Before I visited Kenya, I had never thought of setting foot in a house made out of cow dung. I did it anyway, and then felt bad afterwards for deliberately not touching the walls while I was inside. I spent maybe 15 minutes sitting on a very low seat that stretched the limit of my knees learning about the people who had invited me into their house. I also learned in a land where building materials are scarce and a three or four or six foot high termite mound is a common sight, cattle poop is apparently useful as a readily available termite-resistant building material. If that's all there is to build with, I guess you have to use it.
This, to me, is why we travel.
This, to me, is why we travel.
Visit Kenya and you'll find yourself in a land made up of 47 different tribes. There is absolutely no sense behind why these 47 tribes are amalgamated into one 21st century country other than that's where white men who had little real understanding of the history or importance of this land drew some lines to show other white men where their land started and someone else's stopped. Think 47 different tribes sounds like a chaotic mess to draw a country's borders around? Head south into Tanzania and you'll be in a nation composed of over 120 different tribes. Crazy, right?
Based on our one week each in Kenya and Tanzania this past February, I would struggle to name the largest, second largest or smallest or middle sized tribe in either country. We spent one week with two Kenyans (our guide, Joseph, and driver, Peter) and the same amount of time with two Tanzanians (our guide, Filbert, and driver, Samson) and I couldn't tell you what tribe each of those four men hailed from. Joe even explained the whole thing to us and I still couldn't tell you and I swear I was paying attention.
For the limited amount of time we spent in East Africa this year most of these 160ish tribes were invisible to us. They were all around us and registered very little in my memory. They all pretty much looked the same. They were store clerks or lawyers or tourist guides or drivers or customs agents or chefs or janitors or park rangers or motorcycle or car repairers or doctors or millions of other different things. They all looked similar to one another in the way they dressed and walked and interacted with us. All of them except one tribe: the Masai.
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| A line of Masai women trying to out-do their male counterparts. |
We went to Africa earlier this year thinking we knew a thing or two about the Masai. Legendary lion killers who confronted the kings of the jungle armed only with spears. Warriors with famous constitutions who can run for miles at a time without tiring. Nomadic tribesmen who exist on a diet of blood and milk and little else. Resisters of change determined to not conform to other people's vision of progress. All of those things turned out to be myths and truths at the same time. And then we found out so much more.
The Masai are both one of the 47 tribes incorporated into Kenya's population and one of the 120 within Tanzania's border. The funny thing about drawing lines arbitrarily on a map in a place you just got to is that some of the folks you are trying to define as Kenyans or Tanzanians aren't going to see themselves the way someone else sees them. The Masai's traditional land is in Kenya. It's also in Tanzania. They move freely between the two countries pretty much as they used to, although I'm sure in reality it's not really the same as it was centuries ago.
We had the opportunity to spend time with the Masai in both Kenya and Tanzania. We took the opportunity to do so in both lands, once near the Masai Mara National Reserve and once near Lake Manyara National Park. Both villages were similar and both were different but in our time in Africa this year, it seemed like the Masai were everywhere. I'm sure it seemed that way because the places we went were pretty much all in and around the Masai's lands. But we found some further apart too.
The Masai are both one of the 47 tribes incorporated into Kenya's population and one of the 120 within Tanzania's border. The funny thing about drawing lines arbitrarily on a map in a place you just got to is that some of the folks you are trying to define as Kenyans or Tanzanians aren't going to see themselves the way someone else sees them. The Masai's traditional land is in Kenya. It's also in Tanzania. They move freely between the two countries pretty much as they used to, although I'm sure in reality it's not really the same as it was centuries ago.
We had the opportunity to spend time with the Masai in both Kenya and Tanzania. We took the opportunity to do so in both lands, once near the Masai Mara National Reserve and once near Lake Manyara National Park. Both villages were similar and both were different but in our time in Africa this year, it seemed like the Masai were everywhere. I'm sure it seemed that way because the places we went were pretty much all in and around the Masai's lands. But we found some further apart too.
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| Masai children welcoming us into their village. |
The Masai are about impossible to miss. Tall, slender men standing stock still in the middle of fields wrapped in red, blue, purple, orange or any other brightly colored checkered patterned blankets or shuka cloth. The cloths are likely 20th century substitutes for traditional leather goods used by the Masai for protection from the wind and other elements. How the Masai gave up their leather for these synthetic blankets is uncertain. Maybe they fell in love with tartan blankets traded with Scottish missionaries. Maybe they got them earlier than the 1900s by trading with people from the coast. Maybe it was something else. Wherever they came from, they make the Masai watching over livestock stick out visibly against the savannah. Visible to their flocks and herds and also to the predators that might do them harm.
