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    My Maasai Experience: Reflections
    My Maasai Experience: Reflections
    My Maasai Experience: Reflections
    Ebook119 pages1 hour

    My Maasai Experience: Reflections

    By Tracy Sillato

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    About this ebook

    A dream on my bucket list, came true! I traveled to Kenya on a voluntary experience. I always knew that it would be leaving an impact and I would return back as a new person and so it did. A three week experience marked my life and my thoughts forever. My daily routine and the most common thing one could do, started to be accompanied with a simple question, 'What if I was in Kenya?'
    This experience was not just an adventure but also a voyage in which I discovered different ways to see life. Less materialistic and more real humane. All the things I ended up writing, made me realize that even though in the beginning I had regrets, now, I would want to relive it again and again since I do not want to forget what I achieved. I discovered the true meaning of happiness.
    Surely, many lived such an experience and not everyone would end up thinking like me.
    Such an experience is an individual journey and this book is like a journal or diary which in a way criticizes my way of living. It would be amazing to get to know the thoughts and feelings of others who shared the same experience! Is it just me or it leaves such an impact on everyone?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTracy Sillato
    Release dateApr 24, 2017
    ISBN9781370233748
    My Maasai Experience: Reflections
    Author

    Tracy Sillato

    A software engineer with human rights at heart. During my free time, I enjoy reading, writing and dancing. Due to the fact that during working hours, I spend most of my time in front of a computer, I do my best to switch offline completely in my free time. I try and involve myself in voluntary work, and stay close to my loved ones.I think that the world can be a better place if only people use more their humanity. I believe that writing has a great power since our actions reflect who we are and what we believe. If we read more about good deeds and positive news, we can also learn to live in a better way. My aim is to write about how life can be more human and less tragic.

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      Book preview

      My Maasai Experience - Tracy Sillato

      My Maasai Experience

      Reflections

      By Tracy Sillato

      Copyright 2017 Tracy Sillato

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1 - A Continent Away

      Chapter 2 - The Shock

      Chapter 3 - A kind of Poverty

      Chapter 4 - Need for Survival

      Chapter 5 - Health is Wealth

      Chapter 6 - Amongst the minority

      Chapter 7 - Vision and Goals Ahead

      A Continent Away

      After a seven-hour flight we finally arrived in Kenya – a destination I’ve been dreaming of going to for a very long time.

      The culture, the beautiful scenery, the history, and all the stories I’ve heard made me long for this dream to come true. Tourists usually make sure to visit the most famous and advanced cities, go on Safari, visit the amazing beaches, lagoons, and national parks – plus see the mountains, valleys, and everywhere else that’s usually advertised. Africa is an amazing continent and Kenya, although just a small part of Africa, assured me that I’d want to visit many more places on this amazing continent.

      But I was here for a different reason – to volunteer.

      In the nations of Europe, like most developed countries, you’ll commonly find Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that help third world countries. I come from Malta, which despite being quite a small country has a big heart. Malta is full of such organizations, and they provide great opportunities for volunteers to help out abroad.

      I’d been doing voluntary work locally in Malta for years now, and it had truly become part of me. Helping is not just giving money, or changing someone's way of living, or even getting them out of trouble. It can also be something deeper and simpler – like just making people feel appreciated and loved, or organizing events to make people smile. Sometimes, it’s just being part of somebody’s life and spending time with them.

      And the thing that’s attractive about volunteering – that it’s not just about giving, but also receiving. By being a volunteer, I’d grown up a lot and discovered more and more about myself. Meeting different people makes you understand what you love, and what you want to improve in your own life. There’s something inspiring and motivational about it that keeps you going, and looking forward to embracing many more challenging moments.

      In addition to being a keen volunteer, I’m also an adventurous and curious person who is always looking for a way to change life for the better. In addition to helping people by volunteering, I wanted to do something different. Therefore, I decided to use the caring side of myself to motivate my adventurous side – and I volunteered to go somewhere in Africa.

