TJW 1st Quarterly Report

flickr 001, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

When I decided to come to Africa, I did not fully understand the consequences of my decision. I was simply looking for an adventure. I bought an English to Swahili dictionary, the Tanzania Lonely Planet guidebook, watched the movies, read the books and I thought I was ready. I boarded a plane headed for Tanzania to learn about the Maasai. I did not know exactly how I was going to accomplish this feat seeing how I knew no one in Tanzania. I had received one return email from a man that said he might be able to help which never actually happened. The flight went smoothly and I touched down at Kilimanjaro Airport in the middle of the night. I retrieved my bag, cleared customs, walked outside to find dozens of touts and taxi drivers accosting me for my business, and at that moment, I realized that I could not have been more naïve to what I was about to experience.
It has been said that there are two different kinds of white people: those who have never found themselves in a situation where the majority of people around them are not white, and those who have never been the only white person in the room. Until three months ago, I would unequivocally been classified as the former. I grew up in a very safe homogenous environment and college was much of the same. The airport was a rude awakening but not nearly to the extent as living with the Maasai in Longido.
Longido by western standards is a very small economically depressed village with dilapidated buildings serving as a truck stop between Nairobi and Arusha. In reality, it is a bustling town in the heart of Maasailand. Even though it was a lively town for the region, there were very few white people present. There are the occasional tourists stopping to get their cultural tourism experience portion of their African safari, and a few volunteers scattered about. This is by no means a racially biased assessment of the village. It is simply the reality that for the first time I discovered what is like to be the minority. I was simply referred to as ‘the mzungu’, which is the universal African term for ‘white tribe.’ Young children would run up to me, touch my skin or my beard, then turn and run, yelling and screaming with excitement. The very young children that were less brave would simply start crying at the mere sight of me.
I was trying to cope with the massive culture shock internally with very little success. It was day ten of the trip when it all became overwhelming. Being the minority for the first time in my life, witnessing appalling poverty around every corner, and looking at everything with the big picture in mind, all became too much. I cracked, but luckily I had someone to confide in; Paul, Sarah, and Jane. They were American volunteers spending three weeks in Longido that just so happened to coincide with my first three weeks in Longido. They helped me understand that in Africa you can’t think of the big picture because it is too depressing. Instead, you take it one day at a time; do what you can, and hope that it will make a difference. That simple piece of advice helped me cope with what I was experiencing. I was very fortunate to have them.
This solved my internal conflict, at least, for a while. I then started asking myself other questions about the Maasai culture and questioning the reason behind many of the social and economic systems that were completely foreign to me. I spent one whole week reading every book I could find about the Maasai. I began to understand much of what I was seeing around me. This newfound knowledge also had its consequences because what frees one’s mind saddens one’s heart. A perfect example of this is the disparity between my comprehending two very similar ceremonies with the Maasai; a wedding and a female circumcision ceremony.
I attended the wedding after only being in Africa for five days. I was still very much a tourist; wide-eyed and naïve to what was going on around me. I was taking lots of pictures to document the very lively dancing and singing that is carried out during the two-day ceremony. I did not have the slightest clue what any of it meant. All I knew was that the morans (warrior class) performed most of the dancing and singing in a formation that looked like a horseshoe. The nditos (uncircumcised girls) gathered at the open end of the horseshoe of morans. Both the morans and nditos were wearing their respective ceremonial attire with red ochre painted on their faces and intricate beadwork worn as necklaces, earrings, and headdresses, often overlapping each other. I was is awe at the beauty of their singing and dress; again, being a tourist.
The two-day festival climaxed just before sunset on the second day. The nditos took over the singing and entered into the horseshoe formation of morans. I was simply told that it was time for each ndito to pick the moran she thought performed the best during the ceremony. I was so naïve that I didn’t read between the lines. It was only after I attended a female circumcision ceremony a month later that I realized what was actually going on. The nditos were picking the morans that they would share their bed with that night. Keeping in mind, the nditos range from ages seven to fifteen and the morans between ages eighteen and thirty. That was the biggest reality-check of my life. I remember when it all materialized and at that moment, I decided to leave the ceremony early. It just became too much to handle.
The Maasai are renowned for being one of the most conservative tribes in all of Africa, but they can no longer resist change. Their culture as a whole is in a transition phase. Most young girls are not circumcised and not all marriages are arranged. Although this still occurs among the traditional Maasai, it is becoming less common because most people are trying to emulate western culture, especially the younger generations. During the ceremonies I attended, there would occasionally be a moran leave the singing procession to wonder aimlessly around in order to find cell phone service. There are many other traces of western culture integrating into their culture as well.
The Maasai are not alone in trying to emulate the west; they are actually far behind the rest of Africa. Across Tanzania and Malawi, I have been surprised to find western pop culture everywhere I go. It is sad that many of the cultures are disappearing across Africa, and the world is slowly developing into one big homogenous culture. I have mixed feelings about this and don’t know what to think of it yet.
It is hard to believe that three months have already passed. It has been a crazy chain of completely random events that has continued to perpetuate itself culminating in my current location in South Africa. I do not know how I have done many of the things I have done or how I have arrived at my current destination, but it has been an adventure.