Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton

by Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna

  She says, “OK, Son. I’m putting this rock here. Let’s see if it’s going to move before tomorrow.” She just doesn’t understand it. If I ask her what she thinks happens, she says, “Well, Son. I think the sun goes down, goes all the way underground, and rises up on the other side of the country.”

  “And how about the stars?”

  “Well, the stars—during the day, they go out and graze, like the cows do. So you don’t see them. At night, they come home and sleep, and we see them up there.”

  That’s all she knows. For her, there’s just nature. Bring science, bring technology to her, and she’ll never really get it. If there’s an eclipse of the moon, she thinks that we did something wrong, and she prays. When I’m home and staying with her in her hut, I’ll sometimes hear her get up in the night and pray: “Thanks for bringing my son home. Thanks for the things you’ve done for me. And bring the moon back!”

  I tell her, “Mom, when I come home, I fly here.” She has no idea where America is. She knows it’s far away, that’s all. She’d never get in a plane. She sees them up there, but they don’t mean anything to her. So I tell her, “My plane leaves at 6:30 in the morning, when you take the cows out. You go the whole day, and the cows come home, and I’m still up in the air. And you sleep, and I’m still traveling, and the next day when you take the cows out again is when I reach America.”

  She says, “All that time, you’re up there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you eat and move around in the plane?”

  “Yes.”

  And she says, “Son, I don’t believe it. But I trust you. I trust what you’re telling me.”

  The thing is, I spent very little time with my mother when I was growing up. I was away at boarding schools from the age of six, and when I wasn’t at school I was usually at cattle camp with my brothers and the other men. I was learning how a boy is supposed to live, learning our traditions, how to be brave, how to protect the cattle—and not to involve myself too much with women. That’s our culture. I’d see my mother for perhaps ten days a year. So now I make it a point to spend time with her. I go home to Kenya during the school vacations, and I spend two or three weeks with her, telling her what I’m doing and finding out from her about life at home.

  Whenever I go home, I bring her a present—usually some cloth. It’s not very much: As I told you, she doesn’t have many possessions; she doesn’t live like that. After college, I became a teacher in McLean, Virginia, at The Langley School. A teacher doesn’t make a lot of money, but I always saved what I could. I wanted to do something more for my mom. At the end of my second year teaching, I took a group of students and parents to Kenya during the summer vacation. They saw where I came from, what kind of life I’d lived as a child, the kind of huts we lived in. I told them, “This is how my mother lives. She lives in a hut like this.” And I was thinking about what I could do for her.

  At the end of the trip, the group gave me some money, to help me and to say thanks. I took that money, put it in an envelope, wrapped it tight with a rubber band, and stuffed it away at the bottom of my bag. I didn’t even look at it—I thought, if I see it, I’m going to want to spend it. I knew I wanted to do something special for my mom. So I went home, and with Lmatarion and a friend and some soldiers I knew, I went up to an area near the Ethiopian border where there are a lot of cows. With the group’s money and the money I had been saving, I bought my mom some cattle.

  The cows up there were a good breed. They were more drought resistant and gave more milk than our cows. I thought that they would be the perfect present for my mom—not only for her, but for the whole community. There would be more milk for everybody, and the new cattle would improve our breeding stock. So we went up there and bought the cows. We arranged for transportation, then we drove home. I never said a word to my mom, so she wasn’t expecting anything.

  The cows arrived about a week later. I made sure that they were brought to the village early in the morning. Mornings are regarded as a blessing. As the sun was coming up, I brought the cows into the kraal, one by one, eight of them. I said to my mom, “This is a gift for you. What you’ve done for me has been incredible. You’ve supported me my whole life, through all the tough decisions to allow me to stay in school. When people wanted me to drop out, you made me stay. So this is your gift. Come and see your cows.” She couldn’t believe it! She couldn’t say a word. She just went and looked at them, touched them.

  It was time for the cattle to go out and graze, so the new cows went out with the rest of the herd. When they came back that evening, Mom went out and looked at them again, and that night she woke up many times to go out to be with them. What she was doing was naming them. In the morning, she took me out and told me their names—“This is so-and-so, this is so-and-so, this is so-and-so.” She was very happy—I knew it was going to make her happy, but I didn’t know how happy. And now the kids in the village are saying, “I’ll go to school to buy cows for my mom, like Lekuton did.” It’s been very good.

  Afterword

  More About Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton and the Ariaal People BY HERMAN VIOLA

  JOSEPH LEMASOLAI LEKUTON is a remarkable man, one I am privileged to call my friend. Half the year Joseph is a social studies teacher at The Langley School, a prestigious private school near Washington, D.C. The other half he is a Maasai warrior in northern Kenya following the traditional nomadic cattle-herding culture of his people. He recently completed a master’s degree in international education policy at Harvard University and intends to use his skills to improve the lives of the traditional nomadic peoples of East Africa, whose proud and durable way of life is under increasing stress from the pressures of modern society.

