On this page you will find some information about the Maasai - one of Kenya's 43 tribes. We will focus on the traditional life the so called 'people of cattle' have lived since centuries and still do today, not only in rual areas of Kenya like the Maasai Mara.

The Maasai have a very rich culture with important traditional ceremonies. Maasai life is very social, family relations and friendship are highly valued.

... to be continued ...

Here are some photos of Maasai ceremonies and daily life:

Maasai Wedding

Village people waiting outside the bride's home

while the bride gets beautifully decorated inside

Finished - following the tradition she has to look sad because she will now leave her parents home

Blessings by the elders with milk and grass

Leaving the house under protection of the elders

who go on blessing the path she will walk

The bride is supposed to walk very slowly, setting one foot directly in front of the other

The bridegroom and his best man carry her belongings

The bridegroom (r) and his best man (l)

With the bride's mother and a younger sister

The bridal pair

Usually they would walk the whole way to the bridegroom's village,

but today they used one of Maa Adventure Safari's Landcruisers

These women at her new home were already preparing food

Others came to see the wedding party

After leaving the car the bride went on with

the traditional extremely slow walking

Her beautifully decorated legs and shoes

Following the tradition, she even sat down to make the women of the new village promise

to give her enough lifestock (sheep, goats and cattle) for the new family

Her mother giving her advices

while the women of the new village still made promises or also gave advices

The bride entering the house of the bridegrooms aunt. The new wed couple

would live here until the wife would have built her own, new house

Women from a neighboring village bringing sheep as a gift for the bride

The village women were still preparing Chapati

while the village men were roasting meat in the nearby forest

Women and men celebrate the wedding seperately, the men usually eat in the forest while the women sit together in the village.

Boy's circumcision

Of course we do not show any photos of the circumcision itself, only of the ceremony around. Therefore the following pictures start after the circumcision of five boys had taken place in the early light of the morning. The boy's heads had been shaven by their mothers, then they had been taken to the river to shower with cold water. When they returned the doctor gave each an injection against the pain (something new in our days, not long ago boys had to endure the ceremony without any painkiller). Now they sat down on their cowhides, surrounded by friends and family, and the doctor went from one to the next and circumcised them with fast, precise cuts. The traditon demands that a boy does neither move nor utter any sound during his circumcision. After it was done, each was led to his mother's house to rest and the elders prepared for the ceremonial rituals:

Participants of the ceremony in front of one elder's house

In the cow's boma a cow's neck was ligated with a belt to make the veins clearly visible

Then one of the men shot an arrow (with round tip) into the vein

The jet of blood gushing out was captured with an calabash

Woman waiting outside the boma with another calabash

The blood-taking was repeated with a few other cows

so each animal had to give only a small amount of it's blood

captured in a calabash where it would later be mixed with milk

One of the elders sitting in front of his house