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.

A life away from home

While my sister was here, we decided to spend some time on Zanzibar together.
The five days we spent there, made me fall in love with the island all over again.

Travelling with someone who is new to Tanzania and sees her beauty with wondrous eyes, reminded me why I came to love it here.

Traditional dhow in the evening light.

We went to Kendwa, in the north of the island. Crystal white sand on a long broad stretch of beach and clear turquoise waters in which swimming is possible even at low tide, make this my favourite place on Zanzibar.

You cannot walk there without being addressed by people trying to sell you things.
Many of them are Zanzibaris but there are also a lot of Masai.

A warrior talking to tourists on Kendwa beach

They come to coastal regions in the hope to find work to help keep up with an increasing demand for materialistic things by their families.

These days the Masai do not cloth themselves in sheep skins but buy expensive clothes made in Asia. They do not use twines, roots and seeds anymore to create jewellery, but buy plastic beads made in China to make necklaces, bracelets and anklets.

An increasing population size has lead to higher cattle numbers and overgrazing.
Cows do not produce enough milk anymore to make the yoghurt the Masai used to live off in past times.

A warrior keeping watch over a hotel beach front.

For this reason Masai have started either planting farms of corn or buying it which is both costly. They have become many, and the land is no longer enough for them to live off exclusively.

They usually find employment as security for hotels and often have shops selling Masai crafts too.

It is a stunning sight - Zanzibar's white sands and turquoise waters glistening in the African sun - and a warrior in full dress, wearing Ildeka, which only they are allowed to wear; long cotton strings braided into the top hair, falling in braids down to their lower backs.

A warrior posing for me on the beach.

I loved Africa even before I had met any of them but for me now they represent everything I have come to love about this continent.

Their even featured faces with almond eyes and bright white teeth is matched in beauty only by their kind souls.

Working hard for water

My sister is here for a visit and today we went to look at our communal waterhole.

A warrior standing on the watering trough to keep the cattle in order

The warriors are busy organising their cattle to drink from the water trough and the women are washing and loading their donkeys with water to take back home for cooking, drinking and washing.

Our cattles' turn to drink 

Donkeys here are very valuable work animals and therefore very well looked     after. My husband always says they are the Masai's equivalent of cars. 

Donkeys waiting patiently to be loaded 

They are used for carrying water and corn or supplies to take to far away camps when moving the cattle.

Women fetching water

They can easily carry 80 litres of water in one trip, often they carry more.

Recently, donkey numbers have been declining due to Swahili people stealing and slaughtering them for their coats.

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. 

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