Maasai bomas, Maasailand, Tanzania.
“It’s time to surrender,” I thought to myself as I laid my dust-covered hands down in my lap and consciously decided to stop swatting at that determined fly that kept landing on my nose. “Let it be,” I acquiesced, looking to draw on some deep internal patience I wasn’t sure existed. Perhaps, I mused in a voice only I could hear, they too have deliberately laid down their swords to end what would otherwise be a ceaseless fight against the flies who have taken up residence on their faces, arms, and legs. Perhaps anyone who calls such a harsh, desert-like, dust-cloud-filled, thorny landscape home has no other choice but to willfully allow these insects their victory. One less battle in a way of life perpetually at odds with itself, its surroundings, its country.
The air was hot, thick, and moist—heavenly for the flies, sickening for me. Sitting crouched on a low tree-trunk stool, I rested my back against a traditional earthen wall that had been hand constructed out of sticks, mud, and dried cow dung. The top of my wide-rimmed, weathered brown canvas hat nearly touched the roof, whose dried grasses and sticks poked out this way and that.
Maasai children outside a family boma. Photo by Francesco Pierre-Nina.
It was a great honor for me, an outsider, to be welcomed inside that boma on that auspicious day, the day of Emuratta, the circumcision ceremony when boys become men. Early that morning, just before the equatorial sun made its 6:00 AM ascent, the handful of boys (who were likely between the ages of eight and 18) who lay silently on the other side of the low thin wall behind me, had the foreskin of their penises cut off with a dull razor blade and no form of anesthesia.
In keeping with Maasai tradition, this group of boys would have been taken out the night before, stripped naked, and had their skin painted with red ochre. Their group would have been worked into a frenzy of excitement through continuous song and dance in preparation for what was to come. Then, around 5:00 AM, the boys would have been bathed with water, milk, and cow blood… “sanctified in faith”… before being lined up on the ground next to one another, naked with their legs spread wide, under the watchful gaze of every Maasai male in the vicinity. And when the old circumcizor stopped in front of each one boy to make the slow, excruciating cut, none would have flinched, winced, made a sound, or batted an eyelid. Why? To do so would have meant great dishonor for themselves and their families and ultimate ostracism from the tribe. The boys’ mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sisters would not have watched the actual cutting process. Instead, they would have gathered in an outdoor space of their own, comforting one another as they stressed and worried… “What if he flinches or cries? What if he brings shame upon our family?”
I was intrigued. Who were these brave young souls laying just feet away from me who had, just hours earlier, survived what must have been unimaginable torture? In the near total darkness inside the boma, I could not see them, so instead I listened… intently, straining my ears for any evidence of their existence… Heavy breathing? Soft moans? Muffled cries? Nothing. I heard nothing beyond the buzzing of the relentless flies and the soft lyrical chatter of the women in Kimaa, the language of the Maasai.
Newly circumcised Maasai boys wandering in the bush.
Those boys inside that boma with me would spend the next 10 days lying flat on their backs. They would be fed cow’s blood and milk by their mothers before being forced to head out into the bush donned only in lightweight black fabrics, white face paint, and ostrich feathers, a signal of their new “morani” (warrior) status. In keeping with tradition, these newly circumcised boys would then wander about, finding and proving their strength by surviving off the land in their small brother-packs, for four to eight months until their elders decided it was time for them to come home. Once back in their village, those now-warriors would be responsible for the safety of their people and their people’s most prized possession, their cattle. In return, these man-boys would be revered and able “take” any girl or their choosing.
One Maasai woman — still heavily adorned with ceremonial brightly colored beadwork wrapped around her freshly shaven head, thin neck and arms, and long-stretched earlobes — crouched to offer me a chipped ceramic mug filled with fresh cow’s milk. For more than 30 years I have been visiting the Maasai tribespeople of northern Tanzania, and I have perfected the art of polite deception. I can stealthily slip a hunk of cooked goat meat (and even bits of raw goat testicles) into a pant leg pocket while chewing and feigning delight. “Mmmmmm. Ashe naleng.” Thank you in Kimaa. (Any attempt I have ever made to speak Kimaa has inevitably elicited stares and giggles. Do they laugh out of disgust? Distain? Pleasure? Compassion? I likely will never know.) But, in that moment, there was no pocket deep enough to absorb the yellowish-white liquid congealed in clumps across its surface that was being handed to me. My stomach churned, and my heartrate quickened. I struggled, asking myself: Do I be polite and drink (and surely become violently ill) or do I decline and risk my own shame and ostracism?
Entering the boma on the day of the circumcision ceremony.
Maasai women gathering for their own celebration of Emuratta.
Maasai kids outside a traditional maasai boma.
An elderly Maasai woman inside her boma.
Note: The details of this story were confirmed through an interview with Hosiana Thomas, a maasai woman who works with the Unite Food Program.