10 things you don't need when raising your child with the Masai

I have been living with the Masai for five years and 18 months ago I had my son.

Sometimes bringing him up out here in the bush seems difficult but when I think about it, I believe I am very lucky as certain things are so much easier out here in regards to raising children.

Here are ten things you won't need when raising your child with the Masai:

Nappies. Out here they are difficult to dispose of, as Tanzania does not have a               working waste disposal system in place. You don't need them though as Masai life       is lived out in the open. We just let the children do their business openly, cleaning       them up when need be.

Clean clothes: We are surrounded by sand, mud and dust around the clock, so           things are bound to get dirty. No one here minds a dirty child or messy clothes.

Baby carrier: African women are famous for carrying their babies on their backs.
They don't do this with a specially designed backpack (which you wouldn't find       here anyway) but with a kanga, a simple piece of fabric which has a multitude of       uses, from headwrap to sarong to baby carrier.

Pram: Roads are sandy, stoney and muddy. You would not get anywhere with a           pram, even a fancy off-road one. Here, when you want to take your child places,           you carry it.

My son playing with a baby goat.

Nanny: Masai live in huge extended family units. You will always find someone
willing to look after your baby for a while. They love children and they help you         out for free.

Highchair: Out here, when a baby is old enough to eat, you sit it on your lap and
feed it or sit it on the floor and let it get messy. After all, we don't have fancy             carpets here.

Car seat: The main means of transport here are motorbikes. If need be, you strapp your baby to your body and let yourself be driven by a reliable driver or, in my case, my husband.

Play groups: Children here play OUTSIDE. From dawn to dusk. And they play with anything available, sand, twigs, seeds. No need to take them somewhere fancy.

Cot: Masai babies sleep in their mother's bed from the day they are born. So has           mine. I love watching his sleeping face in the morning and holding him close.

Wet wipes: The Masai use soft leaves from a tree they call Olmaroroi to wipe baby bottoms. We call it toilet paper tree.

As strong as a woman

Can you do this?

My sister-in-law doing her washing with her son strapped to her back.

Masai women, and generally women in Africa, do back-breaking work on a daily basis. They walk kilometres to fetch water, having to either carry it home on their heads, or loading it onto a donkey. They often do this with a baby on their back.

When they get home, they do not sit back and recover, but start cooking their own food over an open fire. In the African heat, this is another strenuous task.

If they have a spare minute, they go out into the bush to collect firewood. Again they carry a huge load by tying it together and carrying it on their backs with a string wrapped around their foreheads.

Masai women are also in charge of house building. Masai huts are built out of wood and mud. The women fell trees which serve as pillars and hundreds of thick branches which are wrought together with flexible tree bark to serve as walls. 

This is then weather-proofed by plastering it with cow dung and sand. 

Men take no part in building houses or fixing them. Nor do they fetch water or firewood or play a role in raising their children. 

Women do everything in the Masai world and they never complain.

I have come to know how strong we can be, through them. 

Marriage and circumcision

The Masai are polygamous and there is no limit to the amount of wives a man can have.
They marry by paying cattle to their prospective wife's family.

The current number of cattle is twelve, of which only two are allowed to be male. This does not include a juvenile female to be brought along with the traditional brewed 'gongo', a brew of fermented corn, that the elders drink in exchange for giving their blessing.

The groom also provides a bull to be slaughtered at the girl's circumcision ceremony.

A girl is considered mature enough for circumcision and henceworth marriage at about 13 years old. She does not have any say in the election of her future spouse.

In our parts of the Masai Steppe, partly due to the influence of Christian missionaries, and partly due to strict law enforcements on this issue, FGM is no longer practised.

Girls have a circumcision ceremony, but are not circumcised in praxis.

The boys however who are 'laioni' before circumcision, have to undergo this procedure to become warriors, or 'moran'.


In the past, Moran were not allowed to marry until they were degraded to Elder status. These days, Moran marry as young as 18 years old.

The commonly spread myth about the killing of a lion being a prerequisite to warriorhood might have been true decades ago, but is certainly no longer.

There simply aren't enough lions left for this.

Newly circumcised warrior 

 

Out and about with bow and arrow

Fully healed in full dress 

Jumping tribe

You might be surprised to hear, that it is not only the warriors who do the dancing at festivities, but also the women.

However, married women never dance with warriors but separately, in an all women circle.
The warriors dance with uncircumcised girls in the centre of the cattle enclosure.

Masai women form a circle and sing and dance at the same time. In turns, one or two of them enter the circle to jump up and down

Warriors and girls enter the cow enclosure in single file, then each form a semi circle and start singing simultaneously. While the warriors jump, the girls mainly use their upper body, wiggling their shoulders to display their neck jewellery.

Old men never participate in the dancing but rather watch from afar.

For the love of cows

The native African cattle (Bos taurus africanus), also called the 'Sanga' cattle, was originally humpless. Interbreeding with Zebu (humped) cattle imported from Asia, created the modern intermediate African breed.

The hump serves as fat reserve during long dry seasons these cattle have to endure.
They are resistant to extreme heat, humidity and certain diseases.

Different to European cattle, African cattle come in all sorts of colours and the Masai have a name for each single colour or pattern.

Here is a picture of two of our dominant bulls, having their fill of pumba (corn shells) and bean shells from our farm.

The colour of the bull on the left is called 'Ouasse' identifying the white marks he has on each side. The other one's is called 'Keri', for a mixture of white and any other colour in large patterns.

Dry season

It's that time of year again when the grass has dried and the cows grow hungry.
Last year's dry season saw the death of a dozen cattle.

We are preparing ourselves for the worst again by buying plenty of 'pumba', the swahili term for the corn dust produced by the mill when grinding corn. We feed this to the cattle when there is no more grass for them to feed on.

Cattle are everything to the Masai, they are their only form of income, their measurement of wealth, their pride. Losing even one cow is a huge loss.

Recent years have seen irregular rainfall patterns and drought, causing hunger for men as well as cattle.

Sadly, climate change and overpopulation affect us even out here in the bush.