  Upon graduating from St. Lawrence University, Joseph decided that he wanted to teach in American schools for a few years. Uncertain how to go about finding a job, he filed his résumé with a teacher placement service and hoped for the best. The first phone call of many that he eventually received came from Betty Brown, at that time the headmistress of The Langley School in McLean, Virginia. The Langley School was founded in 1947 as a cooperative school and is now one of the premier private educational institutions in the region. Betty had looked at Joseph’s résumé and liked what she saw.

  “When I looked at his résumé, I knew he was a very unusual person who had a lot he could contribute from his own culture to the students at The Langley School,” she recalls. “I thought any young man whose people would put up their livelihood, their cattle, to send him to school certainly had their absolute endorsement of him, yet, the fact that he was bright enough to get a scholarship so he did not need the cattle spoke well of his ability. I passed around his résumé at a faculty retreat, and one of the teachers sent me a note saying, ‘Are you crazy?’ I said, ‘Yes, a little bit, but this is one young man I want to meet.’”

  Upon returning from the retreat, Betty asked Joseph to visit Langley for an interview. He was somewhat hesitant because of her Southern accent (he had been warned that the American South was no place for an ambitious black man), but she told him that Washington, D.C., was an interesting and welcoming city, that Langley was a super school. She convinced him to come down and take a look.

  “When I met him I was even more impressed,” Betty said. “I realized he was a person between two cultures, but I saw him as a global citizen. He is one of only two teachers in my career—and I have probably interviewed over a thousand teaching applicants—to whom I offered a contract on the spot. We really wanted him. He is very kind, a fine human being as well as a real scholar. Moreover, he has a wonderful attitude and outlook on life. At any school you have teachers who come in and mumble and complain, but when they run into Joseph, they leave with a little lilt in their step. They’re almost skipping after they see him. ‘What do you say?’ I will ask him. ‘I tell them to look at the sky, to see what a beautiful day it is.’ Joseph sees the beauty of everything around him. He makes people who are miserable and complaining happy�
��not by saying forget it, or snap out of it, but by saying something that lets people see what a wonderful world it is. He tells everyone you can overcome any hardship and meet any challenge, and Joseph has certainly done that. It is a sort of contagious quality. No one ever wants to complain around Joseph because he always puts a positive spin on things. And the students love him as well. He comes from such a different background than our kids, yet they bond with him immediately. He has such a winning smile. He turned out absolutely wonderful.”

  TO UNDERSTAND JOSEPH, it is first necessary to understand the Ariaal people, whose home is the savanna of northern Kenya. Their livelihood relies upon livestock, mainly cattle, but also goats, sheep, camels, and donkeys. The Ariaal are a small, Maa-speaking group, whose population is estimated to be about 100,000, but an accurate census is difficult to obtain because, as Joseph explains, it is considered improper in his culture to count people.

  The Ariaal homeland is quite dry, mostly arid plains and semi-deserts, consisting of lowlands and highlands. The higher areas are cooler and wetter than the lowlands. Lowland temperatures are often near 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and even in the best of times rain may not fall for months. Lacking the rainfall necessary to grow crops, the Ariaal must rely for survival upon their vast herds of livestock, which can be moved from pasture to pasture as season, rainfall, and other factors dictate.

  Ariaal settlements usually consist of a few families. A thorny fence called a boma made of acacia branches protects their livestock at night. Each family has its own gate into the compound, and each married woman in the compound has her own house. The Ariaal are polygamous, which means a man can have more than one wife. Women own their houses, which they build with cow dung plastered over a wooden frame. Husbands sleep in the houses of their wives.

  Ariaal society revolves around age and gender. Men and women behave according to long established principles based on age. Males, for example, belong to an age-set determined by the date of their circumcision, which marks their initiation into manhood. Men of an age-set may have been born a dozen or more years apart, but in Ariaal society they are considered the same age and, like fraternity brothers, they will be friends for life. The most recently circumcised males form an Ilmurran, essentially a brotherhood of warriors who are responsible for protecting the community and its livestock. Warriors live separately from the other villagers, are not allowed to marry or eat any food seen or offered by a woman, and spend their free time making themselves glamorous by wearing long braids powdered with red ochre and by practicing their singing and dancing skills.

  The tenure of each Ilmurran is determined by when the next group of males is circumcised, usually after 14 or 15 years. Once that occurs, the men of the former Ilmurran cut off their braids, marry, and enter the fraternity of elders, the most powerful group in the society.

  The life of Ariaal women is less regulated. Girls usually marry as teenagers and are at least 15 years younger than their husbands. A woman’s prestige rises as she matures and has children, especially when she has sons who become warriors. A woman identifies herself with her husband’s family after marriage. Names and property such as livestock are only passed from father to son. Although a woman cannot inherit property from her father, she often receives gifts of livestock that she brings to the marriage. After marriage, a girl’s mother gives her gourds and other items she needs for her household. These and the house she builds belong only to her.

  Daily life revolves around the care of the livestock. Because the animals must be taken out to pasture every single day, families rise before dawn. Mothers relight the cooking fires and prepare a simple breakfast of tea and porridge. The children then take the animals out to assigned pastures. The workday does not end until dusk, when the cows return and are milked. The evenings are spent in conversation, telling stories, and often in singing and dancing. Because their day begins at dawn, Ariaal families usually retire early to sleep.

