Mto wa Mbu, Tanzania

The Maasai village walk proved to be one of the more awkward things I've ever done in my life. There are settlements of Maasai (a nomadic tribe that of Nilotic speakers originally from north Africa) that often see tourists and that we read are very cliche and contrived. Our guide took us to a group of Maasai that gets tourists about 5 times per week. This made the experience a little more authentic but still a tough thing to wrap your mind around. The only reason this group allowed tourists to come and take pictures is that the tour groups pay their water bill. It's obviously not running water but water to wash, drink and feed animals.

We walked up and immediately the children were fascinated by us and trying to play with us. These children aren't "poor" per se but many were wearing completely soiled clothes with insects pouring over them. We headed into a hut and listened to the Maasai way of life from our expert guide: each little settlement is founded by a chief who has many wives, they are a cattle herding people who now do a small amount of farming out of necessity, they circumsize their adolescent children (men AND women) in late teen years and the men undergo spiritual learning off in the bush with an elder, they believe they have a prehistoric right to all cattle on earth, the colorful garb was actually introduced by the Scottish in the 20th century (before that they wore animal skins), they are constantly on the move and spreading but all have one central leader who all obey, they are currently in the area surrounding the Serengeti in modern day Kenya and Tanzania, and they are allowed to life in national parks because they never hunt wild animals. This was all good fun and educational.

Next the Maasai organized a dance for us that was very very wrong in some unidentifiable way. We were supposedly getting to see a small piece of real ancient tribal culture but these people were forced to do this almost daily. The whole thing just felt a little disrespectful. They involved us in the dance towards the end which was actually kind of fun. All in all we each bought some of their cheap ass jewelry which made us feel better.