Alone in Maasai Land

 Before leaving town on Sunday I was frantically trying to find a doctor to go to because of a rash on my hands and feet that I have had for practically the entire trip (turns out I am allergic to something here).  But the rash was getting worse and I wanted to find a doctor.  I woke up early and was disappointed that everything was closed because it was a weekend when a man offered to show me a clinic that he knew was open.  I was pretty desperate because I was leaving that day and wouldn’t have access to a doctor for a week so I followed him.  We found a small malaria clinic and it was one of the biggest culture shocks that I have had.  It was just like the clinics in movies that I always had thought were exaggerated.  But people were lying in beds in front of me so sick.  This was at 7:30 in the morning and started my week off for the many crazy stories that would follow. This week was prep week for our Independent Study Projects (ISP) in November.  I was originally supposed to do my project on a Maasai orphanage in an extremely remote village of Engaruka.  I got all the way there and found out that it was actually a boarding school with a couple orphans and I couldn’t do my project.  But even a couple days with the Maasai make for several interesting memories.

On the “bus” to Maasai land I quickly found out what situation I was in for.  I jammed myself into the van with Maasai men and women only to find out that the bus didn’t leave for 3 hours but that if you got off you risked your stuff being stolen or loosing your precious seat on the bus. While waiting I spent 15 minutes talking to an old Maasai elder in slow Swahili so that he could understand. It wasn’t until 15 minutes had passed that another passenger finally told me that the man was speaking Kimaasai and not Kiswahili. When we left for the 3 hour trip the road got so bumpy that I swear a baby could probably get shaken baby syndrome from riding along.  All of the passengers were shoved right up into everyone else and every minute or so we would stop to drop off a Maasai in, literally, the middle of nowhere. I don’t have any idea how they even knew where to stop because there were no defining characteristics whatsoever.  They would get off, someone threw them their 100lb bag of beans off the top of the bus and they would drag it away into the savannah. This one bus boy had the job of making people run to get on the bus so that we didn’t need to stop for long and he had multiple ways of doing this. Sometimes he pushed them to hurry and other times that didn’t work.  Maasai mamas in particular didn’t like to run so sometimes the boy would grab the child in their arms so that the Mama could run faster and had something to run for. However, multiple times the Mama or baby were not supposed to be on the bus and screaming would ensue after a man ran off with her baby.  The same bus boy tried to tell a Maasai elder that he wasn’t allowed on the bus and the boy pushed him away and the Maasai swiftly whipped the boy with the stick that he was carrying in his hand.

After all of the chaos on the bus I walked back to my translator, Onesmo’s house, exhausted from a day of traveling and waited for a couple of hours to have dinner.  What was on the menu? Goat heart.  It was disgusting but I had to eat at least a little to not be considered rude. After choking it down I went back to my tent but the smell lingered on my hands so I decided to go to the bathroom and see if there was any water in a bucket to wash my hands with. I was greeted by 3 of the biggest cockroaches I have ever seen.  They were 3 inches long excluding the antenna. The next morning I woke up early and went to the school to meet the kids and quickly realized that some of them had never seen a white person before. I was the first, and they were quite terrified.  One mama forced her 3-year-old son to talk to me and he was screaming and crying the entire time. I also got the chance to watch goats and kind of herd them and one had a baby so I was able to sort of aid in that.  I tried to text my friend and was informed that the closest place with cell service was a 40-60 minute walk and then when you got there the ground doesn’t have service so you have to climb a tree. So I didn’t get to send the text.

I realized that I should figure out a new project so I decided to head back to Mto wa Mbu or the River of Mosquitos.  I woke up at 4:00AM to pack up my tent and walk to the bus stop.  Halfway through packing up my tent my headlamp stopped working and I had to get ready via moonlight. The long walk included thorns and crossing a creek with my giant camping backpack to get to the bus.  Once there, all 70 people, plus uncountable bags of beans, maize and rice, and 7 chickens jammed in and the bus took off in the dark. I honestly compared it to the night bus in Harry Potter because it was dark, I was sitting in the very front seat and we were zooming unbelievably fast through tiny towns.  Also, like in the movie when they count down as the lady crosses the street, the driver was forced to stop so that cows could cross the road.  He would sit and count down and then get impatient and start to drive too early, practically swiping the sides of the cows.  As we drove through the towns one man would hang off the outside and whistle extremely loud to let everyone know that we were there and leaving.  Then he would hold on to the top of the bus and swing from open window to open window and perch there to make sure that everyone had paid.  On the bright side, I was able to see my first real animals outside of the national parks, which was very cool because they were less used to humans and cars.  Then when we were almost back to Mto wa mbu 3 of the chickens tried to escape and everyone was scrambling around trying to catch them.  Sadly they didn’t escape and probably ended up as someones dinner.

In Mto wa mbu I met up with 6 of my friends already there and we found a great place to stay and got started on our ISP projects.  I decided to do mine on the cultural tours that Mto wa mbu is famous for and how the cultural groups are effected.  I am going to possibly look at the Tanzanian painters, the Chaga tribe’s banana beer, and the Makonde tribal carvings, and they even agreed to teach me how to do some of these things! It was a very nice week in Mto Wa Mbu; we went to the Maasai market, and had a celebratory pilau (spiced rice) picnic with our translators because of a holiday.  It was definitely an eventful week and I am much more excited for ISP now, although Sunday we leave for Serengeti, Ngorogoro, lake Natron, and Maasai home stay so I have plenty to do until then!