Maasai

How do they live? For the Maasai,
cattle are what make the good life, and milk and meat are the best foods. Their
old ideal was to live by their cattle alone – other foods they could get by
exchange – but today they also need to grow crops. They move their herds from
one place to another, so that the grass has a chance to grow again;
traditionally, this is made possible by a communal land tenure system in which
everyone in an area shares access to water and pasture. Nowadays Maasai have
increasingly been forced to settle, and many take jobs in towns. Maasai society
is organised into male age-groups whose members together pass through
initiations to become warriors, and then elders. They have no chiefs, although
each section has a Laibon, or spiritual leader, at its head. Maasai
worship one god who dwells in all things, but may manifest himself as either
kindly or destructive. Many Maasai today, however, belong to various Christian
churches.

What problems do they face? Since the colonial
period, most of what used to be Maasai land has been taken over, for private
farms and ranches, for government projects or for wildlife parks. Mostly they
retain only the dryest and least fertile areas. The stress this causes to their
herds has often been aggravated by attempts made by governments to 'develop' the
Maasai. These are based on the idea that they keep too much cattle for the land.
However, they are in fact very efficient livestock producers and rarely have
more animals than they need or the land can carry. These 'development' efforts
try to change their system of shared access to land. While this has suited
outsiders and some entrepreneurial Maasai who have been able to acquire land for
themselves or sell it off, it has often denuded the soil and brought poverty to
the majority of Maasai, who are left with too little and only the worst
land.

How can I help?
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How does Survival help? Since 1993 Survival has
assisted several Maasai groups in their struggle for their land. In Kenya we
found funds for a programme of consciousness-raising against land sales, and
supported the people of Iloodoariak and Mosiro, who are resisting the theft of
their land through a legal fraud. In Tanzania, we have backed the demand of the
Maasai of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area for a proper say in its
administration, and supported attempts to defend the sacred hill Endoinyo
Ormoruwak ('hill of elders').