Day 11
A few hours to relax at our lodge in the morning after a late breakfast. A small group of us decide to visit the local Sunday market in town and we are accompanied by our guide who was born and raised here in Karatu and is very familiar with the town. In fact, when we went into the covered food market, where fruits and vegetables were piled up in separate stalls, we met our guide’s sister who works there every day.
In addition to the fresh produce, there was a whole row of numbered butcher shops, with large slabs of large animals hanging down from hooks but without any refrigeration. There are stalls outside selling everything that is part of the lifestyle here: plastic housewares, hardware stores, pharmacies, tailors shops, everything in diminutive size compared to our standard stores, each store about 10 feet across, I estimate. Walking around past the shop selling fresh friend potatoes and samosas, we come to the woodworking area of the market, where wooden bed frames are being made as well as wooden caskets in preparation for burial, which is the standard custom here. Our guide said a casket can cost as much as $1000 for a very fancy style but most are much less.
A dressmaking shop we came to had some local-looking cloth but when we went closer we could imprinted see that it was all imported from Nigeria and much of it had some kind of plastic coating on it which, we assumed, would come off upon washing.
While I and some others are at the market, the rest of the group take a walk around the property which includes a small coffee plantation, one of the local crops. And then we all meet again for another delicious lunch on the verandah (Rae especially liked the vegetable soup).
The afternoon was another “cultural tour” which we were told was to visit a Maasai (or Masai) tribe. Joseph, the Oreteti Safari founder, is with us dressed in his traditional Maasai clothing with a bright checked over-the-shoulder cloth. The Maasai are traditional nomadic herders but their freedom to move their herds for grazing has now been restricted due to government formation of parks to bring in tourism and expansion of town and villages.
This group seemed happy to have us visit them, and as we are the only tourists here we assume this is due to Joseph’s connection with them. They dress us all in Maasai traditional cloaks and necklaces and then both the women and men dance and sing for us. The songs are led by a very tall man with a very high clear reverberating voice that is totally distinctive and powerful. The women all have fully shaved heads and are beautiful, the men tall and slender with closely cropped hair. We wonder how they all manage this.
The men show us how they start a fire using two sticks, like we all tried to do in Boy/Girl Scouts but they are actually able to do it successfully. The power of need. We then break into small groups of two and each go with a Masai guide into one of the very small mud huts in which they sleep. Each woman has her own hut which she shares with her children and men have separate places (if I understood correctly). Dhara and I have a guide who is one of the chief’s many children, from more than one wife, of whom we ask many questions which he patiently answers. It seems most of the men have been to school and speak passable English as well as Swahili and their local language of Maa. Joseph has told us that he sends his children to his village to live with relatives for several weeks or more each year so that they are comfortable speaking Maa. He speaks Swahili at home to them. A common problem for immigrants and for indigenous people living in colonized countries.
Then on to the expected final stop — a circle of tables with the handicrafts said to be made by the villagers, beaded jewelry, coasters and animals, soapstone dishes. The prices they ask are ridiculously high, prices no one would rationally pay except to help support this group of people. I bargain down to 40% of their asking price for 2 beaded elephants for my 2 grandsons, still too high but more reasonable. And Joseph thanks us later for supporting this group.
And then, our duty done, we head across a field to the village school where there is a teacher and a group of young children not quite ready to leave their village for the government school they are required to attend for a few years.
These people are far more integrated into the social fabric of rural Tanzania then the Hudzabe group from yesterday, for better or worse, bound to their greater country by their knowledge of Swahili and English. Joseph and our guides have all spoken to us of prizing being a pluralistic society not divided by religion or tribal affinities – which may be true to a certain extent or may be aspirational or the promotional language for tourists.
After leaving this village, Joseph tells us that we we pass through a number of roads leading to other Maasai villages, including the one he was born in. Our last night in Tanzania, which we enjoy together as we have every night of this memorable trip, not just for the sights and sounds we have experienced but because of the deep bonds the 12 of us have together.