Masai Mara, Kenya
June 9, 2025
[NB: Our journey started a couple weeks ago. Previous installments are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here]
“Looking back on my life in Africa, I feel that it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world, into a still country.”
- Karen Blixen, Out of Africa
A few years ago, we wrote about the state-sanctioned displacement of Gullah Geechee from Sapelo Island. For a couple centuries, the Masai have resisted similar efforts in East Africa.
To little avail.
Part of the Nilotic peoples native to sections of Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Kenya, the Masai originally migrated to this area from the Nile basin, and now occupy regions of the Great Rift below the Ngong Hills.
To Tanzanians, the Masai Mara is the Kenyan appendage of the Serengeti. On this side of the border, the Serengeti is considered a Tanzanian extension of the Masai Mara.
For two nights we’ve camped beside the Mara river. Within its waters and along the banks, herds of hippo honk their horns, swim in their sh*t, and emit their “perfume”.
Mara is a Masai word meaning “spotted land”. Upon arrival from the southern Nile, the Masai noticed speckled balanites interspersed across these plains… and gave a name to the vast grass.
The Masai have historically been warriors and herdsmen on the highlands. Once feared by passing travelers and neighboring tribes, they are now notable for their elaborate fabrics, intricate beads, and (in our experience) gracious hospitality.
But with their distinctive spears and extravagant shields, they’ve been known as much for fitness and fighting as refinement and grace. Not that they’re without ample dignity and a certain elegance.
A Masai Village
A few days ago, we visited a Masai village. Cow dung covered the ground, and helped precipitate fires that cook food and warm huts.
We crouched into a typical structure… a small, low, dark hovel where we were warmly welcomed by the man of the “house”. He showed us the cowhide “bed” on which his family of four sleeps, under a tiny opening supplying hints of air and a speckle of light.
The adjacent “room” contained a small pit for cooking, with surrounding holes that served as storage.
As all Masai women do, our host’s wife built the hut. Made of olive wood, with roofing of acacia and cow hide, the structures take three months to build and last about ten years.
Masai men are polygamous. Their role is to manage their wives and tend the herd. Each of his wives has her own hut. His kids attend a village school where they learn Swahili, English, and practical arts.
A Masai medicine man explained that his people prefer prevention to remedy, and showed us some natural palliatives to address or avoid common ailments. Surgeries and other serious treatments require travel to the “Western” (i.e., modern hospital) several hours away.
We’ve often recalled how civilization requires low time preference. While emphasis on education seems to be expanding horizons, the Masai historically devoted their attention almost entirely to the present.
Lacking a savings ethic or the capital accumulation it encourages, the Masai have little choice but to live for today.
There’s no plumbing, electricity, or refrigeration to preserve food. They consume what they can from that day’s kill. Whatever remains is hung from a tree.
The next morning more cattle is slaughtered. From it comes more meat and blood on which the Masai subsist. The process repeats the next day.
Because they shunned anticipation and planning, the Masai were always difficult to enslave or imprison… at least for an extended periods of time.
To the extent they envisioned tomorrow, they couldn’t imagine it being different from today. With such a limited outlook and little ability to hope, most quickly died when captured in war.
After initially prohibiting the Masai from fighting in the First World War, the British decided to conscript them. The Morani warriors refused, and disappeared into the bush.
In pursuit, the King’s African Rifles killed two old women while mistakenly firing into a manyatta. This precipitated open revolt on the Masai Reserve.
The British negotiated a fragile peace, and received some Masai assistance in the fight against Germany. After the war, the Crown increased its control over Kenya.
Reminiscent of what Valois kings did to Loire peasants, the Masai were shoved from ancestral land to create hunting grounds and game preserves.
The Edges of Dogma
When Karen Blixen arrived from Denmark, she noted a striking lack of prejudice among the Kikuyu near her coffee plantation. She attributed this indifference to long acquaintance with many races and tribes.
This makes sense. Isolation encrusts conviction. But as commerce commences and travel increases, the interaction of goods and culture softens certainty. As exchange proliferates, competing beliefs rub against each other, dulling the edges of dogma.
As Blixen put it,
“Nearly every Native, down to the little herdboys of the plains, has in his day stood face to face with a whole range of nations as different from one another, and to him, as a Sicilian to an Esquimo [sic]: Englishmen, Jews, Boers, Arabs, Somali Indians, Swaheli [sic], Masai, and Kavirondo. As far as receptivity of ideas goes, the Native is more a man of the world than the suburban or provincial settler or missionary, who has grown up in a uniform community with a set of stable ideas.”
