The Maasai Cultural Breakdown Paper

The Maasai Cultural Breakdown Paper

"Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people" Proverbs 14:34. This is a quote from a web site (http://www.peopleteams.org/maasai/culture.htm), that defines parallels to the culture of the Maasai. The Maasai Culture is from Southern Kenya. The culture is very family based, with many families being quite large. The Maasai own a total land area of 160,000 kilometers ( http://maasai-infoline.org/TheMaasaipeople.html ). Some of the physical characteristics include, but are not limited to, tall height, long pierced earlobes, and thin bodies. The Maasai have a saying for how they believe "it takes one day to destroy a house but to build a new one will take months, perhaps years. If we destroy our way of life to construct a new one, it will take thousands of years" (http://maasai-infoline.org/Maasaiceremonies.html).

The Maasai culture has been around since the latter part of the first millennium (http://www.environmentalaction.net/kenya/kenya_policy_failure.html). They generally stay in the same area, unless they need to hunt the lion. Only when they are forced out by Westeners or animals will they abandon

their homeplace.

WORLD VIEW

When looking at the World View it is important to remember it is timeless and must represent a fundamental set of assumptions, thoughts and options; how they see the Universe. The World View categories are:

1. Supreme being: Above all, beyond all, Culture. One and only one.

2. Super natural forces: exist on spiritual plan

3. Human beings: leader of the tribe

4. Nature: storms, grass, moon, and stars

5. Animals: Lions, cattle,

6. Inanimate: nonliving objects, a special rock.

Now we will look at how the Maasai rank and define these categories based on Richard Porter's research of their World Veiw (Samovar, Porter 2000, p. 90-98).

1. Nature:

2. Supreme Being:

3. Human beings:

4. Animals:

5. Inanimate:

6. Super natural forces:

NATURE:

The Maasai tribe live in the out-of-doors, literally- so the climate is extremely important. Drought, can bring about extinction. It would be more difficult to draw water. Women would be required to walk long distances-both exhausting and dangerous - to fill their gourds. It could kill their cattle resulting in no milk or blood for their sustenance.

SUPREME BEING

This tribe has one god. The Maasai view their god from two different perspectives. Engai Narok is seen through the thunder and the rains. While the other god, Engai Nonyokie, is for lightning.

HUMAN BEINGS

The elders are most respected in the tribe. They have a person that is their "king". Every day all tribe members will awake, and go to see the leader. He will then distribute jobs that need to get done. The people are not able to start the day without seeing the "king"; otherwise the workers could end up doing jobs that do not need to be accomplished. This would make the "king" mad.

The Maasai tribe is very dependent on animals. Without the lion, this tribe would not be able to survive. They depend on the skins for shoes and other tribal wear. The hunters wear the mane as a sign of dignity and skill. The tail of the lion is braided by women and then passed on to the hunters, to wear on special occasions (http://maasai-infoline.org/lion.html). Also, the Maasai tribe is not a cattle-eating culture, but rather use the cattle for many other things. They use it to show the wealth of a tribe; they also use it to provide milk to the tribe. In order for the culture to survive, they will mix the goat milk with the cattle's blood. This will give the people a great deal of energy and vitamins and vital components necessary to survive.

INANIMATE

The last worldview that they consider important is the inanimate. Jewelry, specifically, is most important. The older the women get, the more jewelry they will wear, and the "higher respected" they will be. Or if their husbands are master hunters, the women will wear more jewelry. They consider it very beautiful to have a long ear lobe, so they will place objects of great size in their ear, in an attempt to lengthen the ear lobe.

SUPER NATURAL FORCES

It should be noted finally, that no information was found in this category. It can be assumed that Super Natural Forces are not part of the Maasia World View and not important to their culture.

INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION PATTERNS

Having set forth and supported the rank ordering of Maasai World View, I will now examine the interpersonal communication structure among the Maasai. The Maasai language is categorized in the Chari-Nile family (http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/Hmar/Cult_dir/Culture.7860 ). Having no definite starting date, the Maasia culture has been telling stories that originated in the early 1800's.The Maasai culture has been perpetual by word of mouth. It has an oral tradition. It's communication patterns are not written down. The Maasai have no written down history.

The Maasai culture has always been one of oral tradition in which stories and teachings have been passed down through the generations by word of mouth and not by written words (Samovar, Porter 2000, p. 91,92).The Maasai stories have been analyzed since the late 1800's (http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/Hmar/Cult_dir/Culture.7860). Even with other groups writing the stories down, the Maasai are primarily an oral communication based tribe. The Maasai culture is based highly on memory. The stories aren't written down. The older you get, the more respect you have because of all the information you store (Samovar, Porter 2000, p. 91,92).

As soon as the children are born, the Maasai people will begin to tell them stories, so the knowledge will start to grow. This is mainly to teach the kids who they should have relationships with, and who not to have relationships with (Samovar, Porter 2000, p. 90). The memories and the stories are used