The Maasai tribe is the most authentic ethnic tribe of Kenya.

The Maasai tribe (or Masai) is a unique and popular tribe due to their long preserved culture. Despite education, civilization and western cultural influences, the Maasai people have clung to their traditional way of life, making them a symbol of Kenyan culture.\ The Maasai's distinctive culture, dress and strategic territory along the game parks of Kenya and Tanzania have made them one of East Africa's most internationally famous tourist attractions.

Maasai people reside in both Kenya and Tanzania, living along the border of the two countries. They are a smaller tribe, accounting for only about 0.7 percent of Kenya's population, with a similar number living in Tanzania. Maasais speak Maa, a Nilotic ethnic language from their origin in the Nile region of North Africa. The Samburu tribe is the closest to the Maasai in both language and cultural authenticity.

Clothing & Beauty Though they traditionally dressed in animal skins, today, typical Maasai dress consists of red sheets, (shuka), wrapped around the body and loads of beaded jewelry placed around the neck and arms. These are worn by both men and women and may vary in color depending on the occasion.

Ear piercing and the stretching of earlobes are also part of Maasai beauty, and both men and women wear metal hoops on their stretched earlobes.

Women shave their heads and remove two middle teeth on the lower jaw (for oral delivery of traditional medicine). The Maasai often walk barefooted or wear simple sandals made of cow hide.

Clothing

Maasai woman

Meeyu Sale Wearing her Finest

Clothing varies by age and location. Young men, for instance, wear black for several months following their circumcision. However, red is a favored color. Blue, black, striped, and checkered cloth are also worn, as are multicolored African designs.The names of the clothing are now known as the Matavuvale. The Maasai began to replace animal-skin, calf hides and sheep skin, with commercial cotton cloth in the 1960s.[90] Shk is the Maa word for sheets traditionally worn wrapped around the body, one over each shoulder, then a third over the top of them. These are typically red, though with some other colors (e.g. blue) and patterns (e.g. plaid). Pink, even with flowers, is not shunned by warriors.[91] One piece garments known as kanga, a Swahili term, are common.[92] Maasai near the coast may wear kikoi, a type of sarong that comes in many different colors and textiles. However, the preferred style is stripes.[93] Many Maasai in Tanzania wear simple sandals, which were until recently made from cowhides. They are now soled with tire strips or plastic. Both men and women wear wooden bracelets. The Maasai women regularly weave and bead jewellery. This bead work plays an essential part in the ornamentation of their body. Although there are variations in the meaning of the color of the beads, some general meanings for a few colors are: white, peace; blue, water; red, warrior/blood/bravery.[94] Beadworking, done by women, has a long history among the Maasai, who articulate their identity and position in society through body ornaments and body painting. Before contact with Europeans beads were produced mostly from local raw materials. White beads were made from clay, shells, ivory, or bone. Black and blue beads were made from iron, charcoal, seeds, clay, or horn. Red beads came from seeds, woods, gourds, bone, ivory, copper, or brass. When late in the nineteenth century, great quantities of brightly colored European glass beads arrived in East Africa, beadworkers replaced the older beads with the new materials and began to use more elaborate color schemes. Currently, dense, opaque glass beads with no surface decoration and a naturally smooth finish are preferred.[95] [edit]Hair

Head shaving is common at many rites of passage, representing the fresh start that will be made as one passes from one to another of life's chapters.[96] Warriors are the only members of the Maasai community to wear long hair, which they weave in thinly braided strands.[97] Upon reaching the age of 3 "moons", the child is named and the head is shaved clean apart from a tuft of hair, which resembles a cock's comb, from the nape of the neck to the forehead.[98] The cockade symbolizes the "state of grace" accorded to infants.[99] A woman who has miscarried in a previous pregnancy would position the hair at the front or back of the head, depending on whether she had lost a boy or a girl.[98] Two days before boys are circumcised, their heads are shaved.[100] The young warriors then allow their hair to grow, and spend a great deal of time styling the hair. It is dressed with animal fat and ocher, and parted across the top of the head at ear level. Hair is then plaited: parted into small sections which are divided into two and twisted, first separately then together. Cotton or wool

threads may be used to lengthen hair. The plaited hair may hang loose or be gathered together and bound with leather.[101] When warriors go through the Eunoto, and become elders, their long plaited hair is shaved off.[102] As males have their heads shaved at the passage from one stage of life to another, a bride to be will have her head shaved, and two rams will be slaughtered in honor of the occasion.[103] [edit]See also 11 CLOTHING

