Jambo (=Hello)! Sorry for taking so long to put up a new post but last week mainly constituted in attending class and making observations on bats for a report, so honestly there wasn’t too much to write about (excluding another secondary school futbol match). However, the past three days have been rather exciting, but before I get into that I just want to throw out some random things that are on my mind at the moment. I also realize that all of my posts turn into mini novels, my apologies (poleàpole lay =sorry). pronounced
With wind comes dust here. With giant thunderstorms blowing in from one direction at around 3 PM daily following an 80-degree day of sun comes walls of flying debris. I wish I had my camera for one of the more recent ones, you could literally see the advancing line of dust as it quickly advanced on our position.
I can understand why the people here were not happy with sleeping under mosquito nets when they were first advised as preventative methods to combat Malaria. The nets are treated with chemicals, that unbeknownst to me, are rather irritable and seems I am somewhat allergic to. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if I didn’t have to untuck and tuck every time I get into bed…so of course I now have what looks like poison ivy all up and down my hands and arms and on the bottom of my feet (and I cannot tell you how itchy it is).
Alright well that’s enough of the random things for now, I think I’ll enlighten you as to some of the cultural aspects of this region as our past two days held quite a stark contrast (this will make sense in a bit). The local people living in and around Kimana are the Maasai, semi nomadic pastoralists/agriculturalists who happen to be extremely kind to our school and the program. We visited one of our neighboring bomas earlier in the semester (one of the earlier posts mentioned it…we sang Twist and Shout for them) and in the last two days we were able to see the people in a new light.
On Wednesday, we took a day trip into Amboseli again, but the purpose of this trip was solely to be wazungu (white people/tourists) rather than wanafunzi (students). And of course, as tourists, we had to go and meet with the real Maasai warriors (cue sarcasm radar). We visited a cultural manyatta, which is a boma set up to entertain tourism and to profit from visitors. They have routine songs/performances and prayers which were actually quite entertaining though during the prayer we had to kneel and with my perfectly healthy and relatively strong knees (ninacheza=I am joking) this was rahisi (easy). But of course, being used to tourists, these show Maasai have perfected the art of guilt tripping unsuspecting site-seers into buying little trinkets for extremely outrageous prices. Advice: know and avoid a tourist trap when you see one and know how to haggle if you cannot avoid. With my stint in Nairobi, I knew not to get singled out by anyone and made my way through the gauntlet without my pockets getting any lighter (the gauntlet meaning they had this fenced off alleyway with goods/merchants lining both sides as your guide would lead you down it saying “This is my wife…this is my mother…please buy for my family?”).
So what is really interesting is that today, the day after the manyata, was our homestay with the Maasai in the surrounding area. We were split up into groups of two or three and left with either murran (warriors) for the gents or mamas for the ladies. Our warriors were 22 and 26 respectively and didn’t speak a lick of English and didn’t convey that they spoke Kiswahili either (good thing I took pains to try and memorize a few key, now useless, phrases). The day was interesting though: it began with chai, followed by two hours of weeding a tomato field, with chopping down shrubbery to appease the random knights of Ni that appeared (actually we used it to repair the fencing surrounding their boma but I couldn’t resist the HG reference). Lunch was ugali (African bread that isn’t really bread), a cabbage/onion/carrot/some kind of sauce mixture, and a glass of warm milk.
More work in the field followed lunch (we used carved staves to push and roll chopped brush and plant debris into bundles in order to clear fields to plant banana trees) followed by another round of chai. I’m not going into all the details here, but what really struck me was how everyone else outside of Maasai culture (and now apparently even inside with the manyattas) tries to obviously glamorize the Maasai tribal way of life. In no way am I criticizing the Maasai pastoralism or agriculturalism, but rather the tourist industry’s and Hollywood’s idealistic notion of “savage” existence and wild people. Let me tell you, almost every Maasai warrior has a cell phone. They know how to work a camera even though they still get a kick out of photographing their buddies and showing it to them on the view screen. Yes, their condition of living may not be too appealing to many Westerners, but in no way is it not acclimatizing to the world around them. In fact, I find it terribly amazing that they can keep so much of their history and culture intact in their daily lives while the government and the rest of Kenya criticize them of being backwards and stagnant. It’s certainly a rare feat in this world.
Anyways, sorry for another novel, though I didn’t touch upon even half of what I intended. I promise the next post will be sooner…probably Saturday evening following our third day trip into Amboseli (we’re actually partnering with the Kenyan Wildlife Service to conduct a total density count of the wildlife residing there). Most excellent. Oh and before I forget check this link out. http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/5852_first_impressions_sfs_kenya_to_tanzania.cfm
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