Masai house building

The Masai used to live a nomadic lifestyle and have in that way aquired a traditional knowledge about hut building which is passed on from generation to generation.

This knowledge is strictly female as men take no part in any of the building process.

A nearly finished house - just leaves and sand missing from the roof.

Modern Masai houses are not round but rectangular and consist of sticks and poles and a mud/cow dung mixture only.

It takes between two and four months for a standard size house with two large beds to be built, depending on the intensity with which it is worked on.

The builder of the house is usually the one who will be living in it but older, more experienced women, often help newlywed women build their first house.

The inside of the partly finished house displayed above.

They are very sturdy and last for 7-10 years. After that they are not considered safe anymore as wood worms and other wood eating insects would have done some damage by that time.

When a house is taken down, it is not allowed to build the new house on the same spot - it has to be at least a few metres away.

The building is started by drawing the outline of the house into the ground and then digging four deep holes at each corner. This is where supporting poles will be erected. Then, a trench is dug along the outline and smaller sticks are stuck into it to make up the walls.
Thin, flexible twigs are aligned horizontally along the structure and fixed to the vertical sticks with rope. This makes everything more sturdy.

A woman carrying building material on her back and her baby on the front, followed by her older son.

Then, these wooden walls are plastered with the cow dung-mud mixture, leaving small round openings as windows,

To fix the roof, up to 10 heavy poles are erected inside the walls. These support sticks that are laid on top of them to form the roof. Others are laid on top of this first layer and then a layer of grass or leaves goes on top of the sticks. The roof is finished off with a heavy load of sand that is piled on top for waterproofing.

The house is done but the work is not yet. What is left, are the beds.

These are again made out of long sticks which are laid across short thicker poles that have been dug into the ground and cushioned with grass and leaves and a cow hide.

Using the same system, shelves are erected on which to store cooking utensils.

Myself in the house I stayed in during my very first visit to my husband's family's boma 

It is a huge task and one that leaves the women exhausted. The men, as with so many other chores, leave it entirely up to their wives to get it done.

Living here with the Masai, I have gained much love and respect for female strength and resilience.

To a large part, it is the women, who keep the Masai culture alive.

I am running a campaign to teach our community about conservation and land management to counteract the destruction of their land.
Please click on this link to find out more. Donations of any size are appreciated and help us make a difference:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stephanie-s-masai-education-fund-africa/x/17779290#/

Cow works

I have been living amongst the Masai for quite some time now but it never fails to put a smile on my face when we get a new addition to our cattle herd.

The warriors are experts at predicting when a cow is about to give birth. So often, they keep heavily pregnant ones from going out with the herd, in order to keep watch over them and extract the calf when it arrives.

My brother-in-law untying his cow after a successful birth.

Zebu cattle give birth every 15 - 18 months and carry their unborn calves for 9 months like humans. They are fertile from about three years old and are named as soon as they have given birth the first time.

Unlike bulls, cows are not commonly sold, but are kept in the family's herd till they grow old.

When wanting to milk a cow, Masai women call them by their name and they obediently trot over to be milked. A lot of them are quite docile and can be touched and stroked, others however do not like direct contact with humans.

In the video below, you can see one of our cows bringing her calf into the world with help from the warriors.

The plight of modernity

The Masai used to be nomadic but in recent times they have had to adapt their way of life to ever more difficult conditions.

This is due to dwindling pasture lands and encroaching human settlements and farmland.

These days, the Masai try to teach themselves land management in order to preserve grassland for the dry season.

They also move the cattle if need be, making camp for months at a time wherever the rains have come early.

We move our cows once or twice a year. This has become difficult though as there has been a rise in conflict between Masai and the neighbouring tribe, the Wasingua.

More than once, on moving our herd into the nearby Kilindi district, we have been fined by local village chairmen for no reason.

Herding the cows in the hills in the dry season

Last year, while camping out with the cows in the Kilindi district, our boys and young warriors were beaten and our cattle taken by unknown Swahili men. The cows were held ransom for two days and only due to police pressure and the involvement of the heads of both Kiteto and Kilindi district, were they released without being harmed.

This incident was completely unprovoked.

We see evidence on a daily basis of an ever rising human population causing problems and tension. The Masai will find it increasingly hard to find sufficient pastures for their cattle and they are increasingly exposed to the bad will of their neighbours.

I believe it is essential now to teach the Masai about land management, family planning and to advice them of their rights so as to prevent them being taken advantage of.

For an example of how they are treated to date in our neighbouring Loliondo, please read this article.

Rights abuses and evictions of Masai people in Tanzania

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. 

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.