Our Visit to a Maasai Community
Longido, Tanzania
July, 1999

Our visit to the Maasai village at Longido, Tanzania was a non-exploitative, feel good, intellectually stimulating, visually stunning and shocking cultural exchange, with a delicious home-cooked lunch thrown in.

The intellectually stimulating part was from our contact with Esto, an amazing Maasai man in his 40's who was educated at the University of Brisbane and then returned to help his people. He conceived of the idea of a village cultural exchange as a win-win situation--tourists could experience the Maasai culture without being solicited to buy things at every corner, and the Maasai could benefit, economically and culturally, by our visit. (The money we paid for our visit went toward a community cattle dip, to rid cattle of diseases.)

The sad part was that Esto became a paraplegic before he started his plan, when he fell into a hole and injured his spinal column. That was seven years ago. We met with him as he lay on his side on a hospital bed in his humble, concrete home, with a urine bag hanging over the side of the bed. Still, he had more dignity, humor and ability to connect laying in that bed than most anyone I'd ever met. We sat on chairs around him to listen to his personal background, how his wife built the home for him and helped him fulfill his dream of the cultural exchange program, his opinion of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair, and about the Maasai villagers we were about to meet.

From Esto's concrete home, we walked to the Maasai boma (collection of small huts) along a path through tall grass, stepping over many wide, deep holes that erosion had formed in the red dirt. We walked with Harry, Esto's teenage nephew, and Nurl, an 11 year old Massai boy who proudly showed off his 10-inch knife. The women at the bomas seemed happy to see us-they were smiling and we felt welcome. We had brought photos of scenes from our life at home with Swahili captions, and showed our little album to them. That really broke the ice--they looked at them and laughed.

The six women we met were all wives of the same man. The young women all had babies or small children, sitting next to them or wrapped into their blankets onto their backs. The women's hands were rough like cracked sandpaper when we shook them, probably because they build the bomas themselves by hand, out of dung and mud and sticks.

Our kids were the stars. Our 15 year old daughter Alison wears a lot of colorful bracelets and necklaces, and the women were drawn to her decorations like she was one of their own. When Alison took off a bracelet to give to one woman who fingered it admiringly, the Maasai woman went into her hut and came out with two huge beaded necklaces, which she fastened onto Alison. Then she extemporaneously showed Alison how to dance with the necklaces, raising up her shoulders to get the necklaces to bounce up and down with the movement. Alison tried it too. We posed for pictures together, and their kids liked holding on to the soft hands of our kids. A four year old boy became attached to our 11 year old daughter Sarah--he played with her fingers and kissed them. We gave away Polaroid pictures we took of them, (they don't have mirrors and were fascinated) and some inexpensive digital watches. One woman told our guide in Swahili how delighted she was to have the watch, because she could now get to the 2 PM Thursday market on time!

Some other women in Longido who were not Maasai cooked us a delicious lunch, which we ate in the living room of another concrete home. The lunch, served buffet-style from large bowls, consisted of boiled peeled potatoes, peas in gravy, rice, meat in a gravy sauce, and tea. The food sounds ordinary so it's hard to describe how delicious it was but we all agree on that fact--it was hot, flavorful, and plentiful. We didn't have any Entemann's cakes, so we gave the local women who cooked for us some granola bars and raisin boxes to express our gratitude for one of the best lunches we had on our trip.

Lastly, we had a debriefing with Esto, who had been wheeled outside and was now laying on his bed in the sunshine. He wanted us to tell him what we thought, ask more questions, and was open about the problems of the Maasai. His sophistication bore little resemblance to the tribal women in the boma we had just visited, but they had one thing in common--they all made us feel very welcome and gave us a glimpse into their culture, and for that we'll always be grateful.

© Debbie Eisenberg Merion
July, 1999
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