During the cultural visit to a Maasai village in the Masai Mara, you will see and mingle  with Maasai warriors, resplendent in vibrant red robes and coloured beads, rhythmically bobbing their heads back and forward as they perform a traditional welcome dance. The handsome Maasai tribesmen sing in a call and response form without any backing instruments and it’s beautiful. But as they breathe out, their upper bodies and heads bob forward; as they breathe in, they tip their bodies back. The synchronised movement, combined with the hypnotic singing, is intensely captivating.

The villages are also homes to many of the hotel staff . Experience more of the Maasai’s marvellous song and dance before we start our tour of the village. The tribesmen demonstrate the jumping dance for which the Maasai are famous in a performance of the ‘adamu’. The men sing as each takes turns leaping as high as he can into the air. When one gets tired, another warrior takes his turn. The highest jumper apparently gets more girls.

Inside a cattle enclosure you get to meet a group of Maasai women, who stand in line to sing for  welcome songs for their visitors. The women’s songs follows the same form as the men’s – a call-and-response kind of pattern, where one singer leads and the others follow. It’s lovely.

As you walk around the village, A guide introduces you to more Maasai traditions, customs and rituals. You get to watch a fire-making demonstration – a stick of soft wood (generally red cedar) is rapidly turned between two hands onto a piece of hard wood (sandpaper tree) until smoke and then a flame is produced.  You get to learn about the kudu horn that  tribesmen wear (A lofty headpiece made from a lion’s mane!) , is the Maasai mobile phone that’s used to call warriors together. Of course, currently many Maasai's  now have ‘real’ mobile phones – and email addresses due to the spread of technology. Cellphones are nowadays cheap and essential in day to day Maasai lives..

 Maasai wear red not only to scare the animals away but also to be able to see each other from a distance. The beaded jewellery they wear doesn’t have any great significance – Maasai just like the way it looks. The most important people in the village are the chief, the medicine man, and the midwife, whom you get to meet. The village mid-wife delivers an average of 20 children a year.

Despite the very solid-looking mud houses , the Maasai are still nomadic, and that the village’s 300 plus people move approximately every eight years to let the land they’ve lived on rest and rejuvenate, and to give their cattle fresh pastures. The cattle, along with goats and sheep, are not only a source of the meat that’s important to the Maasai diet, but the milk and the blood that the Maasai drink. There are tribesmen specialised in the art of drawing blood from the cows, one cow gives blood each month, in a method similar to making a blood donation.

Maasai Manyattas are basically  mud huts with separate living quarters for a family and their baby animals. It’s cosy (okay, cramped) and very dark inside, with just one tiny window high on the wall for ventilation. But it’s that one small window that enables the home to stay cool in summer and warm in winter.

It’s the women of the village who are the builders, (the men merely collect the sticks, leaves and cow dung that are their building materials), and “architectural geniuses”. Guest will be able to see a structure of the latest house they are collectively building for a new bride, pointing out some new innovations they’re trying out.

While the women build the houses, grow the vegetables, cook, and look after the children, the men remain the herders and hunters they’ve always been, taking care of their precious cattle, and occasionally hunting, though far less than they once did, and no longer killing the lions or other protected animals that earned the Maasai their reputation as brave warriors.

Female circumcision isn’t the only tradition the Maasai are phasing out. Some tribesmen still have the enormous holes in their ear lobe for the huge earrings that identify them as Maasai. Many Maasai currently dont cut holes in their ears nor do some of the other younger men we see. It seems schools, universities, and many workplaces in Kenya now disallow it.

One custom the Maasai have maintained is the removal of a lower tooth or two to create a gap, traditionally made to enable medicine to be fed to a person who got lock jaw during a tetanus outbreak. Totally unnecessary now that the Maasai receive vaccinations, but the missing teeth could be a sign that the Maasai are keen to hold onto this practice, and as many other customs as they can, in the face of modernisation.

Like any modern-day tour, the Maasai Village tour  ends at the ‘gift shop’, the village market where the Maasai sell the stunning beads you can see them making. While we would normally be offended by such a tactic after already paying for a tour, I’m eager to look around and spend some money. Why?

Not just because the beads are beautiful, but because the Maasai tribe are extremely poor. Maasai's are however very proud people and are very eager to hold onto their traditions. Maasai hut designs are getting increasingly more innovative, but the huts still don’t have running water, toilets, baths, or lighting.

Don’t visit the Maasai Mara without doing a cultural visit to a Maasai village, which you can organize with your Safari Agent. In addition to paying for the tour, do tip your guide and do buy lots of beaded jewellery. Aside from the fact that it’s so beautiful, you are not only helping the people out, you are helping to keep traditional crafts alive. 

Hope you Enjoy your visit to The Maasai Village