mmmmooooooo. cows. goats. endless savannah. yes, you're in Maasailand.

the final formal leg of the Tanzania program was a stay at a Maasai "boma" or family compound. we drove to a small village way out in the savannah where we stayed for 5 days learning about and living closely with the Maasai people. all of us stayed in one boma but in separate huts. the boma is a circular area fenced with thorny trees to protect the people and livestock on the inside. our boma was owned by one man named Taon Matinda, but he shared it with three others and their total of 22 wives, 10 of which were Taon's. each wife has her own hut made from sticks and a mixture of mud and cow urine and covered with a straw roof. with no ventilation and a constant fire going inside, the interior is small, very smokey, hot, and dark. but in a cozy way. Adam, Nate and i slept on a dried goatskin (very dried - practically jerky) covering some straw and twigs. not very forgiving on the back, but i slept okay. personally, i really enjoyed the rustic conditions. felt a lot closer to the earth. though i did have a lot of black stuff in my handkerchief at the end of the stay.

we did all kinds of things while were there. the first two nights we participated in traditional dances. there were no drums, but the dancers would sing, grunt, and make a whole range of other sounds i'd never heard from a human before. that provided the rhythm and melody for the dancing, which consisted of a lot of small shaking and shuffling movements interspersed with men entering the middle of the dance circle to jump straight up in the air. the whole event was very jovial and fun, and they were especially entertained to see us students try it out. i got a lot of congratulatory handshakes for my jumping, though i think it was less because of the height that i jumped and more because of the absolutely ridiculous and completely off-beat "dancing" that i introduced. one of my friends got video. please don't watch it - i look like a jack-in-the-box on a trampoline in an earthquake.

on the first night there, many of the Maasai from the village came to hang out. some of the moran (warriors) slaughtered and roasted a goat right in front of us. it was damn tasty. i employed the services of a translator named Abrahim to talk with an elder man, who i later learned was the traditional leader of the village. we talked for hours about education, culture, science, history, and astrology. we got to comparing the ways that we used the stars to interpret reality and/or predict changes in things. he seemed to know a lot about reading the stars for signs of changes in the weather. i explained a little bit about how astrology works in a Western context, but in pretty simple terms. at this point, the conversation was pretty exciting (for me, at least), and as you may know, i get a teensy bit exuberant and crazy when i'm excited. just a little. so before you knew it, i was down on my knees, drawing a representation of the solar system in the dirt and spinning my fists around to demonstrate orbit and the change between night and day. the propane lamp gave a simply luminous performance as our sun. i also attempted to explain why different stars appear at different times of the year. in fact, i found myself teaching things i didn't even knew that i knew. maybe i was channeling Bill Nye the Science Guy.

he seemed pretty impressed with the model, and he said that he had never understood that the earth revolves around the sun. i guess Copernicus isn't exactly a well-known dude around here. after this jaunty into astrophysics subsided, the conversation was pretty well spent and he had to return to his boma. elated, i spent the remaining hours before sleep sitting around the campfire with other students and some of the warriors.

after class the next day we grouped up and walked the 45-minute trail to our home for the next 3 days. the boma welcomed us warmly. over the course of my time there, i was able to converse with many people, with or without a translator, and learned a lot about their culture. on the first night, one moran i talked to extensively about theology tried to convert me to Christianity. i tried to explain that my set of beliefs did not conflict with his, my own lame attempt at proselytizing religious pluralism, but he insisted that when i return home i need to "find Jesus." talk about reverse globalization. most of the younger Maasai are Lutheran, Catholic, or Baptist, and i didn't meet anyone my own age who seemed particularly interested in alternatives to Christianity. as upsetting as this was at first, i later realized that many Maasai don't perceive Christian religion and their own traditional spirituality to be at odds, so the missionaries may have been less culturally destructive than i initially surmised. as i always say, ...and by always, i mean right now... "you can never stop learning." yup. ain't that the truth. uhhh-huh. okay, bye.