John Tyman's Cultures in Context Series AFRICAN HABITATS : FOREST, GRASSLAND AND SLUM Studies of the Maasai, the Luhya, and Nairobi's Urban Fringe |
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John Tyman's Cultures in Context Series AFRICAN HABITATS : FOREST, GRASSLAND AND SLUM Studies of the Maasai, the Luhya, and Nairobi's Urban Fringe |
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| 406. In contrast, the lives of Maasai women change little as they advance in years. The tasks assigned to them at marriage are theirs till death. They tend to be identified in status with the male age-set with which they danced as young unmarried girls. But they are not physically grouped into corporate age-sets in the way men are. And if they take lovers, these are supposed to come from their husband's age-set. The children they bear will beloved and accepted by their husbands with no one worrying about the identity of the biological father. (Milking in late afternoon.) |
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| 407. Since an uncircumcised male may not have sex with a married woman, circumcision frees men to engage more widely in sexual intercourse. Female circumcision, in contrast, like mediaeval chastity belts in Europe, is supposed to discourage promiscuity. Yet, since a woman's value depends largely on her capacity to bear children, because the more children a man has the more cattle he can look after, infertility is far more serious than infidelity. Childlessness is the only reason a man would consider divorce -- and this rarely happens since it would involve repayment of the bride price. Families are large because many children are needed to look after large herds, so men are likely to have two or three wives with 6 to 8 children per wife. The term for a rich man is arkasis, meaning one who is blessed with both children and cattle. |
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| 408. Women do most of the work around the home. They build the house, fetch water and firewood, milk the cows and distribute the food, prepare and clean the flasks which hold the milk, make clothes and ornaments, keep the house clean and sweep out the cattle, sheep and goat pens. They are also sometimes called upon to graze and water livestock, though this is normally done by men and boys. In addition of course they bear and care for the children - lots of them! It is not surprising therefore, that many women's songs lament their situation and powerlessness (see "Woman's Prayer Song" in Kenyan Folk Tales.) |
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| 409. The number of Samburu women who do not marry is almost zero, and they will rise each day before sunrise, as the cattle are milked first before they go out to pasture, and again when they come home in the evening. |
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| 410. In the “Western World” the calves of dairy breeds that have been specially developed, are usually taken from their mothers soon after birth: yet the cow continues to give milk. In Africa they won’t! If the cow loses its calf it dries up: the milk ceases to flow. |
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| 411. Because of this, and also because calves are precious since they will grow into cows, the calf gets half the milk and the woman takes the rest for her family. |
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| 412. Calves get a lot of attention, and are pastured close to the village. They are kept apart from their mothers during the night and while grazing during the day, but they are brought together at milking time. |
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| 413. If a calf dies it is skinned and stuffed with leaves. (The correct English word for such a mock-up is a “tulchan”.) Then, when the calves are brought to their mothers at milking time, the stuffed one is sprinkled with salt and positioned in front of its mother. |
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| 414. She is encouraged to lick the salt on the hide and in this way experiences both the taste and smell of her calf. The woman then bumps the cow’s udder, the way a calf will nudge its mother when it is hungry, and the milk flows! |
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| 415. The milk is collected (and stored) in flasks, and you can see here the two types used. The brown one was made from a gourd, obtained through trade from a tribe of cultivators. The bigger black one was made by hand, for the man of the house. |
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| 416. It was carved from a log, with great care, over several days, and finished off with a cap and a leather strap so it could be carried easily. |
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| 417. When a friend from town comes for dinner his meal is simply poured from a flask. To clean them after repeated use, hot ashes from the fire will be tipped into the flask, stirred using a whisk made from the hair of a donkey’s tail, and then emptied out. As a result the milk will have a smoky flavour. Some milk is drunk when it is fresh but, in the absence of refrigerators, most of it will have curdled by the time it is consumed. |
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| 418. As in most countries even today, Maasai women are required to look after the children when they are young. Why they shave their heads is difficult to understand: but some say it helps focus attention on their beads ... though I’ve also heard the opposite -- that their beads help focus attention on their face! |
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| 419. Children are greatly loved and carried around much of the time. But many of them nevertheless die when they are young. The woman on the right had four children with her when I took the picture, but she had given birth to six. Two had died as infants. |
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| 420. The rate of infant mortality is high in Kenya. In both Canada and Australia, on average, of every thousand live births 5 babies will die in their first year. In Kenya 60 will die in their first year, and a further 40 will die before they are five years old. That’s one in ten: and infant mortality among the Samburu will be significantly higher than the national average! (Woman from the Kisii tribe who married a Samburu man.) |
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