Masai country and hitting Tanzania's rough roads

Posted on 11 August 2009

Our stay in Arusha was longer than expected, but the guys from Grandmaster Records were to kind and helped us backup all our media and let me use their facilities to update all the blogs.

Unfortunately my laptop crashed so I was far behind. They also made life good by showing us around town, with Marc and I catching the Boks lovely defeat against the Wallabies.

We cycled out of the city with convoys of safari outfitters passing us by. Two mzungus on bicycles must be considered to be a good wildlife sighting on safari, due to the amount of telephoto lenses pointing in our direction. You would hear the vehicles slow down, with a glimpse down into your mirror you would recognise it as a safari vehicle, an Eastern tourist would start leaning out the window, and you would put on your happy face and wave, thinking to yourself that this is why the Masai charge for photographs.

You do not just take photos of the Masai. They demand you pay them, not in shillings either, but in dollars. They believe you have to pay for the piece of their soul you have captured. I couldn’t help but think what the price was for early photographers in the colonial times, a goat or perhaps a cow?

It was an experience cycling through the land of the infamous Masai. Tall, lean figures draped in scarlet red and deep purple traditional dress, shimmer on the heat-hazed dusty horizon, among their wealth of cattle. No matter how good your camera is it is an image only a visit to Tanzania can offer. To feel the dusty heat, surrounded by the people who were not only feared for their bravery in lion killing, but also respected for their herding capabilities.

Unfortunately, the existence of traditional Masai is at threat, just as it is with other nomadic herding tribes in the world. This has sent many Masai into the cities, abandoning herding to be “askari’s” guards. To see young warriors, with long braids, in traditional dress guarding the streets in the cities is intimidating, but saddening to know that desperation has sent them from their homes.

Marc and I reached Babati,after some of the hardest and desolate terrain we have experienced thus far. Dusty, tired and with a new respect for peoples’ use of the land, we settled in to repair our bikes after the abuse the tough Masai territory dealt out, in the company of our host, Jonathan Brema, from Vodacom Tanzania.






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