The African Gourmet

The Maasai are East Africa’s most celebrated indigenous peoples. Tall, dark and slender, they have for long remained contemptuous of modern lifestyle. They are a noble, proud, and freedom loving people, who have always infatuated romantic esterners, since the appearance of explorer Joseph Thomson’s book “Through Maasailand” in 1885. Their interpreters to the world have included such gifted writers as Karen Blixen and Ernest Hemingway.

The Maasai are a pastoral tribes-group native to southern Kenya and north-central Tanzania, along the Great Rift Valley plains. They are great herders of cattle who live in the open wild, sharing their habitat with wildlife.

Thought to have originated from the Nile Valley in Sudan, the Maasai migrated southward sometimes between the 14th and 16th centuries, probably in search of greener pastures for their beloved cattle. Along the way, they fiercely fought and displaced tribes they encountered. Around the 18th and 19th centuries, these nomadic Maa speaking Nilotes settled in their present domains in Kenya and Tanzania.

Author: Andrew Muigai Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_84267_29.htmlPhoto USAID