The Masai Reserve was across the river from Blixen’s Ngong farm. She was there almost three decades, during which she opened a school on the property.
School Visit
Being several hours from there, we visited a different school on Saturday. With about seventy-five students, Kileleoni is in the middle of the Masai Mara, and named for the “peak” below which the academy sits.
When we arrived, dozens of smiling faces waited outside. Standing in a horseshoe formation, the kids began singing songs to welcome their guests.
Most children were under twelve. Some were as young as two. The youngest came as wards of older siblings.
Students usually wear uniforms, but Saturday morning (which is a half-day) their usual attire was in the wash. Many walked barefoot, marching nonplussed thru piles of manure that grace the grounds.
The children danced as they continued singing. Grabbing our hands, they guided us toward their humble class. We waited as they walked in. A few minutes later, we followed.
Ducking our head under the low lintel, we saw about thirty students crammed behind or between planks that doubled as benches and desks.
Within this modest, fly-invested enclosure… with cramped conditions, poor ventilation, and little light… the instructors and students put to shame what passes for most “education” in the U.S. The only technology was a blackboard and some chalk.
Students and teachers were actively engaged. With each question every hand went up. Nine year-olds pleaded to be at the front of the room, to show off their proficiency to their American audience.
When we were asked to complete an equation or identify a word, cheers and applause rewarded the accomplishment. The children were fascinated with us, wondering about our age, children, favorite color, and (in a couple instances) number of wives.
Smart phones captured their attention, which quickly fixated on photos of themselves. By providing additional exposure to our screens, I left lamenting the damage we might have done.
Eyes of God
“In normal years”, as Blixen related a century ago, “the long rains began in the last week of March and went on into the middle of June.”
We’re at the tail end of that window, which in recent decades seems to have shifted earlier by several weeks.
Distinguished from the “short rains” in November and December, the more intense Spring soakings are liable to cause flooding, close roads, and inhibit migration.
April absorbs over eight inches of rain. June receives fewer than four. While most drops are presumably behind us, lingering moisture remains a magnet for mosquitoes. So do we, tho’ we’re relieved to have attracted relatively few.
The weather has been beautiful. This is the “chilly” season on the highlands of East Africa. Nights are cool, the days comfortable, breezes common. Temperatures rarely breach 80F, and touch the mid-50s just before dawn.
By the time yesterday’s sunrise arrived, we were under a balloon above the earth, watching the world thru the eyes of God. Thru the darkness, we dodged hippo and buffalo to reach the baskets that would lift us aloft.
Lights flickered beyond the plain and thru the trees, signaling the location of surrounding homes. In Kenya, these houses can be owned by their inhabitants.
This contrasts with Tanzania, where all property is owned by the government and leased to those who wish to use it. Most U.S. states work the same way, tho’ governments use “property tax” as their euphemism for “rent”.
Fine Wine
After boarding the balloons, we cut the cord that tethered us to earth. Below us zebra, buffalo, wildebeest, hyenas, and warthogs scattered and scampered among the balanites of the Mara.
As our balloon ascended, the rising sun revealed the scene. The great vault filled with clarity like a fine wine into a crystal glass.
Suddenly yet gently, the plateaus and peaks caught the light. As the earth turned towards the sun, grassy slopes assumed hues of gold. Balanite dots affirmed the wisdom of the Masai’s appellation.
Tho’ the same ecosystem, the Masai Mara is more concentrated than the Serengeti, often making animal sightings easier.
Whereas the Serengeti is characterized by vast plains - and Amboseli features a mix of open grasslands, thick marsh, and acacia woodlands - Masai Mara offers diverse landscapes… including riverine forests, prominent plateaus, and sharp escarpments.
After an hour surveying this sublime scene from a clear sky, we softly descended toward champagne breakfast on the savannah.
Innocent Bystanders
Our palates cleansed and our stomachs full, we then came upon another feast. On the road from our breakfast were four lions enjoying brunch. Within the hour they’d killed a giraffe, which they’d begun to ravage in a dry ravine.
Like innocent bystanders at a murder scene, a tower of giraffes and dandy of zebras watched the victim being devoured. They were keeping their friends close, but their enemies closer… to prevent the lions from launching an ambush.
Back at camp, an afternoon lull offers opportunity to write. Thru my outdoor “office”, a soft breeze wafts off the Mara.
In the river, a dozen hippos take a nap. Across it, an army of monkeys frolics in the foliage. Around us flit a gang of mongoose, flocks of birds…
… and a symphony of sounds from a million creatures we’ll never see.
JD