Dave Taylor's African Safari: The Missing Factor: Human Beings - The Maasai

The Missing Factor: Human Beings
The Maasai
Page 8

The people most associated with the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem are the Maasai. They are relatively new arrivals. They, too, speak a Nilo-Hamitic language (Maa) and keep cattle. Believed to come originally from the Ethiopian Highlands, they began a southern migration into Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania, reaching the Rift Valley as early as the fourteenth century. They settled in southern Kenya three or four hundred years ago.

They migrated into the Serengeti area in the middle of the 1800s and in a series of battles drove out the Datoga people and other tribes. (One tribe of Maasai moved into the area around present day Arusha. They called themselves, then and now, the Wa-Arusha tribe and gave their name to the town.)

Much of the credit for the richness of the Serengeti's wildlife goes to the Maasai. They did not hunt game for meat. Instead, they were tolerant of the presence of most plains game near their herds. Wildebeest are less welcome than others because they bring with them a scourge of flies that pester and cause sickness to their cows. One of the reasons the Maasai set fires was to drive off the migrating herds.

Maasai warriors did (and sometimes still do illegally) hunt lions as a sign of prowess. This hunt was steeped in ritual and was outlawed by the British when East Africa was a colony.

Maasai wealth is measured in cattle. Cattle dictate the Maasai way of life. Because they keep cattle, they are a semi-nomadic people. Their yearly migrations are not unlike the wandering wildebeest moving from place to place seeking the best grass and watering holes.

Social Orders

A single male lives with his wives (as many as he can afford) and his offspring in a manyatta. A manyatta is a small village made up of several huts surrounded by a thorn fence known as a boma. The huts are made of cut saplings bent over and then covered with a mixture of straw, mud and cattle dung. Each wife has her own hut. Her husband rotates from hut to hut as he wishes. The "wife of the day" is responsible for preparing his food.

Cattle are brought into the enclosure every night as protection against lions and spotted hyenas. Smaller animals such as calves and goats are brought into a section of the hut that is set aside for them.

There is a strict social order among the males. Young boys tend the cattle from the time they are five or six years old. It is their job to take the cattle out onto the grassland to graze in the morning and return them at night. They do this armed only with a stick and the help of slightly older boys. If lions are active in an area, a moran may accompany them for protection.

When a boy is 12 to 14 years old, he undergoes a ceremony. He is circumcised and his head shaved. When the celebration is finished, he is a moran. Moran are the warriors of the Maasai. In the past, it was this group that hunted lions, raided other villages for cattle and women and defended the village. All males between 12 and 20 are morans.

When a male finishes his term as a moran, he becomes an elder and is free to marry. While a moran, he was not allowed to marry or own cattle. Cattle he "acquired" through raids were another matter. Those, he could keep. He could also have relations with Maasai women and should a child result, even with a married woman, he was not responsible for its care or raising. Maasai value children and any child produced by an elder’s wife, regardless of the father, is considered the elder's offspring.

Elders do not fight. Their job is to make the decisions about cattle and ceremonies.

The Myth of the Fierce Tribes

When the British and German explorers first entered their area they found a fierce, proud nation of 50,000 Maasai controlling an area roughly the size of Great Britain. This picture is not quite correct and reflects the myth more than the truth about these people.

There are at least 16 or more subgroups of Maasai. Some Maa speaking peoples, the Samburu and the Wa-Arusha have adopted other ways and traditions that set them apart from "true" Maasai. The Wa-Arusha plant crops and the Samburu have a much different social system, for example.

The image of the fierce cattle-stealing Maasai resulted from the Maasai defending themselves against a pseudo-Maasai group known as the Iloikop or "fierce ones". They were, in effect, terrorists who robbed Bantu and Maasai alike of their cattle.

To stop their predation, the Maasai formed the rigid caste structure described above and the warrior sect was born. In the middle to late 1800s, they were engaged in rebuilding their lost herds and cattle rustling was common. These were the people the explorers met.

The Fall and Rise of the Maasai

The arrival of the Europeans spelled disaster for the Maasai. One Maasai elder predicted three great plagues would devastate the tribes. He was right. A great iron snake would appear and bring the white men into their land. This "snake" was the railroad. Kenya and Tanganyika (as Tanzania was then known) were viewed by the British and Germans as stepping stones to the riches of Uganda. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, both nations embarked on a plan to build railways across their territories to Lake Victoria.

Tanganyika was German territory at the time and would be until the end of World War I when it was "given" to the British.

