They roam freely across the savannah from country to country, place to place without regard to customs regulations or state borders. For centuries, the Maasai, unlike the Kikuyu, Luo and other tribes, were able to maintain ancient customs and a way of life that has existed for centuries.
However, the onslaught of civilization has meant that Africa is running out of tribes that have managed to preserve their culture, identity and ancestral ways of life. One of these tribes is the Maasai, sometimes spelled Maasai, who to this day remain a primitive tribe of warriors living mainly in Tanzania and Kenya. The majority of the tribe, which in total numbers about 100,000 people, live in the border areas of Tanzania and Kenya, in areas dominated by the massive mountain of Kilimanjaro.
According to one report, the Maasai originate from Egypt, specifically from the upper reaches of the Nile, somewhere between the lands of modern Sudan and Eritrea. This partly explains why, like the inhabitants of those regions of North Africa, Maasai women shave their heads and remove their two lower front teeth.
The Maasai people consider themselves the highest and most noble tribe in Africa. They do not mix with Europeans or any other Africans they consider to be from lower-class tribes, for example, the Kikuyu, Meru, Kalenjin, Luyha, Luo, Kisii, Kamba, Swahili, or Turkana. They believe and, in fact, are completely convinced that God gave them all the animals in the world. Furthermore, this belief allows them to indulge, quite legitimately, in cattle rustling from other tribes without fear of retaliation from Kenyan law.
They live by raising cattle and other animals. And due to their nomadic lifestyle, they have developed a complete lack of interest in, and indeed are unfamiliar with, cultivation and agriculture.
The Masai home is always a place of temporary residence. Every 3-4 years, when the pastures run out, the tribe moves to another place and a new village is built. See the image below of a typical traditional Masai house.
They build small villages or camps that will house five to seven families and their livestock. It consists of a group of very low huts that they build with small branches and brush, supported by a framework of robust branches. It is then covered with dung, clay, mud, and dried cattle dung. The entire camp is then surrounded by a thorny coral (kraal) and thorny bushes to keep out lions, leopards and other wildlife. Their cabins do not have windows, but they do have a fireplace that is located in the center or near the sleeping area. Their beds are on the hard clay floor and are covered with animal skins.
While the men take care of the cattle, it is up to the women to build the family home and since they do not have beasts of burden to help them, they have to carry all the material necessary for the work on their backs. Traditionally, the staple diet of the Maasai is cow’s milk, however, when there is a shortage of dairy cows in the village, the warriors add the animal’s blood and mix it with their milk. Sometimes they drink pure blood drawn from a vein, usually making an incision in the bull’s neck and using a gourd as a container to catch it. This is supposed to give warriors great strength. They rarely eat meat, their livestock considered too valuable to slaughter for food.
Whenever there is a marriage in the tribe by tradition, the tribe will collectively give the couple a cow as a dowry. After marriage, the husband can let his wife take care of some cows from her herd, but they still belong to him. In general, it is children who take care of small animals. From the early age of 3 years, it is the young who take care of the cattle and graze them in the nearby pastures. When children reach the age of 7 to 8, their earlobes are pierced with a tool made from cow horns. The gap is gradually widened with pieces of wood until, over time, the lobe is stretched so much, not only with wood but also with heavy ornamentation, that sometimes the lobe reaches to the shoulder. The larger the hole in the earlobe, the more respect is given to the person and the more beautiful he looks.
The number of wives a male Maasai has depends on the size of his herd. The women must be fit and strong enough to take care of all the animals and children; they are obliged to bring water and wood for the fire. Women are considered to be much less important than their husbands, who are first and foremost soldiers, even in peacetime. The men tend to do very little physical labor, preferring to spend hours conversing with other warriors on the savannah.
The tribe’s relationship is based on a strict set of rules. The tribe itself is made up of various groups of men who are roughly the same age. The most important event for these young men is the dedication and circumcision ceremony.
After circumcision, the young Maasai warriors leave their homes, armed with spears, clubs and swords, to make their living on the plains where they will tend the cattle. A warrior who manages to kill a lion is awarded the highest honor of the tribe and is later entitled to wear a headband made from the lion’s mane during ritual ceremonies.
After the early initiation test, the men become like brothers forming a close-knit community. Community members must pass a series of tests to advance in the tribal hierarchy, each of which can take up to 15 years to achieve. They have a sort of ranking order starting with young warrior, then older warrior, old warrior, master warrior, and the elders. In the old days, a young man from the tribe could not be considered a man until he had managed to kill a lion with his spear.
An important attribute of the tribe is the ornaments they wear. Maasai men and women spend a lot of time decorating themselves. Women wear short hair and prefer precious jewelry: long necklaces, earrings, silver, headbands, and bracelets. Male soldiers, on the other hand, have long hair.
Years ago the Masai owned land in the Serengeti Valley, in the vicinity of the Great African Rift known as the Rift Valley. In the 19th and early 20th century, they were able to survive and prove to the Europeans, mainly British and German settlers, their right to the land inherited from their ancestors. But unfortunately they have not been able to resist the onslaught of civilization towards the end of the 20th century. Over the past 30 years, the Masai have been evicted from much of their land. Rich white tourists who come to Kenya and Tanzania on safari want to “see wild animals, not evicted Maasai.”
Campsites, bungalows and lodges began to appear throughout the savannah and the Masai soon realized that the lions, antelopes, gazelles and tourists were more important than themselves. With no means of subsistence, many turned to poaching.
The Maasai tribes have coexisted with nature for thousands of years, and now they see themselves beginning to destroy it in a frenzy. Their own livestock cannot support them, now the horns of elephants and rhinos are sold on the black market. And now rhinos in Maasai lands are on the brink of extinction, and elephant numbers have declined dramatically.
Today in Kenya and Tanzania, the Maasai are being hired as security guards to work in expensive hotels. Many work to entertain visitors with traditional dances in hotels and theaters.
Increasingly, people clad in red with shields and spears can be seen, guarding the perimeters of many of the new luxury hotels that have sprung up in recent years.
Only in the remote corners of Savannah will you find a few nomadic peoples whose life still remains in its original form, following the ancient ways of life of the once formidable and well-known tribe in East Africa – the Masai tribe. [http://www.masaiboutique.com/masai.html]