If the Maasai people, on the contrary to Mentawai et Karen women ( articles posted previously), do not have any problems because of their appearance, it seems very interesting for us to talk about them in the way their appearances points out their belonging to the group, which will best describe our initial problematical. The Maasai are not the only group to adopt a special appearance thanks to physical modifications or clothes in Africa (and it seems obvious to say that they nearly all do it it, so that they can identify the others members of their tribe or other tribes more easily), but as I went to Tanzania and spent some time with Maasai people, I decided to post an article about them; and also because the Maasai ‘s appearance is well known from nearly everyone ( postcards, advertisings) but their culture and history not.
First of all, the Maasai tribe is an ethnic group that lives in east Africa, in Tanzania and Kenya. They are a semi-nomad people, most of them being stock-breeders. They speak Maa, but usually know the base or speak currently the official languages of Tanzania and Kenya: English and Swahili.
The Maasai population has been estimated as “approaching 900.000”, but those estimations have been several and never exact because of their semi-nomadic way of life.
I will introduce to you, briefly, the Maasai history. According to the oral traditions and archeological data, they migrated from the North, from the Nil Valley in Egypt, and from Soudan. During centuries, the Maasai had lost their territory. On the one hand, most of the Massai’s territory had been conquered by the English settlers in the end of XIX century (whic
h have reduced their territory by 60%), and on the other hand, more recently, in 1940, an important part of their territory had been transformed in National Park and wildlife reserves such as: Amboseli, Nairobi National Park, Maasai Mara, Samburu, Lake Nakuru, and Tsavo in Kenya; Manyara, Ngorongoro, Tarangire and Serengeti in Tanzania.
Maasai have, until now, well resisted the urging of the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle, and have demanded a grazing right in some of the national parks and they keep living in it with wild animals. As they keep having an aversion to eat game, they are not considered as a problem for the respect of wild anim
als’ life. That for that reason, that, nowadays, maasai people have got a quite peaceful way of life in Kenya and Tanzania, having with their government mutual agreements. So the Maasai had kept easily all of their traditions and rituals, except one of them: each young man was supposed to kill a lion before they were circumcised. But as the lion hunting has been banned in East Africa, they cannot kill them anymore. But if a lion is putting human lives in danger, they are allowed to kill them. In addition to that, Maasai receive compensation when a lion kills livestock, which is a better thing than killing the predator, which again best describes the mutual agreements with governments.
In a second part, we will try to explain to you the origin of their special appearance (clothes and body modifications), and describe them.
Maasai clothing varies by age, sex, and place. Young men, for instance, wear black for several months following their circumcision. However, red is a favored color for men and women ( as you can see on the picture posted ) . They also wear black and blue, striped with red and sometimes multicolored clothes. Since 1960, they do not use animal skin for their clothes, and replaces it with commercial cotton.
Their clothes are like sheets that they wrap around the body, one over each shoulder. The sheets, red and stripped are the traditionally ones and are called Shùka ( Maa word ).
Many Maasai wear simple sandals, which are made from cowhides. Men and women wear a lot of wooden bracelets and bead jeweller
y. They play an essential part in the ornamentation of their body. There are many meanings of the color of the beads, some general meanings for a few colors are: white, peace; blue, water; red, blood. This ornamentation articulates the Maasai identity and position in their villages.
Concerning their body modifications, Maasai still practice excision and circumcision. Most of boys having between 12 and 25 have to pass from “boyhood to the status of warrior”, which now consist in a circumcision ceremony. They do not use anesthetic, and as a result, this ceremony is very painfull. But the most difficult for those young men is that they can’t show their pain : expressions of pain are considered as dishonor. During 3 months, urination is nearly impossible and very painfull.
Young women also undergo excision during an elaborate rite of passage too. This ceremony makes them ready for marriage. In Kenya female circumcision is practiced by 38% of the population. The most common form of excision for Maasai is clitorectomy. This operation, also done without any anesthetic is very painful and dangerous.
Another very common practice of Maasai is the piercing and the stretching of earlobes. To stretch them, they use stones, elephant tusks and
other various materials. They also remove some of their canine tooth in early childhood because they strongly believe that this canine region will create diarrhea, vomiting and other febrile illnesses.( This belief and practice is not unique to the Maasai in Africa.)
Now, as you know everything about the Maasai, and not only the way they look on the postcards, you can easily understand that their special appearances are part of their identity, that they determine their social position in society, and so, that they are not created or preserved for tourists as it often occurs nowadays.
