Knitting for the Maasai

Part Time Maasai Warrior IV

OK a bit of cute before the blood drinking and other warriorlike activities to come.

My mother has been knitting and here's the result. I shall be taking Maasai Ted with me and will find a baby warrior to give him to. Not sure if we've got the robes (properly called a shuka) quite right, but there will be plenty of advice on site, and of course I will be wearing the correct gear myself for the initiation ceremony so I will know for next time.

Mystery Tour

Part Time Maasai Warrior III

The travel plans for my trip to the Maasai Steppe are encouragingly vague. This is not travelling for those who like a firm itinerary. I do know that the big ceremony, during which I will be initiated, will take place over two days in early June. I know the name of the village where it will take place, but as I can't find it on Google Maps or indeed Search I am not much the wiser.

What I do know is that a young warrior will be dispatched from the village to Dar es Salaam to meet me at some point after I fly in. He will then escort me on the journey which involves a couple of long and uncomfortable bus rides and then a motorbike. It may take a day or it may take two.

How I will hook up with the young warrior in the chaos of Dar - one of the continent's fastest growing urban centres and slated as Africa's next Megalopolis - is to be decided.

Using Ideas As My Maps

Part Time Maasai Warrior II

I love this map of Africa from an old Victorian family atlas. The"Dark Continent" actually contains a huge expanse of white space representing the unmapped interior.

Fast forward to May 2016 and I consult today's equivalent, Google Maps, for my forthcoming trip to see the Maasai. I am delighted to discover that the village I am visiting is not on Google Maps - I am going to the digital equivalent of a cartographer's white hole. It feels like a real expedition.

Why would I want to drink more blood?

Part Time Maasai Warrior I

The days are counting down before I leave for my expedition to the Maasai Steppe and my thoughts - as well as my gag reflex - turn to the blood I will be drinking when I get there.

I am attending a very important ceremony which marks the transition for my Maasai brothers Juma and Frank into senior elders. As a sideshow, I shall also complete my own initiation into their tribe.

I have drunk fresh blood before. It would be fair to say that it's not my favourite tipple. The taste of warm blood is not at all bad. It's mixed with milk into a sort of smoothie and the flavour of the milk dominates over the blood. However the texture is challenging. The warriors whisk the blood furiously to prevent clotting, with only partial success. Globules of clotted blood can be a bit difficult to swallow. Best to drink it quickly before more form.

It's difficult to prepare myself for this. Black pudding is about as close as I can get. But I shouldn't fret. I am sure blood milkshakes are very healthy - after all the Maasai look pretty good on them. I may even repair some of the Mojito-induced liver damage from Barcelona last week.

Hollywood Maasai

The latest bulletin from my brothers Juma and Frank has them on a trip to Los Angeles. The food is still very unimpressive (Californians eat all that chicken and fish - no food for a warrior). Frank, however, says that Santa Monica Beach is "nice like Paje".

Maasai don't like water a great deal so this is praise indeed. I was with Frank when he touched the sea for the first time in Paje in 2011. It was quite something to see a six foot something warrior shying away from a tiny wave as if it were going to engulf him.

Maasai Burgers

Juma and Frank - my two closest Maasai brothers - are in the USA just now. I'm not entirely sure how they have managed to persuade Middle America to sponsor them on a cultural trip but they have. They are very adept at it -- they were in Germany last year.

They are very pleased with the welcome and find the USA interesting.

We tend to assume, in the rich countries of the West, that anyone from Africa just can't wait to settle and grab their bit of the American or British or Australian Dream. Legally or illegally they will have to stay, so intoxicating and superior is our way of life.

Juma and Frank make the following comments as they count the days until their return to Tanzania.

1. Why do Americans eat such dreadful food? The pizza and hamburgers are particularly bad. Don't they have any pride and desire to eat proper meat? The two warriors plan to slaughter and eat a whole cow, just the pair of them, as soon as they get back to their village in Tanzania.
2. It's too cold.
3. Some American customs display a complete lack of common sense. Juma - who is clearly in his mid thirties, not only a warrior but a village elder to boot - was asked for age ID when he ordered a beer.
4. It's very difficult to watch Manchester United matches.

Tanzania here they come.


 

English riots

I have almost resisted the temptation to blog about the riots and the collapse of civilisation as we know it. I surprised myself by agreeing with Boris Johnson who described them as a huge own goal -- that is true. I was not surprised talking to a friend at the BBC to hear about the enormous handicaps placed on their reporters by health and safety bureaucracy, over-staffing, daft correctness like the "protesters" gaffe and centralised diktat -- no wonder Sky News outperformed them at every stage.

