In the land of the Maasai, the one-eared dog is king

The Masaai stood out both physically and culturally. From our first encounter at the KIA lodge, we came across them constantly. They were walking the roadsides, tending herds around their villages (domas) acting as our guards in Ngorongoro, and finally they were our hosts for a "cultural trip" to one of these villages.

To me, anyone I encounter in a hotel is by definition not in their native habitat, and for all I know you could be from Glasgow and paid to dress up like that for the tourists. So the first "real" Maasai we saw were at a distance, tending their cattle, where their red robes were spectacularly conspicuous.

The first Maasai we saw up close were the young men undergoing their coming of age ritual. This seemed to involve some period away from the village, and several times we came across these voodoo-esque youths singly or in small groups walking along the roadside.

The driver always seem anxious to get them into the rear-view mirror.

While we were at Ngorogoro the day came when we were due to go on our "cultural excursion" to the Maasai village. I had very mixed feelings about this excursion. It felt hugely contrived, artificial or worse, exploitative. On the other hand, it was clearly a unique opportunity to truly get a glimpse of their culture.

At the start, I was swayed by the idea that we were helping to support their way of life (they were paid for the visits) and in the end I was swayed by the clear evidence that they were exploiting us much more aggressively that we were exploiting them. It took five to ten minutes of serious hard bargaining and walking away to get the prices of the little hand-carved trickets they were selling down to only ten times what you could buy them for on any one of a hundred street corners in NYC.

The village, or boma, was entirely surrounded by a thick fence of acacia and stinging nettles. The interwoven branches, the sharp spines and the nettles were an effective deterent to leopard, lion and hyena, all of which would welcome an opportunity to get at the cattle which were housed for the night in a corral in the center of the village. A one-eared dog divided his time between snoozing and on patrol around the visitors. We asked about his ear and were told he lost it to a leopard. To only lose his ear made him the clear victor in our opinion, and presumably the leopard backed off. We concluded (with all due respect to Erasmus) that in the land of the Maasai, the one-eared dog is king.

The highlight of the trip was an invitation to visit inside one of the houses. Like Alice shrinking in the rabbit hole, the entrance was a tight and ever narrowing passageway such that we were practically doubled over and shuffling sideways by the time it let into the complete darkness and heat of the interior. I was overwelmed by a feeling of creeping back into the womb, and if that sounds gross, then you have some impression of my claustrophobia, and the panic and nausea that the heat, the smell, and the dark were causing.

After a few moments, the dim light from the embers of a fire which was being kept just alive began to reveal a few details. A wall, or perhaps I should say a fence, because it was just a basket-woven twig construction, divided the house into two very unequal halves. The smaller section was pretty much entirely taken up with a small cot, and as the last man standing, I was invited to sit on the edge of it. It was only as I shuffled my backside into place that I noticed a pair of feet being pulled up to make room—the wife was at home. A smile of tolerance played briefly on her lips and faded just as quickly. I couldn't stop thinking about a story someone had told us about a student whole was studying the Maasai and spend some time living with them. She had complained about how long it took her to get used to the cockroaches crawling on her at night. Meanwhile I'm sure our guide was telling us something very interesting but I wasn't listening to a word of it. I was entirely focussed on hanging on to my sanity long enough to make it back outside without making a scene.

After that it was on to the trinket-buying ceremony.