There was no real telling how old the ‘laibon’ (Maasai
medicine man) was. His skin was stretched taut over his face and his head clean
shaven as befitting his elder status. His eyes were misted but when he looked
at me I got the feeling his deteriorating sight didn’t mean he couldn’t see. I
had found Ol’Lenana the spiritual leader of the ‘Kaputei’ clan of
the Tanzanian Maasai after a month’s hard search. I had come to talk
about the threats the Maasai way of life faced from ‘progress’.
Sitting on the hard earthen floor of his hut, sipping soured
milk, I told Ol’Lenana snippets of my quest to find him. How I met many
drunk Maasai, who seemed to value beer above God and cattle. How others had posed
as laibon in search of cash. How
finally at the end of what seemed to be another fruitless dust-choked day on
the savannah, I spotted the light of distant campfires and drew up at his
village in the middle of a National Geographic style song-and-dance. I watched
as the moonlight outlined leaping warriors, bodies shining with sweat and
grease, as they displayed like birds, the occasional mobile phone jiggling next
to a sheathed knife, plastic flowers bobbing in their headdresses.
Ol’Lenana responded by telling me
to stay for the ‘Eunoto’ a coming of age ceremony that would shed light
on my question.
The next morning in the soft transitory light of dawn I watched
as warriors filed into the main ‘kraal.’ Their naked bodies had been
decorated with chalk patterns, their long hair dyed using red ochre. As I
watched, mothers shaved off their sons’ long locks, and the men wept, mourning
the end of an era.
Ol’Lenana explained, just as the
Eunoto marked a passage through a man’s life, customs the Maasai had practiced
for centuries were undergoing transformation. As he spoke I watched a line of
blood trail down a warrior’s shaved head. An omen? Ol’
Lenana’s voice penetrated my thoughts, “even the ostrich with its long
neck and sharp eyes cannot see what will happen in the future.”
