Khalid Aziz: Lessons can be learned from the Maasai
TO Tanzania to learn about leadership from the Maasai, but we learnt as much about life as leadership, whether herding goats, or practising spear throwing and realising just how close you would have to get to spear the lion that would turn you from a boy to a warrior.
We also visited local schools and sat with Maasai elders and visited a Maasai boma where women, children and animal occupy tiny fetid huts amidst swarms of flies and don't seem any the worse for it.
The whole experience was both humbling and uplifting.
Aged three, a Maasai child has a young goat placed in his arms. It's the first of many ceremonies.
"This is your life, your wealth and your health. Look after it."
Livestock is indeed the very lifeblood of the four million Maasai who straddle land between Kenya and Tanzania, clinging to their culture in an increasingly challenging world.
When asked to herd some goats across the savannah to their village for the night, our team of Hampshire business people set to it with gusto.
We soon cottoned on that the goats with the bells were leaders. Push them and you push the whole flock.
We achieved our mission, but failed to notice the dozen or so that had silently broken away and were thankfully restored to the flock by a couple of eagle-eyed young Maasai.
Pleased with our prowess, we were crestfallen to hear damning faint praise through our interpreter.
"The goatherd says you did quite well, but the idea is to let them stop and graze every now and then."
Then he mentioned the lost goats. "If I returned to the boma without just one goat, my father would have beaten me hard." Discipline is a key part of Maasai society.
Everyone knows their responsibility and is expected to act accordingly. For two hours, we sat down with 20 Maasai elders, half elected by modern universal suffrage, including the women in the modern Tanzanian way, the other half elected in tribal tradition by men only.
They don't have a problem with feral youth. "Firstly, a young person can be disciplined by any elder, and the father of that person will instil such obedience in the child."
They were incredulous on hearing that in England it is illegal to beat a child. "How can you expect to keep discipline?"
However, every child we saw was happy, from the very poor goatherds to those clearly thirsting for knowledge in the schools we visited. Maasai elders, although uneducated themselves, support education for coming generations.
"We need Maasai teachers, doctors and even lawyers to help win back tribal lands taken by the government."
The Maasai don't believe in an afterlife. No virgins or land of milk and honey for them.
So they have to make the best of the here and now in the belief that this is it. Maybe we should do the same.
9:58am Thursday 27th March 2008
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