In the morning, we wander outside the village yard and climb down to the valley. For the first time in Africa, we have the chance to take a warm shower in the morning in a place, of course, least expected – a tiny Masai village. Or, to be precise, near the village, under a hot waterfall.

Joseph is waiting for us behind a hill when me and Berit relish under the warm geyser, water coming deep from the ground. Dramatic nature surrounds us, completely remote. A couple of antelopes are sneaking in the bushes on the other side of the canyon. Only the sound of a singing bird cuts into the silence. When we arrive back to the village clean and happy, Anna serves us chapati, fresh from the oven.

Our friends show us the ethnic women clothes and decorate us with Masai apparel. Later, Seret introduces us to his bow and teaches us to shoot it. A couple of arrows are lubricated with deadly poison, that’s why we’re not allowed to touch them. As for the less deadly, no matter how hard I try, they still don’t fly too far…

Seret is Daniel’s sweet apprentice. When he doesn’t quite understand what I’m asking, he forms a fine apology: I’m not really getting your question properly.

The greatest values in the culture of Masai according to Seret:

• Family.
• Livestock – cows, sheep, goats and donkeys.
• Elders in the community. One’s age is very important and the youth have to stand for the quality of the elder’s being.

The loo

The whole village share one lavatory, or, to stick to the reality – a stinking loo (a shit house would be the most accurate definition). It’s not too hard to go there in the darkness at night, but Berit still loses her appetite when she thinks about her visit there in the morning (those horrible worms…). When I saw her reaction, I decided to skip my turn. 

Seret and Joseph accompany us for about 10 kilometers on the dusty roads of the savannah, towards civilization. A family of giraffes gallop in the bushes not far from us, zebras wander on top of a hill. As for us – we walk with guys with stick legs and red gowns who both have killed a lion.

First, you have to catch the lion’s eyes, Joseph instructs. These words and the depth of his eyes haunt us of for a long time.

When entering a low-lying hut from a narrow door, we cannot detect where we actually are at the first moment. The hut is full of smoke and completely dark. Someone sits us somewhere and only then we realise where we are.

A small fireplace is looming in the middle of the shallow room, a young woman with a baby is working on something. There are bowls and tin cups on the floor. A man sitting next to us starts to explain in which room people live, with a root hanging from his mouth.

The Masai people are very hospitable, hence the guest bed we’re sitting on, every family has one. The children (and the wife) sleep in the next room, a Masai in the third one. From the stack of rugs on the children’s bed a small dirty face is looking out, flies flying around him. There are lots of flies here, soon even I feel them making my skin tickle.

The hostess flushes the pot, still on the floor, still with a baby in her lap, and makes tea for the guests. The men smoke and try to tell us the story of their village, in slow, a bit stiff English.

69 people live in the village called Olkarian Maasai Culture Center, in 17 low squared huts – manyatas - built from cow excrement, standing in a circle. These are the women who do the construction work, bring firewood, drinking water, grow the children, cook. The children have to watch the herd. They start with pasturing the sheep. Growing older, they move to watching goats, when they hit their teens, they start pasturing cows. The Masai believe that they own all the cows in the world. The ones in Estonia, too. True story.

Usually in the age of 15, a very important turn take place in the life of the Masai youngsters – circumcision.
Women, too, are still quite often circumcised. The tradition originates possibly from the time when men had to take long war expeditions. To avoid women’s lust, their clitoris is cut off. Orgasm? Heh. Yes. The Masai woman was not made for pleasure.

One of the most important goals in the life of the men is to marry as much women as possible. To do that, one must first get as rich as possible to be able to feed all the families.

Our new friend Daniel’s grandfather had 13 children. And the granpa’s last words to his grandson was that he must own enough cows to marry lots and lots of women. Daniel has 64 aunts-and-uncles. Daniel has managed to marry only one woman so far – Anna, 21 (on the picture), they have two children.

Conversations goes more and more interesting. We’re discussing the endless differences between Masai people and Europeans, drinking milky tea and chewing Khat. Khat is a plant that has an amphetamine-like effect, it causes excitement and gives energy. It is grown only in the middle of Kenya, but it is sold all over the world. Our friend Daniel is a self-taught anthropologist. He doesn’t have a degree, but despite that, he has given some lectures in universities. Colleges in Paris and Vienna are expecting him in the spring.

The Masai people, living only in Kenya and Tanzania, are divided into age groups. Every group has an elder. The future leaders are usually chosen early from the young ones. The elders are on top of the ladder in the village. Our village has 5 elders. It is told, that Masai men reach a very old age thanks to a special diet. Up to 130 years, which beats even the last Guinness World Record…

The main components for the diet are blood and meat. They drink warm cow blood. When celebrating, the blood is mixed with milk and cow urine to get a shake called Mursik, which is said to decrease the cholesterol levels.

A child enters the room, stands in front of each person and waits them to touch his head. As do we. The children have to go to school 20 kilometres from home, which explains why they got home in the dark. Every morning, they start their struggle on the path of education. When all the children have reached home in the evening, the leader steps through all of the huts to ask the men for blessing as a sign of a safe return.

