I was setting up my tent behind the park office in Amboseli NP and didn’t notice a local teenager approaching. His earlobes hung down to his shoulders weighed down by special little copper-colored weights, the rest of the earlobe wrapped in beaded tubes. On his right hip was a sheathed knife, and on his left was a cellphone. “Do you maybe want to visit a Maasai village?” he asked.
Many Maasai are still living within the national parks, and their cows graze the same fields as zebras, white rhinos, and antelope. Maasai shepherds walk for miles where tourists are not even allowed to step out of the car because there are lions around. Some years ago, a friend of mine, while on a zoological expedition to Kenya, asked an old Maasai moran (warrior) why is it believed that lions are afraid of the Maasai and thus don’t harm their herds. The old man laughed and replied “the lions are afraid of Maasai because Maasai are not afraid of them.”
Watching Maasai in Kenya by Sarit Reizin
Location: Kenya
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Born in Ukraine, raised in Israel, and acquiring her higher education in the US, Sarit Reizin is proud to call herself a citizen of the world. However, to stay worthy of the title, she felt a nomadic lifestyle was in order, and in November 2005 left the comforts of the first world with no desire of coming back any time soon. http://HopStopTravel.com
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