December 24, 2011
Wow! I’ve seen so many amazing things so far, both in terms of African wildlife and Kenyan culture. One of the main factors of deciding to do this tour with Intrepid was the cultural interaction offered by the company, and they have been fantastic. I feel like I’ve met a lot of locals who have been very open about their lifestyles and lives.
The first community we visited was the Hope Children’s Center. The orphanage was originally started as a girls’ school but now serves 120 boys and girls ranging in age from under a year to 18. When we got off the truck, a dozen little faces met us. “Hello. What is your name?” could be heard as the children grabbed our hands or crawled into our arms. We toured the place and learned of the amazing work being done there, and then the children sang for us. I’ll admit that part of it felt a little cliché with the white tourists visiting the underprivileged performing Africans. At the same time, you could tell that important work was going on at the orphanage, and I can see how this interaction with the kids helps outsiders see the need and probably open their pocketbooks or calendars for the children’s benefit—it’s definitely made me think about how I can be more service-minded.
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Two girls from the orphanage. Both girls and boys
often have hair this short. Usually schools or parents
require it for the ease and cleanliness of the style. |
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| The children singing to us. |
The next community we visited was in Lake Nakuru. Intrepid uses a campsite there outside the national park that is overseen by the local villagers and the money brought in supports the microfinance projects the woman of Lake Nakuru are using to better their lives and the lives of their children. We went on a game drive the afternoon we arrived (details of which I’ll expound upon in my animals entry
J), but the following morning we toured the village with Beth, a Kenyan woman from elsewhere in the country who studied microfinance and how it might work in Lake Nukuru community at university in Nairobi. The women’s projects we saw ranged from tilapia and rabbit farming to bead making and t-shirt screening to weaving, and it was clear these projects were really empowering the women of the community. I attempted very unsuccessfully to make some yarn, but was able to make a paper bead with only a little help.
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| Me, messing up the yarn they were spinning |
Accompanying us on the tour was also Gladys, a divorced 24-year-old woman with a four-year-old daughter. She was from the village and had started weaving with the women’s group, but Beth suggested she was too young to be doing the weaving and proposed she become a tour guide. It was interesting to have a candid conversation with her about her life and opportunities in the village. She explained to me that her daughter was in a private school, but in public primary school, which had just become free to all in the last decade, class sizes could be more than 80 students! (And I thought 28 was a lot!) Also accompanying us was an 18 year old student who had taken the entrance exams and qualified for university—not an easy task here. Unfortunately for him, like many people in Kenya, he doesn’t have a national identity card which means he can’t matriculate. From what Beth said, a lot of people in the community don’t have ID cards for various reasons including having to leave their homes in a hurry (many people came to this village during the civil unrest of the last Kenyan general election), and it can be really difficult to get a replacement, largely due to corruption. This man had been waiting for a couple months and had two more weeks to receive his card before he would have to defer his studies for a year.
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| Our tour guides |
The highlight of the tour, however, was probably the group of children following us and holding our hands. My buddy John introduced himself to me and took my hand. Whenever we'd stop to learn about the project, the kids would wait away from where we were, but they were there to grab our hands again as soon as we were ready to walk to the new place. John wanted to wear my sunglasses, and was very kind in letting other children try them on as well.
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| I knelt down to be closer to his height, and he knelt down too. |
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John in my glasses. He had a hard time getting them to
rest over his ears. Instead, he'd have his ears smashed
between the two frame temples. (Yes, I Googled "parts of
eye glasses" to know the word for temples.) |
The third community that really left an impact on me was the Maasai village in Loita Hills. Maasai is a native tribe to East Africa that has preserved much of its culture in modern days. We arrived in time for lunch, and the most noticeable thing while we were preparing food were the flies. They were
everywhere. We did our best to keep the food covered as we cut up vegetables and grated cheese for sandwiches, but the cattle raised in this community attract the flies, and we were fighting a losing battle. We kept swatting, but it was a tiring game, and later when I saw the Maasai people ignoring the flies in their eyes or on their foreheads and in their noses, I could see how they would have developed this apathy. (Unfortunately, our guide explained, these flies in the children’s eyes cause trachoma, something the government is trying to educate about.)
