Inside Maasai Culture - Traditions of Marriage, Wealth and Womanhood

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:16][music] [music] In East Africa along the Rift Valley live the Marsai. This film was made in the western highlands of the Rift Valley near the Kenya Tanzania border.

[00:01:00]Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:01:13]Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:01:27]Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:02:13]These Messiah are animal herders.

[00:02:15]>> They despise hunting and they do not grow crops of any kind.

[00:02:20]Land is held in common and animals are the only form of wealth.

[00:02:28]And Marai love their cows. Each animal has a name and the men compose long poetic songs in praise of their herds.

[00:02:45]This is the village of an important man, a Libon or prophet. It is a large village because the Libon is rich.

[00:02:55]He has many cattle, many sheep and goats and many women and children.

[00:03:06]>> The Marsai conception of wealth is different from our own.

[00:03:11]Whereas a European tends to regard his wife and children as an expense, to a Mars, women and children are wealth in themselves.

[00:03:21]Wealth involves rights over people as well as rights over things.

[00:03:26]And a man's riches may be measured by the size of his village, which reflects not only the size of his herd, but also the number of his female dependents.

[00:03:39]It is a prosperous and leisured society and there is an abundance of natural resources.

[00:03:56]>> The Libon is especially rich. He has 12 wives, about 60 children, and numerous daughters-in-law.

[00:04:06]Yeah.

[00:04:10]Oh, >> the Marsai use everything produced by their animals.

[00:04:26]>> They eat their flesh and drink their milk. They make thongs and bed coverings from their skin and containers from their horns.

[00:04:35]It's a sign of prosperity to be able to smear the roof with pure cowong rather than with a mixture of dung and mud.

[00:04:56]A man needs a woman to build a house for him, to milk his cows, and do the household chores.

[00:05:03]But a woman needs a man far more.

[00:05:06]Because women can never have rights of ownership over any living animal to survive. They must attach themselves to some man with cows, be it father, husband, or son.

[00:05:23]This woman is the Libon's sixth wife.

[00:06:13]At about 30, a Masai man becomes an elder, a respectable citizen entitled to marry and live in the elders villages.

[00:06:22]They are the people who make the decisions about the herds and flocks.

[00:06:28]But before this, men serve as warriors.

[00:06:41]After circumcision at about the age of 18, they belonged to the army which in the past raided neighboring tribes for cattle and extended the boundaries of Masai land.

[00:07:04]Warriors do not marry and they do not live in the elders villages.

[00:07:09]They spend a lot of time in the forest and wandering about the country.

[00:07:15]>> When they do descend upon a village, it's the little girls who run their errands for them.

[00:07:34]Girls themselves are circumcised in a ceremony which is the female equivalent of male circumcision.

[00:07:41]Until then, the girls belong as a group to the warriors.

[00:07:49]A girl leads rather a carefree life. She doesn't have much work to do.

[00:07:54]She's flattered by the attentions of handsome warriors, and she has a secure home in her father's village.

[00:08:22]A girl's only anxiety as she gets older is that she should not get pregnant until she's been formally initiated into maturity.

[00:08:41]Are you The circumcision ceremony begins as a private family affair >> for the girl. It is her farewell to childhood and also to her father's village because she will leave to be married soon afterwards.

[00:09:25]This girl is going to marry one of the Libon sons.

[00:09:29]The ceremony is expected to transform a giggly girl into a mature and thoughtful woman.

[00:09:36]Her head is shaved. She relinquishes her childhood name and she gives away her jewels to a younger sister.

[00:09:44]It marks the total shedding of her previous identity.

[00:10:07]After circumcision, she is considered fertile and entitled to become pregnant.

[00:10:42]After the circumcision has taken place, the branches of a special tree are brought to marks the house where the girl is recovering.

[00:11:11]For the rest of the day, people gather from all over the neighborhood to drink honey beer and to celebrate because the ceremony marks the emergence of an adult who will increase the fertility of the whole community.

[00:11:28]It's all a bit like a white wedding, an occasion for rejoicing, especially for the parents.

[00:11:36]They are proud and happy to announce to the world that they have a daughter and that she has grown without mishap into a woman.

[00:11:49]The mother and father are smeared with red ochre.

[00:11:54]>> Later, at the climax of the party, the mother will anoint the clothes of the women guests with butter, while the father puts on women's jewels and is blessed by the men.

