.
We had lunch at home, and then a quiet rest on that gorgeous veranda. Scott and Anja were playing ‘four in a row’ in between playing with the kittens. Dessie’s present from us was a bone made out of hide and this she kept moving to various hiding places outside. I was wondering how she would like going back to Sweden after the 3 years in Tanzania. In dog fashion she probably didn’t care what happened to her, she would just accept anything that came along. She would have to be 6 months in quarantine, but this could be done in Finland at a kennel where she wouldn’t be lonely. She was of course vaccinated against every possible disease. She also had minimal contact with other dogs, as the Kibaya house was all enclosed and she seldom came away from there, so even if she could contract rabies it would have been highly unlikely.
A little later I went with Harriet into Kibaya to get some fruit from the market and to have a quick look at the town. The roads were very poor, and although there were some people with bikes I saw hardly any other cars. Lots of pedestrians though and lots of Maasai. It was dusty and very basic, but I could tell that Harriet loved the place. We stopped to go into an indoor type of market where Mama Harriet was well known, and here we bought some bananas, mangos and onions. There wasn’t very much else available but Harriet assured me that this was unusual, maybe it was the time of day.
Our afternoon program was simple but lovely. We were to go to ‘the House on the Hill’ and watch the sun go down over the plains. This little house was rented by Harriet, and was a sort of summerhouse/hide-away for her. No electricity, no running water and a rough track leading to it. It was perched on top of a hillock with a 360º view over the plain and hills. The house consisted of just one room, containing four beds and a small table, so one could overnight if one so wished. The windows were narrow horizontal slats, and the outside walls decorated with bush paintings. In front of the house stood a huge euphorbia tree, its candelabra branches contrasting against the sky. A veranda furnished with two small tables and some canvas chairs faced west and the sunset. To the right of the house was a small outdoor ‘choo’ (toilet) with no door, so as you sat in there you were looking endlessly down towards the bluish hills far away.
Harriet’s askari had decorated the house beautifully with purple bougainvillea, hung up in strands and garlands around the veranda and also inside. This was particularly touching as the poor man was dreadfully upset as his only cow had been stolen that same morning. He had very little English, but Harriet had a long conversation with him in Swahili and tried to comfort as best she could.
While she was talking to him I walked around the house looking at the view. I had always thought that the Maasai steppe was flat and grass filled, a bit like the Serengeti plains, but now I could see that it was miles and miles of hills, with a fair amount of bush spread amongst the few shambas (fields) that I could see. It was very green again, because of the recent rains, and the earth where it was exposed was red; that wonderful brick red, which we sometimes gets here in the UK as well. I remember in Tsavo National Park in Kenya seeing elephants that were completely red from having sprayed mud on themselves while bathing in the waterholes!
The little house itself was bordered by flowers, informally planted in loose beds and the grass had been left fairly long as to give a wild feel about it. Beautiful tall white Cosmos, African marigolds and a purple Vinca dominated, making the surroundings look absolutely idyllic. Dessie was with us and happily explored the ground, before flopping down in the shadow of the big euphorbia tree.
When I got back to the veranda Harriet had put some Bombay mix and peanuts in bowls on the small tables, and also taken out the chilled beer and sodas from the cool box we had with us. She also had some Konyagi (Tanzanian gin - same stuff we’d drunk at the bar in Moshi), not in a bottle this time but in handy, small plastic bags. We settled down on the veranda to watch the sun going down. African sunsets are just gorgeous. The sky is huge, and the colour display is astonishing. The sun sets very quickly, and when it was close to the horizon we started counting the seconds and got to only about 40 before it had dipped below and darkness started creeping in. The sounds of the African night became louder and louder, and the stars started twinkling above, first in the blackest part of the sky but soon also in the more purple part closer to the sun set. We had candles set in glass surrounds on the table, and these provided perfect soft light, without attracting too many insects. Again it was quite chilly and I was happy to wear my sweater, as was Paul.
After a while the drinks were finished and we packed up our things, said goodbye to the askari and left this amazing little place. The road down was steep and in poor condition and some of it had eroded away in the recent rains, but I had great confidence in Harriet’s driving.
Back home I sat on the veranda for a while enjoying the sounds and the smells. Harriet had some dim lamps outside which gave out just enough light to see, but not be intrusive. Dessie came out but wanted to go in again almost straight away and I had to agree with her - it was getting really quite chilly. I went in and joined the others for supper.
Day twelve had been wonderful and exciting and it ended to the sounds of Bob Marley’s Exodus.

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Photos

Sintei inside her house
It was pitch black inside the house, so I took the photo quite blindly, hoping to catch the interior

Scott on the veranda
Harriet has a lovely veranda in Kibaya, overlooking a huge sausage tree

Scott and Anja playing a game
This is the living room in the Kibaya house

Sintei
Sintei was expecting twins, but still walked for miles everywhere

Sintei's family at their boma
There were three houses in Sintei's boma

Paul and Harriet outside Sintei's house
With the Maasai it's the women who build the houses

Sintei's husband and the main elder of the homestead
Mzee did not realize that I was going to take this picture as it was pitch black in there

Sintei's family helped to fix our anklets
Because Sintei was so heavily pregnant she asked her daughters and sisters to help

Anja getting her anklet measured
They fused the anklets together with a burning hot stick straight from the fire

Harriet in her Maasai beads
The fashionable bead colour this season was white.

Drinking soda in Sintei's house
Anja and Scott preferred soda to beer anyway

Some of Sintei's children
Emmanuel is in the middle, wearing a Gibb's Farm T-shirt. He came with us to Kibaya, to go to the tuberculosis hospital later

Inside the little house
The house was beutifully decorated with bougainvillea both inside and out