As I promised, here is the story of my trip to a Maasai village.

Now that school is out for the between school year break (the school year starts in January), my mom has come to see me, bring me many wonderful goodies, and tour some of the country. I had to go up to Arusha a couple days early to sort out payment for part of our Safari. I know two people in Arusha: Megan at YWAM and Tait from Peace Corps. Megan and her fiancé had left Arusha that morning to visit his family in Zimbabwe, and Tait was off climbing Mt. Meru (not quite as high as Kilimanjaro). So what was I to do? I called up Lemiray to see if he wanted to meet me in town. Of course he did. But he was leaving to go to his village to try to secure funds for this new school year. I knew that what I had to do would only take a small part of the next morning; without anything else to do in Arusha, I asked if I could go with him to his village.

The next morning we did what I needed to do and some things he needed to do. Then we took off for his village near the Kilimanjaro airport. (Conveniently located to pick up mom.) Once we got to the airport, we had to walk completely around it to get to his village – a dusty two hour jaunt around one end of the runway and no public transport. The area is a lot like Eastern Oregon: high desert.

He pointed out the place where he grew up and told me a little more about himself. We passed his family's old house (which seems to be abandoned) and traveled on, greeting many people as we passed and giving homemade sugar cookies to the children. Finally we reached the houses of one of the village leaders. He has two houses because a Maasai man must give each of his wives their own house. He is also building an even larger one (portelling a third wife? Who knows? I'm sure he hopes so!). We sat for a long time in his unfinished house watching the sun set and drinking some chai (tea with milk and spices) while I answered their questions about America as best I could with my limited Swahili (thus fulfilling goal one of Peace Corps).

After dark they brought in a huge pile of roasted sheep meat for five or six of us to share. As is the tradition of the Maasai, the sheep was slaughtered and cooked by the young men. If a woman so much as looks at the meat, the young men (my friend Lemi included) are not to eat it. Lemi explained that this was to force the young men to gather together for meals and to be friends with each other. After I had eaten my fill, the village leader was apparently not satisfied that I had eaten enough, because he had his wife cook the liver. Since I was the guest, and he is no longer a young Maasai, we were the only ones to eat it. I was as stuffed as Santa Claus after his Christmas rounds of Milk and Cookies.

The exciting part about the sheep wasn't that it was just food. You should understand that the Maasai only kill an animal for special occasions. They truly treated me as an honored guest by serving a sheep for dinner.

That night the village leader gave his bed to me and Lemi while he slept on couch cushions in his first wife's room. His second wife has her own little house.

The next morning we went out to see Lemi's grandmother. We finally reached her little two-room, mud-walled house which she shares with a daughter and two grandchildren. Lemi's grandmother and aunt wept for some five or ten minutes after seeing him. After the tears had subsided, I politely offered our gift of a kilo of sugar and a "Takwenya" (a greeting to women). Lemi recounted his adventures of the big city of Arusha and education while I drank some boiling hot tea. Before we left Lemi's grandmother gave me a present of a beaded cross Maasai necklace which I am sure was her very own.

On the way back to the house where we stayed, we had to stop for more tea with some more extended family members. Once we arrived at the house, we were given even more tea and bread while the men prepared the leftover sheep meat and a soup made from the blood and some milk. Before you get squeamy (like I did), I'll tell you that I did NOT try the soup, but maybe next time I will be brave enough to try it. Finally the time came where I had to waddle over the dusty landscape back to the airport to meet mom.

Before I leave off, I would like to tell you a little about Lemi's story.

I met Lemiray at the YWAM base in Arusha where my friend Megan is living. I was traveling through after my Thanksgiving visit at Singida. Lemiray, who was staying at the base for a short time participating in an English course, had come to ask Megan for some help with a presentation he was doing about America. The next morning we had breakfast before I left to catch a bus back home. He patiently answered many of my questions about Maasai practices.

His parents had died a few years back, and the wealth from his father went to his oldest son (not Lemi). This brother pissed away the wealth with alcohol (such a common story isn't it?) and parties leaving nothing left for the three other wives and all the children for education and other things. Yes, that was three other wives. Maasai often take more than one wife.

