by Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna
I didn’t get up until I was given all the cows I’d earned. As soon as you pass the test, you’re allowed to ask for cows from everyone in your family who is present. I got 22 that day. Then they carried me to my mother’s hut, where there were two big beds made of branches and covered with skin. I lay down on top of that skin, and the pain just kept coming on. There is no medicine, no painkiller. You just go through it. I could hear my brothers and other people all around us—“Ohhhh! Ohhh!” I was doing that, too. But the worst was over; the healing had started.
WE ALL REMAINED in the village for a couple of months to heal, to grow close to one another, and to get ready for the big feast to celebrate our initiation. Beginning two days after the circumcision, each warrior is supposed to kill birds to make a skin headband. A good headband takes about 15 birds. This is where those special arrows tipped with gum come in. You have to hit the birds with blunt arrows and knock them down. You do this while you’re still in pain, still sore. But the good thing is, you don’t wear any clothes during this time, especially when hunting. After you kill your birds, you skin them—you have to be good at skinning as well as at shooting—and you line them up on a string.
The problem for me was that I was still young and not very good with a bow. But I had a friend, Nkadaru, who was crippled. He walked with crutches that the missionaries had given him. He was older, in his 20s. He may not have been able to walk well, but he was a good shot, and he was smart—he knew where to find the birds. We decided to work together.
At this point, the only thing we were allowed to eat was saroi. It’s milk and blood that’s been fermented for days. It’s believed to rebuild your blood, and we certainly needed rebuilding because you lose a lot of blood during circumcision. So we brought a gourd of saroi and we camped in a big, big tree. Sure enough, all these birds came out. Nkadaru shot them down, and my job was to run and bring them back. I had to be quick because some would regain consciousness and run away. As soon as they hit the ground, I ran and grabbed them. Then we skinned them—Nkadaru was a very good skinner. We got a lot of birds that way. I had more than 15 on my string. That surprised my brother Lmatarion, who was hunting by himself somewhere else. He got only 12.
THE BIG OCCASION when we were finally recognized as men was a ceremony called lmuget. Each new warrior was required to slaughter a cow, and all of the tribe came from many surrounding villages to join the feast. This ceremony marked the end of the long celebrations. During the months that we had spent together, my age-mates and I had formed lifelong friendships.
Cows have special parts. The most important part is the nkiyeu, or chest area, because it holds the heart. For the lmuget ceremony, each new warrior selects another warrior who he feels will be a trusted friend forever, one he can confide in during times of hardship and times of happiness. He calls this warrior Nkiyeu and gives him that part of his cow. Then the friends drink together, and that saroi binds them forever. I have two Nkiyeus—Leneepe and Lesamama.
Sitting at that feast with my family and friends, I felt so good. Conquering the circumciser’s knife made me feel that I could conquer all the challenges that would ever come my way. I had earned my place in the brotherhood of warriors and could take part in community decisions. I was a man.
Chapter 8
Kabarak
When I was born, a lion was born.
I can kill a lion on flat land and on high land.
BY THE TIME I WAS CIRCUMCISED, I had left the missionary school and was attending a school near Mombasa. The reason was this: The missionary school was pretty good—it got me started, gave me a good background—but when the time came to take the national high school examination, I didn’t get good grades. Most of the kids there didn’t do well. They did okay, but not as well as kids elsewhere in the country. After all, we were nomads, far from the capital, Nairobi. We didn’t always get the best teachers, and some of those who came resented being sent to work in what they thought of as a remote and backward place. It takes many days for the teachers to get to our area, and the roads are in poor condition.
I didn’t want to be a failure. I’d already left my home and my village and stayed at school. I wanted to keep going, and I wanted to do well. I had started to develop a new ambition toward the end of my time at the missionary school. I’d learned something about government, heard people in power on the radio, but I had never heard anything about our people being in power. Nomads are a minority in Kenya. We continue to live traditionally and haven’t been well represented in government or other institutions. I was starting to learn something about that and to think that maybe I could help someday.
As it happened, I had a cousin who worked for Kenya Wildlife at a place called Voi, in southern Kenya near Mombasa. He allowed me to go down and stay with him for a year so I could attend a different school and retake the primary exam. When I did, I got all A’s, and I was accepted at a high school called Kabarak. Kabarak was a very prestigious school. It was sponsored by Daniel arap Moi, who was then president of Kenya.
KABARAK IS IN NAKURU, in the Great Rift Valley about 90 miles or so from Nairobi. I was a poor nomadic kid, still very traditional in my outlook and my way of life. I didn’t actually wear my red nanga when I went down there for the first time, but I carried it with me. I felt like everyone could see it, like I had the wrong clothes on.
When I got to Nakuru, I found the school and walked up to the gate, but I couldn’t bring myself to go in. I just sat down outside, watching the cars drive in. Some of them were pretty fancy cars, too—Mercedes and the like—and there I was, in my old, patched school uniform. I finally got up my nerve. I walked up to the guard and told him I’d come to be a student there. He chased me away. I went back across the street and watched some more. Finally, I went back and showed the guard my admission letter, and he let me in.
