"No, not in the same way. We have something we call 'generations,' but that's more, I don't know, general. It's just everyone,
man or woman, born within a certain period, about thirty years or so."
Kesuma translates, the women ponder my answer. Another woman asks, "But if you don't have age groups, how do you know how
to show and receive proper respect?"
"Um... respect? I don't know. I guess maybe respect doesn't mean as much to us. Or it isn't the same somehow. I respect someone
for what he's accomplished or who he is as a person, not because of how old he is."
The women look horrified. "But respect... respect is what makes us people. It's what holds together families. Respect is the
most important thing!"
"For me, respect is nice, but I'd rather have, well--love, I guess."
For some minutes we try to bridge this terrible gulf between us; they are too polite to confess they think me a dangerously
insolent heathen, and I am too polite to say I think they're trapped in some benighted patriarchy. But then I have a sort
of revelation--more of an instinct than a reasoned explanation. "You say respect holds people together. I say love. I think--I
don't know how to explain this. I think when I love someone,
really
love someone... not, um..." I turn to Kesuma. "Not, you know, sexual love, or a crush or something?" He translates, and the women
giggle again. "But when I really love someone it's
because
I respect him. Or, my respect for him comes out of my love. I think maybe they're the same, really."
I don't know if this actually means something or not. But it seems to satisfy the women. There are smiling nods all around.
After our conversation, I decide to take a little walk around the
boma
and maybe find a quiet spot to take a piss. Kesuma has explained to me that each
boma
--a collection of several thatched mud huts, with a corral for cattle and another one for goats, the entire cluster surrounded
by a fence that is really just a jumble of thorny branches--represents one family group, an elder and his wives and unmarried
children, and the wives of his sons. Many
bomas
make up the village. They are spread out from one another, by quite a distance. As I walk around the
boma
I'll be staying the night at
,
there are a couple of others within sight, but only just. So actually the "village" is a sprawling thing with no real center,
a vast scattering of homes up and down the mountainside. It seems a strange way to live, somehow at once lonesome and rather
too rife with mothers-in-law.
It also proves a rather tricky place to pee. I get used to the notion of my ablutions being witnessed by a few incurious baby
goats, but I'd rather not be witnessed by anyone at any of the
bomas
or by one of the children wandering about as I drop trow, revealing what to Maasai eyes must seem my hideously wide and pale
ass. The trees and bushes dotting the landscape are both treacherously spiky and rather sparse, so it takes a bit of doing
to find a good spot. But eventually I manage.
As I continue my walk back in the direction of the
boma,
I'm suddenly met by a small swarm of kids, waving and giggling and not attempting to exchange a word. They don't even call
me
mzungu
--Swahili for "gringo," basically--the way the kids in Arusha do when I walk down the road, because they don't speak Swahili.
Still, these guys--three girls between the ages of nine and twelve, I'd say, and a couple of small boys--know the drill. While
one girl closely admires the beaded necklace and earrings Kesuma's aunt and the other women gave me when I arrived, the others
rummage through my pockets for my camera and BlackBerry to play with. The Amy Winehouse ringtone on my phone--"You Know That
I'm No Good"--is cause for many toothy grins and small spontaneous dances, and the camera of course has to be passed around.
Everyone in the growing group needs to take a picture and then have everyone else gather around to see the result, the subject
of the picture always receiving some congratulation or ridicule.
Then suddenly Kesuma's aunt is striding up to our group, linking her arm forcefully with mine, shooing the kids angrily away,
showing special vehemence for a very small boy in a windbreaker that hangs down to his ankles, who runs off toward another
boma
some distance away, moaning. She pulls me back inside the
boma
walls to the pup tent that Obed and Leyan have erected for me to sleep in. (Kesuma has adamantly recommended that I stick
to the tent, rather than brave a night in one of the huts. "Very, very dark and smoky. It's difficult, at first, for
mzungu
to get used to." Which makes me feel sheepish and wimpy, but I have acquiesced.)
