Lessons learned in community spirit – a Moldovan visits Kenya

Victoria Apostol, of Promo-LEX Association from the Republic of Moldova, recently visited Kenya on a study exchange organized through MRG’s Global Advocacy Programme. Here she reports back on the minority communities she visited and the valuable lessons learned during her trip.

Learning from others could become a universally recognized solution for the problems faced by many minorities around the world. Exchanging thoughts, ideas, opinions, and even business cards, represents an important and necessary step in promoting and maintaining diversity in this modern world.

Not as simple as it sounds. But learning and exchanging are two processes which require attention, passion and good intentions. Over seven days, myself and four other friends from European organizations had the pleasure to be involved in such a process through a study visit to Kenya, organised by Minority Rights Group International.

Kenya is an amazing and interesting country from a social and cultural point of view; home to a rich diversity of minority communities, all trying to build a democratic country through involving themselves in promoting and protecting minority rights. Additionally, the new Kenyan constitution represents a myriad of new opportunities for the inclusion of the country’s citizens, and in particular for minorities.

Victoria visits Kenya

It all sounds good, however in practice to realise their rights provided for in the new Constitution minority communities need first of all to be involved in elections, not only as voters, but also as electoral candidates. In this sense, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to observe and participate in preparatory meetings during our trip, which aimed to inform minority communities about their rights according to the new constitution, and how they should take part in the election process.

We visited three communities: Endorois, Ogiek and Maasai. Each of them is unique, but on the other hand, all of them are minorities and have common needs as such.

Endorois land was originally appropriated by the Kenyian government in the 1970s to create the Lake Bogoria National Reserve. The fact that they were evicted from their land affected their life-style and livelihood. Therefore, the main issue for this community is land rights. However, they try to improve their own situation through different socio-economic initiatives and are not waiting around for the state to help them. For example we visited an Endorois honey factory which has double importance for the community. On the one hand it is a source of employment, and on the other it provides an income for all 15 members of the community involved.

The Ogiek community, who live in the Mau forest, near to Nakuru, was the second place we visited. Ogiek are a traditional forest dwelling people, who were also driven from their homes by both the British colonial and Kenyan governments, in order to log the forests and make way for agricultural projects.

We visited two Ogiek schools, both of which are financially supported by parents who farm for a living, whilst most of the teachers work voluntarily. The school buildings are small and rudimentary, but this aspect doesn’t stop the children going to school. Education is of great importance for the Ogiek community, but still there are things which need to be improved. The schools do not have a proper libary, nor enough books, whilst space for school activities is limited.

Victoria with a Maasai woman

The Maasai from Magadi live in one of the hottest places in Kenya, meaning access to water is a real issue for them. This community is distant from any towns which also creates some difficulties in terms of access to health and other services. What struck me most about the visit to the Maasai was how the community endeavours to empower women through community-based activities. For example, women are organized as a distinct group, addressing issues concerning them directly. One of them was even appointed as a community leader, a major breakthrough in this male-dominated traditional culture, while the majority of women are no longer afraid to speak out about their problems.

All these things impressed me in a special way. I enjoyed discovering Kenya and learning from minorities what it means to work in a community; to share the spirit of collectivity; to find the power and strength to fight against cruel injustices; to be optimistic and to exercise democracy together by knowing our rights as minorities and claiming those rights.

The experience was incomparable for me. I realised how wrong it is to assume something about another culture before fully understanding it. Most of all the study visit brought to my attention the many things which we Europeans could learn from African communities, not least for instance how we should appreciate more the education we receive, despite the conditions under which we sometimes study.

I left Kenya wishing to be back as soon as possible to discover more about this country, and more importantly, it set my mind to thinking how I can do something concrete in support of its minority communities.

Part 1: How to Skin a Porcupine

Daniel Openshaw, MRG’s Publications Intern, reports back from the Expert Seminar on Indigenous Peoples’ Languages and Cultures. In the first of two blogs he discusses the importance of cultural rights and their inseparability from rights to self determination and land.