When Lemi got a little older, he went to Arusha to work as a guard. That didn't pay very much, but he discovered that he really wanted to go to school and learn English, but he didn't make nearly enough money to go to school. He moved back to his village and tended cattle. I'm not sure when, but a few years ago some of Lemi's brothers decided that he should give up his dream of school and move back to the village, get a wife or two, and tend cattle. They even paid the dowry for a wife for him. Lemi did not want a wife just yet as he was trying to go to school. Lemi tried to return his "wife" to her father, but was told that he had to take it up with his own family. He tried to talk with his brothers, but instead of trying to help and encourage him they beat him up. He has scars which still hurt where they stuck sticks into him and beat him.

One day a former primary school classmate was on a broken down bus near where Lemi was tending his cattle. He invited Lemi back to his home in Arusha. This is the part where good things happened, and Lemi found a way to go to school and live with this friend's family for free.

Since he is past the age to go to a normal secondary school, the cheapest option for him is to attend a special program which teaches forms 1 and 2 the first year, 3 and 4 the second year, and 5 and 6 the third year. It is kind of like a GED program. But this program costs 300,000 per year plus fees for exams at about 20,000 per year. At the current exchange rate this is 300 dollars. But the funding from last year is not able to fund him this year. He has already found 200,000. I tell you this so that you can get an idea of what education here costs, both financially and emotionally. I am not asking you to send money. I have already decided that I will help my friend finish his education myself. Before I left the states I saved some money and am able to do this, so don’t worry. If you would like to sponsor a student in Tanzania, let me know. There are organizations which allow you to donate from the states and get a tax deduction.

In one of my recent emails I mentioned that I have become a bit jaded toward many charitable organizations. That statement was a bit rash, and the thought was not very well fleshed out. Please allow me to explain a bit more. The topic of wells is a bit complicated. First, water, clean water at that, is very important. I'm all for water. I love water. I like to drink it, bathe in it, swim in it, grow crops with it, and wash my clothes in it. And I'm all for wells too. Wells are a great way to get all that water I'm so fond of. The problem comes when you pump water into a semi-arid landscape that isn't used to water. Creating a little oasis in such a place has in the past attracted more people to that place. These people bring their goats, sheep, and cows to the surrounding area. The animals eat all the available vegetation, the already fragile topsoil dries up, and, without those plants to break up the wind and their roots to anchor the soil, the wind blows away the topsoil creating a brand new desert. Then the people don't have any way to support their animals, they haven't learned any new skills to survive, and thus are forced to move from the place.

Contrast that scenario with this one. The landscape receives enough rain to support an already vibrant plant ecosystem. Unfortunately, surface water has been contaminated. A well is dug to provide clean water suitable for boiling and then drinking. Now, in this second case, animals could also overgraze the area, but because it already has more rain, the plants recover much more quickly. The problem isn't the well; the problem is the densification of people who are trying to live without any modification to their lifestyles.

This problem as I have laid it out is oversimplified, and the problems and the answers are both very complicated. My concern is that many aid organizations, especially smaller ones, tend to overlook many of the long term consequences of their actions. I mentioned World Vision in particular. I think that many of the things World Vision does are extremely helpful: food stuffs to displaced peoples, wells (when constructed in the right circumstances), AIDS relief, orphan care, plus more.

But let’s also look at the case of education in Tanzania. In the next five or ten years Tanzania wants to build 2500 new secondary schools. With about 25 teacher training colleges graduating about 100 new teachers each year, that is only one teacher each year for each of those secondary schools with 120 to 200 students per grade level. That might be okay if the teachers would stay teachers, but many young teachers see teaching as a step toward university or something else. After university, very few return to teaching. This high attrition rate is wreaking havoc on the schools Tanzania already has. Instead of focusing on building new schools it already cannot afford (much less maintain with adequate supplies and teachers), it should be focusing on improving the quality of the education in the schools it has on hand. And can you guess where the money for those new schools is going to come from? That's right, US of A, Europe, and Japan - Tanzania's national budget is 75% from foreign aid (as reported in a leading national Tanzanian newspaper).

If you didn't get this in an email, please let me know. If you don't know my email, guess you'll have to find someone who does.