"Lala, lala ...,"
Kesuma's aunt insists, making a universal gesture, palms pressed together under one tilted cheek. She wants me to have a
little lie-down. The afternoon has grown hot, and either I'm looking a little wilted or the Maasai just assume all white folks
are delicate flowers. I nod, smiling, and crawl into my tent. Kicking off my shoes, I lie down on my side, then have to roll
over to take my BlackBerry out of my pocket. I glance down at its face as I do, and am appalled to see I have four bars of
phone service. Even more astonishing, I can get online. Within moments I have logged onto Facebook, where I cannot resist
updating my status to "Coming at you LIVE from a freakin' Maasai village." I also can't resist scrolling over to D's page,
where I can see the only photo that exists of him in un-password-protected cyberspace. (Believe me, I've Google-stalked him
enough to know for sure.) In it he's smiling in a very D-like way while wearing a Ben Sherman shirt I gave him. Just looking
at it, here, makes me feel a little disgusted with myself. I turn off my phone and tuck it into my backpack. As I do, I come
upon the chunkee stone, the one Eric had custom-carved for me. It is heavy and dark, with perfectly smooth concave faces like
the inside of a cup-and-ball joint. I'm not certain why I brought it with me on this trip, risking losing it, but I enjoy
holding it, running my fingers around its circumference or placing my forehead, briefly, to the cool stone. Beneath the chunkee
are two bundles of pages, my two now-epic letters. I pull them out.
But I wind up not even writing in them. I just stare up at the fluttering sun-spackled walls of my tent. Outside, the light
is gold on the hills past my netted window. Two girls continually creep up to the unzipped door of my tent, smiling and grabbing
at the camera to see the pictures over and over again, then running off, either out of shyness or, more likely, fear of reprimand
from Kesuma's daunting aunt.
And then all of a sudden, as if I was not sufficiently aware of how bizarre this whole situation is, there is a great explosion
of bleating; the adult goats are returning from their day of grazing, and as the mothers enter their nighttime enclosure they
call out to the kids, who were left behind near the village. A mournful, almost desperate call and response, which doesn't
end until every mother and child is reunited. It's an oddly comforting sound, that blaring panic settling gradually into contented,
suckling quiet. The sound of having everyone come home.
That night shortly after the sun finishes setting, I eat a dinner of goat ribs and potatoes that Obed and Elly make for me,
banking their cooking fire immediately after. I'd imagined an African village lit by torches or campfires or gas lamps, but
there is nothing. When the dark sets in, it sets in entirely. The only man-made light in evidence in the
boma
, or anywhere outside it, is my flashlight and a distant blinking red light atop a power line on another hillside that Kesuma
tells me is across the border in Kenya. By my flashlight, I watch as the men show me their dances. Obed and Elly, the only
other people here besides me in Western dress, watch too as Kesuma joins in. One of the songs and dances is like a competitive
game; the story line is about skilled warriors who can leap straight up into trees to escape a charging lion, and that's what
they do, one after the other, to the music. They jump straight into the air, pulling their knees up sharply, trying to get
more height than the preceding man. The elders participate, as well as the warriors and the small boys. (I feel strange using
those words,
warrior
and
elder,
but these are the words they use for themselves so I suppose I must follow suit.) The mood gets more and more exuberant,
almost out of hand. The universal symptoms of testosterone poisoning. Elly, a beautiful young man who's probably all of nineteen,
shakes his head, laughing, and leans over to whisper in my ear, "These Maasai, they're
crazy.
"
Eventually I say my good-nights and return to my tent. I should stay up, it's not late and I'm not even terribly tired. I
just suddenly want to be alone. So I lie down in my tent, staring up through the near pitch-black at the vague dim rippling
of the nylon. The women have begun to sing, separately--I can hear that they are farther away, perhaps as far as the school
tree. They are overlapping with the men, perhaps competing with them, or just complementing them. It is ravishingly beautiful,
fiercely joyful and yet somehow evocative of yearning, and it goes on and on for hours into the night. I think of my phone,
put away, its silence almost a part of the music. Lying there, sleepless, listening, I feel maybe the most peaceful I've felt
in years, in forever.
Unlike Eric and I, who share almost the exact same taste in music and often wake up with the same song in our two heads, who
can recognize instantly what the other is thinking from a bit of badly hummed tune or a couple of stray words from a single
lyric, D and I did not often sing together. He'd have liked for us to, but I was shy about my voice, as D's was assured and
pitch-perfect. Besides, none of the songs we knew the words to were the same. I remember one haunting melody he sang to me
once in a parking lot in Florida. I had to go look up the lyrics later. It turned out to be a Beck song. I still don't know
the words, though the tune sticks in my head and weaves in with all the other music inside and out. Something about
a strange invitation...
