Part I: Karibu Maasai Boma

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.

Our bodies caked with sweat and grime; I grimaced as I lifted my sore legs over the motorcycle seat. The silhouettes of Acacia trees, mud brick huts, and animal pens surrounded me. We saw the first stars beginning to twinkle and heard the laughter of children and the bleating of goats. Other than those sounds, it was blissfully quiet. No electricity. No running water. “Congratulations,” said my friend who had been my travel companion this whole time. “We are at my home. Karibu Maasai Boma.”

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.