[00:12:07][laughter] Hallelujah.

[00:12:28]Hallelujah.

[00:12:38]New York.

[00:12:54]>> The father has already arranged his daughter's marriage with the son of his friend, the libomb.

[00:13:12]Hello.

[00:13:16]Hello.

[00:13:18]I'm Angel.

[00:13:34]I'm speech.

[00:13:56]form.

[00:14:12]That's >> [cheering] [cheering] >> How am I? [cheering] I am yellow.

[00:15:06]I am [cheering] [cheering] God.

[00:15:22]>> [cheering] >> Yeah.

[00:15:56]A stranger is being brought to the Libon's village, the new bride of one of the Libbon's sons. Her husband already has one wife, Mayani, who is waiting for her co-wife to arrive.

[00:16:17]I know.

[00:16:53]Open Okay.

[00:17:51]In Masai, to be married means to be led.

[00:17:55]As soon as the women of the village see the husband and his companions, they go out to greet them and to look for the bride who is trailing behind.

[00:18:07]Then they will descend upon her, screaming threats and insults to make her cry.

[00:18:26]I don't Now you speech All these women have been through this process. They too once left behind their mothers and everyone they were used to to settle in a strange place.

[00:19:31]Marriages are arranged between men and the bride knows neither her husband nor his village.

[00:19:40]The ritual dramatizes her helplessness and isolation.

[00:19:45]>> It requires her to express her anxieties in the midst of the women who are already established in the village. The very women on whom she will come to rely for friendship and support.

[00:20:08]The person whose behavior is most ambivalent is Mayani, the co-wife.

[00:20:22]>> Mayani held some of the worst threats, but also seems to protect her new co-wife.

[00:20:41]Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech.

[00:21:20]Nalpa approaches and the women pretend to the bride that she's mad.

[00:21:27]They will try to protect her, but they will probably be unable to do so.

[00:21:40]>> [screaming and laughter] >> Come on.

[00:21:55]Come on.

[00:22:01]Come on.

[00:22:03]Come on.

[00:22:18][laughter] Women marry young, and men don't marry until they've been through warriorhood.

[00:22:28]So, the age difference between a husband and wife is inevitably a large one. What matters to the bride is how he will turn out to treat her. Because unless he treats her with positive cruelty, she will be unable to leave him.

[00:22:45]Let's go.

[00:23:10]Fore!

[00:23:26]Foreign! Foreign!

[00:23:43]Don't give your >> [screaming] [cheering] [screaming] [cheering] [cheering] [screaming] >> Hello.

[00:25:03][cheering] The next morning, before Mayani has let the cows out, the bride emerges from her mother-in-law's house where she has spent the night. She's already a bit more cheerful.

[00:25:58]She will not sleep with her husband for another 4 days, but she's beginning to get used to his family.

[00:26:20]You find your very well.

[00:26:38]E.

[00:26:50]>> Her mother-in-law takes her across the village to meet the Libon, the bride's father-in-law.

[00:27:03]to the Libon. She is a new addition to the family who will increase the wealth and prestige of himself and his sons.

[00:27:19]A person who lives to see the circumcision of many grandchildren achieves a kind of immortality because his name will not be forgotten.

[00:27:29]>> When he dies, he is said to be merely sleeping.

[00:27:33]And he will be buried unlike ordinary Masai whose names will never again be mentioned and who will be left outside the village for the vultures and hyenas.

[00:27:53]again.

[00:28:19]Appreciate it.

[00:28:44]On her first morning in the village, the bride is introduced to the herd and given milking rights over some of her husband. usband's cars.

[00:28:53]>> Nine of these should be perfect in shape and color.

[00:29:10]>> This is an important transaction for her because the animals she gets today will form the core of the herd her future sons will inherit.

[00:29:20]And she will refer to them from now on as harin animals.

[00:30:18]After being shown her husband's herd, she is expected to weigh anyone else she sees and to demand a present from them.

[00:30:26]Not surprisingly, there are not many people around on this particular morning.

[00:30:43][laughter] >> Not one of the cows the bride obtains is hers to dispose of.

[00:30:52]And if her husband decides to sell or slaughter, there is nothing she can do about it. As Nolaya put it once, no Masai woman can ever say, "I shall sell a cow. I have a purpose in mind." She is only holding them in trust for her sons.

