(from Caitlin Thomas)
This week was amazing! We finished our interviews and our data collection. We also traveled to Arusha for the weekend to visit the Maasai museum. The museum is run by actual Maasai villagers who live nearby. With the exception of cell phones, the tribe is largely untouched by the ways of "civilization". That is, they make/kill all of their food and build their houses by hand using sticks, sand, and manure. After touring the museum, our tour guide invited us to visit his home. The next day, we picked him up after work and he guided us on an hour journey to his house. The only road was a dirt path that was worn down by cows, so the ride itself was very bumpy. We arrived at his village to learn that a white person had never visited the village before. It was strange to see that many of the children were afraid of us. After about fifteen minutes, they overcame their fear and started smiling and talking to us. We saw the huts that the women make and got to taste some boiled milk. We saw the children herding huge masses of cows and goats (cows signify wealth in this culture and are actually used by the males to buy more wives) and men with huge holes in their ears. Overall, it was an awesome experience.
This week was amazing! We finished our interviews and our data collection. We also traveled to Arusha for the weekend to visit the Maasai museum. The museum is run by actual Maasai villagers who live nearby. With the exception of cell phones, the tribe is largely untouched by the ways of "civilization". That is, they make/kill all of their food and build their houses by hand using sticks, sand, and manure. After touring the museum, our tour guide invited us to visit his home. The next day, we picked him up after work and he guided us on an hour journey to his house. The only road was a dirt path that was worn down by cows, so the ride itself was very bumpy. We arrived at his village to learn that a white person had never visited the village before. It was strange to see that many of the children were afraid of us. After about fifteen minutes, they overcame their fear and started smiling and talking to us. We saw the huts that the women make and got to taste some boiled milk. We saw the children herding huge masses of cows and goats (cows signify wealth in this culture and are actually used by the males to buy more wives) and men with huge holes in their ears. Overall, it was an awesome experience.
The only stressful obstacle we encountered this week was a social encounter. Leslie, Whitney and I rode a dala dala (a bus with tons of people in it) into town to pick up some dresses that we had made. The ride there was uneventful, as was the trip to the fundi (seamstress). However, on our way home, we had to squeeze on another dala dala. The dala dalas are really just large vans that probably sit about 15 people. There are seats that fold down into the aisles, so everyone is cramped together. On top of that, the drivers usually cram even more people in, so there can be up to 30 people in a 15 person bus. The bus we took on the way home had about 26 people in it, counting us. We had to stand on top of each other's shoes next to the door. The moment we entered the bus, the riders started to glare at us. They proceeded to glare at us the whole trip home, even though we tried to smile and be friendly. At one stop, Leslie and I were rudely pushed off of the bus by people who were exiting at that stop. We later asked our translators about the experience, because almost everyone we have met has been helpful and kind. They told us that we must have been on a bus with a bunch of people from the city. They said that the people who work in the city have very different (sometimes hostile) attitudes toward foreigners than those who live in the suburbs.
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