Weekend in the Maasai Mara

Monday 15th October

The view of the Mara from the top of the hills behind the village

What an incredible weekend. Feeling very humbled from our welcome to the Maasai village and seeing their homes and just in awe of the stunning Kenyan wildlife in the reserve!!

(Get ready for a mega info amd picture dump!)

We set off early on Saturday morning and after a long, bone-rattling drive we made it to the Mara! Seriously though, our driver Ken is a brilliant driver but he did scare me a few times! The safari vans we were in were amazing - off roading, through streams, out of ditches, up banks - major kudos to Ken and Bonny and they're mad driving skills!

En route to where we were staying, Izzo pointed out to us some more of Marifiki's projects out in the Mara. We stopped off at one where they're building a mid-range camp and HQ for volunteers that's right next door to their water project. Hearing Izzo talk about it was so inspiring - by making water more accessible for villages he's allowing kids to stay in school instead of having to miss days to walk and find water. Keeping those kids in school means they get a better education, which means they can learn how to live better lives and advance their own community in ways like finding and using clean water for drinking and building more effective and efficient ways of farming and protecting their land.

One project Izzo was involved in had an orchard that was destroyed by elephants (the biggest threat to crops in the Mara - they don't really grow any of their own food, they trade or buy it because of the wild animals that eat them) and all the trees were uprooted or broken - except for one. What was different about that tree..? It had a beehive in it. Elephants don't like bees. Voila, an idea was born. If you fencce your land with beehives (real hive, dummy hive pattern), the elephants won't come in AND you get to have honey too! Genius.

The difference in the water too was amazing, Izzo found an uncontaminated spring, built a concrete tank to pressurize it and then gravity pushes into huge tanks which provide for taps further down the road, too. People who live there didn't really drink water because they knew it made them ill, so part of the project is also about reducating them so they trust the water from the spring and don't use it for bathing or washing clothes etc like they use the river for.

I could go on ! I can't do it justice but it was really inspiring hearing Izzo's drive and mission, such a worthwhile charity and amazing man. There are some farming techniques and things too they're wanting to bring to the community, but with these things the people have to see it before they will believe it works, so it all takes time.

This is the camp we stayed in - it was really lovely! Big communal lounge/eating area and 2-3 bed tents round the back

But anyway, when we arrived we threw our stuff into the tents, had some lunch and then went on a hike up the hills behind the village. 

This was our lil tent with a roof that we stayed in :) I shared with a lovely Canadian, also called Jennifer, it was quite comfortable! (I was super paranoid about bugs and diseases tho! So I hung my own bug net inside the one already there...I felt much better after that)

You see those telegraph pole things..? We were joking that we should walk up to there....we walked up to there.

Dann, who works with Voluntours/Marifiki, the charity I'm with, was brought up here so his older brother Eric joined us and led us up to the top of the climb. It was an amazing view and really interesting chatting to Eric about the Maasai way of life and watching him interact with the landscape. 

The Maasai are a semi-nomadic people who live pretty much completely naturally, it's amazing. The whistles and calls they have to control their herds are so cool and they just know their land so well - Dann and Eric would point out different plants and tell us about their uses, such as the roots of certain trees are boiled to make a poison used for hunting that allows the animal to survive for about 3 minutes and then pass out ( Dann's arrows were very impressive, he can shoot really far!), morning glory leaves are used to cool the body temperature, kind of like how you'd put a cold towel on your forehead or neck, and the soft underside is also used as toilet paper! Then there are some used as natural deodorants and all that and even toothbrushes - it was quite funny, at one point Eric was using his machete/knife to cut down a branch to a smaller size and peel off the bark, then chewed on the end so it went all bristly and just started brushing his teeth! To my questioning look as he was whittling he just said "I need a new toothbrush, Maasai don't use Colgate". 

The view from the top was just amazing, definitely worth the steep hike! We just sat on some rocks and admired the Mara, watching an eagle soaring around below us, loved it.