Once I got through that gate it seemed to take forever to get to the building where the guard said the new students should report. I was very shabby, with my plastic garbage bag over my shoulder, and everyone was staring. I was so embarrassed it seemed like my legs couldn’t carry me. One thing I remember is that I never looked back at the gate. Never. I was so afraid the guard would call me back, tell me I had to leave. I just kept walking until I reached the building.
Some of the other kids were like me, but not really like me. None of them were as ragged, and none of them looked as tired as I felt. I kept thinking about how I had so little money in my pocket, just enough to buy some bread at the canteen.
Someone called out our names, and we were given our uniforms and sent to the dormitory. It was a big room with lots of bunks. I got a lower bunk. It was temporary housing because they were building a new dormitory. It wasn’t really very good, but I liked it a lot. No rain came through the roof; it had the best bed I had ever slept on; and there was a shower in a building near the dormitory. I was in heaven.
There were a lot of very wealthy kids at Kabarak. There were some poorer kids too, but even they had some Western, urban ways about them. They’d lived in the city; they spoke incredible English; they had television at home. And there I was—I didn’t even know what a television was. I’d never seen one in my life! What I knew about was cows, so we didn’t have a lot in common. When I talked about cattle, it was like “What are you talking about?” They just laughed at me. It was culture shock in my own country.
Even though I was different from the other kids, after the first shock, we got along well. I made a lot of friends there, and many of them are my friends today. I realized early on that I was one of the few nomads in the school, and that gave me courage, self-confidence. At vacation time, the other kids at Kabarak went home to the city and hung out. I went to the cattle camp. It gave me an edge. I looked at my experience at Kabarak as another initiation, as part of my preparation for life. Everything you do in our culture, you are preparing for the next stage. Everything you do in life is preparing you for the next challenge.
The kids at Kabarak came fro
m all over Kenya. Many different tribes were represented. It was like a little United Nations. We spoke either English or Swahili to each other. I guess that is how I started relating to people, mixing with all those groups. The elite in numbers and education were the Kikuyu. There were also Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin, Kamba, Digo, and Kisii. And there were a few nomadic students at Kabarak. We were all from different parts of the country. But we were all in the same situation, and we became friends. Some nomadic kids were really embarrassed to say where they were from, but I was proud.
Still, sometimes I would wake up at night and wonder why I was there, why I was doing this. Every day there were little things, little symbols that showed I was not from the right class, that maybe I didn’t belong there socially, that maybe I had stepped out of line by leaving my cows and coming to such an elite place. But I tried not to dwell on it. The school treated me like everyone else, and that was the most important thing.
Although no one became a special mentor to me, I became friends with some of my subject teachers. The teachers were very good. Many came from Nairobi, some from Uganda. Two were British, and one was American. The subjects were the same as at a good high school in the United States, although the curriculum was different.
Slowly, I learned what to do and what not to do. One thing was sure: I was going to study really hard. My goal was to be successful and not let my family down. They had had to sell three or four cows to pay the fees when I went to Kabarak. That was a lot of cattle for them—it’s an expensive school. And there was a drought at the time, so there were few to spare. A lot of our cows had died that year. The funny thing about it was I don’t think they would have felt let down if I had quit and come home. They supported me, but school was not important to them. They would just have thought, well, he’s come back to be a herder. Now we’ll have enough people to work for us.
But I was determined. The school was intense. Everyone was sharp—if you relaxed, you’d find yourself at the bottom of the class. The curriculum was quite specialized: You had to choose three core subjects and focus on them. Mine were economics, Kiswahili, and geography. That was what I felt comfortable with.
The days were hectic. Wake-up was at 5:30 in the morning. Classes began at 8:00 and went on until about 4:00; then we’d go out for sports. Dinner was at 6:00, and then we’d go back to study until about 9:00. And keeping up with the schoolwork often meant even longer hours—getting up as early as 4:00 in the morning and not going to bed until 10:00 or 10:30 at night, sometimes even later.
Everyone was required to live at school. The kids who came from the wealthier families around Nairobi always complained, but I loved it. I had never lived better. In the third year, I was made a prefect—a student who’s given some responsibility for monitoring the other kids and running some school activities—and I had my own room.
I ALWAYS LOVED my holidays at home. But in the days before school closed, I’d have nightmares about how to get there. There was no problem getting from Nakuru to Isiolo. You could take a regular passenger bus. But from Isiolo to Marsabit, the only means of transport was on top of trucks carrying food and other goods to Marsabit. You had to climb up there and hang on. It’s about 200 miles, and usually it took a day or two depending upon the condition of the truck you were riding on. Many of the trucks were old and in poor shape. I always tried to find a new one, but sometimes there was no choice. The roads were bad, too—so bad that the trucks were always getting flat tires. And there were bandits. It’s a remote stretch of road, and there was always the danger of being attacked and robbed.
