Soupa? Ipa!

I may miss a few parts, due to the fact that I'm writing this a good 5 days after the homestay ended, but oh well... Anyway, after packing up in Soit from our bio final and whatnot, we traveled a short distance (only a few hours drive...) to our next camp in beautiful pastoral land. Rolling green fields spotted with cows rising right up to ridges spotted with elephants and giraffe that border the Serengeti to the west and Kenya to the north. Maasai land.

Anyways, our first day there we met with the Pastoral Womens Councel of the Maasai who are the people in charge with arranging and facilitating our homestays. They informed us of all the social pressures on the Maasai as well as the inevitbale changes, both good and bad. We discussed a wide range of problems from government corruption selling their land to wealth arabs, to these women's thoughts on female circumcision (most thought it was a good thing still). Which brings me to a short point I realized mostly during the Hadza and was solidified within the Maasai, and that's simply that people have different values and practices and in order to understand them we simply just have to accept them as equally right to our own practices. And I mean, female genital mutilation is pretty fucked up, and it's becoming increasingly less common as time goes on and has become a very optional thing for young women nowadays. But it was still pretty interesting that this older generation of women were happy that the practice was practiced on them. And, though they heavily advocate a girls right to choose, they still think it wouldn't be beneficial to eliminate the practice as a whole.

That pretty much ended the first day, and we all hit the sack pretty early to prepare for our next few days in the Maasai homes. The next morning we were met by a few of the men who were to be our translators and shown traditional uses of plants around the area. Then we met with both male and female elders and learned about the traditional roles of men and women at different ages throughout the Maasai culture. I could get into it, but that's what the internet if for anyway. Then, after lunch, we were given sticks and told to line up. Soon a parade of 19 mothers (ranging from 15 to elders. And yes, some did get host mothers much younger than they are) came and lined up across from us singing traditional songs. They then proceeded to choose our sticks, fairly randomly, and we were off for the next 3 days. My host mother also happens to be married to the same husband that Devin's mother is married too (a lot of older men have up to 9 wives, each with their own boma where them and the kids sleep and the man rotates to whichever wife he wishes to sleep with each night). Anyway, this basically meant that Devin and I shared the same cows and the same goats.

(Not my fam...But you would never know if I didn't tell you)

The first night was uneventful, but still fun. The men, like most Africa societies, don't really have as much to do as the women, so after an evening of walking around playing with baby goats, I returned home to my mothers small, dark, cow dung and stick walled, boma for dinner. My mother was probably one of the nicest women I've ever met, actually, my whole family were some of the nicest people I've ever met and were super excited to have me living in their home. Sadly, none of them even spoke much Swahili (let alone ANY english), so my very small amount of Kimaasai had to suffice. That night was spent on a cowhide mat where I slept surprisingly well considering the amount of smoke in the house and the few goats and four children sharing the room with my mother and I. The next day was spent with...COWS! To make a long story short, guys basically stand around with cows all day. Devin and I spent most of the experience together and were led around by Yioni (who we think was our host brother...) and another guy who's name was potentially Cookie...but we could be wrong...Anywayyyyy. After going to the cow car wash (cattle dip), where the cows were dipped in a bath like thing in an effort that we decided was probably to prevent them from getting Tse Tse flies we went on a nice long walk to find some giraffe (closest I've ever been to one on foot aside from the giraffe center in Nairobi). The day was unfortunately split with a prearranged meeting for us students in different villages to “meet up and talk about our experiences”. Most ended up just being fairly pissed that they were taken away from our experiences to talk. Apparently other groups found this homestay much harder, while our group had Pemba...and not much can be more difficult for a lot of people than Pemba, making this home stay a piece of cake.

goatsgoatsgoats...

Anyway, writing this in the Safari Lodge, pretty hungover from the birthday party we had last, so bear with me if this whole entry is fairly uninteresting. The things that I learned in the Maasai homestay were much more than I can simply write in a blog entry, so just ask me next time we talk and I can talk for hours about these people, their lives, how they view the world, how their world works, and so many more things. Maasai are awesome people.

So that evening was much like the first, and after herding all the cows and goats back into their pens, Devin and I took an absurd amount of pictures of and with goats with his camera. So that was fun. What wasn't fun, was the amount of cow poop water that leaked through the cow poop roof and all over me that night during the torrential rain, oooooooh well. After drying off in the morning, Devin and I walked with Yioni to (I think...) visit his brother. Little did we know it was like... 6 miles away on the boarder of both Kenya and the Serengeti National Park, a very long walk for the small amount of chapati and chai I was running on. But a beautiful walk nonetheless. We then met up once again with the group to visit the Moroni (warrior) village, where the warrior class lives. It was kind of a let down since they just wanted us to pay them to dance for us and then leave, one of the more touristy things we've done. The cool part about it was the torrential rainfall that happened yet again as we got there and had to coop up in one of their bomas during that time. Luckly we got a translator in there as well and were able to converse with one of the few women who lives in that village of young warrior men. After that whole ordeal, it was time for 6 of us to walk back to our village. On the way over we crossed a small stream, say 2 feet wide and only a few inches deep at most. Well, this stream decided that it would be a good idea to become around 20 feet wide and a good 6 or 7 feet deep. We then had to wait for it to go down (luckly only took an hour or so), but that was one of those inconveniences that end up being more fun that if we could have conveniently walked back across the stream.

That night was our last night in the homestay and fairly similar to the others (a lot of silence and awkward goat noises to break the silence). And the next morning, after throwing a few spears and what not, it was time to say good bye to our Maasai friends. After a shower and some clean up at camp, it was time for lunch and we were to serve our host mothers who had walked over to camp. Lunch was then followed by an improptu Maasai market where our mothers set up shop with jewelery they made and we were able to buy many a gifts as well as support the wonderful families we've been staying with. Later that afternoon we walked down to the local secondary school for an impromptu soccer match "Wazungu vs. Maasai".  We lost horrifically.  Then, we were off, and our time with the Maasai was sadly over.