The Pros and Cons of Marrying a Masai Warrior

This post is inspired from a visit to a masai village in the Serengeti. It is just plain mind boggling to see the way of life there. Masai society exists its own era oblivious to everything beyond their endless plains. It’s a whole other world out there. There doesn’t seem to be a single point at which our paths collide. It’s almost like we live in parallel universes.

The title is inspired by one Corinne Hofmann, who fell in love with a masai warrior and went on to do the unthinkable. If, by chance you fall in love with a masai dude and he gets down on one knee, here’s a comprehensive list of pros and cons to help you decide.

The Cons

1. You’ll have to eat your cereal with milk and raw cattle blood. Sour milk is a delicacy. It’s a common misconception that the masai hunt and eat large amounts of meat. They only kill in self defence and are primarily shepherds. Cattle are only slaughtered for special occasions.
2. You’ll have to wear enormous amounts of beaded jewellery at all times of the day and night. Man, woman, everybody. On your wedding day, you will find it very difficult to walk, which is not that uncommon in certain parts of India as well.
3. They have the weirdest dance routine possible. Nobody can make those moves look good. It’s mostly jumping really high, a little shimmying, and a lot of the beaded jewellery bruising your face.
4. They only have one genre of music, “Tribal Afro” with traditional ‘old lady’ overtones. It does get boring after a while.
5. You’ll have to undergo sometimes unpleasant rites of passage (including female circumcision) and rituals that involve some form of mutiliation. It still happens to this day and age.
6. Nobody from your family can come to the wedding. Your husband gives your family cattle in return for you and that’s that. All ties are severed.
7. You’ll have to live in a house made of acacia trees, cow dung and animal skins that you’ll most probably have to build yourself. Remember to pack a lifetime’s supply of room freshener.
8. You’ll have to shave off your head. And you won’t even be considered cool for doing it.
9. You can’t take a bath until it rains. Now this might actually be a good thing for some. Inspite of this, the masai strangely do not smell bad.
10. Electricity, what electricity ?!

The Pros

1. Your diet will be 100% organic, unprocessed and almost directly from the source. Most of the time, it doesn’t even need to be cooked. No preservatives and chemicals here. Your skin will be glowing in a week.
2. You’re allowed to maintain ties with your exes, both social and sexual, just so long as the relations are with a man belonging to the same age-set as your husband.
3. You get to design your own footwear, albeit from old car tires and cow hides. You can get as creative as you want and boy, do they last long!
4. You’ll finally get that perfect tan.
5. You’ll have more jewellery than you can wear.

As a new generation of Masai reach out to civilization as we know it, they are struggling to keep a delicate balance between millennia old traditions and the new world. The real question is: is what we have really a better way to live?