Wednesday, January 7, 2009

masai mara

January 7, 2009

this is our last full day in masai mara and in kenya. last night, we went to our new and separate tents...no more monkeys jumping on the bed. we awoke at 630 am for our 7 am breakfast followed by a five and a half hour game drive. it turned out to be the slowest of the drives. we were looking for the elusive leopard, which is nocturnal and rarely spotted during the day. after a few hours of following various leads from other guides, we retreated back to the tent camp for a late lunch, followed by swimming, napping, packing, and then...
at 430 pm, we headed to the nearby masai village for a tour. we were greeted by one of the warriors who told of the masai. the men and women each performed their welcome dance for us. of course, we were all welcomed to join in the dancing and we did.
then, we learned some interesting facts about the masai. among them: each man is entitled to marry up to 7 women; each women brings 10 cows into the marriage; each woman must make her own house for herself, her children, and her husband on the nights he is with her; they circumcise men at age 14 in the middle of the cow pasture so that all can witness; they circumcize women at age 14 in the building that houses the young cows; they drink the blood of cows mixed with milk [featured on an episode of survivor;africa a few years ago], they make their homes from sticks, mud, and cow dung; they cut holes in their lower ear lobes so that they hang very very low off their ears; women must wear particular earings or they are beaten; they have no electricity or fresh water. rebecca told me it was 'awful' and sought to question the group leader on whether women were considered property. marc told rebecca about the difference between relativist thinking and positivist thinking and told her this was a time to be a positivist; we told her that, unlike the massai, she would get to choose her husband. on the way back to the tent camp, rebecca, shayna, and e.j., the 13 year old daughter of zvi and debbie weiss who are all traveling with us, were talking back and forth processing the experience. as troubling and disturbing as it all was, it was great to hear them reflect back and forth about what they saw, how they felt about it, how it compared to their lives in the u.s., and how they manage both respect for a different culture and their own, now even more strongly held beliefs, that their system of family and community is much better. rebecca did challenge our tour guide magic about conditions for masai women. magic explained that with the addition of a new school building funded by richard branson, many of their practices are being engaged and challenged by the younger generation. magic suggested that rebecca return to spend a year teaching in the school and sharing her perspective with the masai. rebecca responded that she's already decided that, if she's going to spend a year teaching in a village, it will be in uganda among the abayudaya.
after the tour, we were brought to their own version of a crafts faire mini-mall. they had dozens and dozens of wooden stands set up selling various hand-made items for sale to the tourists. since this is our last full day traveling, marci and i were not reluctant at all about buying. for wonderful, thoughtful marci, the idea of picking the wares of one family's stall over another's was just too much. so...she made sure to pick at least one item from each and every family there. in fact, as she proceeded around the giant square market, she gathered her own following of sellers encouraging her to buy more. i was looking on my own and, at a certain point, called marci to the center of the market for a quick conference. the end result; buy, buy, buy. the one angle that marci did not consider....when it came time to negotiate the price on all our purchases, we were faced with at least 30 different vested villagers who needed to agree on the one price we would pay for all the goods. believe it or not...believe it....we selected nearly 200 items and asked magic to help us with the negotiation. when they rejected our counter, magic encouraged us to walk....we walked....they followed....we countered....they held firm....we held firm...we walked....they followed....eventually, most order collapsed as their chief negotiator could no longer hold all the masai venders together. individual massai craftsmen broke from the collective and tried to get us to buy their item separately... we rejected that and encouraged them to tell their representative to agree to our price...shayna, dear shayna, was attached to me at the kneecap, utterly surrounding by scores of screaming massai all trying to get their price, fight with their representative, encourage me, cajole magic. i reassured her that all was really in control...then we walked again. at this point, the sun was beginning to set and with darkness coming upon us, and no electricity or lights, i figured the bargaining would soon come to some sort of conclusion. magic assured us we could just leave and find all these items somewhere else tomorrow. now the game was fun and the difference between our price and theirs quite small. marci and i huddled and decided we would demand a few more freebie items in exchange for their price. we agreed. magic instructed me to shake hands with the masai elder who was in charge. money changed hands, everyone stopped yelling, now we all started shaking hands and i learned how to say thank you in swahili and masai.
exhausted, we returned to the camp for a late dinner.
zvi, our travel partner, will be celebrating his 50th birthday in a few weeks. in his honor, we asked for a birthday cake at dinner tonight. with some intervention from magic, we ended up getting about half a dozen masai warriors, in full dress, with spears, enter the dining tent performing a dance. they circled around, chanted, danced, and finally presented zvi with his cake. we sang. we ate. it was great.
i type now and then will head to the tent to do our final packing. since we may not blog tomorrow, here's the schedule; 7 am breakfast, 8 am departure for nairobi; lunch as we approach nairobi; a visit to giraffe manor, home to many many friendly giraffes in the early afternon; a visit to mapendo, a shelter and service center for african refugees who are not eligible to be aided by any other international organizations; it was created by sasha chanoff, the nephew of our friend matt chanoff; then dinner and off to the airport for our british air overnight flight to london then flight to sfo, landing friday afternoon.
if we don't get to blog, we look forward to hearing from you, and seeing you, on our return.
lailah salama

1 comment:

  1. It is really annoying that I do not know when your lunch will take place since I know and wrote down all your other times I really need to know when you are going to eat lunch or else I will not sleep..

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