The most memorable episode for me however was a call from my Maasai "brother". He got in touch from Tanzania to offer his sympathy and to ask why we were doing this to ourselves. He was genuinely shocked.

Mobile Maasai

After a long gap I get a call from Juma. He has been back on the mainland for a while. His father, an important Maasai elder, has been very sick but thankfully seems to be on the mend. Adding to the stresses of being a 21st century warrior and herdsman, the rains have failed this year. This means Juma has to take his and his father's cows further and further from the village to graze.

As Juma explains there is an upside. He gets to go far enough to find a patch of ultra rural Tanzania that gets a mobile signal. His village has none.  Now I wonder - is there a project for a terribly clever eco-geographer mapping Maasai grazing patterns against the footprints of East Africa's mobile networks? Is the place he is calling me from today over-grazed because of its Vodacom signal? As I have blogged before the Maasai hold most of the modern world in complete disdain but mobile phones...that's another matter. 

Naughty Maasai

I am not going to be seeing this young warrior friend for a while. Maasai Commander, as he is known, has been arrested by Tanzanian police on suspicion of having robbed his employer in Zanzibar of quite a large sum of money. Having been caught the chances of conviction are pretty high, especially as he was nabbed on the run. I don't imagine the next few years in prison are going to be very pleasant for him.

My Maasai "brother" Juma is very angry with him for letting the tribe down. He says village justice from the elders back home on the mainland will be even harsher than the offcial sort.

Maasai Ramadan

My Maasai bretheren do not observe Ramadan. Along with swimming, eating fish, vegetables and chicken (really only for women!) and eshewing beer it is one of the annoyances of living away from the homelands.

European Elections

The Maasai are very clear that we should be voting Plaid on Thursday...

The Big Match

I am told, although this is probably erroneous information, that ALL my Maasai friends will be supporting Manchester this evening. Perhaps it's something to do with red -- their favourite colour -- or perhaps it is Juma taking it upon himself to speak for the Maasai Nation. Suffice to say that beer will be drunk and there may be a bit of "bouncing" later on. I will switch my phone off tonight.

Manchester Maasai

Juma tells me that he has been celebrating Man Utd's Premiership success since Saturday. "Party, Party bwana". Fun all round except perhaps for the goat population...

Becoming a Maasai

I am considering my Africa travel plans for the rest of the year. Maasai Juma wants to take me back to his village for my "initiation". It will be a real treat even if certain aspects are a bit daunting.

I feel very privileged. Juma's father has already given me a cow as a sort of "herd starter pack". He has even asked if I want male or female. Juma tells me cattle are very cheap at the moment so I could build up my herd quite cheaply. He reminds me as well that the current going rate for a wife is 22 cows. Juma's father has also set aside a plot where I can build my hut.

Juma is keen that we drink blood together so that we become proper Maasai brothers. I think I can cope with that. I am imagining it will be warm and slightly frothy straight from the cow's neck. I shall pretend it's a strange herbal tea concoction. I don't like the idea of it cold and semi-congealed so I shall be quick.

The ritual area that does concern me is circumcision. Maasai boys and young men are circumcised in batches somewhere between early teens and early twenties. It is a crucial rite of passage on the way to becoming proper warriors. The circumcision is fairly public, done without any anaesthetic and with ritual rather than surgical instruments. Most importantly the circumcisee must not cry out -- to do so would be most unwarriorly and condemns the squealer to a lifetime of humiliation. Juma had his at twelve or thirteen (African are never very sure about their age). He spent the preceding months cutting and stabbing himself with anything that came to hand to practise the steely nonchalance of manhood. I am not sure I could do so well. I just have to hope that the old, fat msungu* is considered exempt.

OUCH!

* Swahili: Msungu = white person

Manchester United Maasai

My Maasai "brother" Juma has been in even higher spirits than usual with Manchester United's recent run of success. An avid, even obsessive fan, he has been substituting beer for his usual fresh blood tipple and I have been getting middle-of -the-night celebratory phone calls. Maasai are famed for their ability to stay awake.

Half a century ago Evelyn Waugh* visited the Maasai and remarked on how they had managed to retain their strong culture and customs. With characteristic hauteur they disdained almost everything the West has brought to Africa. The exceptions, Waugh noted, were tobacco, snuff and South African sherry. Not a lot has changed in fifty years but I think we can add Premiership football and mobile phones.

* Published as 'A Tourist in Africa' and highly recommended.