Maasai people

The Maasai, Eastern Nilotes of Kenya and northern Tanzania, speak Maa, kin to Dinka and Nuer tongues, and hold cattle as wealth, wife-price, food and god. A million and more strong and growing fast, they move herds between wet and dry pastures, drink blood and milk, and raise manyattas of dung and thorn where moran warriors guard and elders judge. Lion killing once proved manhood; shuka blankets, bead collars and stretched ears mark age and clan. Parks and wheat schemes fenced the migration routes, and droughts now kill what disease spared, yet Maasai county councils, conservancies and beadwork cooperatives negotiate the modern rangeland. Swahili and English serve the towns, but Maa still opens every ceremony from the Mara to the Serengeti. Kenyan census counted 1.19 million Maasai in 2019, triple 1989. Maa is still the first language of the cattle camps. Northern Tanzanian Maasai graze beside the great lakes herds.