I have no idea how to skin a porcupine, but then I do not speak Innu-aimun, the language of Canada’s indigenous Innu. Innu-aimun has specific terms describing how to kill and prepare porcupine, for which there is no equivalent in other languages. Those who don’t speak Innu-aimun will be able to guess, they might hack away at the rodent, trying to avoid being pricked by one of its sharp spines until it resembles a steak, over time even cultivating methods resembling those that Innu have been using for centuries. However, there will be no efficient way of explaining these processes to others if Innu-aimun ceases to exist. This cultural wealth and ancestral knowledge will be lost…at best assigned to the history books with the useful words assimilated (‘borrowed’) into more dominant languages, at worst, forgotten.

This example highlights a recurring theme that emerged at the Expert Seminar on Indigenous Peoples’ Languages and Cultures, organised by Dr Alexandra Xanthaki from Brunel Law School in collaboration with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which I attended in March. Majority cultures have a longstanding history of dismissing and assimilating indigenous cultures and languages that are often differ radically from the mainstream.

A panel of expert speakers and OCHCR representatives gather during the Expert Seminar on Indigenous Peoples’ Languages and Cultures

Academics and indigenous representatives from around the globe attended in order to aid the development of a study by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the behest of the UN Human Rights Council under resolution 18/8 of September last year. The aim of the study is to investigate the role of languages and culture in the promotion of the rights and identity of indigenous peoples.

The seminar emphasized the importance of preserving and promoting cultural rights and also important issues standing in the way of this. Professor Elsa Stamatopoulou, former Chief of the UN Permanent Forum on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, summed up the conundrum: human rights are seen as the weak part of international law and within these rights cultural rights are seen as the weakest, as illustrated by the make-up of the ICESCR which covers Economic rights (E) and Social rights (S) from articles 1 through to 14 and then tags on Cultural rights (C) as a vague afterthought in article 15. Things are improving with the introduction of UNDRIP, which although legally non-binding has achieved almost universal recognition and indicates a step forward to recognizing what Professor Stamatopoulou referred to as ‘the essentiality of cultural rights’, not simply as a luxury secondary to a person’s right to food and water.

Maasai child in front of traditional hut. Credit: Kibuyu

‘If you don’t have a traditional culture or speak a traditional language then you are a slave’ – a Swahili proverb that emphasizes that the right to maintain one’s culture is fundamental to one’s right to self-determination. Lucy Mulenkei, head of the Indigenous Information Network, further illustrated this through the displacement of Maasai in Kenya.

When they are displaced, for whatever reason, it is almost certainly a non-indigenous person who has decided they must be displaced and they might be moved to areas where traditional materials are unavailable to build traditional huts in traditional ways. Perhaps without malice but definitely with indifference, decision-makers have not taken into account the cultural rights of indigenous peoples and in doing so have denied the Maasai part of their identity.

Cautious optimism did prevail at the seminar, especially because of recent developments in the recognition of cultural rights, often in conjunction with land claims. Dr Jeremie Gilbert of Middlesex University highlighted the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ (IACHR) 2001 landmark ruling in favour of the Mayagna community of Awas Tingni, Nicaragua. Logging permits had been granted on indigenous land by the state without obtaining the free prior and informed consent of local communities. The IACHR recognized Awas Tingni land as property of the Mayagna peoples on the basis of traditional use and occupancy, equal to the social integrity of the community.

Traditional Maasai huts. Credit: J. Czliao

Dr Kristin Hauser of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law also highlighted how the Supreme Court of British Columbia had allowed traditional culture to be heard on a equal footing to anthropological and scientific evidence in the case of a land dispute involving the Tsilhqot’in first nations peoples of Canada. Given the evidence, the judge stated that 50% of disputed land should have been awarded to the indigenous community but as this was an ‘all or nothing’ claim, no land could actually be awarded. Nevertheless, the recognition has been heralded as a victory.

Furthermore, MRG has been involved in the case of the Endorois in Kenya, semi-nomadic pastoralists who were evicted from their ancestral land in the 1970s to make way for a national park. Here the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) took the rights to religion, culture and access to natural resources, together to be equal to the right to cultural integrity and used this to award the Endorois land rights and posthumous compensation; a positive step but one that two years on is yet to be implemented.

