A Thin Line Between Culture and Oppression

The morning after we left Ngorongoro crater, we drove to visit a Maasai village. I felt very conflicted after my visit there.

There are many things I admire about the Massai. They leave a very small ecological footprint. They use no electricity, do not clear land to grow crops, and do not eat wild game animals. They move their villages every few years and this helps ensure that they do not overuse any one area of land. They have a respect for nature and the village we saw was kept very neat with no littering or waste strung about. The way they dress is beautiful and they make gorgeous beaded jewelry that you can find all over Tanzania. When we arrived at the village they were so welcoming. They invited us in to their homes to see how they slept and worked. They sang beautiful songs and performed graceful dances for us.

However, as a self-proclaimed feminist, there were some things I just could not get over. I wanted to approach their way of life through a cultural lens, and to try to be open minded about everything I saw, but as a 21st century female I couldn’t help but question: Where do we draw the line between culture and oppression?

The men spend months at a time away from their wife and children going out into nature where they eat and smoke meat, bringing some of the meat back to their families. In the mean time, the women watch the children, tend to the homes, gather food , water, and wood, make clothes for their family, and create jewelry to sell (their biggest source of income). As I mentioned earlier, they are a nomadic people and whenever they set up a new village the women are responsible for building the homes. The women sleep in the home with the children (and they keep their family goat in the house with them too!) .

While the women are the ones who make the jewelry, the men are the ones who get to go to town to sell it. Because they travel to the cities, all the men know how to speak their tribe’s language as well as Swahili and English. All the women we met had only ever learned the tribe’s language while all the men spoke English and they were the ones who led us on the tour.

The Massai are a group who participates in circumcision ceremonies. They start at the age of 15 or later. While the government has banned the Maasai from circumcising women, they still engage in the practice with men. Men are not allowed to scream, cry, or even flinch when the circumcision happens or they will never be considered a true man in the tribe. They will not be allowed to get married or have children.

We also visited the Maasai kindergarten school which brought a whole new set of concerns. The Tanzanian government has required the Maasai to send their children to school. This was a conflict for a while, due to the Maasai believing this conflicted with their tribal beliefs. All Maasai children now attend kindergarten through 7th grade. They will learn Swahili and some English.

The “school” we got to see was a small shack with four walls and no floor or ceiling. The walls were made with sticks with large holes in between the sticks causing dust to fly in the classroom getting in the students’ eyes. The only resources the classroom had was a small chalkboard and chalk. The students sat on the dirt floor on small logs. The classroom was by far the most pitiful classroom I have ever seen, but it’s condition paled in comparison to that of the children.

Oh, the children! In the kindergarten there were about 20 or so students ages 2 to 8. They were covered in dust and dressed in dirty, hole-filled rags. It was clear that many of the children were in desperate need of medical care. They were so excited for our visit, clinging to our hands, each eagerly reaching out for a hand-shake, high-five, or hug. They were so curious about the clothes we were wearing. One child was so fascinated with the zipper on my fleece I could not get him to turn around for a picture because he kept incessantly zipping the zipper up and down.

I became angry. The adults in the village were so clean and well – kept. They were dressed in their colorful garb and covered with their elegant beaded jewelry while their children were covered in grime and tattered rags with their noses dripping and eyes crusted closed.

I spoke with some native Tanzanians to get their perspective on the Maasai women and got two very different responses. One woman, who was born and raised in Tanzania but now resides in the United States, found the Maasai lifestyle liberating for women. They were able to run the household as they pleased without men meddling in their affairs. Another woman I spoke with, who currently is living in Dar, felt very much the same way I did, and when we visited the village she was questioning the women on their ways of life.

A large part of traveling is learning to step out of our comfort zone and recognize that our ways are not always the norm. But when does justifying actions as “culture” become oppressive?