Even getting on top of those trucks was a nightmare. The moment I arrived in Isiolo I would start looking for a ride. It was normal to spend four or five days trying. It was even worse during the rainy season, when I could spend a week or two. The road to Marsabit was unpaved, and heavy rains could make it impassable. I never had very much money, and after a day or two looking for transport, I always ran out. Since I didn’t know anyone in town, I’d spend the nights sleeping in the open, on the verandahs of shops. It was dirty, and at night it would get very cold. Isiolo has a lot of bars, and people leaving the bars would step on me. Most of the people sleeping on the streets there are homeless kids and orphans. I always felt like one of them when I slept out. I wouldn’t get any apology when someone stepped on me, just insults. And then, after a mostly sleepless night, I’d have to get up and start looking for a new ride.
There’s a police checkpoint in town. Students looking for rides gathered there, and the police would do their best to help. So long as there weren’t too many of us, they would ask the drivers to give us rides. If there were too many, they’d chase us away, so I always made a point to get there early, around 4 a.m. With luck, I’d find a truck and get on my way. But even with luck, I was usually on the road for a week or more before I got home. Most of the other students at Kabarak lived in the big cities; they’d be home within four or five hours of school closing.
Sometimes I’d get desperate. I would think about my mother, my brothers, and my friends, and about the cattle. At home, I could bear hunger and being out in the heat and the rain because I’d be taking care of our livestock. Their beautiful horns and colors could make my hunger disappear. In Isiolo or on top of a truck driving the endless miles up to Marsabit, I sometimes felt like a beggar. But then I’d remember a good grade or something positive I’d achieved, like doing well in soccer, or I’d think about the future, about what I could accomplish for my people with an education, and I’d find encouragement in that. The elders in the village taught us that a man who has gone through hardships will be the most likely to enjoy success. And it would be a shame and an embarrassment, after so many years of learning, even to think of quitting.
Chapter 9
Soccer
Our cattle have a warrior,
We graze on lions’ land.
The lion could have been lucky.
SOCCER CHANGED EVERYTHING for me.
By the time I arrived at Kabarak, I already knew that I would have to compete. I had been competing from the moment I had entered the mission school. In Kenya the students across the country are competing against each other all the time because advancement is limited to the smartest, hardest-working students. You compete to get into high school, and you compete to get into college. A lot of students are left out along the way. In Kenya you are accustomed to competing your whole life.
Academically, things were pretty equal at Kabarak. I worked hard and got good grades, but a lot of students there were getting good grades. The thing that helped me was soccer. I got to meet a lot of students, and I made a lot of friends. Since I was a good soccer player and a responsible student, in my third year the headmaster asked me to be one of the co-captains of the team.
But one game in particular made a difference to me. As I’ve said, this school was sponsored by the President of Kenya, Daniel arap Moi. He had a house not far from the school, and sometimes he’d come over to see us. One afternoon he walked by during soccer practice. We stopped and ran over to greet him, and he asked me, “Who is soccer captain?”
I said, “I’m one of them, Sir,” and introduced myself.
“Well,” he said, “next week you have a game against the minister of education’s school. You must win that game. It’s very important to me.” The minister of education also sponsored a school in his area, and every year there was a day of competition between the two.
“Yes, Your Excellency,” I said. “We will try.”
And he said, “You will not try. You will win!”
I was very competitive, so I answered, “Yes, Your Excellency. We will win.”
“Good! Now—do you have any problems?”
“Your Excellency, our uniforms are starting to fade and we have worn-out shoes.”
“Okay—I will do something.”
The next week, we had new uniforms and shoes.
When Saturday came, there was a lot of excitement. A crowd of people had come to see
the games: first basketball, then field hockey, then volleyball, and last of all, soccer. Our school won in field hockey and volleyball, then the other school won basketball. But it was the soccer match, at four in the afternoon, that was the highlight. Students came, parents came, politicians and other dignitaries came. The president was sitting there with the minister of education. The president told us, “Good luck! I hope you win!” And we started the game.
By halftime, we were losing, two goals to nothing. The president came down and spoke to us. “Tell me,” he said. “You’re the soccer captain?”
“I’m one of them.” I told him my name again, a second time, because I knew he was a busy man.
“I want you to win this game. And I’ll do something for you. So, go!”
I told him again, “Yes, Excellency! We will win the game.”
I had always been a team player, but this time I felt so much personal pressure from the president. I felt that somehow I had to make it happen myself. When we went out after halftime, I talked one of the strikers into switching positions with me. I had always played midfield. My job was to bring the ball forward and pass it to the strikers; it was their job to score the goals. But now I said to him, “Give me ten minutes to be the striker. Ten minutes!”
It was only about a year since I had run from my first lion, and now the goalkeeper for the other team had become a lion to me. The soccer field had become the plains of northern Kenya, the great savanna. I was focused on the lion, and the lion was again looking at me right in the eye. I knew this was my chance. This time I was not going to turn back, to run away. I was thinking, “What can I do? How can I score a goal?” I was in a trance—an initiated warrior. I had spent so much time preparing to be a man. All the warrior songs were ringing in my ears.