One person goes to the market far away every Wednesday and Saturday to buy clothes, metal, flour, rice and fruits for the village.

We walk around the neighborhood with Joseph in the evening. He shows us the hidden merits of the forest and soon we realize, how much essential for life one can easily find from the nature. For example:

• Leleshua – a light green plant used as deodorant. Just put the twig under your arm!
• Acacia whistling tree – toothpicks, the green fruits are used as appetite enhancers. The plant whistles in the wind.
• Ilbibi – a flower with an orange blossom – crush the leaves and leave them in water for 15 minutes, drink  – reduces liver pain.
• Lobai – a bush with thin green leaves – boil in water, drink – treats syphilis.
• Ilmisi – chew the twig, you get a toothbrush. Berit tried. It works.
• If you boil Aloe roots with corn and honey, you get the aforementioned Muratina – the Hallucinodrink that really gets you there.
• Mtulele with Leleshua – boil their roots in water to get a special magic drink that enhances men’s capability way more than Viagra!

Joseph shows us how the Masai dance, sings and jumps. The Masai people believe that they have descended from the heaven. If they jump really high, they might be able to fly back.

A conversation with a man we ran into in the bushes of the savannah:

• How are you?
• Ee-ee. (=fine)
• Is everything alright in the village?
• Ee-ee.
• How are the elders?
• Ee-ee.
• How are the cows?
• Ee-ee.

We sit in the dark smokey hut until late night and discuss philosophy. We drink tea and listen to the grasshoppers, which is interrupted by a couple of mobile phones ringing. The village doesn’t have electricity nor plumbing but all the men have a cellphone. They go to charge the batteries in a few kilometres away factory.

The Masai men are happy (couldnt generalize it to the women). They live in harmony in the middle of wild nature. In peace and love. Every young warrior has to kill a lion before marrying his first wife. As it turns out, our friends are trying to modernize the culture from the inside. They have been involved in communicating to people to stop circumcising women and killing lions for a year and a half now. Still, even in our village, there’s a girl whose beautiful headdress gives away her recent circumcision.

Late at night, we fall asleep in the leleshua-scented bed and realize that is one of the most comfy ones so far we’ve had in Africa. The roosters singing and children crying. We need quite a few minutes to realize what’s going on around us – we are waking up in a small village in Africa with no electricity, there are thin people in weird clothes working around us, flies are walking on the faces of children and all the men have killed a lion with their bare hands.
Anna is already busy in the room, a tired look in her eyes. She didn’t smile once.

After saying goodbye to our beloved family, we traveled from one matatu to the other, until the two of us – white women with huge backpacks and no clue where they were – found ourselves in the middle of flower plantations, fields and pastures, with the mountains far beyond.

oon, a young man waved at us. We had the chance to settle at a YMCA camp in a house for 17 people, but just us living there.
That was the first time Berit told me about her dream to travel with a chicken. The chicken could have a rope tied to his foot and follow us everywhere that way. But that comes later.

Market

For the last safari had really bit into our budget, we bought our dinner from a local market. That was exactly like from a movie. All of the children from the village were shouting at us on their high-pitched voices: How are you! How are you!

Walking on the volcanic ash amid the spices and vegetables, every moment seemed worth capturing, like a film strip of a good movie. We couldn’t even focus on one thing. Someone was fixing rusty bicycles, someone was selling salad, the other was smoking fish, third one peeling potatoes and making French fries. We bought French fries for 0,20 € for ourselves and for the price of 0,25 € to a hungry local lady.

Park

In the next morning, we had a walk to the Hell’s Gate national park. That’s one of the few parks where people are allowed to walk among wild animals. So we strolled amongst zebras, giraffes and goats, enchanted by the dramatic landscape under the burning sun. After three hours of walking, the sun didn’t seem so amazing anymore. On the last 5 kilometres, we were lucky to get a ride from a lonely jeep driving through the deserted land, worn out from the heat. We were standing up in the back of the station wagon driving through the dusty roads of Africa, with the wind in our hair and our skirts fluttering.

Hell

We reached a place where the tricky road down to Hell’s Gate should begin. A Masai stepped to us suddenly, offering to be our guide. Of course, we thanked him and said no, on budget as we were. We’re trying to get to Hell on ourselves.

A minute later, we realized that it’s not that easy after all. You have to climb on one side of the stream that has carved a crack to the cliff, and then on the other side. Every now and then we couldn’t have been able to proceed if we wouldn’t have known the secret stones to hold on to. The Masai was smirking at our stupid self-confidence, said he doesn’t care about money and followed us sneakily to give us tips on the road.

We tried to ignore him but soon, we realized that we are those dumb city girls with no clue in the wild nature. So he followed us until we became friends – he’s called

Joseph.

We climbed the rocks in the bosom of the Mother Nature, in the depths of the volcanic cliffs, until it got really exciting. Sinister clouds rose in the sky and a heavy shower started to pour down on us. We were soaked wet with a few seconds, our feet were covered in mud, the rain was pouring on red ground. Voluptuous nature was growing about ten metres higher, down there were only me, Berit and a thin man in a red gown with a huge knife.