The "snake" brought European diseases into Maasai-land. Many died of smallpox. The second plague had arrived.

The third was the worst. Rinderpest, carried by European cows, arrived with a vengeance in 1890. It wiped out 95% of the Maasai cattle as it did the wildebeest herds and other ruminants. Deprived of their food source and weakened by famine, disease ran rampant and the Maasai "nation" was brought to its knees. Other tribes also suffered. To the south in the Maswa region, an agricultural/pastoral people, the Sukuma, were also suffering losses. (The Sukuma are today successful cotton farmers and cattle herders.)

Much of the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem was deserted by them at this time which allowed the forest to regain its hold on the land. Without the Maasai setting grass fires to keep the trees at bay, the saplings survived. The loss of the grazing herds also permitted the trees to flourish (see Abiotic Factors: Fire).

The Maasai did survive the plagues and made two decisions. The first was to take advantage of European medicine for their cows and people and the second was to remain aloof from other groups and maintain their own traditions. By 1925, they regained their lost numbers and by 1935, they had doubled their population.

The Keeper of the Cow

Maasai are very much a part of the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem. Their traditional way of life is today rapidly becoming a thing of the past. They are becoming more sedentary and are taking to farming and living in towns. However, for most of the 20th Century, they held fast to their beliefs and traditions.

A Maasai never counts his herd. That would be bad luck, but he can tell at a glance if one is missing. Any cow is valued, even sick, under-nourished ones. They are seldom sold or eaten. (Note: Part of the reason why they did not sell their cattle was that the colonial administrators would not allow them to. They preferred to market their own European cattle.)

Cattle provided the Maasai with their needs. A bullock or barren cow was occasionally slaughtered for ceremonial reasons. It was eaten only by the males.

A live cow meant continued wealth. It was a source of food. Blood is taken from the cattle by tying a rope around the cow’s neck, causing the veins to bulge. A blunt arrow is shot into the vein. When the blood starts to gush out, it is collected in a gourd.

After being bled, the cow is allowed to return to the herd. They take only one or two liters (.5 gallons) so there is little harm to the cow.

The blood is mixed with milk. In fact, blood is used rarely for food. Milk is the main food that cattle provide the Maasai. An elder drinks 6 liters (1.6 gallons) a day, a moran drinks 8 (2 gallons) and a woman or child, 3 liters (.8 gallons). Cows produce less milk as the dry season takes hold and production can drop to as little as a pint a day.

Under good conditions, with plenty of rain and green grass, a family that owns 80 cattle (of which 50 are cows) has just enough food to sustain them. Droughts are common. About every four years the rains fail and the cattle die off.

Moving Forward

In order to keep up milk production, new, greener grass must be sought when droughts begin. At first, this is just a case of walking the cattle a little further from the manyatta where there is lots of grass. As that grass withers and dies, the Maasai face the task of having to move. The manyatta is abandoned and the herders follow the rain.

A new manyatta is constructed and they once again settle for several months.

Manyattas are seldom reused and will eventually be re-absorbed into the ecosystem as they are made of entirely natural substances: mud, cattle dung and tree branches.

Maasai also keep herds of donkeys and goats.

All of these animals compete with the wildebeest and zebra for grass. In some parts of the ecosystem, notably the land north of the Mara Game Reserve, there are more cattle than game. This area, known as the Mara Ranchlands, is subdivided into huge "ranches" over which the resident elder grazes his cattle.

Increasingly, there is a demand and a need for the Maasai to give up their traditional ways. Their decision to remain aloof from politics has left them at the political mercy of other tribes. They have seen their traditional land eroded as reserves have been relocated to suit the agendas of other people.

Changing times

Now the Maasai are responding by becoming politically active. Schools are being attended and new ways of doing things are being put in place. Today's Maasai are living in increasing numbers in modern homes and practicing modern agricultural methods. Corn and maize are being grown to feed cattle and humans alike.

Once nomadic, Maasai are now living in towns and villages. Even in places like Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where it was once assumed that they would always live in the old way, there are towns appearing. What effect these changes will have on the ecosystem is still unknown. Some pastures and waterholes will be lost to wildlife.

Large predators are vanishing from much of Maasai land. Truly free-roaming lions are already a thing of the past. In Amboseli National Park, Kenya, the last lions were killed by poison baits a few years ago. They have since reestablished themselves and are valued as a species that bring in and bolster tourism dollars, but will they last?

Will free-roaming Maasai also continue to exist or will they, too, be found only as tourist attractions?

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