These cases illustrate the inseparable nature of cultural rights and land rights, further emphasizing the essentiality of cultural rights. This will be explored in MRG’s ‘State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples’ to be launched on June 28^th, which this year focuses on natural resources and extractive industries.

However, what is striking is the lack of acknowledgment of linguistic rights in the ACHPR definition of cultural integrity. This is a cause for concern as Dr Mark Harris of Adelaide University pointed out; Aboriginal land claims in Australia are often imbedded in language, a discussion that will be continued in my next blog…

Part 2 – Maasai women speak up of abuse and violence

MRG’s media officer Farah Mihlar shares her stories from the sidelines of a media training for community activists in Nairobi, Kenya. Read part 1 here.

Part 2

Yes, they did make it on time, but Stella overslept. The poor thing was completely embarrassed as she came down to a few grumpy stares, though just 30 minutes late. Our trip was to Mara to visit Maasai communities. Joining us was Jedrzej, a journalist working for Polish political weekly magazine, Polityka. His visit is part of an MRG project to increase awareness of issues on minority and indigenous communities in the EU new member states.

Despite coming in earlier than the two party animals, I was knocked out and fell asleep through the early part of the journey, only to be woken to Jedrzej clicking his camera to some of the most breathtaking views I have ever seen. We were driving on a road nestled in between towering mountains. Narok town is a little less than 3 hours from Nairobi.

Our master guide Kedoki and the ever entertaining Eunice, both colleagues of Esmael and Stella, join us as we make our way to Mara. We are stocked with peanuts, water bottles and Esmael’s great idea of Kenyan ice cream. The drive to Mara is arduous and long, the road is in a terrible condition but the company is excellent. We talk about life, kids, romance. When we finally get to Mara, we are stopped at the gate to the wildlife reserve, and asked to buy tickets. While we are swamped by women selling beaded chains and wooden carvings, only Kedoki’s masterful negotiations and contacts within the community get us in. At the entrance to the village we visit, young Maasai men, in colourful robes, welcome us. They sing and dance to a traditional welcome song, whilst Esmael and Jedrzej have to join in.

We are later taken on a tour of the village. We meet women making beaded ornaments, and they show us their hunting tools and how to start a fire. Much of the tour is touristic and it is clear that the villages in Mara have had to adapt themselves to the increasing numbers of tourists visiting the game reserve. I try to avoid the tour guide, and speak to the elders and women about the difficulties they face. The elders explain that they have very limited access to health facilities and schools. They have to walk miles to get to the main road and hope a passing vehicle stops to take a sick person to hospital. ‘We get nothing from the government. You saw the road you came on, they can’t even build the road,’ they say. The Kenyan government earns millions of dollars from tourism, Maasai Mara being one of the most visited places.  It is getting dark and we have to leave to get out of the reserve before it is too late.

I crash into bed, in the guest house room, and watch the Kenyan version of X Factor. The talent was amazing, several Whitney Houston’s and Mariah Carey’s in the making. Just as I was beginning to warm up to the Simon Cowell equivalent on the judging panel  there was a power cut!

I am woken on Sunday morning by the call to prayer from the Narok mosque, and again a few hours later by an array of different church sessions. There are several evangelical groups that practice in Narok. All have their own choirs and sermons that are played out on loudspeakers.

On Sunday, we visit another village closer to Narok. Miriam has helped organise this. Pauline Kinyarkoo, who works with Miriam and is a local councilor, takes us around.  Pauline is a larger-than-life character; she is full of life and energy, kindness and love. We first stop to pick up Mary, a peer advisor to the village we are visiting. It is Sunday so she is at a service in the makeshift little church by her house. Little kids sing and dance the praises of Jesus.

Pauline Kinyarkoo, a woman Maasai activist and councilor, addresses elders in the community

As we enter the village, Pauline first introduces us to the elders. In African tribal culture elders have a very important role to play, respecting them and seeking their approval is a must. After interviewing the elders, Pauline gathers the women in the village so I can speak to them about gender issues in the community. We go and sit under a tree outside the village fence, surrounded by the vast, beautiful terrain of dusty land stretching miles before reaching the mountains.

