Nyamera:

You and I will have to agree to disagree on this one. You must never have been to Amboseli during the dry seaon or you would know your statement about "few Maasais have too much cash or too many cows" isn't accurate. Perhaps the part about the cash is right on for the average Maasai (some have made huge sums with their deep pockets) - but if on one game drive you are literally held up by THOUSANDS of cows not supposed to be in the park to begin with - you would know that many do indeed have too many cows. They can't seem to grasp the fact that if they have 500 cows, sell 250 of them, feed, clothe and educate your family with the money you make, and there will be more food for the existing cows who will quickly reproduce for you. They are no longer the pastoralists they once were. Yes, everyone is to blame for that, I agree.

It isn't only the number of cattle. They totally wiped out the lion population in Amboseli. Luckily lions are now on the come back. They wiped out every rhino in the park. And they are still spearing and poison arrowing animals in their territory. It is for this reason itself that I have absolutely no sympathy for them. If they cared for wildlife as the Samburu people do it would be a different matter altogether.

When you plan your next trip be sure to include Amboseli during the dry season and I think you will better understand why people feel the way they do.

Original von Jan
Nyamera:

You and I will have to agree to disagree on this one. You must never have been to Amboseli during the dry seaon or you would know your statement about "few Maasais have too much cash or too many cows" isn't accurate. Perhaps the part about the cash is right on for the average Maasai (some have made huge sums with their deep pockets) - but if on one game drive you are literally held up by THOUSANDS of cows not supposed to be in the park to begin with - you would know that many do indeed have too many cows. They can't seem to grasp the fact that if they have 500 cows, sell 250 of them, feed, clothe and educate your family with the money you make, and there will be more food for the existing cows who will quickly reproduce for you. They are no longer the pastoralists they once were. Yes, everyone is to blame for that, I agree.

It isn't only the number of cattle. They totally wiped out the lion population in Amboseli. Luckily lions are now on the come back. They wiped out every rhino in the park. And they are still spearing and poison arrowing animals in their territory. It is for this reason itself that I have absolutely no sympathy for them. If they cared for wildlife as the Samburu people do it would be a different matter altogether.

When you plan your next trip be sure to include Amboseli during the dry season and I think you will better understand why people feel the way they do.

we also observed that the massai in tanzania put red-clothed puppets on the edge of waterholes in the park in order to keep the game away from the natural water sources!!!

pippa

As my experience of livestock husbandry is from having had two pet goats, I don’t feel competent to tell the Maasai what to do. The reason it looks like there are too many cows in Amboseli NP in the dry season might be that some dry season pastures of the many that have been lost/stolen are there. I suppose there are also “too many” wild animals congregating and attracting tourists in the dry season. People and their domestic animals are part of the eco-system.

The rhino spearings were a response to very grave injustices committed against the Maasai. As wild animals evidently were so much more valuable than Kenyan citizens to people in power, it’s not completely illogical to retaliate in that gruesome way.

If it's "not completely illogical (for the Maasai) to retaliate in that gruesome way" for previous injustices, then it's "not completely illogical" for us who care so much that wildlife always remain in Africa to go and gruesomely kill a few Maasai that we perceive have done wildlife wrong. Yet there would be a riot if anyone killed a Maasai - but no one gives a damn if the Maasai kill wildlife. What makes them better than wildlife?

Yes, the Maasai were moved from "their land". However, as pastoralists they wandered all over Kenya. That doesn't make them "owners" of every where they wandered. The thing the Maasai and you aren't taking into account is that the wildlife was there long before the humans were - thus in a sense the Maasai have taken the territory of wildlife - and by the Maasai standards - wildlife are the "owners" of the land.

The wildlife for us to care about in Africa that have shared their environment with the Maasai still remain – threatened, but still very impressive. The huge herds that “shared” (more like “had a brief encounter with”) your precursors in America, or mine in Europe even earlier, are gone.

The land conflicts are between Maasais, politicians, conservationists, “conservationists”, other Maasais, the tourism industry, other businesses, agriculturalists and all kinds of other people. Not between the Maasai and wildlife… With interest and just a small knowledge of East African history and politics it’s obvious that the Maasai have been treated very unfairly.

Instead of comparing the value that’s given to Maasai lives with the value that’s given to wildlife lives you could mix yourself in the comparisons. We aren’t exactly benevolent visitors from another planet. How many Americans or Europeans would be as “tolerant” with wildlife that regularly kill people as the Maasai and other Kenyans living close to wildlife are? The Kenyan compensation to the family for a human life lost to wildlife is 30,000 shillings and it can take years to get this compensation. A Swedish hunter gets 100,000 shillings for a dog killed by wolves and still many hunters want the number of wolves to be reduced – and they are about as rare, or rarer, than wild dogs in Kenya. Would you even give the protection of wildlife a thought if you were living under the kind of economical stress that most Kenyans live under? It’s very possible, but most western wildlife lovers would not.

Nyamera:

I agree with you that the Maasai have had some injustices over the years - but so have many in Kenya. But their argument should be strictly with the government, riot against the MP's and the President, not kill wildlife. I also agree that the government is too slow in remunerating them for deaths. That is not right and is shameful, particularly when you consider what the MP's and President make.

However, approaching life as a moran the young men are still going out killing lions to prove their "manhood" to become a moran. The chiefs could easily put a stop to that, but don't. The elephant Odile who was speared seven times - those spears were in her skull bone so deeply that four men couldn't get them out without knocking them loose with a spanner first and then pulling them out. Thus you know that no 13 year old threw those spears - they would not have had enough strength to penetrate an elephant's skull that deeply. On one trip alone I saw 7 speared elephants - 4 females and three calfs. One female and all three calfs died as a result.

"Would you even give the protection of wildlife a thought if you were living under the kind of economical stress that most Kenyans live under? It’s very possible, but most western wildlife lovers would not." I would like to think I would (but could never be sure until I lived through that situation).

I don't think, though, that you can chalk it up to economical stress. I know of many, many Kenyans who are just as poor as those Maasai and wouldn't harm the hair on an animal. Many people living on the borders of all parks/reserves are under much of the same pressure with wldlife, and yet they don't seem to relatiate in the same manner as the Maasai living around Amboseli. Is it a lack of "self-policing" by the local chiefs, tribal practices or what? Do you have any ideas on this?