Tanzanian Days

Thursday, February 24, 2011 8:34pm

Today I had 6 mangoes for dinner. I didn’t feel like cooking, and mangoes are delicious.

Yesterday I went into the Masai Steppe, just over the mountain and down the road a bit from my village, to a Masai Village whose name I could not even begin to spell because it is in their language. I went with some sisters (the Catholic kind) from an NGO called Grail. They appear to do all sorts of wonderful work (as well as spreading Catholicism in an interestingly competitive environment with the Lutherans) including helping fund infrastructure of water and schools, as well as IGAs (income generating activitys), and health and community development projects.

We went in their truck (it’s always such a luxury to be in a car and have a whole seat to myself!) and appeared to randomly make our way through the brush and scrub until we miraculously found our way to a GIANT boabab tree (Swahili Mbuyu, Kipare – Hemramba) If the name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s one of those giant trees that have a huge trunk and are often considered symbolic of Africa. Apparently, out here in the steppe – which is a flat expanse of red dirt littered with thorny bushes of all different sizes and types of thorn, each village manages to have at least one boabab under which all it’s meetings are held. This is a helpful source of shade in the otherwise unbearable sun.

The Masai are one of the last tribes in Africa that maintain completely their separate tribal identity as well as their traditional ancestral culture. There are many modern conveniences that they adopt without hesitation, including cellphones and modern transportation. One thing that they have decidedly not changed is their dress, which consists of draped fabric in the colors of blue and red and some shades there within, sometimes also including orange (on top – in the shirt area) and purple (on the bottom – in the pants/skirt area) and patterns generally staying within a checkered or blocked print. I very commonly find myself squished next to a masai on a daladala who is draped in their traditional dress and carrying a staff (they are all traditionally cow herders) while talking on their cellphone. (they smell very strongly of milk, because cow milk and cow meat are their primary foods, and historically they ate very little else) It is an interesting mixture of traditional lifestyle and modern convenience.

But to return to the Boabab tree. The lesson for today is actually a review of information that has been discussed in the past. The sisters have been working in this village for 12 years now. Their PRIMARY goal is to stop FGM (female genital mutilation, Kiswahili – ukeketaje). At the moment, every single girl in the tribe is cut (per se, mutilated) ritually around the age of 3 – 5 years. The villagers who have gathered for the meeting, a mixture of young women and their babies (every single one had a baby on their boob) and elder men (no male youth) easily put together a list of the dangers associated with FGM. But they were able to put together an even more comprehensive list of why it was continued.

This list included: It’s a reason for relatives to get together to eat and have a party.

It was actually one of the first things mentioned.

The list becomes more confusing and harrowing as you continue. Things like, if the girl is not cut she will never turn into a women (ie – go through puberty) Her child will be born still-born. Etc. Etc.

Looking out over that field of faces, 90% of the meeting was women, I know every one of them had been cut in this harrowing ritual where they are beat if they cry out in pain.

It makes you wonder. Shudder in horror, and confusion. Why?

I look at the little babies feeding at their mother’s breasts. They look like normal healthy babies, happy, laughing, cranky, crying, squirming, crawling babylike babies. But then I look into the eyes of those mothers, tired and shy, subdued, resigned.

It is still practiced in Masai culture, if a man who has wealth passes by a pregnant woman whose unborn child is known to be female (how they know I am not sure) he can claim that child to be his wife. When she is 12 (that’s twelve – I didn’t mistype) she will go to live with her husband (who is now, mind you, 12 years older than he was when he claimed her and also already has a few other wives). It is supposed to be so he can ‘look after her upbringing and take care of her’ but as I am told by both the Masai women and the catholic sisters, many of them are pregnant by 14.

Sitting, standing, huddled in small circles of friends you can see their figures are somehow slightly deformed, by their diet primarily of milk (usually only the men have the privilege of eating meat) they are tall and thin, slightly sunken from a lifetime of malnutrition.

Of the group 45 who gathered for the meeting, only 4 could write their name, none of them women.

For twelve years the sisters have been coming. They brought a company who drilled a groundwater well to provide safe drinking water for the village. They helped build a classroom when the school was built, they brought in a machine that mills corn into flour, and built a building where a womens’ group started up a small store. The also started up a preschool which finally fell apart due to lack of attendance as well as an adult education school teaching reading and writing and Kiswahili (many of the villagers, primarily the women, know only kimasai – the language of the masai- which is a beautiful lyrical sound which I don’t even know if I could make come from my mouth if I tried. It is not Bantu (as Kiswahili and Kipare are) and therefore even Tanzanians find it difficult to grasp)

The adult education program was stopped as well due to lack of attendance.

