** Masai have maintained the way they live for decades and
are one of the few tribes in Africa to stick to their cultural practices and traditions.
**Although the Maasai have strongly gripped their
traditional beliefs, their culture is uniquely transforming over the years.
Most of them live in Kenya and Tanzania.
** Traditionally, the Maasai do not bury their dead bodies,
they simply thrown to the wild forests for scavengers. Burials are believed to
harm the soil and is reserved only for some community chiefs.
In fact, in some occasions, the dead would be smeared with
fat so as to easily attract wild animals to eat the bodies.They believe that
once someone is dead his journey is over.
They believe that their God, Enkai, gave them all the cattle
in the world when the sky and earth split, and cattle rustling is just an
activity of taking back what belongs to them.
A man’s wealth is also determined by the number of cattle he
owns and the children he has.
When a man sires only girls, he is expected to prevent one
of his daughters from getting married.
The young woman was then authorized to have children at her
father’s home, with any man of her choice. If she gives birth to a male child,
he was pronounced the heir of the old man’s property.
No one in the traditional Maasai community was allowed to
inherit land, only cattle could be inherited.
The elders of the tribe drink fresh cattle blood to
alleviate hangovers after a night of drinking alcohol.
Maasai families live in an enclosure called a Enkang which
typically contains ten to twenty small huts. The enclosure is protected by a
fence or bushes with sharp thorns.
Masai huts are very small, with usually only one or two
rooms and not high enough for these tall people to stand.
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