African Camp Fires

by Stewart Edward White

The Masai are pastoral, and keep immense herds and flocks. Therefore they inhabit the grazing countries, and are nomadic. Their villages are invariably arranged in a wide circle, the low huts of mud and wattles facing inwards. The spaces between the huts are filled in with thick dense thorn brush, thus enclosing a strong corral, or boma. These villages are called manyattas. They are built by the women in an incredibly brief space of time. Indeed, an overchief stopping two days at one place has been known to cause the construction of a complete village, to serve only for that period. He then moved on, and the manyatta was never used again! Nevertheless these low rounded huts, in shape like a loaf of bread, give a fictitious impression of great strength and permanency. The smooth and hardened mud resembles masonry or concrete work. As a matter of fact it is the thinnest sort of a shell over plaited withies. The single entrance to this compound may be closed by thorn bush, so that at night, when the lions are abroad, the Masai and all his herds dwell quite peaceably and safely inside the boma. Twelve to twenty huts constitute a village.

When the grass is fed down, the village moves to a new location. There is some regulation about this, determined by the overchiefs, so that one village does not interfere with another. Beside the few articles of value or of domestic use, the only things carried away from an old village are the strongly-woven shield-shaped doors. These are strapped along the flanks of the donkeys, while the other goods rest between. A donkey pack, Masai fashion, is a marvellous affair that would not stay on ten minutes for a white man.

The Masai perform no agriculture whatever, nor will they eat game meat. They have no desire whatever for any of the white man's provisions except sugar. In fact; their sole habitual diet is mixed cow's blood and milk—no fruits, no vegetables, no grains, rarely flesh; a striking commentary on extreme vegetarian claims. The blood they obtain by shooting a very sharp-pointed arrow into the neck vein of the cow. After the requisite amount has been drained, the wound is closed and the animal turned into the herd to recuperate. The blood and milk are then shaken together in long gourds. Certainly the race seems to thrive on this strange diet. Only rarely, on ceremonial occasions or when transportation is difficult, do they eat mutton or goat flesh, but never beef.

Of labour, then, about a Masai village, it follows that there is practically none. The women build the manyattas; there is no cooking, no tilling of the soil, no searching for wild fruits. The herd have to be watched by day, and driven in at the fall of night; that is the task of the boys and the youths who have not gone through with the quadriennial circumcision ceremonies and become El-morani, or warriors. Therefore the grown men are absolutely and completely gentlemen of leisure. In civilization, the less men do the more important they are inclined to think themselves. It is so here. Socially the Masai consider themselves several cuts above anybody else in the country. As social superiority lies mostly in thinking so hard enough—so that the inner belief expresses itself in the outward attitude and manner—the Masai carry it off. Their haughtiness is magnificent. Also they can look as unsmiling and bored as anybody anywhere. Consequently they are either greatly admired, or greatly hated and feared, as the case happens to be, by all the other tribes. The Kikuyu young men frankly ape the customs and ornaments of their powerful neighbours. Even the British Government treats them very gingerly indeed, and allows these economically useless savages a latitude the more agricultural tribes do not enjoy. Yet I submit that any people whose property is in immense herds can more easily be brought to terms than those who have nothing so valuable to lose.

As a matter of fact the white man and the Masai have never had it out. When the English, a few years since, were engaged in opening the country they carried on quite a stoutly contested little war with the Wakamba. These people put up so good a fight that the English anticipated a most bitter struggle with the Masai, whose territory lay next beyond. To their surprise the Masai made peace.

"We have watched the war with the Wakamba," they said, in effect, "and we have seen the Wakamba kill a great many of your men. But more of your men came in always, and there were no more Wakamba to come in and take the places of those who were killed. We are not afraid. If we should war with you, we would undoubtedly kill a great many of you, and you would undoubtedly kill a great many of us. But there can be no use in that. We want the ranges for our cattle; you want a road. Let us then agree."

The result is that to-day the Masai look upon themselves as an unconquered people, and bear themselves—towards the other tribes—accordingly. The shrewd common sense and observation evidenced above must have convinced them that war now would be hopeless.

This acute intelligence is not at all incompatible with the rather bigoted and narrow outlook on life inevitable to a people whose ideals are made up of fancied superiorities over the rest of mankind. Witness, the feudal aristocracies of the Middle Ages.

With this type the underlying theory of masculine activity is the military. Some outlet for energy was needed, and in war it was found. Even the ordinary necessities of primitive agriculture and of the chase were lacking. The Masai ate neither vegetable, grain, nor wild game. His whole young manhood, then, could be spent in no better occupation than the pursuit of warlike glory—and cows.

On this rested the peculiar social structure of the people. In perusing the following fragmentary account the reader must first of all divest his mind of what he would, according to white man's standards, consider moral or immoral. Such things must be viewed from the standpoint of the people believing in them. The Masai are moral in the sense that they very rigorously live up to their own customs and creeds. Their women are strictly chaste in the sense that they conduct no affairs outside those permitted within the tribe. No doubt, from the Masai point of view, we are ourselves immoral.