Once we made our way to the bottom we went straight to the village and were welcomed and shown around. Such an incredible experience. The Maasai men did their special welcome dance and celebration dance before the chief's son, Tom, showed us into the village and told us about some of their traditions and how they live, showed us how they make fire "no match no lighter", just hard wood and soft wood, and then showed us into their little huts. 

We were split into 1s and 2s as the hits are only small and I was honoured to be taken by Tom into his and his family's home with Canadian Jen. They were so gracious, telling us to feel comfortable and that their home was our home, it was really touching.

Inside was actually bigger than I expected! The door enters into a room that is actually a small stable for the family's cow, then around a  narrow corridor is the main room where the family cooks with a child's bedroom in a little alcove in the corner, a guest room to one side and the adult bedroom in the other wall. There's no windows, only one small opening to let the smoke out so it was very dark, Tom explained it's to keep the bugs out. 

It's all made from cow dung, mud and grass with a thatched roof - Tom said it's completely water tight and lasts for about 10 years!

We sat in there together, me, Jen, Tom and the Chief as Tom told us about his responsibilities as the chief's son - soon to be Chief, he takes over in 2 weeks! And some of their practices and customs. One thing they do is that at age 15, all the boys in the village are circumcised and then have to live for 5 years out in the bush as Maasai warriors. They go out in groups and at the end of their time in the wild they have to kill 1 male lion and bring back it's mane, teeth and claws to prove to the community that they're now men. Tom was saying how in his group of 20, he was the first to spear the lion as he was the best shot with a spear in the group - he uses the name for dancing in ceremony and they make jewelry from the teeth and things. 

He blessed me with a Maasai name, too, from him and the Chief. He said from what I had shown him in the short time I'd known him, my Maasai name should be Nashepi (na-she-pie), which means happiness. He said to me to seek it and bring it wherever I go and when I go back to my country, if I ever feel bad I just need to remember him and remember my name and I will find Happiness again. He really moved me, sitting in that small, dark hut, listening to him speak - it was just an amazing experience I feel so humbled and honored, I'll never forget it.

The next day was our game drive! It was so cool - we were in the park from about 9am till 6pm and we saw eeeeeeverything! (Apart from a rhino, but they're super rare and stay hidden in the bushes when it's hot out). It was incredible, we got so close to lions, cheetahs, leopards (oh my!) And water buffalo, hyenas, I was slightly nervous standing on the bank of the Mara River with a family of hippos maybe 50m away...? The noise they make is kinda intimidating! We saw about 9 giraffe too, 2 of them were fighting like in that episode of Planet Earth! It was mental - there were loads of zebra and wildebeest too, pumbas (my favorites - the babies look like micropigs, they're so cute!), loads of kinds of gazelles like Topis, Thompson gazelles, impalas...ostriches, elephants, baboons...so many! Such a great experience - our driver, Ken, and Bonny in the other van were so good, getting us in really close and finding crazy routes to get us places when the radio said someone had found something fun! It was a brilliant day, volunteer Jennifer brought popcorn too to snack on so I was very happy!

I have so many pictures! But yeh, it was awesome. 

There was a craaaaazy thunderstorm after we had lunch by the Mara River too - we couldn't see 2 metres in front of the van!! It was insane, leaking into the van through the roof hatch and doors - lasted maybe 30 minutes and then was gone! Proper African rain!

I wish I could show you the night sky in the Mara too - it was stunning. The moon was so bright and there were more stars than I've ever seen, I could've stared at them for hours...if it wasn't for the bugs and whooping hyenas about!! 

Here's a sunrise instead :)

Quite the adventure...especially towing back the other van for maybe 15 miles to a garage and having an extended lunch while we waited for them to get fixed! Good times.

Hope you enjoyed the essay, there's so much to talk about here! Time is moving strangely, 2 weeks gone and 2 weeks to go...ah!

Lots of love to all the family xxx

(Sorry for any typos - I'm a bit tired and wanna tell you all the things!)