Zaki's Massai Village

This is an extremely overdue blog post and I regret putting it off until now because I feel I have forgotten some of the details! I am going back to look at my photos from the day to try and jump start my memory, so no worries. :)  

Eight of us volunteers went with Zaki to his Massai tribe that is about a three hour drive away. We hadn’t even left Arusha when we saw this guy driving down the road. You never know what kind of crazy things you will see while in Africa!

A huge bull head tied to the back of this bike

Before we left at 8am we walked down to the little store by our house to buy some gifts for the village. We brought beans, sugar, rice, flour, butter, etc. It is customary in Africa to bring a gift any time you are invited to someones home. 

Once we arrived we were greeted outside of the village by a line of Massai men and women who were singing and dancing a traditional Massai “Welcome”. 

Zaki on the far left with his tribe

Once they had finished, our hands were grabbed up by the Massai as they invited/showed us into the gate of their village. Right inside of the gate they lined up again with more Massai and sang and danced again. Massai dancing is not what we would typically call dancing. I have a video of this dance and will upload it to my youtube page once I am home and have faster internet. It is very interesting. Massai men are also known for jumping extremely high and it was during this dance where the men all took turns jumping and called some of us up to jump with them. Obviously, I was too shy. 

Next they showed us the inside of one of their Massai huts. Massai huts are made of mud and sticks. Usually the huts are two roomed, one room for the women and children and one for the man. In some tribes the men will sleep on the floor in front of the door to protect his family from any intruders or wild animals. They use the women’s room for the kitchen and livestock will even sometimes live inside of the hut with the family during the night. 

Zaki and I inside of the hut

Next we were shown to an outdoor table and given sodas. These sodas were opened with a stick by Zaki. Most people here just use their teeth, I cringe every time I see this done. I have had enough practice that if I have two soda bottles or one soda bottle and a water bottle... I can use one to open the other. Cool stuff, I know ;) I am a human bottle opener. 

Massai people generally eat goat and we were given the option of having a goat slaughtered and cooked. Some of our group wanted to and some didn’t. I was among the “Yes” crowd. I figured that if I was in Africa... among an African tribe... who this is their culture... why not experience how they live. It would be a sham not to get a full cultural experience and even though I had my eyes closed through most of it.. I can still say I witnessed it. It was a very interesting process and is very respectful because no part of the sacrificed goat is left unused. They use each and every part of it for one thing or another. 

We were given the choice of how to kill the goat and we went with the more “humane” option of cutting the throat opposed to strangling it. It is a tradition to drink the goats blood anytime one is slaughtered and to do this you have to cut the throat. They hold a bowl underneath the cut and collect most of the blood. Then they stir it until ready to drink so that it will not clot... it still clotted, I saw. Two people from our group were brave enough to drink the blood. NO THANKYOU. Not for me. I had my nursing cap on and all I could think about was all the diseases that could be living in that goat. It didn’t help that it was disgusting either.  

I will not go into details on the carving of the goat, but if you would actually like to know this I can tell you at a later time ;) But they started by skinning the goat and then moved on to taking out the organs and carving the meat. I saw the men cut the kidney’s out of their sacks and pop them in their mouths like candy. INSANE. Very cool. I may have almost gagged. The horns are used as well for making goods. 

They cook the meat by sticking it onto a stick and placing it around a fire. We ate the normal meat you would eat and then also the liver. They cooked more of the organs, like the lungs, but we left those for the Massai to enjoy. 

When it was time to eat we all lined up on a bench and they brought a bottle of water and bucket for us to rinse our hands. Then they proceeded to take once pice of meat at a time in their hands and crave meat off of it with a knife. I’m sure it was the same knife that was used to slaughter the goat and hadn’t been cleaned.. but “While in Africa...” The meat was good but kind of tough. I have had goat many times now in Africa and also in Haiti and it actually is very good. Sometimes. This was on the “Good” side of the spectrum. Especially when you covered it in salt. I could have used some Country Bobs though, not gonna lie. 

We gave them our gifts that we had brought and we paid them some money for letting us visit and were then on our way. Until 10 minutes later when we got stuck in the dirt for 30 minutes. Zaki’s tribe is so far out in the middle of nowhere that for the last 45 minutes of the drive there are no roads... not even dirt roads, and I am not exaggerating. Zaki was sitting up front with Michael, our driver, and would point his hand left or right to show him which way to drive. 

Once we were stuck it wasn’t five minutes before locals were coming from 5 different directions to help us out. We ended up plucking some large plant leaves and placing them under the tires to get us out. 

It was a great day. The only thing that would have made it better were if the sky had been clear and we could see Kilimanjaro... and Country Bobs :)