Maasai

The Maasai community is a unique pastoralist tribe with a rich culture and a lifelong heritage that has put East Africa on the global map as a major tourist attraction. The most recent records reveal  that the Maasai population is approximately 841,000, which is 1.8% of Kenya’s population. 

Over the years, the changing socio-economic environment in Kenya  has greatly impacted the nomadic lifestyle associated with Maasai.  Sedentarisation is now very common, with farming becoming a more frequent way  to support families and generate income. Nonetheless, they are very proud people and are steadfast in holding onto their traditions. The men still chant the melodic Maasai folk songs while jumping 6 feet up in the air during sunset while the beautiful women adorned with colourful beaded ornaments sing-along.

As is often the case in traditional pastoral communities, family roles are divided by gender. Men are the sole providers through farming and hunting-gathering activities while the women (and girls) are the home (enkaji) keepers. They have to bear children as the husband dictates. Women have the sole responsibility of taking care of the husband and children, performing household chores and other domestic duties. Furthermore, the underlying poverty in these communities compounded with these prescribed limited roles and lack of opportunities to pursue education and employment for women, have led to practices of marrying off young girls, as early as  the age of 9 to older men as part of polygamous traditions. This common practice puts these young girls at high risk of health concerns, poverty, violence and death. 

They often start the initiation of sexual activity at an age when girls’ bodies are still developing, bearing children immediately after, which put them at higher risks of death in childbirth. They are particularly vulnerable to pregnancy-related injuries such as obstetric fistula.  Another common practice is female circumcision which young girls undergo as soon as they hit puberty.

It is unfortunate that women are denied the chance to go to school and  lack opportunities to undertake income-generating activities. Levels of formal education for girls and women are significantly lower than that of men. Tucked in the cramped  manyattas filled with smoke, women are forever in the dark.

In parallel, young energetic men who have a great potential of doing more for their communities are also only limited to grazing cattle in the wild from dawn to dusk. Their only measure of wealth is the total number of cattle a man owns. Young maasai men are often marginalised and stigmatised by the wider Kenyan  community for their lack of education and nomadic lifestyle.

Project_Daaylight, hopes to shine a light on some of these social challenges faced by Maasai communities. It is our hope that we can support the Maasai community with  Project_Daaylight to reduce the shortcomings such as lack of access to electricity (energy), address youth unemployment, provide better access to information through solar training initiatives and support health initiatives. Additionally, we hope that this initiative will open the pathway to connecting this community to other support relating to  health services and education services.

As the  old saying goes, “When you empower a woman, you empower a whole society” .