Maasai clothing varies by age, sex, and place. Traditionally, shepherds wore capes made from calf hides, and women wore capes of sheepskin. The Maasai decorated these capes with glass beads. In the 1960s, the Maasai began to replace animal-skin with commercial cotton cloth. Women tied lengths of this cloth around their shoulders as capes (shuka) or around the waist as a skirt. The Maasai color of preference is red, although black, blue, striped, and checkered cloth are also worn, as are multicolored African designs. Elderly women still prefer red and dye their own cloth with ochre (a natural pigment). Until recently, men and women wore sandals made from cowhides; nowadays sandals and shoes are generally made of tire strips or plastic.

Young women and girls, and especially young warriors, spend much time on their appearance. Styles vary by age group. The Maasai excel in designing jewelry. They decorate their bodies with tattooing, head shaving, and hair styling with ochre and sheep's fat, which they also smear on their bodies. A variety of colors are used to create body art. Women and girls wear elaborate bib-like bead necklaces, as well as headbands and earrings, which are colorful and intricate. When ivory was plentiful, warriors wore ivory bands on their upper arms much like the ancient Egyptians. Jewelry plays an important role in courtship.

The Maasai The Maasai peoples are pastoral nomads, living in the Serengeti Plains by Kenya and Uganda. Their wealth, livelihood, and religion all revolve around cattle. The Maasai have also cleverly adapted to increasing globalization. They charge a fee for any photographs taken of them, using Western curiosity about traditional African cultures to their advantage.

Maasai people in their shukas.

The main garment worn by the Maasai is the shuka, which is a basic piece of fabric that can be worn in a variety of ways, depending on the personal style of the wearer. It was initially made out of animal skins, mostly cowhide but never elephant skin, but cotton is now the main material. The fabric is rubbed with color or dye to make it red, becoming a sort of camouflage with the red dirt of that part of Africa. In the dry grass plains the shuka can be white to camouflage with the grain.

Maasai warriors.

Maasai life is predicated by age sets. For men there are three stages. Childhood, warriorhood, and

elderhood. A boy reaches warriorhood around the age of 15, undergoing a series of rituals called almal lengipaata. The warriorhood is the most fabulous time of a mans life, and lasts for about fifteen to twenty years. A young man in warriorhood can be recognized by his appearance. The hair is grown out and braided in very intricate patterns, sometimes using as much as 16 strands at a time. They wear earrings and bracelets, as well as beaded necklaces that hang down the front and back of their bodies. They also wear symbols to show off their achievements. The errap is worn around the top part of the arm, made of leather with coils of metal wire in the front and the back, and shows that this man has fought and killed another man. The Olawaru is a lions mane headdress, meant to show that the man has killed a lion. The enkuwaru is a headdress made of ostrich plumes, meant to show that the man has fought a lion but the lion survived. The body is decorated with white limestone chalk in intricate non-symbolic patterns, and the hair is colored red with ochre and animal fat.

Elaborately braided hair colored with ochre.

The transition from warriorhood to elderhood takes place during a ceremony called the eunoto, which can be extremely traumatic because all of the mans carefully tended hair is shaved off by his mother. The first man to have his head shaved wears a leather cape called an engilaa alamal. The head is then covered in ochre. The elders are expected to take a wife and have children and take on serious responsibilities within the tribe. He will carry a fly whisk made from an elephant tail as a symbol of authority.

Maasai women.

There are only two stages of life for women, childhood and adulthood. A woman enters adulthood after she has undergone circumcision. Mothers of warriors wear surutia, coiled metal medallions. If her son is the first to get his head shaved during the eunoto ceremony, he wears his mothers surutia and it becomes loosurutia. Married women can also wear elongated leather earrings. But the main distinguishing feature for women is their elaborate beaded collars, which are higher in front and lower in back. The collars are made by the women themselves, and thus become more elaborate as women grow and acquire more skill. Heads are shaved to show off the beaded collars, which move around when the women dance. Beads in particular have some meaning to the Maasai, with red beads having a connection to blood, blue beads having a connection to the heavens and the Gods, and green beads having a connection to prosperity, fertility of the land, and peace. All other colors are purely decorative.