Young Masai Jumping High!Jambo!
We headed out to the Mara with Letif for our 3:30pm afternoon drive. I was really excited because we were going to visit a Masai Village! We first stopped at the place that the Hippos use to exit at night to graze. Saw some more hippos and a crocodile. Letif also pulled some leaves/twigs off a bush and said the Masai use it to brush their teeth. Everyone tried it out but me because Evangeline immediately let me know it was very spicy! Xan gave Letif a little demo on his yoyo. We then headed to the Masai Village. We stopped at a little "store" first that sells lots of carvings and artifacts. I bought Hubert and Jess each a Masai spear.
At the village we were greeted by the Chief. He was about 48 years old, dressed in simple Masai clothing and no jewelry. He lead us into the village where we were greeted by about 20 Masai women lined up singing. It was so beautiful! Then a group of male teenagers performed one of their traditional "dances" where they each demonstrated how high they can jump. This is supposed to be very attractive to the girls! They loved having their picture taken and want to see every picture I took. They also demonstrated how they start a fire. I have all that on video which hope to share soon. The Chief then took us into one of the huts. They are all built out of cow dung by the women. I found out that the women do almost all of the work! The men basically just tend to the herds and the women do EVERYTHING else! Not my "cup of tea"! The hut was very small with a small room off the entrance where they keep young cows and goats at night then around the corner was a larger room where they cook, eat and sleep. It was very small, stuff and very smokey. They have one small hole for a window. It was here that the chief gave us a little talk about his life. He has been the chief for about 20 years. His father was the chief before and he had 10 wives and 48 children. Our chief said he only had 1 wife and 6 children. I think he was a very savvy business man because it takes a lot of cows to keep a lot of wives and children. He spoke about his job as a chief - he said every morning someone is waiting outside his hut with a problem - no food, sick wife, etc.. He also has to settle all disputes which are very frequent in a village of 150 people. He seemed quite weary and said he hoped to "retire" in 5 more years.
We then went to an area where the women were selling and making their wares. They had beautiful beaded items. I had them attach a string of beads to my camera so I could secure it to my wrist and that was quite a fiasco due to the language issue. I also got a necklace and had to stop shopping because we still needed to give the chief a "little tip" since he had us pretty primed to do that.
We headed back to the resort, rested and headed to dinner then off to bed!
We did see some elephants on the way back so we only need to see some Rhinos then will have seen all of the Big Five!
Love,
Adina
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