Maasai Boma - Saturday, January 21

After visiting the dispensary, we set out on an even more winding, narrow “path” through the flat terrain to visit a Maasai village (boma). We had to be led to the location of the village because there is no road leading to it. As we piled out of the land rover, we were greeted with reluctant but curious looks from a hoard of young children wearing blue clothing draped over their bodies. There were also many young and middle aged women, but very few boys older than around ten years old. This group of Maasai is all one family. There is one patriarch and he has approximately ten wives. Each wife builds, maintains, and controls her house, and all of them live near each other in an area surrounded by piled-up brush.

At first, the children were very shy and would not approach us nor interact with us. Once the women brought out beaded crafts to sell and members of our group began to barter with them, the kids started to show obvious curiosity about us and relaxed somewhat. They would stare at us from a safe distance, and we would smile back. If we tried to approach them, they would run away. We were given permission to take pictures, so I took a lot of pictures of the group and especially the children. They looked fascinated by the cameras, but ran away if we tried to approach them to show them the pictures. There was one little boy, in particular, that seemed to really stare at me. At one point, I was taking pictures of the entire group, and this little boy, who I know had been watching me closely, ran around the group and stood right in front of me, staring at the camera. When I tried to show him the image, he ran away. Eventually, we were able to approach them and the children were fascinated and excited to see their pictures. It wasn’t long before all of them were posing for photos and were giddy when they saw their images.

The oldest woman in the boma was holding a baby on her back. We asked, through translators, and found that the woman was the mother of the man who headed the boma, and the baby was her son’s wife. At birth, Maasai women are sometimes married to their husband and move into the boma with him (apparently). I don’t understand the intricacies of this system (obviously) since this arrangement would not be possible in the long term; this sort of system is mind-blowing from a Western perspective. [There is surely some variation, too, in Maasai culture].

One of the wives invited us to see her home (many of the wives did not allow us to get near their homes.). It was probably one of the senior wives, and it was one of the nicest “homes.” There were two small rooms made with mud walls. There was very little light inside, only what light passed through the entrance and some small slits in the wall. There was a room for cooking and a room for sleeping. The “bed” was a hardened cattle hide, and there were no pillows on sheets or blankets that I could see. She seemed proud of this abode, and this surreal experience made me realize the extent of their poverty and isolation. It’s hard to imagine how isolated these people are, in the middle of a desolate and harsh place. The lifestyle is unimaginable for Westerners, with no real choice available, especially for women.

After returning to the ALC, we all felt completely drained, emotionally and physically, so it was good that we had nothing planned for the evening. Throughout the evening, some of us discussed various aspects of the day, and we found it interesting how different people reacted to the various parts of the day.

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