These tartan warriors were impossible to miss on our first drive outside Nairobi on our way to Masai Mara National Reserve. Whether they were in fields or by the sides of the roads pushing their goat or cattle or sheep or all three along to find more food, they were obvious as they steered their animals using little more than what looks like a twig from an olive tree. We saw no spear carrying warriors. I have no idea really how they fend off large cats with those little sticks.
The sheep and goats are food. The cattle are not. Well, not in the sense that you and I might think of killing a cow for steaks or hamburgers or whatever else would tide us over with sustenance until they were gone. It's the cattle that are the thing with the Masai. They serve as a source of milk and blood and they are tangible symbols of wealth in their society. The milk makes sense; they get it just the way we do from the udders of the cows. The blood they will drink in a sustainable way, draining just enough from each cow to add more nutrition to their diets while keeping the cattle alive to generate more by feeding and continuing to grow.
These tartan warriors were impossible to miss on our first drive outside Nairobi on our way to Masai Mara National Reserve. Whether they were in fields or by the sides of the roads pushing their goat or cattle or sheep or all three along to find more food, they were obvious as they steered their animals using little more than what looks like a twig from an olive tree. We saw no spear carrying warriors. I have no idea really how they fend off large cats with those little sticks.
The sheep and goats are food. The cattle are not. Well, not in the sense that you and I might think of killing a cow for steaks or hamburgers or whatever else would tide us over with sustenance until they were gone. It's the cattle that are the thing with the Masai. They serve as a source of milk and blood and they are tangible symbols of wealth in their society. The milk makes sense; they get it just the way we do from the udders of the cows. The blood they will drink in a sustainable way, draining just enough from each cow to add more nutrition to their diets while keeping the cattle alive to generate more by feeding and continuing to grow.
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| The cattle that are the lifeblood of the Masai. |
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| The cattle pen, for safekeeping at night. |
The Masai used to be nomadic or semi-nomadic, moving around the savannah with their animals. Now they are really semi-nomadic or permanently rooted in settlements that stay put, more or less, in the same spot for a long time.
Their villages are roughly circular in form and are composed based on our experience from circular or rectilinear houses made of whatever the Masai have available to them to build with: sticks, grass and cattle dung with wooden or latticed together doors. These are not dwellings that families hang out in. They are used for sleeping, cooking and protection from the elements. That last part not just for the Masai but sometimes for their baby cows.
There are maybe two or three or four or five rooms in any one house, which are built by the Masai women. Not necessarily because the men are lazy but because they are generally off away from the village by day watching over their animals. That's probably less stressful and demanding work than building a house (or cooking in that completed house for that matter) but if there's ever a need to defend the livestock, I guess you need the strongest possible guardians out there with them.
Outside the houses there has to be a space to keep the herds safe at night. In the Kenyan village we visited, the entire village was enclosed and gated with the perimeter walls made from acacia tree branches with plenty of long, sharp thorns. The village in Tanzania was not fenced completely but there was gated enclosure (also made from the thorny acacia trees) to pen the cattle, goats and sheep at night. The difference? The first village was right outside Masai Mara National Reserve, home to lions and leopards; the second was not which presumably allowed a little less security to be employed.
If the story we were told about the village near Masai Mara was correct, namely that the Masai do such an effective job of warding off lions that zebra from the park often huddle near the perimeter walls of the enclosure, then the Masai must be on to something.
Their villages are roughly circular in form and are composed based on our experience from circular or rectilinear houses made of whatever the Masai have available to them to build with: sticks, grass and cattle dung with wooden or latticed together doors. These are not dwellings that families hang out in. They are used for sleeping, cooking and protection from the elements. That last part not just for the Masai but sometimes for their baby cows.
There are maybe two or three or four or five rooms in any one house, which are built by the Masai women. Not necessarily because the men are lazy but because they are generally off away from the village by day watching over their animals. That's probably less stressful and demanding work than building a house (or cooking in that completed house for that matter) but if there's ever a need to defend the livestock, I guess you need the strongest possible guardians out there with them.
Outside the houses there has to be a space to keep the herds safe at night. In the Kenyan village we visited, the entire village was enclosed and gated with the perimeter walls made from acacia tree branches with plenty of long, sharp thorns. The village in Tanzania was not fenced completely but there was gated enclosure (also made from the thorny acacia trees) to pen the cattle, goats and sheep at night. The difference? The first village was right outside Masai Mara National Reserve, home to lions and leopards; the second was not which presumably allowed a little less security to be employed.
If the story we were told about the village near Masai Mara was correct, namely that the Masai do such an effective job of warding off lions that zebra from the park often huddle near the perimeter walls of the enclosure, then the Masai must be on to something.
