"Yes Zak?"
"Tonight you are sleeping close with your big knife, yes?"
"Yes Zak."
"Then you are sleeping well, yes?"
"Yes Zak."
"OK then. Good sleeping Shilo and Dayna!"
"Thank-you Zak."
We were in the middle of Africa's fabled Rift Valley, only a hundred kilometers or so as the crow flies from the fantastic predator-laced plains of the Masai Mara National Reserve. My mouth was ringed with a stubborn red-earth film of warm goat blood. We had just spent the previous four hours turning our campsite into an offal-strewn pen: ten feet to the left of our little tent lay the bloody bed of leaves on which we had butchered a goat. Close beside, in withered grass, we had tossed steaming entrails to lean dogs. Twenty feet further was the still-warm campfire where we had watched sizzling roast goat drippings fall and alight, and where we had left the pile of picked-clean ribs and bone. I ran down the list of nocturnal predators who were at that moment lifting sensitive nostrils into the breeze.
A Masai warrior is never without a weapon. They carry three-foot double-edged swords, six-foot long spears with honed steel heads, or stupid-looking little clubs that look like engorged baby rattles. Zak carried a little baby-rattle club, and proudly claimed he could snap a charging animal's front legs with a single divine throw. I was doubtful. Nevertheless, I drifted into a sleepy heroic fantasy that quickly assumed the easy metaphor that plagues most African images: Zak stepping with ancient courage in front of a charging beast and crippling it with his baby-rattle while I deftly hop on top of the thrashing mass of muscled death and finish it with a decisive slash and stab. Together, we would slay the night-lion of racial and economic injustice...
Clutching my balls in a sweaty left palm and a dagger in my sweaty right, I finally fell asleep.
African sunrises are worth getting up at 4:30AM for, which is great, because by 11:00 it's too fucking hot to hike in the open sun. And it's winter here. Our five-day trek consisted of a series of fast scurries across parched open plains to blessed (and I mean blessed, as in life-giving) mostly-dry river beds and choked watering holes. We eventually began to decipher Zak's jovial descriptions of the next water source: "Plenty of water!" meant there may be a festering ten-foot wide pool of animal muck to slurp into. "A big river!" meant we would dig through gravel for twenty minutes to find some eggy moisture. "No water." was pretty straightforward, and we went without. This fit well with my comfy armchair philosophy that periodically 'going without' some things is good for the spirit.
The life of the Masai people is much about 'going without'. Since the British, they have been 'going without' a majority of their most fertile grazing territory, which was converted into the kind of income-producing 'wild place' we had just spent three days on safari in. With dwindling resources ranging from political corruption, criminal mismanagement and environmental degradation they have been 'going without' safe and reliable drinking water for decades. They are 'going without' effective political representation in Kenya because they told the state to go fuck itself when it tried to appropriate ever more land. They 'go without' a sense of safety anywhere outside their own territory because other tribes target them for being so independent. They are 'going without' roads, electricity, and plumbing. They also 'go without' HIV because they refuse to be tested, and the women 'go without' half of their genitals because they are cut out at the first sign of menses.
We organized the trek to be self-sufficient for five days, carrying our own equipment and food, instead of adding the extra expense of a cook and porter. What we didn't realize was that this meant we would watch our guides (Zak the local Masai and Patrick, our contact from Nairobi) virtually starve for three days. Zak had never tasted Mr. Noodles or fish, and I had never drank warm goat blood or tasted aloe-vera beer. We shared culinary delights. A Masai will butcher a goat when he tires of eating ugali, a slop of boiled unflavoured maize, and white bread dipped in condensed milk. It is therefore a very sacred occasion of joy and full-bellied plenty. I bought the goat at the livestock market for 2000 Kenyan shillings, or about twenty bucks, and it fed our guides for two days. It was a gift and a thank-you...and no, a gift-card would not have sufficed: the Masai won't eat paper.
Dayna in conversation with our guide Patrick at our first camp. Patrick was our Nairobi connection. He is from the Kikuyu tribe, one of the largest in Kenya, and also the one most involved in contemporary business and politics.
A skull.
Dayna and our Masai guide Zak walking past some "Good water!".
Cactus.
Sunrise.
Morning light at a busy Masai village intersection.
Why do I need sunscreen when cutting fresh aloe-vera from a fucking fifteen-foot tall monster-plant is much, much cooler?
A "Big River." Twenty feet upstream the ditch crossed the dirt road, where locals came to wash their trucks and taxis, water their goats and cows, and bathe. We were really, really missing the water filter that self-destructed in Nepal.
A young boy crossing the drinking water.
Market day!
Dayna chillin' with local Masai women. The fuzzy white thing in her pack is an ostrich feather.
Kids!
Masai women at market.
Zak and our tasty goat.
Dayna dresses up for the slaughter: Joe Boxer shorts, flip-flops and a T-shirt. (She had just done laundry.)
Kids waiting for some fresh meat.
Zak suffocating the goat. The Masai consider it cruel to use a blade to kill an animal.
As above.
An old man stepped in the help with the butchering. Here he is bleeding the neck into my camping cup.
Patrick is a practicing Christian; this was his first time drinking warm goat blood. He took to it rather easily.
Zak peels a raw kidney for me. Scrumptous!
Sharing some raw kidney with the local kids.
The campsite with our tent in the background.
Zak, happyhappy with some chunks of goat.
Sunrise. Why is this thing underlining all of a sudden?
Roasting meat.
Traditional Masai caked-mud homes. This is kind of a standard arid-climate construction type that we saw all over India as well. Half of the interior is dedicated to raising baby lamb and cow, so the actual living space I would guess at around 50 square feet or less. Your Vancouver apartment is seeming pretty roomy, huh?
Sunrise over the hills.
Looking out over the escarpment of the Rift Valley on the final day.
