If Mary were Maasai

When I read Luke 2, I don't need much imagination these days. It says, and there were shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night... and I picture my neighbor kids that are always pushing the goats around with their whistling and their engudi (herding stick) on the other side of our fence, or singing at the top of their lungs or arguing with their siblings to pass the time out in the bush. Or, I picture some of the mamas next door, Nalotuesha or Helen out in the bush for the day to watch the cows or goats, her tattered shuka pulled up over her head because its too hot to wear it around her shoulders, her feet white with the dust.

And when I read that Mary rode on a donkey (for hours or days?) on the day before she had her first baby, I picture Nalamai, my neighbor happily bending in half (despite my offering her a stool) for an hour or more to do my laundry by hand out in the back yard just a week before her baby came (she didn't know when it was coming- just that is would come when it came).  I see her lumbering along, her wraps flowing around her lovely nearly full-term form with her plastic yellow 20 liter jerry can full of water (about 5 gallons). The strap runs across her forhead then wraps around the girth of the plastic container hanging across her back, the weight falling on her head and neck. She is slightly bent forward with the weight, her hands holding the strap next to her ears.

I picture the herds of donkeys with the black stripe on their necks that we see roaming alone through the bush (rarely do we see them doing much work), meandering across the road in front of our car (to which we gladly shout "get your ass off the road!" and then giggle. It never gets old or maybe its us who never grow up. We've got to vent stress somehow around here...).

Then there's Mary and her non-existent birth plan. Babies just happen with the Maasai, too.  The cows and goats are close.  The goat kids and calves are kept inside the hut at night.  The hut is made of dung, mud, and ash and the birthing takes place in the darkness of the inside- on the low cow hide shelf that is the bed. No running water, no indoor plumbing, no hot shower. Emergency services are non-existent here and life and death rest in the hands of God.

My friend Nalamai had her baby on Monday, 3 days ago.  I went to visit to take some food and found everyone excited and eager to take me to the mama. Helen fell into step with me as I approached the manyatta, we exchanged greetings and I pulled out the 200 Kenya Shillings that I owed her for washing my clothes in place of Nalamai the day before. She led me to Nalamai's hut, I stooped and followed her into the darkness of the inside.

As the happy chatter of Kokoo (grandma), Helen, Nalamai, and two other visiting friends, Lois and Paulina surrounded me, I marveled at this young woman who had just birthed her sixth baby.  No-one really knows her age, but its somewhere mid-twenties and she is strong as an ox, both in body and in spirit. She must have been early teens when she was married as a second wife and started her successful baby having career.  She easily holds favorite wife status with her commanding presence and voice, her beautiful smile and her easy laugh. She's smart as a whip, bossy, too, and doesn't miss a trick. A pride welled in me to call her my friend, a warmth of affection for this brave and cheerful woman. I hear her interpreting my clumsy words for the others since she's the one who understands my halting Maa more than anyone since she comes by my house so often.

My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness of the house interior. The boy baby was tiny, pale skinned with dark curls.  He was wrapped in a cotton cloth, no diapers to speak of; a faint smell of urine and baby mixed in my nostrils. His eyes opened briefly, then closed again, not too upset by the change of position as he was passed into my arms.  I heard the mama say to her friend, "does she know how?" I have no children so why wouldn't she ask this question?

Even though they probably have not had the milky tea, a staple, for weeks and maybe over a month (cows stop producing milk when the grass is completely gone from drought), they insisted despite my emphatic protests, on my staying and sharing a tin cup of shai made of the rehydrated powdered milk I had just brought.  I poured the hot tea from one cup to the another in the traditional cooling technique, sipping between pours.  Sweat dripped slowly down my belly, the warmth of the hut close.  The dim light from the 5 inch window hole revealed the beads on Helen's brow, too.  She fanned her shirt. A trail of cockroaches crawled in silhouette along the stick that formed the cup shelf next to the light hole.

As I walked home, I thought of Mary. She didn't have other mamas or Kokoo around her at her birthing and she was far from home. But, besides that, there was a lot in common between the birth of Jesus and the birth of Nalamai's baby.

...And all the shepherds came crowding into the dark little place where the mama and the baby were hanging out with the cows and goats, praising God.  Mesisi Yesu.

Luka 2:20  Neshuko lelo shekuti eisho Enkai enkitoo neisis too mbaa pooki naatoning'o o naatoduaa anaa enatiaakaki ninche.

Photo Gallery

Paulina and new mother Nalamai.

new little boy

Lois and Helen, Kokoo declined to be photographed.

Grace, the first wife, and Helen, a sweet pre-twenties mama working on number 2, outside Nalamai's house.