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Masai, also Maasai, east-African seminomads of the Drysavanne in the south of Kenya and Tanzania. Your language, the Masai, numbers among the nilohamitischen language group. One estimates the Masai at about a million people.

The traditional economy manner of the Masai was based on that on the cattle breeding in the highlands of Kenya to graze her freely their<A[their|her]> herds let. Your main food consisted<A[consisted|existed]> (and exist) of cow's milk and cattle blood. You exchanged, however, also vegetable food of neighbours driving their<A[their|her]> farming.

Your military institution, the warrior caste of the „Ilmurran", it facilitated the Masai probably coming from the field around the Turkanasee to bring increasingly bigger fields and their inhabitants in the south until end of the 17th century under their control. To 1870 they had extended theirinfluence sphere up to the Victoria lake. A cattle plague destroyed end of the 19th century, the apparent of British colonialists, big parts of the livestock had been brought in and a lot of Masai forced to accept another economy and life manner. A famine and a pimple epidemic were the result of the cattle plague. In spite of this weakening the Masai refused the co-operation with the British colonial gentlemen. The Britons resettled then the Masai 1904 as well as between 1912 and 1913 into far remote fields in the SuedenKenias and Tanzania's, where they still live today. These fields were less fertile than the angestammten willow grounds, were so that the Masai see themselves confronted with the problem of the too much grasland  more and more.

The Masai is subdivided into patrilineare origin groups. The men of the Masai are divided into of course defined age classes (Boys, warriors and oldest). Girls are often already promised by their<A[their|her]> fathers before the birth maritally. Both for boys and for girls curtailment ceremonies are carried out. Old women take hierarchically the same position as old men. Except few exceptions the Masai live most time of the year as a nomad and live in kraals, small settlements, from dome huts near which cattle dung is used as building material.

		Kwaheri    Massai Mara

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