The women take time, but slowly start talking about the difficulties in their lives. Maasai women, like most pastoralist women, are discriminated against and ill treated on all fronts. They suffer discrimination by people from other communities, those who live in the towns, who look at them as backward, ignorant and dirty. They have no place in their own community, and are oppressed through various cultural practices, including child marriage, polygamy and female genital mutilation. They open up, with their stories, their pain, both physical and emotional. I am touched by their willingness to share these intimate, painful experiences. I ask if I can write about them – they tell me to take their stories to the world.

Maasai women in Kenya

On our return we stop at Mary’s home for a cup of tea. She has six lovely children, I ask if I can take her smallest.  The little fellow cringes behind her as she teases to send him with me. We have to leave as it is getting late and I need to return to Nairobi.

I leave Kenya with many wonderful memories, the beautiful landscape, the music and rhythm, the spicy food and the diversity and different stories from each community. But what I will never forget is the tremendous courage and strength of all of the women I met, in Nairobi, Narok, and Mara, who fight tirelessly everyday to give their young girls a better life.

• View a gallery with additional images from Farah’s trip to Mara – part of the Minority Voices Newsroom

Part 1 – Training, interviewing, community visits and clubbing – all in a week’s work.

MRG’s media officer Farah Mihlar shares her stories from the sidelines of a media training for community activists in Nairobi, Kenya.

Part 1

I think in my previous life I must have been born to an indigenous community in Africa. I have been just twice, to Uganda and Kenya, but on both times I have had an instant connection.  Like in my last trip to Kampala, this time too, in Nairobi, I was there for a regional training for community activists on how to use the media. The training was, as always, intense and interesting, but I want to share here some of my experiences outside of the class room.

The first lesson on African culture came even before the training started. I reached Nairobi over the weekend and on the Sunday decided to go to a popular coffee place to check e-mails and prepare my presentations (I know it’s sad – I do on occasion work on weekends!!). While waiting for a hot chocolate that took forever and trying to reply to e-mails, I struck up a conversation with a Kenyan, Indian-Muslim girl seated beside me. Shortly, I was introduced to a male friend of hers and we got chatting about Islamic practices and cultures…the conversation led to being asked out for dinner…followed by two text messages and one call (in a matter of hours)….followed by me completely freaking out!

Perhaps it was being in a new country as a woman alone, or possibly just having got used to the London dating culture, where this sort of thing would happen only when the guy is properly drunk.  I was only calmed by a sweet brotherly lecture from my colleague Mohamed. I decided to solicit his advice and to keep him informed – just in case. I can still picture Muhammad scowling at me, gesturing wildly ‘This is normal in Africa, this is our culture, what is wrong with the men in London’ (I’d like the answer to that too!). Calm down Farah,’ he says, ‘remember we are hunters, we go behind people.’ Great consolation Mohamed, I have now turned into a prey animal. That works well for the feminist in me!

During the course of the week the training was far too demanding to be distracted by anything. My role was to help activists think like journalists – spot the good story, know how to tell it but also to be sensitive and get their point across effectively. We practiced through case studies which the different teams came up with, such as low level violent conflicts amongst pastoralists and tension in South Sudan ahead of the referendum.

Participants learn to operate a camera at the training

Days two and three were run by the illustrious Lee Kanyare, who together with his assistants Christine and Njoroge,  brought the world of filmmaking and audio/video editing alive. We watched movies till late in the evening about different communities in Africa, and participants made their own short films interviewing each other on the issues they worked on.  The last day was learning to create websites, which was conducted by Carson, who is himself from the indigenous Endorois community. Most of the participants were from Kenya, from several different communities, including Maasai, Ogiek, fisher communities and Endorois. There were two participants from Southern Sudan.

As media officer, I had a dual role to play.  One was to train and the second was to gather content for MRG’s new Minority Voices Newsroom.  This meant lunches and dinners were spent chatting to people learning about their lives, the issues they work on, and grabbing them during coffee breaks to do quick interviews.  I learnt fascinating stories from Anne, Miriam and Maryam, about Maasai cultural practices that affect women and girls. Cherono, the first university graduate from the hunter gatherer Ogiek community, talked of the many obstacles she had to go through to get her qualification. Kipkazi and Evans always kept our spirits up telling us how the Endorois were trying to reap the benefits of the success of a recent land rights case. Paul kept the focus on South Sudan without letting the Kenyans steal the limelight. Dalmas knew just about everything on minorities in Kenya.

