Hello all ... we left Najile at about 7:30 this morning. It began rainiing at 5 am, so we wondered if we would actually leave. But we did. Arrived 4 or 5 hours later at Maasai Mara Park. Amazingly beautiful country driving here. The driver told us that most of the road was a nightmare. And the first part was ... ashphalt with potholes everywhere. But the last 2 hours took us through vast, really vast plains ... dotted with Maasai shepherds ... looking after hundreds of goats. It is mesmerizing to travel through there ... knowing now a little bit of the culture and traditions within which the Maasai live, and also the history, and that against the vast almost emptiness of the plains on which they live. At the Game Park, the dancers were Maasai today, and at the end, their leader spoke briefly about themselves .... and mentioned that the Maasai marry many wives, as if it is mostly just a reality now to engage tourism. It is also known that polygamy causes problems amongst the Maasai, including the rate of AIDS Infection. We visited the AIDs Clinic in Ewuasu two days ago and were told that if a man has several wives, he will likely favor one of them. The other wives may find affection elsewhere, as a result, and that can lead to infection. It's a bit surreal to have just lived in homes, in a quite traditional Maasai Community for 3 days, eaten their food, washed up in a basin in the morning and evening cause their isn't any running water, gone to bed by lamp and flash light ... tried to speak a few phrases of Maa ... sung with them, exchanged gifts with them, drunk chai with them several times each day ... and then to enter the Park, suddenly as tourists, visiting Maasai land.
Joseph and Elizabeth are with us. They are Maasai. Not sure if the Maasai get revenues from the many lodges that host tourists visiting here now. It's a national park and that may mean the Government gets the revenues. It is formerly Maasai land. We also wondered why the govenment doesn't resurface the pot-holed asphalt leading to the vast open plains as we approach Maasai Mara. Someone wondered if it has to do with a private an airline that flies people in ... and needs to make sure that most people don't drive, but fly.
If pressed to name "the stories" from the last two weeks in Kenya, my list would include: 1) The Cycling for Life Event. So many things could have gone badly. So many went well. And it is about "showing up" and promoting Peace and AIDS. 2) The 4th CD... "Take your Place" and the quite amazing story of how it happened, both in Kenya and what led to that recording and the living in the community for nearly three weeks. Really quite a unique way of working. 3) The Challenges of Making Peace in Kenya... because the distrust of the dominate groups runs pretty deep amongst the Maasai and others of the smaller groups. 4) Some of the traditions of Maasai that inadvertently seem to place them at high risk for HIV Infections.
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