Today I wake up in Masai Mara under a mosquito net in a safari tent. I am not stirred by the quiet chatter and laughter of girls fetching water and shutting doors. I am listening to birds and chirpers. It is not loud, but it is a deep surround sound.
Light slowly fills the air, first giving trees silhouettes and then exposing their shape and texture. It is still.
The Mara (a place set aside) is vast and remote. The dangers are real. The people distinct and rich in culture. The homes are basic dung structures with mud thatched roofs.
Tall trees and branches with sharpened ends are planted upright into the ground seven or eight feet tall in small circles to pen livestock at night and protect them from lions and cheetah. During the day men and boys walk the land to graze the goats, cows, or sheep.
Livestock is everything for the Maasai; they are embedded in home, function, and tradition.
The homes closest to the savannah have the same protective barriers around their houses. Gardens can not be grown because the elephants will devour everything planted. Young boys spend three years in the savannah with a small herd and kill a lion to become men. Living in this land has created a special relationship between human, landscape and animal.
Tomorrow we will go in and experience the wilds first hand.
Light slowly fills the air, first giving trees silhouettes and then exposing their shape and texture. It is still.
The Mara (a place set aside) is vast and remote. The dangers are real. The people distinct and rich in culture. The homes are basic dung structures with mud thatched roofs.
Tall trees and branches with sharpened ends are planted upright into the ground seven or eight feet tall in small circles to pen livestock at night and protect them from lions and cheetah. During the day men and boys walk the land to graze the goats, cows, or sheep.
Livestock is everything for the Maasai; they are embedded in home, function, and tradition.
The homes closest to the savannah have the same protective barriers around their houses. Gardens can not be grown because the elephants will devour everything planted. Young boys spend three years in the savannah with a small herd and kill a lion to become men. Living in this land has created a special relationship between human, landscape and animal.
Tomorrow we will go in and experience the wilds first hand.
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