Heaven

One moment I feel the ground getting surprisingly hot under my feet. Steam is reeking out of the ground. I put my hand into the water falling down a cliff which explains everything. This is a volcanic hot shower. I feel the hot water falling on my back, I look around and can’t make the difference if this is reality or a dream – the picturesque nature, the air energized by the rain, the warm rocky ground and the deep brown eyes of a triber looking at me. This is not reality. This is a fairy tale.

When the rain had stopped and we had entered the Hell’s Gates our new friend asked as to come and visit his village. It was just up there, a ten minute climb. And why not stay for the night – it’s late and the YMCA camp is 20 kilometres away.

„First, we need to know something,” Berit tries to inquire. „You are not going to eat us, are you?”
„No,” Joseph laughs.
„You are not going to make soup out of us? Not even using a single hand or leg?”
„No!”

We weren’t too convinced when we made it to the top of the hill, where we could see a real Masai village. 17 huts. 69 people.

Our next stop from Masai Mara was another well-known national park Nakuru.Getting there was hell – one gap after the other, rocks and stones under the wheels. It felt like a terrible amusement park.

The traffic here isn’t right-hand nor left-hand. The car drives on that side of the road which has fewer holes.

Drama

Half way there, our beloved driver Opany (aka the trucker) scared us to death when his boss sent him a message from Nairobi. A bunch of British people wanted him as their guide and Opany was bound to leave us.

To give away our trucker? No no no…. A hot Mzungu-fire lid in us and we started to defend our rights. A couple of hours of tense negotiations with the bosses and the white women got their black Goliath with huge hands, who is a 35-year-old father of two, whose brother died of AIDS, whose wife was hit by a car, who runs an Internet cafe named Posthouse and who has been working as a trucker for the most of his life, back.

“Cafe”

In the evening, we arrived to Nakuru, the fourth largest city in Kenya. We decided to go out to explore the city on ourselves for the first time. With a pepper spray in handy, walking on the dusty road we felt everyone staring at us. Quite a few of them shouted: MZUNGU!

We sat in a cafe, where we were treated with fake hospitality that seemed like straight from a book called “How to treat tourists to make a lot of money”.

Honestly, we tried! We managed to drink a half a cup of coffee, before sight of huge cockroaches scrabbling up walls, on the floor and the chairs took our appetite completely.

Dancing with Betty the Prostitute and the trucker

Later that night Opany, who stayed with us after long struggles, fulfilled his promise to take us to see the local nightlife. Oh wow! The people here danced in a disco hall with palm-leave roof and bamboo posts to the somewhat silly sound of old-school Yamaha, bellys bulging out and butts up. Me, too, felt like dancing. Being the only mzungu dancing in a local club – now or never!
Opany preferred the company of Berit and claimed to have a sore back, so he got me a prostitute for a dancing partner. Betty the Prostitute gave me a sidelong look, took my hand and showed me the real Rumba (which had nothing in common with the Latin-American Rumba). Guys were flirting with us constantly, but I stayed true to Betty.

After a couple of drinks and a round of pool, we switched bars. Now we could hear real live music. That is, there was a real old-school Yamaha synthesizer on the stage, a set of drums and a girl with a microphone was strolling among the dancers. Just like magic, Opany’s back got better and Berit’s blue eyes didn’t seems too charming to have a sexy dance (or five) with me. Moving those hips to the drum rhythms with massive black hands on the waist of a Northern woman. We danced so well that the singer forced me to say to the microphone, where is this crazy white dancing woman from. A wild night, Berit was shivering from excitement half way through the night.

Flamingo Safari

Only a bit later, we took off our next safari, the Nakuru National Park, known for its phenomenal rhinos and magical lake, covered with light pink flamingos. A rhino is the last proud member of the Great Five. We have seen already the elephant, the buffalo, the lion and the leopard.

The Nakuru lake has salty water due to the volcanic soil which is suitable for flamingos who can find food easily there. The idyllic pink made our heads spin.

A giraffe walked towards us and didn’t agree on letting us pass. It just stood there and looked at us with a stubborn stare. Then a troop of funny monkeys were hanging around us. Then we glared at frozen rhinos who looked exactly like made of stone.

The most corrupted institution in the country – the police 

The honorable Kenyan police stopped us on our way to more civilized grounds. He examined for a while, and then discovered we’re missing a very important sticker on our windscreen. Long story short: they want bribe. Opany had no interest in paying that. Long story short: they have to arrest our safari van. With the two white woman, of course. the fat police officer squeezed himself into the bus – the backrest couldn’t be moved back up, because Berit, a white beauty, was sleeping there so prettily – and drove to the police department with us. The poor fat police officer had hard time getting out of the bus, too. He tried and tried, until eventually, he succeeded.

When Berit woke up and figured out, what has happened, she took some photos of the village street, which attracted another honorable police officer who wanted her to bribe him. We laughed at him, of course, and got away unsanctioned with only a couple of hours of waiting.

It was sad leaving the trucker.

He texted Berit for quite some time afterwards messages like: Love doesn’t choose color. U will be in mu heart for sure. I believe the world’s so small. I love you very many….