No Man's Land: An Investigative Journey Through Kenya and Tanzania by George Monbiot

Author:George Monbiot [George Monbiot]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781903998267
Google: 1eByAAAAMAAJ
Publisher: Green
Published: 2003-11-15T23:24:11.667950+00:00

Chapter 5

People with Eyes

The Maasai believe that to certain people the bodies of everyone else are transparent. These men and women, whom the Maasai describe as ‘having eyes’, cannot prevent themselves from seeing through their neighbours. Whether they want to or not, instead of clothes and skin they see bones and blood and guts. If they harbour any resentment towards a person they gaze upon, his vital organs will suffer from this exposure. Adults can fall ill, little children can be struck dead. In this there are, of course, similarities to the pan-European belief in the evil eye.

In order to neutralize any evil effects they might be perpetrating, people considered by the other Maasai to have eyes are required to spit whenever they see someone. Spitting, invoking the falling of rain, is, by contrast to its significance in Europe, considered to confer a blessing. While people with eyes within the community are scrupulous about fulfilling this obligation, the Maasai do not trust strangers to be so considerate. This is one of the reasons why, when newcomers enter a village, the little children will run off and hide behind their mothers’ skirts: being seen by an ill-disposed stranger with eyes who does not spit can be fatal to them. It takes time to discover whether or not someone has eyes, so all visitors are initially treated with a measure of suspicion.

Soon after X-rays arrived in Kenya, the Maasai heard that there was a device used by the wazungu to see people’s bones and guts. They heard that long exposure to its rays could make people ill or even kill them. It did not take a great leap of the imagination to make the connection between X-rays and having eyes. When wazungu then arrived in their villages and stared at them through their cameras, the Maasai equated these one-eyed machines with the ones they had heard about. They concluded that the tourists had deliberately endowed themselves with eyes.

Seeing that they never spat when they took a photograph, some of the Maasai assumed that the wazungu were intentionally doing them harm. They did not dare to attack them for fear of the consequences from the government, but they became, and have been ever since, resentful of tourists and photography. This is just one of the hazards of introducing tourism to the Maasai that may not be immediately obvious.

Beside the road to the Maasai Mara Reserve are scores of what the Maasai call ‘cultural manyattas’. These, though almost identical to the true manyattas where the warriors graduate, are false villages. They are not fully inhabited by the Maasai, but were built, like the ‘cultural boma’ I saw outside the Tsavo Park, to attract tourists. The van drivers have been sufficiently bribed, some of the safari companies have even included a visit in their itinerary, and the Maasai who commute to these fake homesteads to dance for the tourists are doing quite well. It is their one remaining option for survival.

The Maasai in the cultural

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.