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| Masai women building a new chimney. |
Masai houses are dark. There's no electricity and therefore no lights and their building materials of choice (twigs and dung) do not allow large open expanses of windows. And if they did, they probably wouldn't take advantage of that fact because windows for people without access to glass doesn't really protect against the weather that well, which is part of the point of these houses in the first place. After we ducked to enter the dwelling, we found our way to where we were told to sit all the while conspicuously (to me) not trying to use our hands on the walls for support.
The house we sat in was a rectilinear structure built by one of the wives of an important Masai. One house, one wife. One Masai man might have multiple houses, meaning multiple wives. I get that this concept may be contrary to the way our society views relations between men and women. Let's not get caught up in that in this post. This was clearly not our country. Let's not try to evaluate other people according to our own standards. At least for the remainder of this post, anyway. Thank you.
In addition to being dark, the place was tiny. I couldn't stand upright in the place due to the roof height and I couldn't imagine sleeping in one of the bedrooms, which seemed to me in the almost darkness to be little bigger than a ship's bunk. The beds were inches off the dirt floor and the rooms were far smaller than the baby cattle's room we passed on our way in. Later we'd spend time in taller circular houses but which were smaller in footprint, presumably due to the sloped reeds used to form the roof; reeds can only span so far I guess.
While we sat and learned, the stove in the house was on, cooking something in a pan or pot. And by stove, I mean an open fire stoked with wood. In a house with very small openings in the walls to admit light. Or to let smoke exit. And it was smoky. So smoky in fact that I guess it was understandable on some level that the women who spend all day watching over a pot of boiling beans refueling the stove have significant respiratory issues and a problem with cancer from inhaling fumes kicked up by burning logs.
The house we sat in was a rectilinear structure built by one of the wives of an important Masai. One house, one wife. One Masai man might have multiple houses, meaning multiple wives. I get that this concept may be contrary to the way our society views relations between men and women. Let's not get caught up in that in this post. This was clearly not our country. Let's not try to evaluate other people according to our own standards. At least for the remainder of this post, anyway. Thank you.
In addition to being dark, the place was tiny. I couldn't stand upright in the place due to the roof height and I couldn't imagine sleeping in one of the bedrooms, which seemed to me in the almost darkness to be little bigger than a ship's bunk. The beds were inches off the dirt floor and the rooms were far smaller than the baby cattle's room we passed on our way in. Later we'd spend time in taller circular houses but which were smaller in footprint, presumably due to the sloped reeds used to form the roof; reeds can only span so far I guess.
While we sat and learned, the stove in the house was on, cooking something in a pan or pot. And by stove, I mean an open fire stoked with wood. In a house with very small openings in the walls to admit light. Or to let smoke exit. And it was smoky. So smoky in fact that I guess it was understandable on some level that the women who spend all day watching over a pot of boiling beans refueling the stove have significant respiratory issues and a problem with cancer from inhaling fumes kicked up by burning logs.
While I'm all for not imposing our own standards of living on people living in places other than the United States, I was honestly shocked to hear about cancer and respiratory issues in places as remote and relatively unspoiled like Kenya and Tanzania. Fortunately, in this instance, G Adventures, our hosts for the two week trip we were on, were not ones to stand by and let this continue to happen unchecked.
Enter the Clean Cookstove Project, an initiative by G Adventures' charity arm Planeterra, with a solution for those Masai women that want to improve their quality of life in a relatively simple way. The Project involves a self installed chimney and improved concrete stove to direct the smoke and ash that burns off the fuel for the daily cooking. In addition to being three times as efficient (which means 2/3 fewer trips for firewood), the stove and chimney assemblies exhaust up to 90% of the dangerous fumes the women will breathe in while presiding over their meals which cook for hours.
The solution is deceptively simple and super low cost. The average installation runs about the equivalent of $60 U.S. dollars and it's subsidized. The only issue, of course, is that most Masai don't have much money, so the women's half has to come from some savings and hard work. The silver lining to that struggle is that the Project will pay the women who build the chimneys for their work to improve their own lives. It's a circle that can be self-sustaining if worked correctly. I'm not saying it's easy necessarily, but it's something that can provide great value for a little investment. We were able to watch a team of women constructing a chimney for fifteen minutes at our stop in Tanzania. It's crude but effective construction. And effective counts here.
Enter the Clean Cookstove Project, an initiative by G Adventures' charity arm Planeterra, with a solution for those Masai women that want to improve their quality of life in a relatively simple way. The Project involves a self installed chimney and improved concrete stove to direct the smoke and ash that burns off the fuel for the daily cooking. In addition to being three times as efficient (which means 2/3 fewer trips for firewood), the stove and chimney assemblies exhaust up to 90% of the dangerous fumes the women will breathe in while presiding over their meals which cook for hours.
