For eight hours I rode in a standing room only bus on a bumpy dirt road with deafening Afro-Pop music blasting in my ears. Gratefully, I exited the bus, but then I hopped into a much smaller ride. It was a beater of a minivan that had no AC and was packed with thirteen other people. For five more hours, we drove on something that only resembled a road through Serengeti National Park. The back seat of the van had been removed to allow for extra space, so I sat back-to-back with other men who were seated in the trunk of the vehicle. After we passed through the Serengeti, we embarked on a ten-mile motorcycle ride to a village not shown on the map and situated very near the Tanzania/Kenya border. It was dusk when the bikes pulled off the road and it finally went silent.
For two nights I stayed at my friend’s village. He had invited
me so that I could celebrate the start of his business in Mwanza. It is something
that we have been working on together for over a year. I will write more about
this in my next blog, but needless to say it was an opportunity for his family
to recognize this significant step as it will undoubtedly impact the lives of
his family and the future of his entire village. The profundity of the moment
was not lost on me.
A boma is a dwelling or a shelter. They are usually circular
enclosures and different ones are built for people as well as for animals. My friend,
Pukare (his English name is Niclous), is one of many children of an 80+ year
old Maasai village chief who has four wives. Each wife has her own boma. It was
with Nic’s mother and two others that I slept. The boma is made of branches and
clay. There is one door and no windows. The floor is dirt and there is a small
hearth for cooking and for staying warm. It is very dark and smoky inside. You
either have to sit on an elevated frame of branches with goat hide that also serves
as a mattress/bed, or on a carved stool. The stools are reserved for married people.
I never understood why.
Sleeping was uncomfortable to say the least. Right next to me was a small pen made of branches for baby goats. Next to that one was another pen for baby cows. The animals are brought in each night so that they are protected from predators. All night my nostrils stung from the smoke, and I was frequently awakened by a goat or cow chewing or relieving itself. I felt small cockroaches crawling up my pant legs, but I was so tired that I could hardly flick them out. As I laid down next to my friend, exhausted and desperately trying to fall asleep, I told him: “Maasai beds are REALLY comfortable.” We both laughed until our stomachs hurt. And then I fell asleep.
In the morning, I helped take the animals out to pasture and
said hello to the many neighbors who were interested in saying hello or “Supa.”
I guess a white person hadn’t visited for about five years, so I was somewhat
of a novelty. Even more interesting was that I had been gifted a Maasai blanket
(shuka) and loaned a staff and knife for venturing out in the bush. I was
basically a white guy dressed as a Maasai. After we took the cows out, we
bathed naked in a small creek and used sand as soap. We drank water from a
spring, ate fruits off the trees, and I was given a root to chew for my sore
throat that had become irritated from a smoke-filled night in the boma. The
root numbed my entire mouth, and the soreness disappeared. Nic showed me dozens
of other plants and told me their uses. We walked around the surrounding
wilderness or “the bush” as it is referred to there.
After a few hours of trekking around the bush, I asked Nic about
breakfast. “We had breakfast,” he said flatly. By that he meant the hot cup of
cow’s milk that we drank after we woke up and for which I knew my stomach would
pay the price later. Lunch wasn’t much more sustentive, consisting of a cup of
fermented milk chunks similar to Kefir. “Remember what I told you,” said Nic. “Don’t
ask for snacks and don’t ask for a
pillow.” And so, it went.Dinner was a surprise. I was teaching duck-duck-goose to
about 20 kids, which I changed to “bird-bird-lion” (ndege-ndege-simba) as given
our location that made more sense, when Nic approached and motioned for me to
follow him. We walked a few hundred meters towards the creek where we had
washed in the morning. Around twenty Maasai men were cooking a goat over a fire
in a small copse of trees. The cooked pieces of meat were placed on cut leaves and
shared in a circle. No salt, no sauce, just goat. Of course, this is where my preferred
vegetarian diet must be set aside. I couldn’t imagine saying no as the goat had
been slaughtered to celebrate my friend’s business and the arrival of his guest
(me). It was an honor, and I felt further honored by sitting next to Nic’s
father as we ate together in community.
There is so much I would like to write about my experiences
in Tanzania with the Maasai people. I think they are fascinating, and I feel privileged
to have been welcomed into my friend’s village. For this blog, however, I would
like to share just a few final observations:1) Poverty is not just material; it is social and spiritual.
I read once that the thing that people living in extreme poverty hate the most
is not just having unmet needs, although daily survival is often a constant
challenge here. The thing that is most painful is the invisibility. This is
painful at levels which transcend material wealth and even societal exclusion. Not
having one’s human dignity recognized affects you at the soul level. Extreme
poverty goes beyond exclusion, it is dissolution. The Maasai people I visited
live in abject poverty by almost every standard I can think of. We brought some
sugar as a gift, which turned out to be a gratefully accepted luxury. However,
they are not poor. Their culture, family bond, and sense of who they are as a
community is stronger than almost anything I’ve ever experienced. In that way,
they are among the richest people I’ve ever met.
2) Nature is something to live with, not something to own,
to dominate, or to rule. The Maasai largely live in tune with their natural
surroundings. I’m not saying that we should all move into bomas, but I do feel
that there is value in seeking more nature in our lives and in finding more
ways to live in concert with nature as opposed to how we are living now.
3) My friend Nic told me that coming home is difficult for
him. He said that he used to visit for weeks at a time, but now he stays for
just a few days. He says it is not the discomfort of the living situation that
makes visiting hard, although this is definitely a challenge for someone
accustomed to modern amenities. Rather it is the boredom that he finds difficult.
Every day is almost the exact same. Wakeup, livestock out, herding, family,
friends, livestock in, sleep. Eat and drink a little in between. Conversely,
this is what I LOVED about visiting. The beautiful simplicity, a powerful sense
of community, and closeness to nature. Our modern lives are busy. We have
gained much, but we have lost much too.
The Maasai people have changed a lot over the last few years. Their population has grown significantly, and the culture is morphing rapidly. The consumption of raw meat and blood from a cow’s jugular is no longer as common a practice. Nic’s father was the last Maasai warrior in his village who killed a lion as a rite of passage. The cruel practice of female circumcision is slowly being eradicated. Bomas are getting switched out for tin roof shacks with electricity. Like other ethnic groups in Tanzania, I imagine that the Maasai people will look very different 20 years from now.
Indigenous people around the world are losing their way of life just as the environment that they have harmonized with is changing too. I hope that we find ways to help preserve natural places and to allow space for the people who wish to live in harmony within them. Indigenous people can’t do this on their own. There are too many outside factors. Poverty is the constant companion of wealth creation and cultural homogeneity its sad mistress. I pray that the world can find balance where the Maasai people can still be Maasai, even as what that means becomes something different.