I'm considering leaving the
boma
to go to the bathroom, which I have to do rather urgently. But then, rising over the sounds of the singers, comes a strange
yelping cry, close by, like a woman calling out. I am damned near sure it's an actual hyena.
I think I'll wait until morning.
I
T TURNS
out that Elly used to work as a guide taking tourists up Kilimanjaro. I learn this the next day as he is driving us to our
next destination--another village, another
boma,
this one belonging to Kesuma's father. Elly keeps the conversation lively on the long drive, informative and, just possibly,
flirtatious. He alerts me to points of interest along the way: baobab trees; the tiny antelopes, no more than a foot high,
called dik-diks; birds. There are these birds here, very common, just starlings, but their feathers are brilliant, sapphire
blue, with bright orange breasts. An apparently suicidal eland races across the road just in front of us, avoiding by milliseconds
a bus coming in the opposite direction. We ponder aloud about what could have gotten it so spooked, and I half expect to see
a lioness or a cheetah racing behind it. Or perhaps that's just what elands do for fun.
We arrive at the
boma
over a treacherous track that almost isn't a track at all, up over the crest of a hill. I'd thought the village yesterday
was lovely, but this is breathtaking. A long view out over a valley to another chain of mountains across the border in Kenya.
One of the mountains is a volcano; it's smoking gently. The light is pink and gold; it is nearly sunset by the time we arrive,
and we're greeted by small boys waving and the bleating of goats calling out to their mothers to nurse.
A sometimes violent act, this, the kids kneeling on their forelegs and then ramming their heads hard up against their mothers'
underbellies. It looks like it hurts. One of the mothers, in fact, has decided she's had just about enough. She tries to run
away from her hungry child. Kesuma enlists my help, getting me to hold her still by her horns while the kid kneels to feed.
Another goat acts rather like a naughty dog. He'll come try to eat out of your cup. I'm drinking a tea that Kesuma's wife
has made me, Kesuma tells me, from the bark of a tree that grows nearby. It's a light, muddy color, but tastes like chocolate
and cinnamon. The goat will try to get into the houses and is constantly being shooed away. There's also an actual dog, a
friendly thing who Kesuma says is his. The Maasai in general don't seem much enamored of dogs. Kesuma and I are the only people
who pet this one, and everyone looks at us like we're slightly loony.
Kesuma wears his traditional garb and motorcycle-tire Maasai shoes everywhere, but he's also got a degree in filmmaking and
a keen interest in women's rights. He has visited San Francisco, New York, Europe. But he seems equally at home among the
goats and
bomas
of his father's village, squatting on the ground with a cup of tea that his young wife brings to him before going back to
her chores with the other women. And he keeps dogs as pets, a habit he says he picked up while visiting American friends in
the States. Life must be strange and wonderful and big and treacherous for Kesuma, I think. But I suppose it is for us all,
if we allow ourselves to pay attention.
Then it's time for the cows to come home. Maasai cattle are nothing like the prosaic Herefords back home. These are magnificent
animals, enormous red and black and gray beasts with spreading horns and gleaming hides and great dewlaps. They have dignity;
they even have grace. They come up the hill quietly, with very little lowing, the occasional clang of a bell.
Tonight, after I've eaten my dinner (a sort of spaghetti-and-meatballs dish that Obed throws together) and the sun has gone
down, we gather around a fire. It's cold up on this mountainside, and windy. I give Kesuma's father two beers I brought up
from a town at the base of the mountain. Now that he's an elder, rather than a warrior, he enjoys a beer now and then, Kesuma
has told me. Everyone else gets Cokes. We sit, and some of the men tell stories, which Kesuma translates. The stories are
long and meander, and I don't follow them very well. They involve demons and evil spells, wives who try to save their children
from fathers who want to kill them--standard mythical fare. I guess we are all of us worried about fathers eating us. Then
they ask me to tell a story from America, and I'm flummoxed of course, but then I come upon the perfect solution: