Kesuma and Kitumusote

My first day of work with Kesuma at Kitumusote was Tuesday 8/7. Monday was orientation day, and Kesuma came to talk to our group after dinner Monday night about his organization and the issues his people are facing. MWCS (Maasai Women's Cooperative Society), one of Kitumusote's initiatives, aims to educate and empower the Maasai women to enable them to support themselves when necessary and give them more of a voice in their society. There are also reforestation efforts which involve planting trees and growing gardens. In the interest of survival and because of the lack of both education and environmental awareness, many Maasai had taken to cutting and selling trees for charcoal, not realizing they were harming the land they depend on for that survival. There was a group of “old” volunteers who had been here for a while and who had already met Kesuma and had been on one of the cultural safaris he conducts to earn income for Kitumusote. They were a rowdy bunch and could be heard from all over the compound even sometimes when we were having group activities or discussions. But I noticed that when Kesuma was speaking they tiptoed past and were quiet as mice. It’s a good example of how respected and admired he is by those who meet him. My first day at Kitumusote, which is in a very modest house in Arusha, the two of us talked for a couple hours about his organization and his people. I could barely keep from pinching myself and kept thinking “I’m sitting in Africa talking to a Maasai warrior”. And quite a remarkable one, at that. One of the things that most impressed me as we talked was the strategy behind his establishment of an MWCS shop in his village. This shop allows people to avoid the 3-hour walk to the nearest market, and being a women-operated shop it forces the men to deal with the women in a new capacity in order to ultimately create a new dependency and respect. As he said it is a bit of a “trick” since this is not something most of the men would willingly do. I found this brilliant, especially considering that this is the culture in which he was raised. After we talked he showed me around and showed me some pictures from past cultural safaris in his village. He also showed me a picture from when he first visited America (he’s coming again in September). Maasai warriors carry with them a walking stick, a spear, and a knife (Crocodile Dundee’s knife is no knife), so you can imagine the issues he had with security at the airport. A couple who are friends of his and who are major supporters of Kitumusote housed him and took him to Disneyland, where he wore his traditional Maasai clothing, as he always does, and they had a picture taken which put their three faces on the bodies of Princess Leia and 2 Jedis. He found it pretty cool that they were able to do that when he was actually wearing something altogether different. He loves to listen to Bob Marley, as all the locals do, and he always sings along. To spend my mornings sitting in front of a computer in Africa next to a Maasai warrior singing reggae…what more could I ask for?