Participants at the media training in Kenya

Despite the tight schedule, I did however manage to cram in two other interesting activities. The first was to visit the Nubians, a small minority community in Kibera, Nairobi’s slum area. The Nubians trace their history to pre-biblical times. They moved across Egypt to Sudan, where the small numbers who live in Kenya originated from. Despite having lived in Kenya for centuries, even before colonial rule, the Nubians lack proper recognition, have no legal ownership of their lands and struggle with poverty and unemployment.

The second activity was more exciting than interesting. I managed to squeeze in 30 minutes of proper African clubbing with my friends Stella and Esmael, who were also participants. Stella is originally Maasai, living in Narok and working on gender rights and Esmael is Somali Kenyan working on sexual rights and HIV prevention. Unfortunately I don’t have a bone of rhythm in me,  certainly not compared to Kenyans.  I would have loved to stay longer but I had to wake up at 6 am to leave for a community visit. Stella and Esmael were supposed to be our guides, they promised to leave in time to make it by six. If you want to know if that happened you will need to read part 2.

Oh, and if you are wondering if I ever went on the date…well I’ll leave that to your imagination!

• Read part 2 of Farah’s blog post from Kenya!

Part 2 – “We have become squatters in our own home.”

In the second part of his 2-part blog, Carl Soderbergh reflects on a land rights issue which is confronting Maasai in Loliondo District of northern Tanzania. See Part 1 here.

While the Maasai whom Lucy and I met in Loliondo are not directly affected by what is happening to those living in the Ngorogoro Conservation Area, they follow it with concern. More particularly, they have their own land problems.

This was most vividly described to us by Sandet Reiya, elder of Mondorosi sub-village. Mondorosi lies to one side of a valley, the sides of which are dotted with several other smaller sub-villages. In the middle of the valley is a large stretch of mixed savannah and forest. The seasonal Pololet river flows through the valley. When Lucy and I arrived in Mondorosi, there were easily 150 men and women waiting to talk to us about their problems. We sat around an acacia tree and gazed out over the valley unfurled below us. In the far distance, I could see the silhouettes of giraffes loping across open ground.

Sandet Reiya

Sandet looked out over the valley. He waved his staff across the expanse and said bitterly, “It is very simple. A person is welcomed into a house and is entertained by the owner. Instead of just visiting, the person occupies all of the place and the owner becomes a refugee… We have become squatters in our own home.”

The placement of the sub-villages follows Maasai traditional good husbandry practices – their communities are built away from the open areas in order to reserve the best land for their cattle.

This practice was drastically curtailed in 2006 following the purchase of over 12,000 acres across the middle of the valley by Tanzania Conservation Limited (TCL), a company linked to the American tour operator Thomson Safaris. TCL bought the land from the state-owned Tanzanian Breweries Ltd. (TBL). TBL’s title dated from the 1980’s but had been disputed by the local communities, who complain of improprieties at the time of the sale. In particular, there are questions concerning whether the Maasai who signed the sale agreement with TBL really had the authority to do so. The communities lost their claim in court and were sadly too impoverished to keep travelling to Arusha in order to follow up the case, missing their opportunity to appeal. At any rate, TBL only cultivated 700 acres and did not establish possession over the rest of the land, so the Maasai of the area continued to graze their livestock on the stretches of savannah above Pololet river.

While questions remain regarding TBL’s title, a further issue is whether the open stretch of land in the middle of the valley was TBL’s to sell and TCL’s to buy. It may largely be open ground, but it was not unoccupied. The fact that there are wild animals there to look at is not an accident. It is very much due to the Maasai communal approach to land as well as their traditional respect towards wildlife. In short, the valley was not Terra nullius.