  Children do much of the herding. Boys and girls as young as five or six take the little animals—calves, sheep, and goats—to grazing areas near their homes, learning early to become responsible, productive members of society.

  The warriors have responsibility for the mature animals. Often they have to take the community herds long distances to find adequate grass and water. Sometimes, during the dry season or in periods of severe drought, they must establish cattle camps far from the villages and remain away from home for weeks at a time. On these occasions older boys and girls will also be sent to the camps to help with the chores and give the warriors a break in the routine. It was at one of these camps that Joseph—as a young warrior—had his first confrontation with a lion.

  Ariaal food comes from their livestock. Milk is the staple of the diet. It is drunk fresh or after it has fermented a few days, becoming a form of yogurt or cottage cheese. Milk is stored in a calabash, a type of gourd that is cleaned with burning sticks, which gives the milk a unique taste.

  Meat is not eaten very often. Although the Ariaal have a great many cows, goats, and sheep, they are too valuable to be slaughtered for food. Animals are killed only for special occasions and certain ceremonies. Otherwise they are traded for grain, sugar, tea, cloth, and other necessities, sold, or kept for breeding purposes. Animal blood, on the other hand, is an important part of the diet. Blood can be drunk plain, mixed with milk, or cooked into porridge.

  Like the other pastoralists of Kenya, the Ariaal are threatened by modern society. Towns and wildlife preserves now occupy some of their prime grazing lands; roads bring unwelcome visitors and change, and the government encourages nomads to give up herding and settle into towns, where they become dependent on government assistance to survive.

  Those groups that continue to cling to their traditional way of life are such a small minority in Kenya that they find themselves isolated and unprotected even by their own government.

  I MET JOSEPH IN 1994, when he joined the faculty of The Langley School, where my wife, Susan, administers the Pat Bush Library. I had spent much of my career at the Smithsonian Institution as a historian, working with the tribal peoples of North America, so Susan knew I would enjoy meeting her new colleague, who was a tribal person from Africa.

  How right she was! Joseph is a fabulous storyteller. From our first conversation at dinner one night at our home, I was mesmerized by his stories and was eager to help him tell them to a larger audience. As I explained what I had in mind, Joseph willingly agreed to the idea, insisting only that we write the story for young people rather than for adults. He wants to use his life as an example to let kids know that they can overcome whatever obstacles appear in their path as long as they pick a goal and do their best.

  During the writing of this book, my wife and I accompanied Joseph to Kenya one summer. He led us on a typical tourist safari with two other couples from the Washington, D.C., area. It was a profound experience in many ways. One was in discovering just how far Joseph had come from the African savanna, not in distance but in personal achievement. Fellow Africans were incredulous at the thought that a black man, especially an Ariaal, was in charge of a group of white Americans. Indeed, his people are at the bottom stratum of Kenyan society. At the four-star hotels in the Masai Mara, and in other tourist hotels in the nomadic inhabited areas, the higher level employees—waiters, hostesses, and managers, for example—are members of Kenya’s dominant tribes. If the Maasai are employed at all, it is in menial jobs, such as cleaning or chasing the monkeys out of the eating areas with their slingshots.

  Such expectations are so ingrained that native Kenyans and tourists alike are startled when they meet a cattle herder who is fluent in English. English is one of the official languages of Kenya but rarely penetrates remote areas.

  JOSEPH LOVES TO TELL the following story about such an encounter that took place one summer while he was a college student.

  “When I go home,” he explains, “I sometimes dress traditionally—my beads, my spear, my club. One day my brother, my cousin
, and I took our cows into the national forest for water. When we were crossing the road that separates communal land from the park, we met a van with an African driver and about eight American tourists. They saw us and stopped.

  “They yelled ‘Jambo, jambo, jambo!—Hello, hello, hello!’ And they wanted to take our pictures. But, it is illegal in Kenya to take native people’s pictures without their permission, and all tourists are informed of this law. Despite this their driver, who dressed like someone from the city, said, ‘Go ahead. You take a picture of these guys, but pretend you’re photographing the national park and the woods.’ So they came piling out their van, yelling ‘Jambo, Jambo Kenya!’ I said, ‘Jambo America!’

  “Of course they had no idea that I could speak or understand English. They came close to us to take pictures but pretended they were only looking at us with their binoculars. I decided it might be funny to give them a little scare.

  “When one of them finished focusing his camera and was about to hit the button, I said, softly, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’ They all looked up. They were so surprised. They were more than surprised. They didn’t know whether this remark came from me or someone in their party, so the guy started focusing again. This time I said in a gruff voice, ‘Hey, what part of what I said didn’t you understand? I said wait a minute!’ By this time, the van driver figured out what was happening and took off. He ran to the van, jumped in, and locked the door.

  “When I saw the driver take off, I said to my brother and cousin, ‘What a silly man. Why don’t you go and scare him a bit.’ So they went over to the van and starting breathing heavily, pressing their faces against the windows, and singing and waving their spears and clubs.

  “The tourists were shocked. I said, ‘Okay, folks, you broke the rules. In America when you break the law, you pay the price. The same thing in Kenya.’