Maasai

During the seventeenth century the Maasai people, descended from the intermarriage some thousand years ago of two older tribes, migrated southwards from what is now north-western Kenya and wandered down to the more abundant grazing available in the Great Rift Valley and its surrounding plains. Through a mixture of necessity and cultural inheritance the Maasai had by then become the nomadic and hardy race of stock-raising people that Cynthia Salvadori and Andrew Fedders have made the subject of this book. Today, the Maasai number some 120,000 people and they roam an area that straddles the Kenya-Tanzania border.

The Maasai's way of life revolves exclusively around his cattle. To engage in any activity or occupation other than herding is insulting to Enkai, his dominant god, and is personally demeaning. A true Maasai will not even consider breaking ground for cultivation purposes, neither will he bury his dead or dig for water. He regards the raising of cattle as a sacred trust and is unsuited by habit and conviction to the acceptance of 'modern ways'.

These are the people that Cynthia Salvador! and Andrew Fedders have set out to present in this photographic documentary of the Maasai's day to day life and of the exotic customs through which this remarkable people express their attitudes to the various phases and events that mark the lifespan of each generation. The two collaborators have succeeded in their attempt and in doing so have added further and invaluable details to our knowledge of these remarkable people.