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| The village |
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| The photo doesn't do the quantity of flies justice. |
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| Setting up lunch among the flies. |
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| Maasai girl carrying her baby sibling. |
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| This photo breaks my heart. |
After our lunch we pitched out tents and talked with a couple of elders in the village. They were very friendly and open to sharing about their lives, though I was getting a little distracted by the man sitting next to me who seemed to be picking his nose and rolling whatever it was he found in there in the palm of his hand. (After learning a little bit more and discussing the site with another traveler, we decided that he might have been using an herbal remedy in his nose and that was what he was playing with instead of mucus. Regardless, it was a little off putting. Anyway…) Daniel, the elder of this village, had a bow and arrow he was explaining to us how to use, and that later we were able to shoot. He was on village guard that night, keeping watch for any unwanted animals or men from other tribes trying to steal goats or cattle. After our talk, Daniel gave us a tour of the area. He showed us how different plants were used for healing, decoration, and tools.
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| Daniel, our guide |
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| Daniel wanted to make Ally his second wife. Really. |
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Daniel showing me how to use the bow and arrow.
It's harder than it looks! |
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| Organic blush! |
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| Village Elder |
Later that afternoon we met Josephet, a village elder who was in charge of teaching us about the Maasai culture. He explained that we were a little unfortunate in our timing at the village because had we been there a day earlier, we could have seen a circumcision ceremony. (To be honest, while I’m sure it would have been interesting, I’m not sure I mind I missed it.) As it was, we did see the 13-year-old boy who had been circumcised. (They boys wear ear-muff looking things after the ceremony for several months. When I asked Josephet about it, he explained that it let others in the community know the boy had been circumcised and to be mindful of it. While I had thought about how painful it would be to be circumcised as a teenager, I hadn’t thought about what awkward timing 13 or 14 would be in terms of hormones. No wonder they have to make such a big deal about it!
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| Josephet and me |
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Recently circumcised boy on right.
Builder of the hut we're in on the left. |
We learned a lot from Josephet and he encouraged questions: Before being circumcised, 13- and 14-year old boys go out with others their age in groups of 20 to 40 to kill a lion with their spears. (It’s very rare that a lion is actually killed—usually only one or two are killed in five or six years among all of the Maasai, but the experience is important.) After the lion hunting, at age14 or 15, boys are circumcised. After they’ve healed from that, at around age 17, the young men live as warriors for seven or eight years. They live together in a village with only a few women (moms and sisters) helping take care of them. After their warrior days, the men come home and take wives. Maasai men have multiple wives if they have enough cattle to afford to do so. The first marriage is arranged by the parents, and subsequent marriages are determined by the father of the bride and the husband to be.
Women do most of the work around houses, including building them out of cow dung and tree limbs. (Women build houses; men build fences.) It takes about six months to build a home. A husband will rotate sleeping in the different houses of his wives. Children under the age of 5 can stay in the house if the husband is sleeping there, but any older children would understand what is going on in the bed between their parents and thus sleep somewhere else for the night if their dad is visiting. Josephet explained that there is no jealousy between the wives. I asked him if that’s really true. He told me I could ask his daughter about it, but not when he was around. (Unfortunately I never had the chance.) He was also very upfront about how the society is not egalitarian; men are more important than women and are treated better, but they command women kindly. Also, as village elders know this, they typically side with a wife if an issue is brought before them to be resolved.
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| A Maasai home. The woman made it in 6 months. |
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| Inside of the house. It takes about six months to build, |
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| 114 year old Maasai |
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| Type of fence the men build to keep the animals in at night. |
What was particularly interesting to me as I was learning about these people is the way the Maasai are balancing their culture with modern day life. You can buy a cell phone for two sheep, a motorbike for 20. Josephet’s daughter was going to university in Nairobi, but she does the women’s tribal jobs when she’s home on holiday. (“I don’t know if she dances and goes out when she’s in Nairobi,” Josephet explained, “but when she’s here, she lives as a Maasai woman.”)
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| The women of the village singing for us. |
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| A great shot if only my eyes were open! |
The following morning the Maasai warriors sang and danced for us and showed us some of their other skills. It was fascinating. They do this jumping thing to get themselves psyched up, and a couple of the boys jumped like they had springs in their legs. We also got to try throwing their clubs—I wasn’t half bad. I think my favorite thing to see, though, was the picture taking. These 15- to 24-year-old men loved getting their pictures taken and then seeing them on the camera screen. Even more fun for them was when we let them take pictures with our cameras. I wasn’t sure I was going to get mine back!
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