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Who are they?
The Maasai, famous as herders and warriors, once dominated the plains of East Africa. Now however they are confined to a fraction of their former range.
How do they live? For the Maasai, cattle are what make the good life, and milk and meat are the best foods. Their old ideal was to live by their cattle alone – other foods they could get by exchange
but today they also need to grow crops. They move
their herds from one place to another, so that the
grass has a chance to grow again; traditionally,
this is made possible by a communal land tenure
system in which everyone in an area shares access to
water and pasture. Nowadays Maasai have increasingly
been forced to settle, and many take jobs in towns.
Maasai society is organised into male age-groups whose members together pass through initiations to become warriors, and then elders. They have no chiefs, although each section has a Laibon, or spiritual leader, at its head. Maasai worship one god who dwells in all things, but may manifest himself as either kindly or destructive. Many Maasai today, however, belong to various Christian churches.
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