Masai Woman
by Timothy Hacker
Title
Masai Woman
Artist
Timothy Hacker
Medium
Photograph - Photographs - Watermark Will Not Appear On Prints.
Description
The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group of semi-nomadic people inhabiting southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are among the best known local populations due to their residence near the many game parks of the African Great Lakes, and their distinctive customs and dress.
Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man's wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor. A Maasai religious belief relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.
All of the Maasai’s needs for food are met by their cattle. They eat the meat, drink the milk and on occasion, drink the blood. Bulls, oxen and lambs are slaughtered for meat on special occasions and for ceremonies. [Though] the Maasai’s entire way of life has historically depended on their cattle... more recently, with their cattle dwindling, the Maasai have grown dependent on food such as sorghum, rice, potatoes and cabbage (known to the Maasai as goat leaves).
The men in the Maasai tribe are born and raised to be warriors. They don‘t marry when they are young but instead they stay in the woods.[citation needed] This is the reason[original research?] why there is a great age difference between husbands and their wives, because they are not allowed to marry until they are older (when they have become "elders“) while the women marry when they are young.
Uploaded
January 29th, 2015
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