Overnight in a Mud Manyatta

While visiting another colleague's family home, we had the privilege of sleeping in a traditional manyatta, a Maasai house made by the women out of small logs, sticks, mud, dung,  and ash. How they got the frame bed inside?... took it apart and in through the door, then tied it back together. The chairs also were an uncommon luxury in this particular home, usually its tiny benches and up-turned cans. We were clearly given the deluxe suite. The rest of the beds are made of a cowhide on a frame of sticks. Notice the "window" next to the bed is plugged with a purple piece of cloth.

The mama who lent us her home came in just after 6 a.m. to start getting shaai ready. The house filled with smoke. 

Across the living area, you can see a hide bed in its own cubby. And the local style of indoor lighting: a plastic jar of kerosene fitted with a hollow piece of aluminum from an umbrella handle through which a wick draws the fuel to the flame.

Breakfast of bananas, white bread and shaai (tea) were served te boo (said with long o). A soft thick layer of dried and sometimes not dried manure was our carpet.

This cow had a baby a few days prior. Combining that with the starvation of the drought, she needed help getting to her feet in the morning to avoid death.

A friendly crowd of children of the family.

The goats and sheep were in a separate boo surrounded by the local fencing material: thorn branches. Our friend was checking over them before releasing them to graze. 

Taking photos is always a hit for everyone, though you can't see their big grins till after the picture when they come look at the camera screen.

This was the fate of their cow that starved to death from the drought a day prior. The hide was sold for 400 ksh (about 4.50$) and what was left of the carcas was drug into the bush for the wild animals and dogs.

When I asked this 2 or 3 yr old kiddo to go stand next to the baby goat for a picture, he immediately took charge of the animal! Hilarious.

Our colleague and his mother surrounded by nieces, nephews and a neighbor. The father of this family died when our friend was young and his mother (the second wife of the old man) stood firm against relatives that she did not want to re-marry. Because of this, the young sons were able to use their family cows as a commodity to get themselves through school and university instead of simply to collect for status and unused wealth. Now, with good jobs, they come home with plans and resources to build better homes for their mother and other family members, to develop a water system, to begin practicing hay baling on their land to cope with the droughts.

I was given a special gift. An "enkukuri" is a milk gourd the women take with them when they get married, tucking them down the back of their clothes. You can milk straight into the gourd and it will stay fresh and delicious and cool for when your husband comes, she said.