[00:31:11]Marriage in Mars is more to do with the organizing of rights over animals than with friendship or affection.

[00:31:18]A woman doesn't choose her husband, but she can and does choose a lover.

[00:31:29][clears throat] foreign.

[00:31:42][laughter] Okay.

[00:32:01]Yeah.

[00:32:26]>> [crying] [screaming] >> Yeah. Bye-bye.

[00:32:42]Your mother for [screaming] [screaming] yeah Marsai don't like the feeling of being alone. So friendship is very important.

[00:33:57]One of the disadvantages of not owning animals is that women don't have much that they can give as presents to their friends.

[00:34:05]But women sometimes give away their own children to their mothers or to childless co-wives and sisters.

[00:34:13]>> Nolaya gave away a girl to one of the Libon's daughters-in-law whose baby died so that she should not have to sit alone in her house at night.

[00:34:31]A woman must spare children, especially sons, [crying] >> because her sons will take over her herd when they are old enough.

[00:34:39]Otherwise, when her husband dies, the animals will be dispersed, and she will lose her milking rights over them.

[00:34:47]She will become dependent on anyone who will look after an old lady with no means of support.

[00:34:53]She will no longer eat her own food, as the Masai put it.

[00:34:59]>> The fortunes of women are almost wholly dependent on fate, on whether or not they manage to produce children.

[00:35:07]So, it's not surprising that their ideas about fertility have a religious significance.

[00:35:13]These ideas are summed up in a concept called for After their own circumcision, women only participate in ceremonies through their children.

[00:36:14]The proudest moment for a mother is when she follows a warrior son to the most splendid of all Masai ceremonies, Aayono.

[00:36:23]>> This ceremony marks a crucial transfer of dependence for her because when her children grow up, her husband will move in with his younger wives and she will go off to live with one of her sons.

[00:36:37]Aunoto is the ceremony which ends warriorhood and transforms the young men into elders.

[00:36:45]After the ceremony, they will settle down to marry and take charge of the animals to which their mothers have milking rights.

[00:37:12]The warriors from the Libon family are blessed to protect them from the evil eye of strangers they will meet at the ceremony.

[00:37:27]I'm bro [laughter] At the ceremony itself, the mothers will be seen to have succeeded in life. They have beautiful children who have grown into men who will look after their cattle.

[00:38:09]For the mothers, it is a magical and moving occasion.

[00:38:29]foreign.

[00:38:57]Oh. foreign.

[00:39:25]Hallelujah.

[00:39:31]>> [singing] [cheering] >> Hallelujah.

[00:39:53]Hallelujah.

[00:39:57]Hallelujah.

[00:40:23]Hello.

[00:40:25]Hello. Go.

[00:41:46]>> [cheering] >> Woohoo!

[00:42:23][screaming] [screaming] Hey!

[00:42:47]Look at that.

[00:43:10]the women bless the warriors with milk when they enter the village.

[00:43:20]Warriors are expected to show their emotion in a form of trance.

[00:43:31]left.

[00:43:46]Okay.

[00:44:25]Okay.

[00:44:40]helicopter.

[00:44:48]Helicopter.

[00:44:56]Another way out.

[00:45:45]I got one.

[00:45:47]I got one. I got one.

[00:46:14]The elders organize a mass blessing to mark the climax of the day's ceremony.

[00:46:53]I don't know where more.

[00:47:16][cheering] >> [cheering] >> The only people who are not happy at Aayuna are women with no children.

[00:47:53]Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech.

[00:48:28]But for those who have sons, the ceremony is perfect.

[00:48:33]These dandified and sometimes callous young men are always respectful and loving towards their mothers.

[00:48:41]One of them has slaughtered a cow to feed the party from the Libon's village.

[00:49:04]>> [cough] >> In the two years I lived in the village, people showed very little curiosity about my own culture. But the one thing women asked me about was inheritance rules. Would I have equal rights with my brothers?

[00:49:30]Because a woman cannot own cattle, the course of her life lies completely outside her own control.

[00:49:37]Women recognize the source of their vulnerability, but they explain it away by means of a myth which lays the blame on women themselves.

[00:49:58]Fore speech. forch.

[00:51:25]Come on.

[00:51:28]Hallelujah.

[00:51:30]Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:51:46]Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.