The solution is deceptively simple and super low cost. The average installation runs about the equivalent of $60 U.S. dollars and it's subsidized. The only issue, of course, is that most Masai don't have much money, so the women's half has to come from some savings and hard work. The silver lining to that struggle is that the Project will pay the women who build the chimneys for their work to improve their own lives. It's a circle that can be self-sustaining if worked correctly. I'm not saying it's easy necessarily, but it's something that can provide great value for a little investment. We were able to watch a team of women constructing a chimney for fifteen minutes at our stop in Tanzania. It's crude but effective construction. And effective counts here.
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| How many Masai does it take to start a fire? |
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| Ultimately, the answer turned out to be one. Too many cooks in the kitchen in the first photo. |
The Clean Cookstove Project is an example of the Masai embracing the 21st (or 20th, if you prefer) century on their own terms. While they have largely resisted western notions of progress in a number of areas, they are clearly willing to bend their lifestyles a little when it suits them. While they cling to traditional ways of life, most Masai carry cellphones and in the first village we visited there were a number of portable solar light fixtures charging on the dung and reed roofs. There may be no plumbing in their houses, but they recognize the need for a light source so their children can do their homework at night. I'm not sure if most Masai use elephant dung, a stick and a knife to start a fire like we were shown in one of our visits, but if they do, that seemed to work when we were there.
I wrote earlier in this post that we knew a little something about the Masai before we set foot in East Africa. Warriors. Runners. Shepherds. Traditionalists. We didn't know about the chimneys and we didn't know about the portable lights. But we did know they jumped. And we got an up close look.
I get that this demonstration was put on solely for our benefit, but the line of young Masai men who took turns showing us how high they can jump was truly one of the more impressive displays I have seen on my travels. This ages old tradition is intended to demonstrate strength for potential wives and some of these guys can get some air, especially given their jumping form which involves being wrapped in a blanket and jumping straight vertical using (at least it seemed this way to me) just the strength in their lower legs and ankles.
This is truly difficult. I think the picture at the top of this post is me at my maximum vertical leap of about six inches. Our Kenyan guide, Joe, claimed I wasn't even jumping but check it out because the evidence is clear: there's definitely some separation between my boots and my shadow. Yes, I'm not winning many wives with this sort of junior varsity level effort but I'm wearing way more than the Masai out jumping me and I'm way older than these much younger men. Fortunately, I don't have to be the highest jumper in order to find the love of my life. I'd be in trouble if I did.
I wrote earlier in this post that we knew a little something about the Masai before we set foot in East Africa. Warriors. Runners. Shepherds. Traditionalists. We didn't know about the chimneys and we didn't know about the portable lights. But we did know they jumped. And we got an up close look.
I get that this demonstration was put on solely for our benefit, but the line of young Masai men who took turns showing us how high they can jump was truly one of the more impressive displays I have seen on my travels. This ages old tradition is intended to demonstrate strength for potential wives and some of these guys can get some air, especially given their jumping form which involves being wrapped in a blanket and jumping straight vertical using (at least it seemed this way to me) just the strength in their lower legs and ankles.
This is truly difficult. I think the picture at the top of this post is me at my maximum vertical leap of about six inches. Our Kenyan guide, Joe, claimed I wasn't even jumping but check it out because the evidence is clear: there's definitely some separation between my boots and my shadow. Yes, I'm not winning many wives with this sort of junior varsity level effort but I'm wearing way more than the Masai out jumping me and I'm way older than these much younger men. Fortunately, I don't have to be the highest jumper in order to find the love of my life. I'd be in trouble if I did.
He was our guide around the chaos that is Arusha, taking us from curio shop to curio shop looking for cheap souvenirs and maybe a piece or two of Tanzanite, a local purple-blue precious stone that is more rare than diamonds. Isaac didn't look like the Masai we visited in the two villages earlier in our trip. He wore no shuka cloth, carried no stick and was not herding livestock. He is one of 15 children of his Masai father. His mom is his dad's second wife. He and all his brothers and sisters from his dad's three wives have moved away from home and chosen to live their lives in a non-traditional way. With the unemployment rate in parts of Kenya and Tanzania at 40%, this is perhaps a brave thing to do. But it's also potentially a sign of what is to come more and more for the Masai.
In meeting Isaac and having him guide us around the city for a half a day or so, we got to see a different side to these people and I think it was valuable for us. It made us see beyond the stereotype that visiting the two villages might have reinforced for us. The day we spent walking around Arusha was the hottest day we spent in Africa. We sweated. We needed water. We needed shade. We needed rest. We ultimately had to beg off the walk back to where we were dropped off in favor of our driver coming to get us. Isaac didn't break a sweat the whole time. We thought of the Masai as warriors with famous constitutions. Yep, Isaac was for sure a Masai.
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