It is difficult to know what to do in this situation. The Masai have been forced for the most part into a more sedentary lifestyle (they are traditionally nomads as they tend their herds of cows) by the TZ government in order that their children receive a primary education which is mandatory by law for every able child (disabled children can go to school until it is decided they aren’t keeping up or learning anymore and then they are just returned home. There are special schools in the cities but they are not government and therefore cost money, not to mention transportation, and are therefore generally inaccessible.)

The Masai have been taught to farm – which is a new and uncomfortable work for them. Sadly, in our area the farming education was brought in around the same time the rains began to fail and the Masai have all but given up on this labor intensive project that they see very little if any profit from. I have been told that it has, at least, improved their diets by bringing in corn and beans as more acceptable foods in their diet, to the point that they now purchase corn flour (to make ugali) in the markets.

Who are we to tell them to change?
Do they want to change?
Are they HAPPY?
What is HAPPY anyway?

The mothers/women are the ones who are receptive to the education. They have tried to change the diets of their children, they send their children to school, and they go to church. According to the sisters, the church is full of women every Sunday, and about 3 men sit at the side. Generally the men are not receptive at all of changes to the traditional Masai life.

Even at the meeting the only men who came were a few elders, who sat in the back and barely spoke up – unless directly asked questions and even then preferred silence.

At the end I stood up and gave a little talk, something that you become used to after awhile because it is asked of you at pretty much any event, funerals, weddings, government meetings, graduations, you name it – I have given a short talk at it.

And after I sat down they presented me with a beautiful gift – a beaded cross necklace (msalaba) decorated in the traditional masai fashion. (pictures will be posted when I get up to Moshi again)

They want me to come again, to teach them something, and I wrack my brains for what to teach them. My little talk was about change, because the world around them is changing, the weather in particular, their herds are dying and their wealth is shrinking rapidly (as their herds are their only source of wealth) I talked about how in the past there were no cars and we walked to get places, but now we use cars and we can get even farther, see more places, meet different people, etc. And in the past to send messages you sent by word of mouth, person to person, until it reached its’ destination (as they don’t write much, they don’t send letters) now they can speak directly to the person using a phone.

What I WANT to teach about is gender roles. Do an exercise which labels each activity with a gender than discusses whether the other gender is ABLE to to it (could do it) and then discuss whether they SHOULD do it – and why. It opens up dialogue, sets things moving in peoples’ heads. Because it wouldn’t work to go straight in and say men should help women do laundry, wash dishes, and bath the children. But to allow people to realize that both sexes are ABLE to do the labor, along with comparing the burden of labor the mothers carry versus the fathers, it can begin the wheels that will eventually lead them to change.

But some part of me really wonders if this tribe has held so tightly and dear to their traditions for so long, many of which I find abhorable, although many more I find fascinating and beautiful, whether it really is my place to stick my head in and change them. Create them in my image?

They are some interesting catholic-masai culture now.

They believe in God and Jesus and the earth and their cows. But not in that order.

Sunday, February 27, 2011 11:39am

I have had a lot more time to think about the Masai culture, as I continue my insanely busy schedule.

I have come to this conclusion:

Life in Africa is hard. There is physical and emotional pain. There is death. There is violence and corruption. There are limited resources and an ever growing population.

The Masai culture has adapted, if not embraced, that undeniable truth and created a system of rituals to harden their tribe members in order to survive, if not thrive, in this difficult environment.

From the age of a young child there is ritual branding. This is pain, you will feel pain in your life, it is like this. When a baby, or child, or adult is very sick, some Masai tribes still practice the ritual of leaving the sick person far out in the steppe to die. Death happens. Accept it, you will die, I will die, we will all die.

It is an unforgiving culture. It is a culture bent of survival. Some tribes still regularly steal cattle from neighboring villages. I have met people who have been badly injured by Masai for trying to protect their crops from being grazed by Masai cattle, or to try to protect their cattle from being stolen. Historically, most tribes in Tanzania were driven into the mountains by the Masai after many years of battle and suffering. The Wapare (or the Pare mountains were I live) and the Wasambaa (of the Usambara mountains south of me) were driven into the mountains many many years ago by the masai. The Masai prefer the flat land of the steppe to graze their cattle.

There are many practices that still don’t make any sense at all to me. Their diet does not provide them health or strength but they continue to primarily subsist on cow’s milk. They have access to modern medicines as well as education on disease prevention (most pointedly mosquito nets) but do not embrace these changes.

I do not know what makes cars and cellphones ok, but food and medicine not.

Maybe I will be able to learn more when I visit them again.