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