The Masai Way of Life

Kenya was always on my bucket list, and it naturally included the very ancient Masai tribe, whose past could be traced even beyond their fifteen centuries on the African soil. In August 2025, I, along with eleven other Indian tourists, finally had the opportunity to travel to Kenya with a tour operator called Bihanga (meaning bird) from Chandannagar, West Bengal.

We fly with Air India from Kolkata to Nairobi, via Delhi. After arrival, we spend the night in a hotel near the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The next morning, after breakfast, we start for the Masai Mara in a Land Cruiser. The distance is approximately 230 kilometres and the road is quite bumpy. So it takes a little more than seven hours to reach the Jambo Mara Safari Lodge.

In Maa, which is the native tongue of the tribe, the name Masai Mara means the spotted land of the Masai. The name truly depicts the landscape, which appears spotted with an endless number of acacia trees, both yellow and black-barked, and small bushes. After a late lunch, we visit a nearby Masai village. As these villages are regularly visited by tourists, the Masai are quite used to them and love to interact. As soon as we alight, a group of young men clad in typical bright red blankets with blue stripes called Shuka surround us with their arms extended for a warm handshake. Jaramogi Jacob, nicknamed Pere, the leader of the group, introduces himself and his friend Shami. Shami is probably his stepbrother as well. The place is like a gateway to the village. There are long seats made of logs for the guests to sit and enjoy the famous Masai welcome dance. Pere explains that there are broadly three types of dance: welcome, celebration and competition.

The welcome dance is really a feast for the eyes – a group of slim and shiny Masai men and women in bright Shukas and multicoloured beaded ornaments sing and dance cheerfully using their whole body, from the head to the toes, but not the arms. In some dances, the arms are used to hold a stick or play a flute-like instrument. In others, the arms are aligned with the body and kept inside the Shuka, which is tied around the body with a knot. The dances are also accompanied by drumbeats and rhythmic chanting.

After the welcome dance, the men, specifically the warriors, start the iconic Masai jumping dance called Adumu. Adumu is a competition dance in which each participant tries to jump higher than the others. While the whole group stands in a row and sings, one young man comes forward and jumps a couple of times and then returns to the row to make way for the next dancer to come to the fore and jump. Young girls also join the group, but they don’t jump.

The jumping dance is followed by another round of the welcome dance, in which we also join.

The ancestors of these Masai people migrated southward from the Nile valley to Kenya and Tanzania between the 17th and 18th centuries. This Nilotic ethnic group is known for its unique characteristics and traditional traits, which they preserve carefully even in the face of modernisation. They still live a semi-nomadic pastoralist life and carry out community living. Their food habits are very different from others. The traditional Masai diet includes milk, meat and blood from their livestock, honey, wild fruits, roots and a stiff maize porridge called ugali. They even consume raw organs, fat and tree bark. The Masai people have stunning stature – the average heights of the Masai man and woman are six feet and five feet nine inches, respectively. They love wearing bright and colourful cultural attire and beaded jewellery. Masai men are especially famous for their jumping dance.  

After the welcome ceremony, we enter their village. Pere says he is the son of the village head and the entire village is inhabited by just their family members. The Masai people practise polygamy to have as many children as possible. Pere's father has many wives and the young men and women we see around are his stepbrothers and stepsisters and their families. The Masai are also exogamous - they are not allowed to marry anyone from their own village, i.e. the community. Pere adds that the co-wives maintain an amicable relationship between them.

The village, called an Enkang, is surrounded by a fence made mostly of thorny branches of Acacia trees. This village has some 12 small and separate rectangular dwellings called Manyatta. The Masai women build these houses to shelter their families, while men build the fences to protect their tribe and cattle from wild animals. The houses are built with natural ingredients, chiefly wood, sticks, dry grass, mud and cow dung. The basic structure of the walls and ceiling is timber poles and intertwined sticks coated with a mixture of dry grass, mud and cow dung. Sometimes cattle hides are also stretched across to make a more durable ceiling. These dwellings have a small door and almost no windows, rather a few small holes in the walls. Inside, there are very narrow passages leading to a cooking area, a room for the couple, another one for the children and maybe one for guests. The rooms have beds made of sticks and animal hides and places to store household items. The cooking area has shelves on the walls to store utensils and planks on the floor to sit around the fire. We felt really suffocated inside as very little air and light were allowed to enter the house.

Each dwelling has a big water container outside. The outer fence also includes a huge common ground meant for the cows, goats and sheep owned by the villagers. The soil there is a mixture of mud, dung and urine. The entire settlement has a semi-permanent look reflecting the semi-nomadic character of the Masai tribe. Pere explains that after a period, they leave the old settlement and relocate to a new place with a source of water, rich pastures for their cattle herds and school facilities for their children.

Other than building the houses, the Masai women are also duty-bound to cook, bear children, and look after the family. A group of Masai men known as the warriors, like our guide Pere, protect the tribe and livestock. They are respected for their bravery. They always carry around their waist a double-edged dagger in a scabbard made of cow tail. The wealth of a Masai man is measured in terms of the number of children he has and the size of the cattle herd he possesses. In marriage, the groom has to gift cows to the bride’s father. In Pere’s community, for example, it's ten cows. However, if the groom is a super performer in the jumping dance, which testifies to his sound health, then the number of cows is reduced a bit. Men usually marry when they are 25, but girls are married off at an early age. In the Masai tradition, men and women are not treated equally. In fact, the patriarchal Masai society doesn't allow women to either give opinions or receive enough education.

The Masai tribe follows the traditional knowledge of making fire by rubbing two pieces of wood. They use a soft and dry wooden board and a hard and straight wooden stick. Rubbing the stick against the board by spinning it hard between their palms generates heat and creates embers. The embers are covered with a handful of dry grass and blown on gently until they transform into a flame.

With these astonishing customs and practices around, I felt as if I was on a different planet!

Opinions differ within the Masai community regarding maintaining tradition – the older generation thinks that access to education and modern technology will ruin the tradition and the community bond of the tribe, whereas the new generation believes that these two will help age-old traditions to evolve in the right direction. Currently, the Masai traditions are largely preserved in their community living, unique food habits, red and bright attires signifying bravery, blood and unity, vibrant beaded jewelry, hair style, village settlements, dance culture, fire making, and pastoralist and semi-nomadic lifestyles. The tradition is evolving too. Kenya was a British colony that became independent in 1962. Currently, the two official languages of Kenya are English and Swahili. A few young men of the village, especially Pere, are fluent in English. They use mobile phones for communication. Shami tells us that Pere will be their next village head after his father. Pere tells us that he has one wife and two children, but he wishes to have one more wife in the future.

In this fast-paced modern age of technology, the Masai appear to be very special, and meeting them was indeed a once-in-a-lifetime experience!

Photo and Video Courtesy: Karabi Sendas and Mina Dan.

About the Author

Mina is a retired professor from Kolkata. She has taught Linguistics for thirty-three years. Her favourite hobby is travelling. She appreciates nature, likes talking to people, enjoys the sounds of new languages, admires local cultures, relishes local foods and cherishes new experiences. She normally writes travelogues in Bangla. This is the first time she has penned her travel story in English.