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Maasai are best known for their distinctive customs, dress and beautiful beadwork which plays an essential element in the ornamentation of the body. Beading patterns are determined by each age-set and identify grades.

Young men, who often cover their bodies in ocher to enhance their appearance, may spend hours and days working on ornate hairstyles, which are ritually shaved as they pass into the next age-grade.
Maasai

The Maasai are an indigenous African ethnic group of semi-nomadic people located in northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. They are well known due to their distinctive customs, red and purple dress and residence near the many game parks of East Africa. This is the tribe who live on the Ngorongoro crater rim.
 
Cattle are central to Maasai economy. They are rarely killed, but are accumulated as a sign of wealth and traded or sold to settle debts. Young men are responsible for tending to the herds and often live in small camps, moving frequently in constant search for water and good grazing lands.
 
The Maasai have very elaborate "coming of age" traditions. Boys are circumcised in their early teens in a ceremony attended by the entire village. Any boy who flinches during this procedure brands himself as a coward and disgraces his family. Once circumcised, the young man becomes a member of the warrior class - a moran.  He must live apart from the village with the other warriors until his late teens or early twenties, when he is chosen to become a junior elder, earning the right to marry and return to live in the village.
 
Maasai community politics are embedded in age-grade systems which separate young men and prepubescent girls from the elder men and their wives and children. When a young woman reaches puberty she is usually married immediately to an older man. Until this time, however, she may live and have sex with the youthful warriors. Often women maintain close ties, both social and sexual, with their former boyfriends, even after they are married. In order for men to marry they must first acquire wealth, a process that takes time. Women, on the other hand, are married at the onset of puberty to prevent children being born out of wedlock. All children, whether legitimate are not, are recognized as the property of the woman's husband and his family. The man may have several huts each housing a different wife.
 
For centuries the Maasai have hunted the lions, both as a test of manhood and to protect their cattle. The lions have learned to recognize the red robes and spears and instinctively keep their distance. It is quite common to see the Maasai and their cattle walking amongst the wild animals on the crater floor.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maasai Village
Maasai Village
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maasai warriors
Maasai warriors
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maasai warriors
Maasai warriors
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maasai women
Maasai women
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Traditional jumping dance
Traditional jumping dance
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maasai must jump high
Maasai must jump high
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Joining the villagers
Joining the villagers
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Haji, our tour guide
Haji, our tour guide
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maasai hut
Maasai hut
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Shoes made from old tyres
Shoes made from old tyres
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
One hut per wife
One hut per wife
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maasai women and huts
Maasai women and huts
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maasai are cattle farmers
Maasai are cattle farmers
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Inside the school
Inside the school
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
school children
school children
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
children at play
children at play
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Making a fire with sticks
Making a fire with sticks
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
making a fire from dung
making a fire from dung