| After our time on Kilimanjaro
we moved southwest onto the remote Maasai steppe of the Simanjaro
district where Vetaid is working with the Maasai people in 30 villages
over an area the size of Wales. Communication is poor and “roads”
are just faint tracks across the dust or through thorn scrub.
Tall red-robed Maasai would suddenly appear from nowhere
- one on an old fashioned upright bicycle - and then disappear into
the tangle of acacias.
It was a wonderful privilege to be accepted into the
Maasai villages and to enter the Bomas, the circular encampment
of thorn scrub “fences” enclosing the central cattle compound
and outer mud huts and sheep and goats. Here we could see at first
hand the proud dependence of these wandering pastoralists on their
cattle and on their nomadic use of the land and all it has to offer,
even in times of drought.
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