View over Maasai bomas and towards the disputed land

When Thomson moved in, they sought to create a wildlife sanctuary on the property. Villagers state that Thomson security guards used force to evict Maasai caught grazing on the land. Bomas, the thorn-bush cattle pens typical of Maasai settlements, were reportedly burnt down, and men and boys caught herding livestock on the property are alleged to have been beaten and taken to the police.

One clear sign of the violence was the fact that when we drove between communities on the access roads that run along the edges of property, the boys herding goats or cattle would run and hide when they saw us coming. Everywhere else, the young goat-herders would stand alongside the track, waving and laughing as we drove by.

While Thomson dispute the accounts, Lucy and I met two victims, as well as many others who described helping those who had been beaten. One of the victims is David, a man in his twenties whom we met in Mondorosi.[1] He described being caught near Pololet river in 2007. Six Thomson security guards ordered him to get into their vehicle. When David refused, the security guards kicked him and beat him with sticks. David was pushed to the ground; one man sat on his chest and held him by his throat. The beating lasted an hour, David said. He rolled up his trouser legs and showed us the scars. David was taken to the police station in Loliondo, where he was held for 24 hours. He did not receive food, water or any medical help. He was released after the community raised 100,000 Tanzanian shillings.

The involvement of the police appears to form a pattern and explains why the victims have not dared to bring charges against their assailants. Another Maasai was shot in the jaw in 2008, when he and nine others demonstrated on the property; police arrived and started shooting when the group refused to disperse.

At each of the meetings, Lucy and I asked the women who were present how they viewed the situation. I was struck by the response we got from the women of Sukenya sub-village, who otherwise praised Thomson for the income-generating scheme it had introduced – namely a market for handicrafts to which it brings its visitors. These women are presumably benefitting from Thomson’s presence. And yet they also emphasized that access to land is a gender issue, since it affects their families. It is their children who are being beaten, they said.

PWC Women’s Choir

On our final day, Lucy and I were invited to the PWC women’s choir graduation ceremony. The songs were beautiful, and some of the women began crying while they were singing. One of the songs was about the land issue. With tears streaming down her face, the chairwoman of the choir stepped forward and pointed towards the children sitting off to one side. She said that their children are being beaten and some are getting lost in the bush as they run away.

Maanda Ngoitiko

Lucy and I met with Thomson representatives on the last day of our visit to Tanzania. They expressed an interest in a mediated solution. We welcomed this, given the strong emotions the situation arouses. Indeed, Maanda Ngoitiko, Coordinator of PWC, put it simply. She said,  “Since Thomson came, I have had no peace of mind.” At the same time, the Thomson representatives vigorously denied all accusations of violence, saying  variously that it had only occurred during the days of TBL, that it had been exaggerated because of the political ambitions of local NGOs, and that it was due to inter-clan rivalries – something that we as foreigners could not comprehend during such a short visit.

In my mind, though, none of Thomson’s arguments explains why those little boys ran away and hid in the brush, leaving their goats and cattle untended, whenever they saw us coming in our 4-wheel drive vehicle. And when we parted company, I wondered what Thomson’s customers would make of the fact that their very presence strikes terror in the heart of young boys.

• See also: Condé Nast Traveler‘s recent article “Last days of the Masai?“

Notes

1. David’s name has been changed to protect his identity.

Part 1 – Terra nullius

Carl Soderbergh, MRG’s Director of Policy and Communications, posts a 2-part blog on the issues confronting Maasai communities in the Serengeti and Ngorogoro regions of Tanzania. In the first part, he considers the fact that Maasai have faced repeated evictions over the past several decades.

Terra nullius is a Latin expression used in ancient Roman law meaning “empty land” or “land belonging to no one”. The doctrine permitted title to be claimed to land through occupation. It was repeatedly applied by European empires to justify the seizing of land in the Americas, in Oceania and in Africa. Essentially, European governments turned a blind eye to indigenous land ownership when applying the doctrine. In part, this was because the often communal land use of indigenous peoples do not follow the same patterns of land ownership as in Europe. Mostly, the doctrine was a convenient excuse for the colonisation of whole continents.

