subject: The Kenyan Masaai Woman [print this page] The Kenyan Masaai Woman The Kenyan Masaai Woman
The Kenyan Masai woman is the backbone of any Masai home. Not only is she important in the home, but also in the community. Though she is the most important person in the Masai society, she is the one most disregarded. She is a very important part of the Masai home; the one who works the hardest yet her work most of the time goes unnoticed. She is the one who cooks, cleans, milks the cows and makes the shelters they live in. Where agriculture has been embraced, she is the one who does the cultivation. Though she is busy the whole day, she still finds time to take care of her children.
Building the homes the Masai live in is a tedious process that one woman cannot handle on her own. The other able bodied women in the community come and help out with the exercise. They drive timber poles directly into the ground and interweave them with a lattice of smaller branches. This is then plastered with a mixture of mud, grass, cow dung, human urine, ash and sticks. The cow dung is for waterproofing the structure. In the morning, a Kenya Masai woman wakes up early in the morning and milks the cows.
This can be up to a few hundred in number. She then cleans the house and compound and prepares breakfast for the entire family. After the family is through with the meal, she walks for several kilometers in search of drinking water and firewood. Later in the evening, she has to milk the cows again, make sure they are well settled in their night quarters and prepare diner for the family.
