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Money Hungry Masai Village

UPON leaving the gate at Masai Mara, Joseph suggested we could stop by at another Masai village. I had been to one yesterday with Luke and Samuel, but he mentioned there was another one here that was a bit bigger, though obviously a lot more tourist oriented. He said it would cost twenty five dollars. I thought about it for a bit and decided why not?

A few minutes later I could see a large conical thatched roof near the right hand side of the road through some scrub. Joseph pulled over and we entered a large Masai village. There were four well-built men wearing very brightly coloured reds, oranges and yellows waiting to show tourists through.

I paid my twenty five dollars and Joseph left me with the six Masai warriors. They started with bringing me to the middle of the village where there wasn’t a blade of grass. They started performing a Masai dance. They danced around in a circle performing a rather loud chant.

Like the clothes Luke had been wearing yesterday, these warriors were wearing wrap around cloaks rather than real clothes. Most of them did not have sleeves in them but had a small sash going over the other shoulder.

One warrior stood in the middle whilst the others continued their dance around the circle. The circle encompassed some hay which their livestock would feed on, but there were no livestock around here today. They then approached me and stood with me as one of them took my camera to photograph us. Then he gave my camera back and they continued their dance. Now they were jumping up and down almost effortlessly on their very long springy legs. They reached nearly a metre high with hardly trying. The others would stand around in a semicircle whilst one would leap very high to the chants of the other members.

Some of the Masai had sticks to assist with balance.

Once they finished dancing, they brought me into the circle. Again one of them took my camera and photographed me participating in their dance. Naturally I didn’t jump too high, especially with my short legs and having spent all day in the van. It was then that I became conscious that anything that I have seen today could be in the area – lions, leopards, cheetahs, and any other predator.

Then the dancing stopped and a couple of dancers sprinted across the village to behind the far huts. There were a few small children playing outside some of the far huts. I noticed they were all wearing rather nice Western style clothes. It seems the twenty five dollars tourists pay here serves them very well.

The runners returned carrying some stuff and we all congregated to the outside of one of the huts.

Here they showed me how they made fire. With a large knife they carved the end of a hard stick, and started rubbing it into the hole of a soft piece of wood sitting on their knife. They rubbed very quickly and within a minute embers had formed. A couple of the others put some dried straw around the smouldering piece of wood and blew on it. Seconds later the straw ignited. They had succeeded in making fire – the first time I had ever seen this happen.

Now it was my turn. It had been very easy watching them create fire. I rubbed the stick between my hands as fast as I could, but it was only half of the speed the others were rubbing. I felt quite hot from all the exertion, but there was no smoke coming out of the soft wood.

Upon realising I would never make fire, I handed the hard piece of wood over and they once more produced fire within a minute flat.

Now they had been successful at making fire, they wanted to sell me their knife. The group leader told me a story of how they had created the knife themselves – it was a genuine Masai knife. It was quite large and I wondered how they managed to get the iron to create such a nice metal blade. Searching for evidence that it had been made by the Masai, I saw the embossed inscription “Made in China” as seen in almost any product you buy these days.

Well sadly the “Made in China” embossment does not at all constitute Masai made. I thought about pointing this obvious flaw out to them, but just handed in back instead. There was no way they were going to sell me their knife if it was made in China. As I handed it back I explained to them that I would not be allowed to take sharp objects like knives into my country. I’m not sure if they understood what I meant. Then again like many other locals here, they seemed to have very little concept of the word ‘no’.

Then the leader took me into one of the houses. The house we had been outside was falling apart. It had a corrugated iron door that had almost fallen off its hinges and a lot of the mud on the outside of the hut was falling off. It was time to rebuild it.

The warrior led me into the next hut. The walls were lined with timber but no mud. Perhaps this was a special house, or maybe it was still in the process of being built. Maybe it was owned by the people who owned the other house that was falling apart.

He led me into the completely dark house showing me around. If it wasn’t totally dark I would have been able to see it was quite well laid out, and in better condition to the house I had been in yesterday. I asked the warrior if I could photograph him. Now this was going to be a challenge, but amazingly my camera did find a focal point in the almost total darkness. The room lit up with a huge flash for just a few milliseconds before reverting to total blindness. Later I would discover the photo had come out very well indeed.

There was a very nice fireplace in this hut, and numerous aluminium pot billies.

Then the warrior told me this was the chief’s house. Cool I thought. Though I would have imagined the chiefs of villages would have had better accommodation than this. This was obviously all they knew here though. The warrior then started the hard sell on me again, mentioning that he must collect money from me as I have entered the chief’s home. I told him that he should have told me that before we entered. He wouldn’t take it though. He said that the chief would punish him if he let guests into his home without them paying. I quite firmly told him that I have already paid twenty five dollars and that by asking for more money he was bringing a lot of disrespect to my tribe. I told him the way to avoid punishment was to tell people in advance if something was going to cost extra.

With that we left the house and he and a few of the other warriors led me around the back to the large conical thatched roof building. The walls were solid unpainted timber standing about one and a quarter metres high, then it was open to the start of the thatched roof two metres above the ground. The roof rose to a sharp point about eight metres above the ground.

There were a couple of women in the hut. As expected it contained a lot of souvenirs. Unfortunately they followed me very closely to the point I couldn’t even admire the amazing things they had for sale. It was then I realised that I was never going to be able to buy anything on this trip. People here in Africa were so pushy, and I certainly wasn’t going to buy anything after they had lied to me about their knife and made up their ridiculous story about having to pay to enter the chief’s house otherwise they will be punished.

From there I politely bade the group farewell thanking them for their hospitality (despite their obvious indiscretions) and returned to Joseph who was waiting in the van.

From there we continued along the very bumpy road back towards the camp.

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