During our stay in Kenya, we took an afternoon off from game watching, and our guide Josphet took us to a local Maasai village to experience their culture firsthand.

The Maasai are a semi-nomadic people living along the Great Rift Valley of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are one of the hundreds of tribes that comprise Kenya/Tanzania, but are famous because of their traditional dress, proximity to the safari game parks, and their respect for nature (not coincidental that the animals love to live around the peaceful Maasai).

We arrived at the nearby Maasai village, which was surrounded by a large, circular fence made of acacia thorns. Inside the communal fence were two dozen small mud huts, with children darting in and out, and a second internal fence to protect cattle from lions and other predators.

A Maasai woman standing outside of her home.

A young boy running through the dung-filled cattle area while the cattle are out grazing.

The houses, which are built by the Maasai women, are made of mud, sticks, grass, and cow manure. Women are also responsible for cooking, fetching water, milking cattle, doing laundry, and looking after the children (basically everything!). Stephen was very intrigued by this lifestyle…

Josphet showing us the materials used to build a traditional Maasai home.

A young Maasai woman invited us to enter her home and allowed us to ask whatever questions we had (with Josphet translating of course). The house was small and dark, but within the entire space, the family cooks, eats, sleeps, socializes and stores food, supplies and small animals like goats. She also had a bunch of puppies roaming the house!

The Maasai woman's son peeking out of their front door.

We sat around the kitchen and bedroom area and started asking questions. We learned that the Maasai are polygamous, and the husband moves from hut to hut on different nights. Cattle are very important to the Maasai community, and how many cows a man owns is a symbol of his wealth. We were not surprised then to learn that the Maasai diet consists mostly of raw milk and meat, and often blood from cattle, which is thought to contain a lot of protein.

In the kitchen of the home she built with her own hands.

Our host wasn’t sure of her age, but Josphet figured she was around 23 years old. When we asked her what her typical day consisted of, she laughed and said "nothing". Then we asked her what her hobbies were, and she said, "being happy".

She showed us some beer she was brewing and seemed very proud when Stephen kept sniffing it and saying how good it smelled.

We learned about the circumcision ceremonies for both males and females, which the Maasai people take very seriously. The circumcision ceremony for a male basically makes or breaks his standing in society. If a male makes any noise, cries, or even flinches during the ceremony, he will be called a coward for the rest of his life! If he can make it through the ceremony in total silence, he will be given many gifts of livestock and respect for his bravery. Oh, and I forgot to mention, there is no anesthetic or alcohol allowed, and the circumcisions take place at 15!! Ouch!

Other customs we noticed and asked about were the shaved heads on both men and women, piercings and ear stretching, and the fact that men carry large sticks to show that they are in fact a man.

One myth about the Maasai that Josphet dispelled is that each young man is supposed to kill a lion before he is circumcised. This was common practice in the past, but concern about decreasing lion populations has led to this activity being banned among the Maasai.

It was incredible to be able to sit with this young woman and have such an open discussion about anything and everything. Our lives are so different and sometimes it amazes me to see how happy someone can be with so little space and so few possessions and to compare it to life in New York where so many people walk around generally unhappy. I’m not saying that I could live in a dark hut made of cow dung, but it does make you think!

After a very informative visit, we walked out of the hut and were greeted by a line of Maasai women in their beautiful and colorful clothing waiting to sing us a number of traditional songs. Afterwords, they lined up with their children and laid out jewelry and souvenirs for our group to purchase. One thing we noticed were the sheer amount of flies everywhere, even crawling all over their childrens’ faces. No one flinched except for us non-Maasai. It was crazy!

The woman and children lined up rows and rows of jewelry, trinkets and wooden sculptures.

We all bought a few things and hopped back into our jeep, mostly to escape the relentless flies. It was nice to take a short break from safari to learn more about the Maasai, and this was definitely one of the most memorable things we did in Africa. We both can’t get the song out of our heads either!

-Michelle