Preparación del cuestionario y confección de la

Citing what he called “previous reports”, a Maasai businessman told me that my dissertation should not present the group in “bad light”. He lamented that “many lies” had been told and published about the Maasai. Anyhow, I was given many stories regarding how each group was more „moral‟ than the other. I would be told how the murran are so disciplined that they

“cannot touch alcohol” only to find some drinking, not in secluded places but in the public

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bars. Such was also the myth that it was a taboo or “unheard of” for them to sleep with married women.¹¹⁴

The story of how Maasai men simply leave or „plant‟ their spears outside a hut as an indicator that they are having sex with the woman who lives there¹¹⁵ has been told over and over again.

And people never tire of telling them. Very few Kamba respondents did not cite this story to express how „immoral‟ and „promiscuous‟ the Maasai are. The story is also similar to another one which I saw on CNN about a community in rural India where a married woman can be shared by brothers. In this case, the man leaves his walking stick outside the hut to indicate that “the woman is busy”. The practice of „leaving a spear‟ outside the hut has also been associated with the traditional Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi.

Going back to the Maasai story, it is indisputable that Maasai men pin their spears outside the hut before entering inside for whatever business. This is done for practical reasons.

Considering that a spear could be as long as two metres, while the entrance to the huts is hardly more than a metre high, it would be extremely cumbersome to get into the hut with the spear. In the evening however, the spears are kept in the huts for security reasons. While some Kamba respondents knew this, they would only confirm after I shared with them the other side of the story. For those who held the stereotype as „true‟, the deconstruction was treated with derision. But then comes in Sitonik, the teacher. Rather sarcastically, he praised „his‟

people, the Maasai for “inventing” the “do not disturb” tab seen in houses and hotel rooms around the world!

Some stories about Maasai sexual relations are not stereotypes though. Members of the same age-set can share wives but as always, the woman has the final say. Ole Sankan admits though that this traditional arrangement where a wife theoretically and in practice can sleep and have children with any man of her choice, provided he belongs to the husband‟s age group, has led to “easy spread of venereal diseases within Maasailand” (1971: xii). The stereotype has been that the women have no choice. Whatever the case, the whole arrangement has faced stiff challenges from Christianity, monogamy and modernity. Let me illustrate. Sometime in the mid 1990‟s, a fairly educated Maasai man was having a drink with his semi-literate friend and a member of his age-set in Kiboko. At some point, the „friend‟ bought him two drinks and excused himself saying he was coming back „shortly‟. This man was seen entering into his friend‟s rented house in the trading centre. A Kamba neighbour, who knew that the two had been playing hide-and-seek games, went out looking for his friend and found him drinking.

114 It was also evident that neither do all boys become murran nor do all murran live in the warrior villages (manyata). See also Spencer (1993: 150).

115 Married Maasai women usually live in separate huts from men.

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This particular Kamba knew that the practice of sharing wives among age-mates was increasingly facing resistance among the Maasai. After relaying the information to his Maasai friend, the latter rushed home immediately. He found his friend and his wife in bed. He beat him up and took him to the nearby police station where the suspected „adulterer‟ was locked up overnight. The „accused‟ thought he would take advantage of the non-Maasai policemen by telling them that among the Maasai, what he had done was the norm. The police however had handled similar cases before. The next day, the „wronged‟ man was asking for Ksh 100,000 (EUR 1.300) from his friend‟s family as “compensation”. He threatened to take him to court or “deal with him”. Through the intervention of their parents, uncles and some clan elders, it was agreed that he would receive Ksh 5,000 (EUR 65) ransom. It was claimed that

“as Maasai”, they should not wash their dirty linen in public (Kiboko is dominantly Kamba).

The complainant was also told by an elder that if the „accused‟ had been Kamba, then a high fine would have been “justified”.

The wronged had taken advantage of the modern forms of arbitration and sanction, for the Ksh 100,000 he demanded was quite exorbitant by local standards. To the eyes of the Kamba though, it was an indication of how „similar‟ the two groups had become in their ways of resolving interpersonal differences. The incident was an eye opener to Kamba residents in Kiboko who realised that many of the „traditional practices‟ that the Maasai are said to observe are no longer tenable. For the Kamba to see a “Maasai rise against Maasai” over a woman served to deconstruct the „Maasai image‟. A Kamba businessman in Kiboko put it thus, “...that day, we knew that the Maasai are just pretenders…they say that they share wives and yet we had to intervene otherwise they would have killed each other” (Kyuli, 14/09/2000).

This was an incident that made the Maasai also come to terms with their own „culture‟. The older generation, for instance, are said to have been “disappointed” by the reaction of the

“educated” man.

Did the Kamba who followed this story „change‟ their attitudes towards Maasai sexual relations? Generally, no. They insisted that this was an “isolated” case. Maasai „promiscuous‟

status had to be maintained to support other generalisations revolving around „primitivism‟

and presenting the Maasai as abusers of women. Taking into account that the Kamba also regard themselves as more Christianised than the Maasai, such negative analogies enhance the feeling that they were „better-off‟. At the time of my fieldwork, this had taken a different dimension with the HIV/Aids pandemic. The Maasai were being presented as a “risk group”.

A Kamba commercial sex worker in Kiboko told me that when she is going with a Maasai, “I

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have to charge them more...they don‟t use condoms, they don‟t care, you know...they sleep with anybody, they don‟t care, that is their life” (28/06/2000).

I gathered many stories that involved Maasai men and Kamba women. Such stories would be narrated with detail and enthusiasm. They remained fresh in people‟s memories perhaps because of their phenomenality. Maasai pastoralists/traders lost thousands of shillings to Kamba and Kikuyu female commercial sex workers based in the trading centres. In one particular account given by a Kamba woman working in a bar in Kiboko market, a Maasai trader lost Ksh 60,000 (about EUR 800) in a lodging where he had spent the night with a friend to the bar maid, and who had since relocated to Mombasa. Although this friend of hers was afraid of the reprisals, she told me that the Maasai cattle trader had later said that what he had lost was “pesa kidogo” (“little money”) and that it was “ng'ombe tatu tu” (“only three heads of cattle”). She had offered to go for her friend in Mombasa clarifying that “this would have cost him about Ksh 3,000...but he would have recovered his Ksh 60,000”. She sounded as if she knew exactly where her friend was and assumed that the „stolen‟ money would have been found intact. Cleverly, the Maasai trader had rejected the offer. Telling her that the Maasai man would probably have lost an additional Ksh 3,000, she burst out laughing in agreement. She considered the Maasai as gullible. But in this narrative, there is a mix of

„class‟ and „ethnicity‟. In the rural settings, it is common practice for the „poor‟ to take advantage of the „rich‟ irrespective of ethnic affiliation. It is only that the Maasai appeared more vulnerable. This vulnerability was said to be exacerbated by Maasai men‟s tendency to be ostentatious “even when they sell one cow” (Mutui, Kiboko, 06/03/2000). To be fair to the Maasai, considering that a cow can fetch up to Ksh 10,000 (EUR 130), the monthly salary of a trained primary school teacher, it is a considerable amount.

Going back to the Ksh 60,000, that is a lot of money by any standards. My reading is that it was not that the money was “little” but perhaps because the Maasai trader was addressing a Kamba audience. The underlying message seems to have been; “we have money, you do not have it”. It was evident that for those who have it, the Maasai carry a lot of money with them.

The school headteacher referred earlier, told me how Maasai parents, in comparison to the others, not only paid school fees for their children usually in cash, but they would pay any outstanding balances and contingent levies “on the spot” even when they did not know about them.