It’s Friday afternoon around 4 PM. Supposed to get out of school early on Friday’s
(hooray!) at 12:30 PM but for some reason we didn’t board the school buses
until 1:40 PM, then our bus ran out of gas on the way so that caused a 25
minute delay on the side of the road while the bus driver filled up a random
jug of gas to pour into the gas tank through a plastic Coke bottle…then got closer to
town, hopped off the school bus before it turned off the main road and the
dalla dalla I got on broke down 10 minutes later. Fantastic.
Luckily another crammed one pulled over and I squeezed on…meeting my
friend Clare for dinner in a couple of hours and I don’t feel like going all
the way back to my village to go home for 30 minutes before turning around and
having another 45 minute commute back for dinner. Quality internet time a head of me.
Last Saturday morning I left with about 10 other volunteers
at 7 AM for a 4 hour drive in a van with no shocks to visit a Maasai village. Not sure how many kilometers it was but about
half the time we were probably driving about 15 km or less an hour because
there wasn’t a real road, only a dirt road through the bush. The village we visited wasn’t a “tourist”
Maasai village, it was the village of one of the guards at one of the big
volunteer houses here. It was apparent
when we arrived they were not expecting us nor were they used to seeing white
people. Suny, our host, was so excited
during the drive because he hadn’t seen his family in over 4 months.
We arrived on the outskirts of the village and had to stop into
the hut of the village elder for permission to pass. Jeff, the tallest and oldest male in our
group was presented to ask for group permission. Permission was granted and everyone filed out
to sign our names into a dusty, dirty, rarely used visitors journal. We got back into the van and drove a little
further. Soon, about 8 Maasai men were
walking towards our oncoming van down the middle of the road to meet us. The village consisted of about 5 thatched
roof homes with dirt walls.
Approximately 35 people live there, in the middle of absolutely no where
with no modern amenities, running water, etc.
To the north we could see the mountain range on the Kenyan border, and
Mt. Meru and Kilimanjaro also. It was
really beautiful. We were welcomed and
sat on the ground in a circle and given cups of chai tea to drink (not nearly
as delicious as a Chai from Starbucks which I am craving!). All of the children came up to us and were
touching us, grabbing our hands, touching our hair, etc. because some of them
had never seen a white person before.
They were frightened of Colin, a redhead with freckles which they
thought were a disease. The children
were covered in dirt and dust and there were flies landing all over them and
they didn’t even flinch. Only two people
in the group knew any English, luckily our driver and Suny were somewhat able
to translate. The men, women and
children all dress the same, many layers of blankets wrapped around their
bodies, both sexes have large holes in their ears and the women wear many
layers of heavy handmade jewelry.
Shortly thereafter they were singing and dancing and welcoming us and we
joined in. Didn’t know any of the words
but dancing consisted of a lot of hopping around which was easy enough to pick
up. After dancing we were invited into a
few homes. The interior consists of two
rooms, a room for sleeping and a room with the fire. They said it takes approximately two weeks to
construct a home between gathering the materials through construction. We had to take pictures to see the interior because
it was pitch back inside. The beds are
made of sticks woven together and lay a few inches off the floor with animal
skins to lay on. The male of the family
gets the bed and the wife and children sleep on the floor if the bed isn’t big
enough.
We spent more time sitting around with the children who were
amazed with our cameras and seeing pictures of themselves. While we were sitting around the males of our
group were summoned to go pick out a goat for dinner. About 20 minutes later they came back with a
cute little goat. L The men gathered and brought out a few huge
knives. They seemed to stare at the goat
and talk for a while and finally two of the men held down the goat while a
third slit its throat. My knees got weak…Blood
was pouring out of the neck and one of the men held a cup to catch the
blood. Their arms and legs were covered
in blood splatters. The men passed the
cup of warm blood around to drink! A
couple volunteers tried it but that cup of blood was staying far away from
me! After drinking the blood, they began
skinning the poor little goat and took apart the animal. The men pulled out the kidneys and a few
other parts and slurped them down raw.
Yuck. They really don’t waste any
part of the animal. They cut up huge
chunks of meat which they stuck onto sticks and cooked over a fire. It took about 50 minutes to cook the meat,
well done. When it was finished cooking
we were invited to come eat. We sat on
the ground again and they brought over hunks of meat one by one and cut off
hunks for us to eat. Took a few small
bites to try to be polite but passed off to the boys in our group every chance
I got. They would also cut off huge pieces
of fat and pass them for us to eat, we threw these “scraps” into a bowl. One guy looked in the bowl, looked back at all
of us like we were crazy and just started eating all of our scraps. They ate almost the entire goat besides some of
the intestines and fur, they even roasted the head after popping out the
eyeballs.
After lunch we sat around a
bit longer until it was time to leave.
Upon departure we danced again and presented the gifts we brought to the
elders to divide among the families. We
brought rice, sugar, flour, chai and some candy for the kids. We paid 40,000 tsh (about $25.00) for the
goat and gave them a “hospitality” donation of about 30,000 tsh. After a few more pictures we boarded the van
for another bumpy, long 4 hour ride home.
Hours of hot sun with barely any shade, flies, goat blood, dirty water…my
bucket shower Saturday night was the best bucket shower ever.