I reflected often on the doctrine of Terra nullius during a recent trip to Tanzania. I was travelling with my colleague, MRG’s head of law, Lucy Claridge. We went there in order to study the situation of Maasai in Loliondo district, a hilly area abutting the Serengeti National Park to the west and the Kenyan border to the north. To the south and east rise the airy highlands around the Ngorogoro Crater. We travelled with friends from the Pastoralist Women’s Council (PWC), an MRG partner organisation which works to support Maasai women in several villages in the area.

In principle, Terra nullius has been repudiated in international law through a series of decisions by national courts and regional tribunals recognising indigenous land claims. The African Union’s decision in the Endorois case concerning Kenya is one of the most recent. Sadly, though, Terra nullius has not been buried with the passing of the European empires but rather lives on in new ways, not least in the blindness outsiders have to traditional patterns of relating to the land.

Lucy and I participated in several large village gatherings in the area. Every speaker was given the time to speak for as long as he or she chose. At each meeting, we asked those gathered what their major concerns were – an open question, since we were there to hear how best MRG could support the communities via PWC. The participants would first discuss among themselves what topics they as a group should prioritise. The meetings could take over five hours, but the gatherings seemed to be as much about the conversations as the results achieved.

In every single meeting, the participants agreed about what was foremost on their minds – land. Access to land is a vital issue for Maasai, given the very central place reserved in their culture for their livestock and the inherent vulnerability of pastoralism to periods of drought when access to secure water sources is quite literally a matter of life or death.

The Maasai of northern Tanzania have a particularly sad history when it comes to land rights.  In 1959, ten thousand Maasai were displaced from the Serengeti by the British colonial administration in order to create a vast wildlife sanctuary. In exchange, the British established the neighbouring Ngorogoro Conservation Area centred on the crater of the same name; Maasai were permitted to graze their livestock alongside the wild animals there. Sixteen years later, the Maasai who had settled in Ngorogoro were told by the Tanzanian government that they had to leave the crater floor for the sake of the wildlife. Over time and to become more resilient during droughts, Maasai families took to cultivating small plots of land on its slopes. And now, the government is telling those who farm on the rim of the crater and in the highlands around it that they must stop doing so or risk arrest. The government has started to relocate thousands of Maasai out of the Conservation Area.

Ngorogoro Crater, Tanzania

In all our conversations with Maasai communities, I got a strong sense of how helpless Maasai feel in the face of these relocations as well as foreign investors coming in and encroaching on their traditional pastorage. Soitsambu Ward women’s chair Mairetwai Nguya expressed this movingly: “We are living like in a house with no doors. Like people without air to breathe… There is no serious action [on our behalf].” Nguya had even participated in a Maasai delegation that visited the Tanzanian parliament. Commenting on their attempts to seek support from the government, she added, “We must be wrong in their eyes. Why don’t they answer?”

Mairetwai Nguya

One can see a new form of Terra nullius in the general lack of respect towards Maasai land use. According to Alais Ole Morindat, Coordinator of Kimange DSC and an adviser to PWC, the combination of modern land tenure legislation plus repeated evictions are “breaking up specific principles of being and belonging”, namely as represented by centuries-old Maasai communal land use.

The belief appears to be that if Maasai do not establish a clear title to the land, through building permanent homes and other amenities, they do not have the right to remain. This happened when the British established Serengeti National Park. However, as Carol Sorensen, a respected expert at the Tanzania Natural Resource Forum, explained to us, the Serengeti is “not a wild but a cultural landscape”. Pastoralist Maasai have been there a very long time, and according to her, the open landscape is at least in part a result of the grazing of their livestock. Another natural resources expert, Fred Nelson, told Lucy and me when we got back to Arusha that the Maasai are not really nomadic. Their movement across the land is “rubber-banding”, whereby “claims to resources become vested and overlapping at certain times of the year.” A problem now, Fred added, is that Maasai have to range such long distances as “acts of desperation, since the land is so fragmented”.

In Loliondo, one of the Maasai women whom we met said, “We are not even equal to wildlife. The government values wildlife more than human beings.” Given what is going on, who can blame her for saying so?

• Read Part 2 of Carl’s blog post on the Maasai in Tanzania…