Saturday May 21
Magadi
We would be driving to a Maasai village today. The drive according to Dr. Wamai would be 3 hours on the road and then an hour off road. We stopped to pick up his friend, Nyamchuk (spelt wrong) who is Maasai though she is not from that village. She had a beautiful baby girl who I had the opportunity to hold. We drove and then we passed the Great Rift Valley where most of the Maasai tribes are dispersed. On the way passed various animals, children, and tons of donkeys with a huge grass or bush. We ate the mandazi that Hellen prepared for us. After about 3 hours of driving we stopped at picked up two Maasai, Nicholas and his friend, who were waiting by the road to direct us. Nicholas had on a belt that had his cellphone next to his knife which had me enthralled. They use cellphones!??!?! Later, I discovered that they had solar powered chargers for them because there was no chargers in their homestead. While driving the land looked so dry...bye bye friendly bush. There were really tall anthills though. I needed to pee so I found a friendly anthill to use. We drove for over an hour. In between we had to get out of the bus a couple of times the bus couldn't move because of all the big booties...lol.
Upon our arrival they started moving in a circle dancing and singing then they came to greet us in a single file line which Wamai instructed us to do and follow them back to the middle. Once there, they started in a circle making hum hum noises and shrieks. The men started to jump which is a traditional way of getting women's attention. They did some warm-ups then got down to the real thing. The man with the best jump was most desired. They would jump against a partner and bump each other when they were ready to stop. The women do a bobbing kind of dance with their necks adorned with tons of colorful circular jewelry. Then everyone did this 3 tiered bob which I love doing. All the women heads were shaved while all the men had long hair with red goop in it. Slowly, we all started to join in and start dancing with them. The women snickered at me which made me self-conscious as to whether I am doing it right.
We followed the Morans who are the younger warriors between the age of about 12-25. Maasai have a social structure of age-sets. This is like our adolescents equivalent unlike us Morans have to kill a lion and endure a painful circumcision before given that title. Today a Moran would kill a goat for us. He kneed the goat in its neck while suffocating it. This took about 3 minutes then he cut a flap in the skin at the neck so people could drink the blood. Many of the people in my group drank goat blood some even went back for seconds. I, however did not. The little kids then went and they were slurping it up and enjoying it which kind of grossed me out. While a group was separating the goat to cook it for us a group was trying to start fire which they did by rubbing wood between a circular piece of wood in cow dung. It took them awhile trading of the stick and spinning but soon a spark started.
We met up with the women who would be taking us to the watering hole that they fetch and put in jerry cans. But, first we had a session where we asked them a ton of questions on various topics based on our research. It was a 10-15 minute walk and they gave me one of the heavy cans. While walking we asked about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and they told us that it did not occur. Yet, our guide Nyamchuk said it did; all the girls in black were recently circumcised. For more information on FGM Click Here. The basic principle behind it is to prevent women from cheating they cut off their clitoris so they would not gain any pleasure. It is a painful procedure that can cause complicating when urinating and giving birth. FGM is illegal in Kenya. As a westerner I did not want to feel like I am imposing but I just could not understand why this was practiced no matter how much I tried to put myself in their shoes. At the waterhole the water was covered by moss. The girls swished away the moss and started drinking.. the fetched the water and attached to a band that we put around our head carried on our back. I got halfway with mine. It wasn't that bad but the other girls who were with me had a hard time doing it. Once we got back we ate the goat they killed (which was not very tasty), said our farewells, and bought some trinkets. Nicholas went with us a bit of the way to help us navigate our way and then walk back.
Ben and Charles spot a Cheetah. We finally got into Nairobi and we dropped Nyamchuk and her baby off. No sooner than that did we get a flat tire in the night and we were all tired and restless. The tomboy in me wanted to help out so I grabbed my light and shone it so they could see what they were doing. We had a jack but it was not working well so we Johnothan and Alizar asked some guys parked nearby of we could borrow the jack which luckily they had. Soon, the tire was fixed and we were on the road again. I was happy to be of assistance. Overall it was a great day.
Hum Hum hum hum hum!!!
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