      Africa was a mystery and promised to be an adventure. Let's face it, in my home country of Malta – and most probably most of the other developed countries outside of Africa – there are mainly only two images of this continent:

      On the positive side, there’s an image which highlights the amazing scenery and wildlife – a place where one can get in touch with nature and experience exotic wildlife very differently to the zoos and wildlife parks back home. When one hears the name of the continent, Africa, most of us immediately either think of the cartoon The Lion King or some 'Ancient Egypt' movie like Cleopatra.

      On the other side, there’s the negative image of Africa as being filled with poverty, criminality, illness and famine – driving a great urge for call for help from first world countries.

      These are the two projections about Africa which are usually broadcasted on our media. But is it really that black and white? Are Africa's nature and people really that easy and simple to explain? In reality, I believed that Africa was much more than we were continuously led to believe - yet, that’s the power of the media.

      Being a kind of person who always wants to form my own opinions – based on my own first-hand experiences, and not on what I hear or what I’m told – I wanted to experience the lifestyle of Africa myself; or at least experience a small part of their own culture without any external influences.

      I believe that people are far more complex, and that our stereotypes are just a simple way to generalize life – to make it easier for us to handle reality. Unfortunately, this results in a fake image. One should never feel so confident or good enough to go to somebody else’s country thinking that you know what's best for them. This attitude is not healthy – and it often has the opposite effect. It doesn’t help anyone, and it’s just a way of suffocating them and turning them into something they’re not; and often don't want to be. It's just forcing our own belief of what's supposed to be ‘perfect’ on somebody else.

      The result is just to create a person without their own values and culture, with someone else's instead. It’s similar to a person without an identity and a forgotten past. Sometimes, we don't understand that our perception of things is just a subjective opinion. Just because our normal way of living is comfortable, and we’re happy with it, it doesn’t mean that any other way of living is wrong and needs to be changed. Once, a close friend of mine told me: You can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped, and you can't help someone if you don't know who they really are.

      Therefore, when I set my sights on Africa, I looked for a way to follow through with that adventure in a healthy way – by finding an NGO that organizes groups that will have the opportunity to learn about and experience the continent’s own lifestyle rather than just try to enforce our own. I found such an organization and shortly afterward there I was: Kenya!

      One might think that the African experience starts when you arrive at your destination, but it's also an intellectual and sociological journey that starts way before – especially when you’re aware that the experience will involve going to a country known for its high risk of illness, frequent conflicts between groups due to religion and race differences, the high probability that there’ll be a lack of technology and few ways to communicate like there are back home.

      The journey can become quite hard before you even leave – especially when you’re trying to explain and justify to people your decision not to stay in a hotel in the city, or go on planned tours that ensure that you visit the most famous and important places safely.

      Before I left, the most common feedback I got from people was that I was acting crazy – and that I was an irresponsible person for volunteering. But I wanted to see the real Africa. Going for a planned trip to South Africa – including Safari packages – is one thing… But going for a personal culture experience in a Maasai village is another. I chose the latter option because it was going to be a challenge, but also challenge all the incorrect impressions we have about people in Africa – the ones that might easily make us afraid of such an experience, and label it as a dangerous.

      It was what I call perseverance – or what others might call stubbornness – that led me to make this decision. Now I had to get the facts right – in order to calm down my concerned family and closest friends. When trying to make me rethink my decision – and believe me, many tried – the only way I could succeed in debating them was by providing real facts and news to counter their arguments. Getting the facts right should always be the first step – since it is the only way to make an informed decision. Gathering facts was to serve as my first baby step closer to Africa – starting from home, researching, reading and learning from various sources, and paying special attention to those written by African themselves.

      It’s not easy to overcome the narrative and preconceptions that we’re presented with every day, right in our own homes. Let's face it, here in Europe little is known about the real lifestyle of people living in Africa. The usual narrative our countries receive about Africa and her people are images of sick children, horribly malnourished, and mostly in the context of charitable events and fundraisers. Otherwise, it’s stories about terrorist attacks, or of African men who abuse their women and don’t respect their families or children. Other tales cover slavery, or the problem of illegal immigration from Africa. These are the images of Africa we most commonly see in the newspapers or on news broadcasts.

      What else? How about visits to African tribes; framed with the

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