Masai Culture

The Best and Worst of Masai Customs

Masai culture is practiced by the Masai tribe who live in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. Although the Masai constitute only 1.4 percent of the Kenya population, they are most romanticized of the Kenya tribes.

As is the case with everything, Masai culture has both its glowing and not-so-good moments. Here are is the lowdown of the Masai people's customs.

Good Masai Customs

The Masai are doing their best to preserve the customs handed down by their ancestors and many remain untouched by Western civilization. Hence, they make fire just as their forefathers did by rubbing 2 sticks together and adding dry elephant dung.
They Masai lead simple non-acquisitive lives. Owing to their strong culture, they are not fully integrated in the cash economy. So among the Masai, wealth is measured, not in terms of money, but by the size of one's cattle herd.
By using local materials wherever possible, the Masai unwittingly play a positive role in preserving their environment. For instance, instead of using matchsticks, they make fire using sticks, elephant dung and grass.
And, they build their huts using a combination of poles, twigs, grass and cow dung. Cattle hides are used as furnishings inside their huts. In addition, they use thorny acacia branches to fortify their homesteads at night. That way, they keep the marauding wild animals and thieving neighbors out.
The Masai possess an amazing sense of style. The traditional dress consists of checkered sheets called shukas that are wrapped around the shoulders and worn as a skirt. Although red is the favorite color among the Masai, these shukas can also be purple or blue.
The Masai music and dance is unique and captivating. The music largely consists of verses sung by soloists while the rest of the choir hums some low key rhythms. The music is entirely vocal and is not accompanied by instruments. The highlight of the dancing routines is when the men leap repeatedly into the air, with the best dancer jumping the highest.
Ornamentation is a vital aspect of Masai culture. Indeed, men and women wear armlets, bangles and earrings on their stretched ear lobes. Women, in addition, wear several feet of stringed multicolored beads around their necks.

Retrogressive Masai Customs

As is the case with many Kenya tribes, the Masai people are governed by patriarchal norms. Accordingly, women are treated as subordinate human beings and carry a much heavier work burden. Not only do they look after the children, they milk the cattle, construct houses, cook and walk long distances in search of water.
The Masai still practice female genital mutilation (euphemistically referred to as female circumcision). This is in spite the compelling evidence of the adverse health effects of this practice.
Girl child marriage is common amongst the Masai. Girls are often married off to men who are old enough to be their grandfathers because these are the ones who can readily afford to pay the considerable bride price. Besides robbing these girls of their innocence and the right to choose their partners, they are deprived of the opportunity to attain a decent level of education.
Masai believe that they are the owners of all the cattle in the world. Hence, they frequently raid neighboring communities and steal their cattle under the pretext that they are taking back their own. This practice often causes needless intra-tribal tension and results in significant loss of life and limb.
Traditionally, a Masai boy had to kill a lion to prove his manhood before he was initiated into adulthood. Even though this practice is banned by a plethora of laws, it persists and is partly responsible for reducing the country's African lion population.

Masai Culture Tours

When in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, one can get a peek into the rich Masai customs by visiting Bomas of Kenya on the outskirts of the city.

However, the best way to experience the Masai people and their way of life firsthand is to visit a Masai village. This can be part of a safari to 2 of the popular Kenya national parks:

A visit to the Masai Mara National Reserve is particularly rewarding as it is home to the largest and fiercest lions and other predators such as leopards, cheetahs and hyenas.
The Masai Mara also hosts the spellbinding annual wildebeest migration when more than 2 million wildebeest cross the Mara River into the Mara from the adjoining Serengeti. The return journey is undertaken with incredible precision a couple of months later.
Amboseli National Park is elephant country par excellence. Many of these elephants can be seen wandering around the Amboseli plains against the backdrop of the majestic Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest mountain.

Don't forget to carry a camera to capture your encounter with perhaps the most fascinating of the Kenya people.

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