Untimely

Friday night Rehema asked me if I could drive her into Isiolo on Saturday morning to attend a funeral. This was her second one in a couple of months. I got to thinking about mortality both here and at home. In the USA the life expectancy is 79 years and most of us have infrequent experience with untimely death. Here in Kenya the life expectancy of someone born in 1990 was 59 years, it dropped to 52 years by 2001 due to HIV and has risen to 63 years for a Kenyan born now. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. In the seven months that we have been here untimely death seems to be a relatively frequent occurrence.

Our community is fairly small, I would guess that 2 to 3 degrees of separation would be around 10,000 people. In the seven months we’ve been here Rehema has had two friends pass on, the first was a 40 year old woman who died of aids and Friday’s was a 24 year old man who hung himself after being diagnosed with hiv. There have been 3-4 poachers shot. The mother of one Lewa employee and the aunt of another have had fatal car accidents. And a local herder was drunk and stumbled upon an elephant. In the course of fleeing, he literally bumped into a rhino and was killed. That makes nine untimely deaths in seven months. People have funerals, cry, and get on with life. It is not as if life is considered less valuable here. The sadness and tears are real. It just seems that some early deaths are expected. They are saddened but not shocked by them. For me, as an American, it is taking some getting used to.

Fear is not an issue for Anne and me and shouldn’t be to visitors. Since we are not poachers, don’t have unprotected sex with strangers, avoid getting drunk and wandering around elephants and rhinos, and drive conservatively our actual risk, here in Kenya, is little, if any, different than it would be in the US. It’s just that early death still comes as a surprise and shock when we hear about it.

Bush Adventures Part II

It’s been a while since my last post. I got sick (a bad piece of goat or homemade honey beer?), so I had to re-load my intestinal system. Then my computer got sick (all my office programs just quit), so I had to re-load my operating system. Both took about three days.

Anne left for the US to visit with kids and grandkids and here I am finishing up the story of Bush Adventures.

I was the best spear thrower of the three of us. It must have been the hat.

I was the best spear thrower of the three of us. It must have been the hat.


Spears

The safety talk was serious. We were using actual Maasai spears (unsharpened). Don’t stick them in anybody. Look behind you before you throw because the back end is as dangerous as the front. When you fetch them after a throw, approach them from the side so that if you trip you don’t impale yourself. When you are walking in a line, carry them either vertically or hold them with the point off to the left so that if either you or the person behind you stumbles no one gets stabbed. This is probably more than anyone wants to know but I find it fascinating that there are taught safety rules just like in a shop, the military, or anywhere people are working with potentially dangerous equipment. The tools may be different but societies work out similar ways to insure safety.

The biggest lesson about actually using a spear is to figure out the range at which you are effective, then wait until the enemy reaches that point. It doesn’t matter if you get the lion 10 meters or 2 meters away, just be sure you don’t miss.
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Bush Adventures Part I

Last week Skylar, Quinlan (two of my step grandsons) and I went to Bush Adventures in Laparua. There we met our four Maasai guides. Born and raised nearby, Silas, Saita, and Kortol are moran (warriors) and Roslynn is Silas’ sister. We were to be trained as Maasai warriors in the daytime and talk about Maasai culture around the campfire in the evening.

Our Trainers from the front; Silas, Kortol, Saita, Roslynn

Our Trainers from the front; Silas, Kortol, Saita, Roslynn


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The New Normal

The Westgate Samburus chanting a blessing

The Westgate Samburus chanting a blessing


The men of the Westgate Samburu clan progress through life in broad, age-grouped cohorts. Around puberty the boys are circumcised and graduate from children to warriors (moran). Ten years later they advance and become junior elders. Their final promotion comes as they enter early middle age and assume the role of senior elders. Each stage is accompanied by an elaborate ceremony with age-appropriate rituals ranging from having their foreskins sliced by machete to rewarding wives with perfectly roasted cuts of beef. As the day of celebration approaches, people assemble from miles around at a location designated by the elders. An enormous acacia boma (corral) is created and a temporary city built inside of sticks, mud, corrugated metal, plastic sacks and grass. Each family is assigned a spot where they construct their huts (manyattas) and erect small acacia bomas to house their goats and sheep. Once the party starts there are four days of socializing, chanting, singing, dancing, slaughtering livestock, eating and drinking. These are celebrations that occur at rare intervals. If you are invited, you go.

Welcomed by the soon to be senior elders

Welcomed by the soon to be senior elders


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Bush lunch

Saturday Anne and I went with Mike and Jo to the Maasai Mara. It was ostensibly a business trip to look at their cattle and grassland management but we intended to include a bit of touristing as well. The first step was to squeeze into a little yellow plane, bounce down the runway, head south west, and labor up a long slow climb to 12,500 feet to go over the Aberdare Range. It felt like a flying version of “The Little Engine That Could”.

The little plane that could.

The little plane that could.

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Beautiful

Guest Post by Julie Curtis

When I was little, I made gowns out of my bath towels. I tied them over one shoulder and belted them with bathrobe ties. Or I wrapped them around my chest or waist to make a strapless dress or a skirt. Then I would top the whole thing off with an elegant cape-style towel.

The results, it turns out, would have been a lot prettier if I had grown up in Africa and used khangas instead of towels. Khangas are big oversized sarong-y rectangles of lightweight cloth, printed in at least three bright colors with some wild pattern. Some of them even have sayings on them in Swahili that translate roughly into fortune cookie prophecies, like “you gossip about everything” and “you have not yet met the person who will tell you what you need to know.”

The ladies arrive

The ladies arrive


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