We drive along a central highway leaving the busy Arusha life behind for a fees days. The hills of green start to fold upon eachothwr as we drive on. On the side of the road. Hildren are picking up rocks into a bucket. Others are sweeping a road. Still others are making a ditch for sewer. We drive on. Heards of cattle graze about. The bus swerves to avoid a ram pet black cow which has decided it will out do any chicken and cross the road. We drive on. With the wind polishing checks smooth, children wave to us and I wonder if it is the first time they have seen white people.... It would be easy to see how they rarely do. We turn off of the road and are soon very thankful we are in a safari cargo vehicle. What little water is in these parts as created small trenches through the dry heavy clay filled lands. We weave our way this way and that wondering where we are going or how our driver knows the way. Eventually stop under a big acacia tree and get our. We have arrived at a Maasai village.
Although there are hundreds of tribes in Africa, the Maasai of East Africa are one of the most commonly known. These tribesmen are known for their red cloaks, bead work and cows. In their eyes all cows belong to the Maasai tribe and not to others. Look up some of the ledgens of why this is if you'd like. Cows provide a crucial part to their culture. Not only to the sled their days leading them to greener pastures for meat, milk and dung are also crucially needed. The huts are pastered with cow dung instead of mud as dung is easier to get and works just as well. (Truthfully you can't smell it as it dries hard so don't get too gross out by this.) they are also occasionally used as fuel for the fire like pioneers on the Oregon trail did.Besides having cows they also have plenty of goats and sheep to make for an abundant herd.
It is tradition for Maasai to honor the visit of a guest by slaughtering a goat and then having a feast. They were more than overjoyed to have 14 wazungus (white people) come to their village and wanted to show us all their traditions (skip reading paragraph if you don't want to learn about this tradition). First thing we did was walk out where some animals were grazing and picked out a healthy not too fatty white goat. We then took him away under a different tree. Interesting fact: the Maasai suffocate animals instead of spearing them or taking a knife. This way more blood and nutrients stay in the meat. So after that was done they started to carefully skin the animal (who one girl on our group named Gene). Then pretty much it was like dissecting a biology project to get sections of meat ready for roasting. Nothing ever goes to waste in this tradition. One of the common drink is blood as it has plenty of nutrients. A coffee cup was soon brought over and filled from the animal. Although the elders thought we wazungus were whimps, the offered us the cup. So, yep I can say I have tasted goats blood. It tasted pretty much like a bloody nose... GROSS!!!! But hey I live in the moment and want to experience everything! Then the animal was roasted on a fire and we were offered pieces. I don't know if it was the mode of cooking or the suffocation, but the meat tasted way too similar to the blood for me to eat alot of it.
Later that night we we're offered the oreviledge to spend the night in the village. So after all the cows came home, we went to a hotel for real-er food, we came back ready for anything. Fur of us went to a hut where we had tea made from milk (either goat or cow) that we had watched them get earlier in the day. Besides being surrounded by smoke it was really good to sit and talk to them. They are surprised Americans only ever have two kids usually while they have anywhere from 6 to 11. They told us about having to fight off lions, hyenas, and elephants and we attempted to tell them about mountain lions. Did you know that a hyena can eat 59 goats in one day? That's a good chunk of change and life for the Maasai. After tea it was to sleep on a cow pelted bed next to the cow dung wall. I slept remarkably well dispute the fact that there were others in the room and a baby cow was also there.
The next day being Sunday and all we went to a church. Although it was suggested to be longer than 3 hours of a service it was relatively short and well done. The music was amazing with the African voices raising up tradition songs to God. Our host translated the message from Maasai to English for us which was really nice and also really cool. During the service there was a celebration for a child bring born to a mother and father that had experienced 5 miscarriages! A goat was brought in for some reason, and was then auctioned after church! It was really great to see how community oriented they are.
This weekend was amazing! Besides the fact that it looked like scenes from the Lion King, it was great to about in the wild and really know that God provides and takes care of His children everywhere. I also got to see into Kenya, meet really great people, and have experiences that are going to be forgotten any time soon.
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