Masai Country

So it's actually Wednesday morning here in Nairobi, but I'm going to ask you to step back in time with me to Monday afternoon when we visited the Masai lands.  I'm just going to give you a brief overview and then post pictures for you to enjoy as I think that's the best way to communicate this beautiful culture.   I think the thing that struck me the most was the disproportionate amount of work the mother does.  Throughout the day they kept telling us all the chores the mother has to do (which we did for her the day we visited!  What a learning experience).  She washes the dishes, cooks the food, she builds the very house that the family lives in, she fetches the water, she collects firewood (which is really cow dung), she raises the children, she collects and burns any litter that might be around the grounds of the family compound.  She milks the livestock.  From what we could tell, the only tasks the men do are keep the cow pen clean of dung and stand out in the fields and watch the goats, cows and sheep graze.  Momma has an awful lot of work to do!  We spent a morning helping the family with their chores and then ate lunch and watched a program where the women and children sang for us and put on a drama depicting a Masai wedding ceremony.  The landscape was so beautiful that I think it was difficult for me to remember that this was just another face of poverty, albeit a picturesque one.  When we helped fetch the water, it was approximately a 3 mile round trip walk, half of that carrying heavy jugs of water.  They said that the women sometimes make that trip 2 or even 3 times a day depending on the needs of the family.  And while to us Americans it seemed like such a beautiful and simple way of life, we were reminded that theirs is a difficult cycle to break.  Most of the children will grow up and remain in the community without opportunity to attend University or pursue other dreams.  It was encouraging to see the work of Compassion in this community and the faith of the Masai!

 

[Our group arrives at a Masai home for our home visit.]

[Stella, a Compassion LDP student and Compassion graduate, laughs as they show me how to carry water!]

[I found this to be a much more suitable water carrying method.  :) ]

 [Unlike the Masai men, Keith was happy to help out when I got tired of carrying water.  I taught him everything I knew about water carrying technique.  haha.]

 [The patriarch of the Masai family we visited shows Keith the best way to shovel cow dung.  Apparently it's quite an art.]

 

[Our home visit team (me, Keith, Nick, Amy, Stella, and Boniface) with the Masai family whose home compound we visited as well as the pastor of the church and a Compassion project worker.]

 

[Some of the mothers of Compassion children sang songs for us in their brightly colored garb.]

 

[I believe these ladies were the church choir, but there seemed to be a good deal of overlap.]

 [At the end of the day, we divided into teams of two and each planted a tree outside the Compassion Project office to commemorate our visit.  I hope to return to see a tall tree in that spot one day!]