The warriors of the African jungle

I felt like I had just put my head on my pillow when my alarm rudely awakened me at 5am this morning. Grabbing my headlamp I crawled out of my mosquito net, skimmed the ground for snakes, checked my shoes for scorpions and began the walk to the sink. The Kenyan jungle around me was still asleep – or I was just completely unaware of what lurked in the darkness… There was a faint smell of smoke in the air from the night askari’s (guard’s) fire and the constellations of the extremely bright night sky were still clear.
After quickly drinking a cup of Kenya brew tea (Kenya produces the most black tea of any country) we jumped in our invincible land rovers and drove deeper into Maasai land than I have ever gone. The road was so rough and bumpy that it felt like my organs were being scrambled and the car shuttered so loudly that I couldn’t even hear my own voice. The only information I was given was that all classes were canceled and that I was going to a ceremony that I would never forget.
Every ten to fifteen years hundreds of Maasai from Kenya and Tanzania congregate at one boma to celebrate the next generation of boys becoming warriors. The men paint their hair red with ochre and wear their best Maasai blankets and all the women dress in their finest cloth and completely cover themselves in their extremely colorful jewelry. The ceremony is filled with dancing, singing, jumping contests and the slaughtering of a bull. The bull is then roasted and cut into hundreds of tiny pieces for all the new warriors and the inner stomach is given to the women. As we approached the festival there were hundreds of teenage boys lined up outside the boma waiting to get their piece of meat to signify that they were finally warriors. Getting to this point in a Maasai’s life takes a great deal of effort and struggle. They have to go through a variety of trials, including getting circumcised to show that they are no longer boys and killing a male lion to show their bravery. The ceremony was extremely emotional for everyone involved and the air was filled with anxious energy the entire time I was there.
I walked around talking to people in broken Maa (the language of the Maasai) and little bits of Kiswahili as people curiously touched my hair and asked why I had blue eyes. I felt like everyone took a double look at me as if I were a ghost, although many people were extremely nice and made quite an effort to communicate with me. Many people couldn’t get enough of looking at themselves in my camera after I had taken pictures. I practiced my dancing with the Maasai women once again, this time feeling like I knew exactly how to move my shoulders and head, but still not ready to sing.
My professor was right in telling me that I would never forget seeing so many young warriors lined up across the savanna, right at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro.